128 years of Coca. What is the secret of longevity of oldest resident of Russia?
For 128 years, Coca Stambolova survived the king, the Great Patriotic war, the Soviet regime, her husband and their children. If she was happy?
The correspondent of “AIF” together with journalist ISA Zakriev, who was the interpreter went to the village of Brotherly Nadterechny district of Chechnya, about 100 km from Grozny. There lives Coca Stambolova. Lately her house was visited by dozens of journalists, TV reporters literally standing in the queue. There were those who compares her interview and finds it weird. Yeah, she doesn’t know her birthday, only the year 1889. He was recorded in the first passport, which she received in the years of deportation of Chechens to Kazakhstan. Why it had issued such a document is unknown. Remembers little about the events of the revolution and civil, although he was already rather big. Claims that got married after the deportation of 1944, then had children. That is, when she was already more than 50 years? But we did not dwell on it. It is important is not when, but how she lived and felt.
“The soldiers took away the last cow”
Coca is still independent. However, the vision fails. Guests she’s happy, though, and speaks only Chechen. The presence of people in the house reminds her of the days when people were more sociable and open.
In her childhood girlfriends got together and spun fleece. If repetitive activity was very tired girl slowly throwing scraps of wool to the fire to the pile of work became a little smaller. “We were very cramped, and from the sheep wool you can make socks, mattresses, blankets and still sell it. And I so unwisely did,” she laments 100 years later about missed opportunities.
From the height of past years, childhood and adolescence seem like a Coke sometimes the happiest of her life. Despite a poor and hard life, they lived together and had fun. Now it’s not that. “The money had not yet won people,” she said, the former oldest child in the family. Remembers that he loved to play with rag dolls, which were making her uncle, but child’s play she has almost no time left — I had to babysit two sisters and two brothers to help mother with the housework. Pure torture was the duty to go to the river for water.
We wore shoes of rawhide, and when I walked in the dew, the shoes get wet and swell. The going was very hard and cold. The family had a sick grandma, and then I got sick and father. To learn it once.
Clothes girl flashing could not. The dress she wore every day — that’s all she had in the closet. But like every woman, she wanted to be beautiful. From her youth she dreamed of red shoes and white stockings. One day the father went for medicine and bought her what she asked for. Alas, to show off the new Coke never had a chance.
The father sick to his stomach. Typically the attacks, he saved soda. Once it was not at hand, and he died. It wasn’t long before the deportation of 1944, In a cold February day strangers loaded Coke with my mom and sisters into the truck, drove to the train and sent to Kazakhstan. Why? Women in the Chechen villages was not interested in politics and such questions are not asked even to myself. Coke knows about the change in the country a bit: once there was a king, and then came the Soviet power.
She brought us only grief. We began to live worse. The soldiers stole us the last cow. We collected the remains of ears of corn in the fields and so I starved in the famine years. And then we still got evicted.
In Kazakhstan Coca grown woman finally got married. My fiance Magomed Stambolova she caught a glimpse of before the wedding. He sent to her mother’s friend, and they quickly agreed. For 13 years the family established a life in deportation, and when Stambolova returned home, everything had to start from scratch. Before the deportation they had two houses. One of them was destroyed. In the second lived with a Russian family, which was immediately vacate their house owners.
Have a Coke and Magomed in Kazakhstan had three children, but with them they brought only the daughter. Two sons died. And the daughter I gave my parents six grandchildren. The eldest of them, Ilyas Abubakarov, grew up in my grandmother’s house. He now lives near her. His family cares about Coke, skrashivaya her prolonged old age. Come to visit with other grandchildren and great-grandchildren, whom Coca is 16.
Grandpa Mohammed died 8 years ago. But it is Coca to remember is not love. Love in their marriage was not. Husband was younger and was very strict to his wife. According to Elias, he worked as a guard at the farm, and home bred turkeys and kept a cow. However, Coca considers that Mohammed not bothered much.