Who will Take Care of the Brothers – Romanian Grandma or Father, the Georgian Citizen? (The End)

Africa

Angelina Beriashvili, the director of the children’s house, “Satnoeba”, recounted, “I remember those children. They were very good boys. The father brought them to us. They looked quite nice; they were dressed in clean clothes and were washed too. The father had a sister and mother, and they looked after the boys. Aliar visited his children everyday. He used to bring chocolates if he had them. He assisted us in everything. He repairs for a living and repaired everything that had broken at the children’s house. I cannot say anything bad about the man. Then a foreign woman arrived and introduced herself as the grandmother of the boys. There were some rumors that she was not really a relative of the children; they said she was the friend of the real grandmother of the boys, who had already passed away.  The grandmother had supposedly asked Claudia to look after her grandsons before her death. A great fuss started since her arrival. Representatives of the Educational Ministry visited us. They were arguing with me and shouting at us. I do not remember their names. Finally, they took the children to the Tskneti Children’s Home, even though they were in good condition here. They were taken good care of, and we fed them well. But, they took them despite all that. I know that father is very sorry about that, and that he wants his sons here with us. Aliar cannot travel to Tskneti, though he says the children are well there, too.
He wants them to be close to him.”

Claudia Brigidina claimed the opposite. She said that Sasha and Tosha were in extremely bad conditions in the children’s house. They had a bad cough, were dressed in dirty clothes and had lice. She said that having arrived at the house the personnel apologized to her for keeping the boys in such mess. The reason for the situation according to caretakers was lack of water.

‘Satnoeba’ is situated next to the police station in the Africa District in Tbilisi. A one-story yellow house is surrounded by a yellow fence. There are rocking chairs and a children’s corner in the yard. It is cold, though children prefer playing outside. Laundry is hanging nearby. The children are watching us from behind the linen before we approach them. They are staring at every newcomer and then greet them in a group.

A large roll of patterned cloth is stretched in the room of the director and they apologized to us for having disorder in the room; they were sewing bed linen for children with the cloth. Angelina Beriashvili did not expect us, so they had not prepared to meet anyone. She said that the grandmother had not visited her, and thus Brigidina was biased in her estimations regarding the children’s house. She showed us round the house, opened cupboards where they keep medicines, then she opened a Samsung fridge where they keep Matsoni, cheese and sugared lemon for the children. It is time for dinner. Fifty-six children should have dinner there but one of them has high temperature and is in bed. He will have dinner in his bedroom today. The rest will have borsch, khachapuri and finally an orange for dessert. Younger children and a few adults gather in the hall where they watch TV and listen to music. There they have Puppet Theater, in which they imitate the heroes of fairytales. There are handmade things on the walls. The toilets are very clean. The floor of the toilets has been just covered with tiles. The director promised us that very soon they would cover the walls with tiles too…Mrs. Venera, a caretaker, said that Sasha and Tosha loved the house very much and greeted their father happily. The only reason for grandmother to take the children to Tskneti Children’s House was to keep the father away from the sons.

Nevertheless, Brigidina petitioned Angelina Beriashvili, the director for the ‘Satnoeba’, and took the boys to the flat she had rented for a month. The children were medically examined at the Tbilisi Medical Clinic # 15 that showed that the children had various serious diseases and needed to be operated on.

“We were visiting various doctors during the month. I am a microbiologist, and besides physical diseases, I guessed that Antosha had some mental (sexual) problems. Later, Sasha told me that, Valia, a nurse, abused the child sexually,” Brigidina could not help her astonishment.

“I asked Aliar several times to go abroad and promised that my brother would help him find a job there. I advised him to accompany me abroad; he would have worked and saved money for a flat. In such a situation, the children would have lived in normal conditions. However, he did not want to accept my proposal,” said the grandmother of Sasha and Antosha.

Brigidina took the boys to the Ministry of Education having medically examined them. “Seeing us, Salome was surprised and asked me where I had found them. She immediately offered us her assistance. I guessed she felt awkward for not having helped me before. I had not come there to make somebody apologize to me; they should have helped me at the very beginning if they wanted. We found out that the best Children’s Home was in Tskneti. We called Manana Tsilosani, the director of the Children’s House and on the basis of the Ministry of Education’s application, I left my boys at the Tskneti Children’s House on July 31, 2006. I realized that children should be left with neither parent. The main problem for me is to keep children in peace and prevent their parents from taking them from the children’s house.

