naqarmoza

Oh My God! That's right, it's me in the article. I didn't even know about that, thanks.

I'm one of the foundng members of CAN. How come I don't know you?

I know her father very well. Her father and my grandfather used to be friends. Khozh-Ahmed wrote many books, and one of them is really interesting to me - the Adats or the Chechen Ethics. Unfortunately I can't benefit from it because it needs commentary to that or at least better Chechen. Recently I asked my cousin to visit him in the Chechen village and interview him. So she did. It needs to be subtitled because it's in Chechen.

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Samian

Hmm, I've never met you either! lol

Do you know someone named Amrina, that lives in Portland? I met her a few days ago through YouTube, and SHE said she was one of the directors at CAN. How small is this world, lol?

I didn't get a chance to email Almut (I was too embarrassed to tell her that I couldn't host those Memorial guest speakers lol), but I might still email her next week, since I've started some new Chechnya-related projects.

(For example, I plan on translating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into Chechen this summer so I can submit it to the UN High Commissioner's office; they have 300+ languages, but no Chechen!)

If you have the text of the interview, I think it'd be a great addition to the wikipedia article. I also can't get birthdates for either person...

naqarmoza

Wait...You will be transltaing a text into Chechen?! So you must be Chechen or at leats know the language well enough?! Are you one of those?

I know Amrina, her nickname is Lady over here.

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Samian

nope, I'm bangladeshi-american. actually, my chechen is very rudimentary (much worse than my japanese! lol), so i need to put some serious study of the language this summer.

what makes it worse is there's no chechens where i live now..

Samian

i wonder if it's possible to get any of Zalpa's writings here in the US...

Mister

Where do you get so much energy. A little girl with big ambitions.
Why do you think chechnya would interest somebody from so far away as you are, how can you explain that?
Actualy, I am interested to hear your understanding of it because I myself in a simmular situation, and can't figure out , why?

Samian

lol, actually im a guy who's turning ninteen next month )
(the photograph of my avatar is of a 5 year-old Chechen refugee girl in Moszno, Poland btw; i was just taken aback by those beautiful eyes)

In some ways, I can't really answer that question. It's like, you see these people who seem so noble and pure, and then you see them suffer so much, even today, and the whole world stays silent, doesn't it?

I think I first really felt like I should get involved in Chechnya, was when I saw this video from the New York Times, and then I saw this one.

But even though there's such horrible events, and it seems like people here in the West are silent, there's tremendous momentum for that to change. For example, you should look at the "Justice for Chechnya" group on Facebook; it's got 350+ members, and most of the people are Westerners who only recently found out about the situation there. So I think in many ways, I can make people here more informed about Chechnya.

Hope that sort of answers your question. I have plenty of other Chechnya-related resources (videos, photos, etc.) btw

Samian

oh, sorry about the two links!
here are the two videos again:
one

two

Samian

Whew! A new wikipedia article, about Zalpa's father! ))

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khozh-Akhmed_Bersanov

naqarmoza

Oh My Goodnees! I didn't know that Ruslan Doshaev helped to publish one of the Khozh-Ahmed's books! I read that on one of the links you've posted, Saiman.

Ruslan Doshaev is a beautiful person who is one of the co-authors of "K'onah" book. It's relatively new and has sayings of the Chechen man's knighthood, or k'onalah, as we call it. The sayings are put together in one book in three languages - English, Russian and Chechen.

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