Alsu Kurmasheva

"It happened on Thursday. I had a book with me, a new one, which I got to just before I left. It was kind of thick and I had to make sure I had a reading for every day. To have a routine, otherwise I would have read it in one day. But I divided it into a hundred pages for each day. So I had the last hundred pages for Thursday. I had porridge for breakfast and sat down at eight in the morning to read. And all of a sudden the door opened and they brought my stuff in and told me to sign that I had it all back. They advised me to leave everything behind and take the minimum amount of stuff. And that they'd be back in 15 minutes. I asked where we were going and they said to freedom. Then I understood that this would be it. Fifteen minutes later they came to me and I left all my things there and took only letters, two books and my diary. Some medicine. I got on the bus, and everyone was already on it. Sixteen people. I was the last one. Then they took us to the airport. We didn't wait long. We couldn't talk, they wouldn't let us. Evan Gershkovich sat behind me, Paul Whelan sat in front of me, and Russian politicians and activists were in the front of the bus."

"There was a shower twice a week, otherwise I was in a cell for six months without hot water. There was only cold water and it was very hard in winter. Slowly you lose your dignity there. They told me I was strong. But I wasn't strong. Some days in a row I didn't want to brush my teeth because the tap water was ice cold. I just didn't have the strength or energy to heat it up. And so I just didn't want to wash my face sometimes. But the longer it goes on, the more often you do it, the faster the brain degradation comes. And that's exactly what the administration and the investigators want. So you need a lot of support, moral support, which I had in my situation. I can't complain. I had a lot of outside support. And it was that support that helped me stay myself. Even if I didn't brush my teeth for days at a time. Or I didn't change my clothes. But then I would get maybe some letters or I would hear from a lawyer and it would immediately help me get myself back together and move on."

"They somehow changed it (the charges) and then decided I was not a foreign agent after all. Which was clear from the beginning. And then the book stayed in there. We waited a long time, first for one expert review of the book, then for another. Based on those examinations, I was accused of spreading false information about the war. On the basis of that, they handed down a sentence of six and a half years and a ban on journalism for three years." "And what did the trial look like?" "It was a closed trial, nobody knew about it at all. From morning till evening, for two days. Again there were some legal formalities, they interviewed the prosecutor, they interviewed the investigators, they interviewed my two lawyers. I didn't speak. My lawyers and I decided to save energy, that there was no point. I was just answering some questions, the same ones again. Who I am, why and what I did. That was a long talk. I think the case against me could fit into six or seven thick books: It took two days to read it all."

"Prague was grey and rainy. I arrived in summer, in August. Prague smelled different, I remember it very well. And suddenly, after the life I had there, lots of friends, extended family and all, I was all alone here. Yes, well, I had colleagues, but I didn't have anybody in the evening, so I phoned home a lot, and I just started writing letters a lot. Physical letters. I realised I couldn't write it at home, it was very sad. So I started going to different cafés, and I found a café here in Prague that was popular with foreigners. It was Globe, it was still in Prague 7 then. So I went there every weekend and wrote tons of letters to Kazan. Those letters are still in Kazan with my friends. Sometimes when I went there, I read them. This was before the internet. And I think I continued for a long time, even though people already had e-mail. The art of writing letters helped me even in detention afterwards, but I'll tell you more about that. That's how I got into life here. I understood very quickly that I had to learn Czech. The reason was that I respect languages. I respect the feeling when I speak to someone in their native language. In the same way, I respect it when someone addresses me in Tatar."