'I am Politkovskaya, I am Politkovskaya," I cried out at about 2pm on October 25, when I was entering the theatre at Dubrovka seized by terrorists. I had no expertise under my belt, absolutely no experience of negotiating with terrorists. If I did have something, it was my desire to help the people who were in trouble through no fault of their own. And also, as the terrorists had chosen me as a person they wanted to talk to, I couldn't refuse.
My soles squeaked on the floor of the theatre, and the sharp noise made by my feet on the broken glass will always reverberate painfully in my heart. I kicked spent cartridges as I walked, tossing them up. My legs felt like rubber from fear. "Why have I, a woman, got myself into this hellish situation?" I thought. "We have macho men at every crossroads, just whistle for them. Why did I have to come here?"
"I am Politkovskaya ... Is there anybody here?" I cried. "Hello, I am Politkovskaya ... I have come to meet the commander. Reply!"
It was completely silent and calm around me. To my right, the theatre's cloakroom was filled with raincoats and jackets. Coats but no people, and no people sounds. It felt like walking into a school while all the children were sitting quietly in their classes.
I walked up the stairs to the second level, still crying out. I stepped into the half-lit area, without a soul in sight. Finally, a man wearing a black mask and carrying a sub-machine-gun, appeared. "I am Politkovskaya. I have come to meet with your commander," I said.
"I will call him right away," he replied. He looked me up and down and we exchanged a few words.
"Where are you from?" I asked him.
"From Tovzeni." (A big village in the Chechen mountains).
"I have been there."
"You have? How was it? Did you like it there?"
I shrugged. We had already been waiting for 15 or 20 minutes. What were they up to? I thought I heard a rustling noise coming from behind the green door just a couple of metres away, where I imagined hundreds of people were sitting trapped and frightened, the people whose I plight I had come here for. Then the green door opened. Another masked person led out a frail teenage girl with a bluish-whiteish face, wearing a yellow blouse. She was led past me, then they came back, and I plucked up my courage and asked,
"How are you doing?"
"What?" the girl replied.
And that was it, she was pushed away with a sub-machine-gun, back behind this damned dark green door. With all my expertise and education, I was still totally unable to help the child. The helplessness was terrible.
Masked people were going to and fro, talking to each other and asking me, "Are you Politkovskaya?" Curious heads bent down from the third-level balcony. I could see through the mouth slits that they were smiling behind their masks. In order to shake off the heavy weight of silence, I tried talking to them.
"Your mothers. Do your mothers know about this?" "No, but we have gone past the point of return. Either the war stops, or we will blow up the hostages."
"When will the commander come?" I asked.
"Wait. Are you in a hurry? Don't hurry. You'll have everything right away," one of them replied. The words made me tremble again.
"What's next? Will they kill me? Will they take me hostage?"
Soon, someone entered from that door, behind which were the hostages, and told me to follow him. A minute later, we were talking in a dirty room with no windows, adjoining the hall. There was light in here, and for the first time I could see everything properly. The chief negotiator from their side turned out to be a 29-year-old man called Abubakar who introduced himself as deputy commander of the subversion and intelligence battalion. At the beginning, the conversation was strained. Abubakar seemed nervous at first, but then calmed down. He became angry when he talked about his generation of Chechens, aged 20 to 30, who had been through the two wars and knew nothing except fighting.
"You won't believe it, but for the first time in many years we feel calm here."
"In the theatre?"
"Yes. We will die here for the freedom of our land."
"You want to die?"
"You won't believe it but we want it very much. Our names will remain in the history of Chechnya."
I am, of course, a very poor negotiator. I had no idea what to say. And he - who had lived for half a life without taking off his military uniform and with a sub-machine-gun in his hands - he didn't know how to do it either. That is why we kept slipping into conversations about the meaning of their life, for instance. Some of the other rebels came in to listen.
Abubakar became calm again, put aside the sub-machine-gun, and said he wanted to clear his soul before death. I listened to him attentively but also tried to interject about the plight of the hostages.
"Let the teenagers out," I suggested.
"No. We suffered at the hands of your people. Now let your people suffer.
"And the parents there, outside the theatre, let them feel what it was like for our parents."
"At least let us feed the children."
"No. Our children are hungry - let yours also go hungry."
Abubakar said he did not expect mercy and that he dreamed of dying in the battlefield. I think he was being honest and frank with me because he was in the presence of a woman the age of his mother. And that is what I told him - that he was the same age as my son and that even in the worst nightmare, I would not see my son cornered by people.
"If he were a Chechen, he would be. And he would also wish to die like myself because of everything that you are doing to us in Chechnya."
"And if you have to die tomorrow?"
"Praise be to the Almighty."
Finally, we decide it is time for us to part. We have not agreed on much and I'm not convinced that the talks were in any way effective. But I am no negotiator. We had only agreed that in the coming hours I would carry water and juice into the theatre and I would try to bring them enough for almost 700 people.
I left the theatre in complete silence. Again, I had the feeling that there was no one around me. Lonely jackets and raincoats watched my steps. It was cold, very cold in this dreadful theatre - and there has never been a theatre in the entire world so stuffed with explosives. I just said to myself, "Go and get the juice, look for it, do now only this and don't think."
Had I done a lot or a little? A little of course. But I could not do more. When the place was stormed, all the terrorists I had spoken to died. And with them died 67 of the hostages who had drunk my juice before death. Let war be damned.