19.02.2009 19:19 | Margiev Ruslan Fedorovich, age 68, Tskhinval

I live alone. My spouse has died 6 years ago. My only son studies in Vladikavkaz, Northern Ossetia. I used to the bombardmentand explosions from the Georgian side for a long time. This year an August was very restless. In the evenings, when the shelling of the city usually began, I used to switch off light in the entire house and go to bed. It had been disturbing, but it was possible to sleep. On August 7, at the afternoon I sat as usual in a courtyard with my neighbors. The remote shots and explosions were audible. The neighbor’s fellow told that Georgians have attacked Tsunar village, and the war there has practically begun. All my neighbors went home to prepare basements for the shelter in case of the shelling of the city. I also went home, prepared the candles, and took a mattress down in a basement. But when I’ve listened to Saakashvili`s speech on TV, when he said that there would be no shooting, I have a little calmed down and have gone to sleep in my room. In the middle of the night I’ve heard the first explosion, then the second one.

I’ve never heard such powerful explosions. There was such a feeling that they had been broken off absolutely closed to me. I jumped, quickly put on and ran downwards to the basement. When I reached a cellar, there was pitch-black there. I do not have mobile phone and I could call to nobody. The bombardment and explosions went on and on. I don’t remember such a bombardment from the very first Georgian-Ossetian war. I had very capitally made house, but it was shaking as an autumn leaf. I do not remember how much time I had been in a basement, but sudden blow at my house frightened me outright. I’ve heard an explosion, and the wall of my house failed. I did not know what to do, whether run to my neighbors or to remain there. After the second explosion my house lighted up. I realized it on a smell of a smoke. Then I’ve heard that somebody bangs an entrance door. But I simply could not move from a place, I guess, I was in a panic. My neighbors shouted me: “Ruslan, get away quickly, the house is burning!”

I heard the shouts, but in a panic I began to search for water to put out the fire. Now, after all I understand that I could not put it out, because, in first, I had not got water and secondly, it was already burning strong. It was useless to call out a fire-brigade; they were fired by the sniper. I began to choke with a smoke. By that time, my neighbors have broken out a window and pulled me out. They also took the TV and the pair of mattresses out of the house. All the other things had burned down. What’s the use for me from this TV and mattresses now, if there is no place to put them down? The rest days of war we spent in the basement of the neighbor's houses, there was a shop of the manufacturing of plastic windows in this house. I survived by a miracle but what a sense of my live, if everything I have acquired burned down in a flash. My son has no place to come back. Now I live in old people’s home. The war changed my life drastically. I could never think that I would be alone and without the house when the old age overtook me.

Translated by Tatiana Inozemtseva