Svetlana is a smile frozen in a photograph, drawings fixed to the wall, a dress hanging in a wardrobe, a stuffed toy perched on a shelf. "Every morning, I pray for her, my daughter. Every day, I talk to her. At first, there was anger, despair. All that's left is this pain deep inside me. You have to survive," said Marina Pak, 59, on the eve of the commemoration ceremonies in Beslan, a small town in North Ossetia, in the Russian Caucasus, traumatized by the hostage-taking at its school between September 1-3, 2004. Among 334 civilians killed, 186 were children, including Svetlana, her only daughter, age 13. Twenty years on, Russia's worst hostage-taking carnage continues to haunt people's minds.

It was back-to-school time. A business appointment prevented Marina from attending. Since then, regrets have gnawed at her. But this dynamic, determined single mother is clinging to life. First she married a father, who had lost his wife and child in the tragedy. Then, alone again, she adopted German, a little orphan who has grown into a big teenager.

"I worry about him all the time. As for Svetlana, I know she's safe in heaven. God is looking after her. I'm just waiting for the day when, up there, I'll find her again," said Marina, in the solitude and silence of the kitchen in her Beslan home. She divides her time between hosting guests at a monastery in the surrounding mountains and maintaining the Beslan cemetery. "I'd like these places to be full of flowers and colors forever," added Marina when we met her at the end of August on a hot afternoon in the same kind of heatwave that had suffocated children deprived of water by terrorists during the three days of captivity.

'We need to know the truth'

Twenty years on, the fighting mothers of Beslan remain all the more alone and lost in their grief, doubting that they will ever know the truth about the hostage crisis. Around 30 Chechen men and women, hooded and strapped with explosives, held 1,300 children and adults. After killing around 20 adults, they herded the hostages into the gymnasium, mined the other buildings and threatened to blow up the school. Without water, the children were reduced to drinking their own urine. On the third day, at 1 pm, an as yet unsolved explosion caused panic and, amid the flames, armed intervention. The children were caught in the crossfire between hostage-takers and the Russian security forces.

"The terrorists were killed, only one survivor was put on trial," recalled Marina, referring to Nur-Pashi Kulayev, a 25-year-old Chechen sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006. "But what has become of those responsible among our authorities? Will no one ever be tried or punished?" These questions are still on many lips in Beslan, and the official inquiry has failed to provide any answers.

You have 65.29% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.