Returning to his homeland after the end of the first Chechen war, author German Sadulaev found the happy places of his childhood utterly destroyed. On that day, he realised there was no going back…

It was at the end of 1996. Or it could have been the first half of 1997. I don't remember the date, the month. I don't even remember the time of year. But I know it wasn't summer. It was cold. Not like the cold of winter, when the gentle frost stings your nose. It was wet and chilly, disagreeable. Like the cold of late autumn, when the birds have already flown away, the trees are bare, the earth is dark yet the sky is too stingy to send a blanket of snow to cover its wretchedness. Or like the cold of early spring, when everything is still tentative, uncertain – when it seems the battle in the sky is not yet over, the sun has been taken prisoner, and the heroes of light could still turn around dolefully and say: "No, we won't make it; the dark and cold are stronger than us – spring won't win this time."

So it must have been November. Or March. I was going home, to Chechnya, after an absence of many years. The first Chechen war had just ended. Though at that time nobody knew it was the first war; back then it was simply "the war". Aeroplanes had long since stopped flying to the capital, Grozny; the airport had been one of the first places destroyed. But, strange as it sounds, the trains were running. From Moscow to Grozny via Gudermes, a train was travelling, packed with silent souls carrying enormous bags which held everything from foodstuffs to fashionable clothes.

In Gudermes fidgety armed men in dirty fatigues got on. They looked like tramps with assault rifles slung across their shoulders, but these were not hobos – they were the Ichkerian border patrol. That's what they called themselves. They made their way through the carriage, inspecting people's papers and luggage. Noticing my Russian appearance, they gave me a thorough going-over. They found cash – I don't remember how much, perhaps $400. And they took half of it. There was nothing odd in that. What was odd was that they left half for me.

I hardly glanced out of the window; I was worrying about the money that had been intended for my parents. But I was also experiencing a vague sense of unease. Of course I knew what I might find ahead. Or rather, it wasn't hard to guess. But imagining is one thing; when the picture arises before your eyes it is nevertheless a shock. Think of a knight who has set out to fight a dragon. He knows the dragon has three heads and is belching out flames. It's covered in scales which are stronger than armour and has feet with claws sharper than Damascus blades. Yet when the knight sees before him a real dragon, then no matter what, it will startle him.

When the doors of the carriage opened, I stepped on to the platform and saw Grozny. Or rather, I didn't see Grozny. I'd been forewarned as my relatives who'd remained in the Chechen Republic had told me what had happened to the city. On TV I had seen the reports of the military operations and the aftermath of the bombing, but deep down I hadn't believed them. I was still hoping to see Grozny as I had left it a few years earlier, when heading north from that same platform. You know, I even thought I'd find the city green with its leafy parks and avenues, because I had left my homeland when it had been summer. Well, I was coming home now, returning to childhood, and returning to summer.



I used to live and go to school in Shali, a village some 30km from Grozny. I didn't go into Grozny that often. Every Sunday I'd go with my parents to the market, but that wasn't the whole of Grozny. Sometimes the school bus would take us there to visit the circus. But the real trips were in the summer, in the holidays, when we would stroll about the city, go to the cinema and the fairground attractions and eat ice cream in the cafés. And that was how I remembered Grozny – green and white. It was green with plane trees and poplars, with lilac and roses. And it was white from the walls of the multistorey buildings which to me, a boy from the countryside, seemed like palaces. It was white from the sun which was everywhere, flooding the avenues and squares.

And so, standing on the platform, I screwed up my eyes and then opened them again. I thought something was wrong with my vision. I thought someone had played with the colour setting. Everything was black.

The entire city looked crouched and hunched. Houses had caved in, reduced to half their size. And everywhere, right up to the hazy, grey horizon, there was nothing but ruins. The remains of walls, concrete slabs, smashed bricks, all charred and sooty. Here and there smoke was rising, perhaps from unextinguished fires or from the few people still left in the ruins trying to keep warm and cook something. I could see people close up and in the distance – someone dressed in rags was shifting bombed roof timbers around as though in a trance.

I was met by my relatives, who had become like the city: hunched and darkened. We drove to Shali along the usual road, via Argun. And once again I tried not to look about me. I was thinking of home, because home – my true, dear home, my father's house in Shali – would never betray me like Grozny had. It must have preserved within itself my summer, my childhood. It had no right to lose everything! No! There, in the yard, everything would still be the same, the same as ever, because if eternity exists, then where would you find it if not in that yard? And as for the garden – the garden was certain to have stayed the same. And perhaps I would see that awkward boy standing under the cherry trees, gazing dreamily towards the east, where the living sun rose, illuminating with its rosy rays the snowy summits of faraway mountains. I would see myself.

I no longer remember what I felt as Uncle Aslanbek's old car drove into our yard. My memory has spared me. I remember that the walls of the house were covered in wounds from shrapnel; where the shed had once stood there was a bomb crater and, in the yard, covered over with tubs, lay unexploded shells.

I realised that up until then I had always thought things could be put right. All my running away, my searchings were simply attempts; each time I could start over again. I had nine lives. And if something didn't work out, I could always return to the place where everything had begun. But that day in the garden I met the boy who told me that he was no more.

That is how my childhood and its unbridled paganism – with its faith in an eternity on this earth, in the gods of the sun and the moon, in the green garden of this world, in its joys – came to an end. History travels from beginning to end, from Creation to the Day of Judgment, when our actions will be weighed up and whatever is decided will be decided for ever. Nothing can be undone, nothing ever happens for a second time, each action is performed just once and remains in an eternity that is not to be found here, and there is only the one Almighty, the Omniscient, the Infallible.

That is how a person becomes an adult.



Later I visited Chechnya many times. Today I travel home regularly. And I see a newly built Grozny. I see a Shali which has become twice as big and more beautiful – or so people say. They say everything has been restored. But that's a lie. You cannot restore anything. Once destroyed, it is destroyed for ever, just as a dead person cannot be brought back to life. They have merely built a new city. Built a new Grozny, a new Shali, on the sites of the old ones. Or perhaps the sites aren't even the same. This new city will be home and homeland to others, but not to me. My home remains in the past.

And when nasty people – there is so much nastiness about – write and say: "If you don't like things here, immigrant, go back to your Chechnya", I smile bitterly. I would return. But there is nowhere for me to return to. Because my Chechnya no longer exists and it will never exist again.



German Sadulaev was born in 1973 and lives in St Petersburg. His latest novel I am a Chechen! is published this month by Harvill Secker, £12.99



To read all the articles in this series, go to theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/once-upon-a-life