Sadyk Alimov: “In the early years of exile the separator saved us” When Sadyk Alimov returned home, his village was no longer there. It had been destroyed and planted with corn and sunflowers. It was impossible to return home, that no longer existed. Like every Crimean Tatar, he had to build a new home. And this was preceded by a long way of survival and return. The video was sent by Evelina Shamly.



– Perekopsky district, Biy-Bolushsky village council, Mamshek collective farm.

They arrived by car, loaded our belongings and from Voinka station we were loaded into the carriages and exiled. They said: “Come on, pack up and get out”. We got in the cars and were driven to Voinka, to the train station. “Hurry up and pack up”. We couldn’t take much with us. Father said: “Come on, load the grain”. Some flour, grains and a bottle of oil. The oil was in such bottles back then. “And come on,” he said, “don’t forget to take the separator, too. And we took it. Then the household stuff: one pillow, two beddings, one blanket. And together with pillows we took brother’s suits, together with pillows we managed to take his suits. We were trying to make dough when the train stopped in the steppe. When there was a stop, we made a flatbread or something like that, and run back to the wagon.

We arrived to Uzbekistan, Kitab station- it was the final one. There was no further railroad at the time. Then father told me that some people had come, unloaded everything and we had been taken away.

Where? To Kitab, to Shahrisabz.

And Dad said we’re going to get in the car now. The car would probably take us to a good place. It turned out they were taking us on a cart because it was far away, and the mountainous terrain, and the car wasn’t going all the way down there, there’s no further road. We were driven all the way to the end, the car’s not going further. They brought us to the collective farm and unloaded us there. Across the river. The river divided the collective farm. There was a river flowing in the middle of the collective farm.

Syr Darya. Here we were.

There was a room like this, just the door, and there were no windows, no stove. The roofs were flat, no slopes, and every time it snowed, we had to clean it with shovel. There was a big mulberry tree in the yard. My mother was lying under a mulberry tree sick with malaria. When we arrived there, she got sick, then Hasylat and the chairman of the collective farm came on horseback, and she was lying under the tree. “Go to work. You can’t?”. They wanted to beat her with a whip. “You don’t want to work”- he said. And she couldn’t get up. Two families lived there, in the middle there was a tarp. Asan was our fellow villager.

They lived on the one side, and we lived on the other side. His father, mother and son died of starvation. Once a week food were given, one to two kilograms of rations, in short. We ate it. When my father came, he started to slaughter sheep here. He slaughtered and sold them. And my mother fell ill from malaria, and did not get up. She was all bruised up and down, lice running around. There were no men, only women and children. My father died. Bury him? With women… there were hills, not mountains, but hills, with women we dug a hole. The women buried my father. We lived in the same house, in the same room which was divided with tarp. Sometimes they asked us for a few spoons of food. We weren’t starving, of course, we had a little bit. We sold bracelets, earrings, chains, too. There were gold watches, and we sold them too.

Everything was sold out.

What saved us? Separator. There was no separator in the collective farm back then. We gave the separator to the collective farm, and the collective farm gave us grain in return. We lived in Uzbekistan, Palandara, Burmetan collective farm. Kitab was 25 kilometers away from us. We went to Kitab once a week to the market. We were given a plot of land there. It had grapes growing there, we took 5-6 kilos on our shoulders and took it to Kitab. Once a week. We sold the grapes, and bought one and a half kilograms of flour and two kilograms of salt and half a kilogram of flour. Then we went home. We used to wake up early and go out and come home at sunset. 25 kilometers on foot. We were going barefoot through the thorns. That’s how we walked. I washed the car, helped, sold firewood. I climbed the tree, collected everything I could, and sold it. I sold it at the market. I sold water on Sundays. That’s how I grew up. My mother was sick, my brother worked at the winery.

After I got a job at the winery, I was selling firewood, branches and cotton bushes, water at the market. Memet Akay and Lilya Abay could not work on the farm, so I had to get food. And I started to mow the grass like this

– Lilya Abay is your sister, isn’t she, Grandpa.

– Yeah, she’s five years older than me. After my brother got me a job at the winery, we moved there. We lived there quietly. Then I went back to my factory again. After I got back to the factory, I was given a small flat. Then I started driving, we had eight points, wineries. Anyway, I went from Voinka to Orlovka. Our village was gone, the mill was gone, everything was demolished. We planted corn and seeds there. The cemetery was gone, either. It was flat ground. There was one hill. No houses at all, no cemetery, no mill, there were nothing. We sowed corn and seeds. And our house was gone. There were only about 30 houses, the village was small.