Eighteen of those years had been spent behind bars. She had nowhere to go. Her mother had died in 1989, her father earlier.
The village of Karabulak had nearly emptied out. But there was one address: Karaganda, Gogol Street, Building 14. That was where Natasha Belyaeva lived.
The same Natasha. Released in 1981. Returned to Karaganda.
Got a job at a garment factory. Married. Had a son.
Zulfiya got the address through Kozlova, who had been released in 1984. Zulfiya arrived in Karaganda in late March 1992. Rang the bell at Apartment 7.
A woman of thirty-five opened the door, blonde, tired-looking. She stared for a few seconds. Then recognized her. “Zulfiya-apa.”
“Hello, Natasha. May I come in?” Natasha broke down crying.
For the first time in thirteen years. Later she said: “I kept quiet all those years. Didn’t tell my husband, didn’t tell my friends, didn’t tell anybody.
Then I saw Aunt Zulfiya, and it all came out. Everything I’d been holding in.” Zulfiya stayed with Natasha.
In the fall of 1992, a reporter named Igor Vladimirovich Somov came to Karaganda. Thirty-four years old, from a major-city newspaper. Thin, glasses, worn briefcase, tape recorder. Somov was working on a series about abuses in the old prison system.
The changes in society had opened archives and loosened tongues. People who had kept quiet for decades were beginning to talk. Somov traveled, collecting stories.
He was led to Karaganda by a former Stepnaya inmate, Svetlana Morozova. Morozova had served time for theft, got out in 1983, lived in the capital, worked as a hotel cleaner.
When Somov asked around for women willing to talk about the prison camps, Morozova answered. She told him about Thursdays, about Zhuravlev, Galimov, Savchenko, Doctor Kovaleva, guard Zueva, and the cook who brought it all to an end. “Find Akhmetova,” Morozova said.
“She’s somewhere in Karaganda. If she wants to, she’ll tell it better than I can.”
Somov found her. Through Kozlova, who by then ran a market stall. Kozlova gave him Natasha’s address.
Somov came. Zulfiya opened the door. Thin, weathered, in a house robe, dish towel over one shoulder.
She had just been washing dishes. She looked at the stranger in glasses holding a tape recorder. “You’re Akhmetova?”
“Yes. And you are?” “A reporter. Svetlana Morozova told me about you.”
Zulfiya was quiet for ten seconds. Then opened the door wider. “Come in. Want some tea?”
They talked for two days. Somov turned on the recorder. Zulfiya spoke calmly, evenly.
As if she were telling someone else’s story. About the village. About her grandmother the herbal healer.
About Ermek. About prison. About Thursdays.
About Natasha. About Aigul, whom she never got to bury. About the pilaf on February 23.
Somov listened. Took notes. Sometimes stopped to turn the tape over or change batteries. Zulfiya waited and kept going.
As if it mattered to her that all of it finally be said out loud.
Not in an interrogation transcript sealed in an archive. Out loud. In a living voice.
For living people. At the end of the second day Somov asked: “Zulfiya Kadyrovna, do you regret it?” Zulfiya was quiet.
Then she answered. Somov later used the words as the epigraph to his article: “I regret that Aigul grew up without her mother.
I regret that my mother died and I wasn’t there. I regret that I gave eighteen years of my life to prison. But those three?…
No. Not one day.”
Somov went back to his paper. Wrote the article. Long piece, full spread.
Took it to his editor. The editor read it. Took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Asked, “Do we have proof? The file’s classified. We’ll get dragged into court.”
Proof that would stand up in court—there wasn’t any. The sealed file was inaccessible. Testimony from former inmates wasn’t enough.
Zulfiya’s tape-recorded account was still just the word of a convicted woman. Nothing more. The article ran in shortened form.
No names, no dates, no prison identified. Those who knew, knew. Those who didn’t, passed right over it.
It was 1993. People had other worries. The country was in upheaval.
Somov tried to get a criminal case opened regarding the abuse at IK-14. He filed a request with the prosecutor’s office. The response was prepared by Major Dzhumabayev.
The same investigator from 1979. “Request to open criminal proceedings denied due to expiration of the statute of limitations. The persons named in the complaint—Zhuravlev V.S., Galimov R.I., Savchenko P.V.—are deceased.”
Deceased. Three words that closed the matter. Dzhumabayev knew exactly what he was writing.
He remembered the isolation-room interrogation. Remembered Zulfiya’s eyes. Remembered his own hands shaking as he smoked on the steps.
But the law was the law. You don’t try the dead. Zulfiya lived in Karaganda another five years.
Quietly, almost invisibly. Helped Natasha. Walked Natasha’s son to preschool.
Cooked. As always, well and with care. On Sundays she went to the market for groceries.
Bargained with vendors, string bag tucked against her side. Bought lamb. The same kind—fatty, streaked white.
Made pilaf. Every Friday. Natasha once asked carefully: “Aunt Zulfiya, isn’t it hard for you? Pilaf… after everything?”
Zulfiya looked at her. “Pilaf is just food, Natasha. Rice and meat. Food isn’t guilty.”
Sometimes women came to see her. Women she didn’t know. Or had once known.
From prison. From Stepnaya. They sat in Natasha’s kitchen and drank tea.
Spoke little. More often they sat in silence. Then left.
Zulfiya walked them to the door. Nodded once. “Take care of yourself.” That was all.
Kozlova came more often than the others. She and Zulfiya drank tea in Natasha’s kitchen. Talked about ordinary things.
The weather. Prices. Health.
Never prison. Never what had happened. As if by unspoken agreement.
What had stayed behind the wire would stay there. In 1997 Zulfiya got sick.
An X-ray showed lung cancer. Stage three. She had never smoked.
But eighteen years of coal dust, bleach, and damp had done their work. Zulfiya took the diagnosis without fuss. Kept cooking and going to market as long as she could.
When she could no longer do that, she stayed in bed. Natasha cared for her like a daughter would. Because in a way, Zulfiya was her mother.
Not by blood, but by what had passed between them. Zulfiya Kadyrovna Akhmetova died in her sleep on November 12, 1997…
