I’m going to a foreign country and I’m crying

Reports started coming in that in many settlements, mostly rural ones, Crimean Tatars were being rounded up en masse. It’s a cunning plan — with a single “operation” you carry out ethnic cleansing and reduce the percentage of the disloyal population.

I don’t want to fight in a war of conquest against Ukrainian people. I am a patriot of Ukraine. So after the mobilization was announced, I decided to leave for Kazakhstan.

I don’t want to stay there long, and I want to bring my family. I’m no longer willing to subject my children to this danger — living on the same land as a vile Russian state. If it remains on my land, I don’t want to be there, and I don’t want my children to be there. For that, I’m ready to say goodbye to my love for Crimea. We’ve been backed into such a corner that there’s no other way out.

I don’t even know how to explain what Crimea means to a Crimean Tatar. It’s not even a home — it’s a place you come to and want to kiss the ground, because it’s covered in the blood and sweat of your ancestors. It’s the land where your nation was born.

My maternal grandfather was deported to Uzbekistan together with his parents in 1944, at the age of 6. My paternal grandfather served in the Soviet army and, returning after the war, couldn’t find his family in Crimea — they’d been deported too. He went to Central Asia to search for them.

Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan were dying in entire families. People didn’t even have the strength to bury the dead properly. They didn’t carry the corpses — they dragged them to a hillock, dug a shallow pit, which by morning would be torn open by jackals, and the bodies devoured.

My grandfather found my grandmother in Uzbekistan. They had five boys. They tried to enter Crimea — they weren’t allowed in. They moved to Novoaleksiivka, 30 kilometers from Crimea, where many Crimean Tatars lived. That’s where my father met my mother. They married, and we were born.

Love for the homeland never left the Crimean Tatars, so in 1989 my father decided to try to move back to Crimea. He was a good professional and found a collective farm near Simferopol with a vacancy and a director who was sympathetic to Crimean Tatars. My father proved himself, and they offered him land. Within a week, we sold the house in Novoaleksiivka and moved to Crimea to build a new one.

My grandfather’s brother tried three times to build a house in Crimea. Three times the house was demolished with a bulldozer, and he was transported out of Crimea to Krasnodar Krai.

Hatred of Tatars was cultivated in Crimea. There was an incident: my grandfather invited a repairman to fix his television at home. The man took the TV apart, and then asked: “Is it true that Crimean Tatars eat people?” My grandfather says: “Yes, once you finish, I’ll eat you.” While my grandfather had his back turned, the repairman took off. That’s what they were pumping into people’s heads.

Under Ukraine, we were free people. We could express our thoughts, voice our opinions.

After the annexation of Crimea, this primal fear appeared. I compare myself in 2014 — I was a free person — and now I’m a little mutt sitting in a kennel. It tears you apart from the inside. You have freedom within you, but you can’t express it, because it’s locked behind the bars of a mad fear of the FSB’s terrible system.

By that point, I already had children. I couldn’t find work because nobody would hire me without a Russian passport. I was forced to obtain Russian documents just to survive on my own land.

People who live outside Crimea don’t understand what it’s like. They think some Crimean Tatars support Russia’s actions. That’s not true. Living on our own land, we are in no way its accomplices.

They tell us: “Why don’t you leave Crimea?” Leaving your own land is the last thing that could happen to a Crimean Tatar. Especially voluntarily, as an act of protest. We couldn’t do that.

We couldn’t do it in February either. There was no direct threat to our nation. Having lived so many years in one place, with elderly parents, three children, a wife, and no financial means — it’s hard to just get up and run. You have to be backed against a wall for that — which is ultimately what happened with the mobilization, when it became a matter of life and death.

If I were in Ukraine now, I would join the ranks of the Ukrainian army. Defending your homeland is the duty of a Muslim and a citizen. But how can I get there with this Russian passport and small children?

I’m heading to a foreign country and I’m crying, because I’ve left my children and parents at home. I’m powerless. I want to go to my Crimea. But only when Russia is no longer there. I need nothing more — we pray to the Almighty for this.