The Makhachkala-Moscow flight was delayed again, for the umpteenth time that day.

"We just brought Khattab's interpreter, and two wounded more," said a dusty OMON officer I met at the airport.

"Our wounded?" I asked.

"Wounded," he muttered and walked away to his men, equally dusty and unshaven people of yet another Caucasian war.

Despite the thunder and lightning in the sky, a heavy transport plane landed—the fifth in the last few hours, as far as I could count them.

And these planes, and the multitude of OMON officers at the airport, not only with automatic rifles but also with "Mukha" rocket launchers, and Makhachkala itself, where the presence of people in protective camouflage is much more noticeable than before, during previous trips to Dagestan and even during the Chechen war—all this for August '99 are much more ominous signs than any natural cataclysms. But even the solar eclipse, which I observed through a darkened glass—a SOBR guy gave it to me—did not evoke any associations with the events that once again shook the North Caucasus and all of Russia...

On this assignment, honestly, military reports coming from the fields, or rather, from the mountains of battles against Khattab's and Basayev's forces that had invaded through the Snezhny Pass, did not interest me at all: firstly, these reports are regularly broadcast on all TV news channels, and secondly, for some time now, triumphant general's reports have often been associated in my mind with a victory over common sense.

What, is Dagestan "leaving" too? Has a new Chechnya appeared on the map? Is Russia once again being drawn into a hopeless Caucasian war, mirroring the recent slaughter into which the president and his miserable Kuropatkins dragged us? To answer these utterly naive questions, I flew to Makhachkala.

I met with Magomedali Magomedov, Chairman of the State Council of the Republic, with deputies, analysts, and special service officers. I spent an entire evening with the wise Rasul Gamzatov, whose authority in Dagestan is unquestionable. I spoke with dozens of people who had no offices or power, but simply lived here and had no intention of leaving Dagestan.

So, first: Dagestan is "not leaving," a new Chechnya will not appear on the Russian map. For that to happen, Kremlin politicians would have to, at the very least, loudly declare the "restoration of constitutional order in Dagestan." As, in fact, happened in Chechnya, where senseless bombings of cities and villages, brutal "cleansing" of settlements, fascist filtration camps, and the murder of tens of thousands of residents simply because they were Chechens, forced many people, who had not even considered separating from Russia, to view every Russian as an occupier and invader.

Everyone I met in Dagestan (not only during my last assignment but also in many previous ones) has their own answer to the question of why Dagestan was and remains part of the Russian Federation. For the political elite, it is primarily a matter of retaining power. For corrupt officials and bandits (which, in principle, does not at all mean that they are not simultaneously part of the political elite, which, frankly, no one is surprised by anymore in our still boundless expanses)—it is an opportunity to convert money from the federal budget into royal mansions on the Caspian Sea: is it accidental that Dagestan is one of the most subsidized republics within Russia? But most people, who belong to neither category, cannot even imagine their lives under Sharia law, let alone under the Wahhabist dictates of Khattab himself. (In one of the "hot spots" where militants penetrated, Wahhabists are supported by only 250 people out of 2,500 residents; in another—by 150 out of a population of nearly 5,000.)

What haven't I heard! From "try to make my wife wear a burqa—you'll put it on yourself sooner" to the truly exotic: "Some negroes want to seize us." The "negroes" turned out to be Sudanese who also came with Khattab. I remember Rasul Gamzatov's words: "How can one imagine life without 'War and Peace' and without 'Crime and Punishment'?" But even people for whom Russian literature is not a daily necessity cannot do without the Russian language in their lives and daily affairs, as it connects dozens of Dagestan's nationalities.