Father

Aliar Musaevi arrived to give an interview initially with his father and then with his friend, Anzor Mantashovi, the director of the Public School 131. At the first meeting he brought toys for the boys. He said he was going to visit his boys in the Tskneti Children’s Home. “I try not to offend any of them. I always buy presents for both of them.” Aliar said that it is very difficult to travel from one end of the city to the other one and he demands to take children back to ‘Satnoeba’. He said about his former wife that Julia did not turn out to be a good wife and mother and they got divorced. Speaking about his children, his face is shining. Aliar said that before children’s grandmother arrived in Georgia, the sons were glad to see their father. But suddenly they changed their minds, and in the Tskneti Children’s Home they do not want to see their father at all.

“In the Africa district my sister gave me a plot and I am going to build a house on it. I have a house in the village of Bolnisi District but if I take the boys there they would learn at school only in Azerbaijan language and I do not like the idea. I want them to learn in either Russian or Georgian. Thus, I left them at the Satnoeba. I want them to get a proper education.”

Aliar is a housepainter, so works off and on. Anzori said that Aliar tries not to stay unemployed for a long time. At that time, he had a private order for painting a house. Aliar himself denied everything that Claudia had said about him, including that he arranged orgies in front of the children and that he forced them to beg in the street and beat them, etc.

The nurse of the children, Valentina Dvarianskaia, agreed with Aliar. “As for the rumors, as if Aliar and I had sexual relationship, is a lie. I am 66 and as old as his mother. Who said such nonsense? ... I was looking after the children for five years since 2001. Sasha was a two-year-old and Antosha was seven-month-old when their mother left them. Julia took me to the children herself, and then she went to that Turkish man. Aliar was in a condition of abandoning the boys, but I promised him that I would bring up his sons properly. I did my best not to leave the children hungry. A woman used to come almost every day and brought milk. Aliar also brought food. I was taking care of the boys. They never left house as long as I lived with them. I am a nurse, and I know how to look after children. I do not feel myself guilty of abusing the children. How could they dare say such things about me?! I do not have my own children, and I brought up these children out of grace. Nobody paid me money to do this job.”

Manana Tsilosani, director of the Tskneti Children’s Home, said, “Aliar visits his children quite often. We know that he is very poor, but he brings everything that he can get hold of -- two apples or two bananas. Initially, the children wanted to meet with him, but now they do not want to see him. Although hr argues with us, because he wants to take his sons to the Satnoeba, we cannot say anything bad about him. He seems to love his sons, though I do not know what he in fact thinks about them and why he needs to take them. Mother visited her children only once, but the father comes very often. Now I have an official decree of the social workers for the Ministry of Education that states that Aliar Musaev has no right to take his sons from our home.”

Marina Asatiani, godmother of the boys, said, “I do not know Aliar very well, but I want to say that he does not seem like a normal person to me. He seems to be indifferent to everything in the world. Although he is not a killer and bandit, there is something strange in him. That man was the only hope for the children with or without his flaws. It is his due to him that the children are alive now, though that does not say all that much. As for the mother, she likes to create a lot of stories. In order to get the children back, Aliar and Julia spread rumors that they had made up. In short, both of them are tragic people. Neither father nor mother can be safe providers for the children. There are only two ways out: either Brigidina should move to Georgia to live, or she should take the boys back to Romania with her. After having met their grandmother, the boys’ lives have completely changed. They have seen a better life, and they understand that they can live in better place than a garbage dump. The children lived in extremely unbearable conditions. Four concrete walls without windows in them, concrete floor, a roof made of an unidentified material and a terrible mess -- this was the shack where they lived. A swamp was very close to the shack. Besides that, children also speak about the orgies the father and his friends arranged in the house. There are some other witnesses who confirm the fact. I should emphasize that it is difficult to speak with Aliar. Claudia offered to find him a job aboard. She found the perfect school for the boys, but the man does not want to hear about it.”

Aliar’s sister-in-law, Sevda, lives in the Africa District with her husband, two children and father and mother-in-laws. They live in a meager flat with three rooms. Aliar spends nights in their flat, too. He sleeps in his parents’ room. There is a Russian newspaper “Ekho Digest” on his bed. Sevda said that Aliar reads the newspaper when he returns home.

“He speaks little. He hardly speaks with his brother too. He really does not drink alcohol and I know that he loves his chidren very much,” said Sevda.

Aliar started working a little time ago. Sevda does not know how much he earns, but she thinks it is approximately 300 lari. He has neither a flat nor a stable job. There is a plot in the Africa District where he is going to build a house in it. That plot belongs to Aliar’s sister, though her family cannot build a house on it at present.

Sevda described Julia negatively and said that she was a prostitute. She said that Iulia abandoned her family herself. Neither Aliar’s parents liked their daughter-in-law and were asking their son to divorce the wife. Sevda also said that it is impossible to shelter two more children in their flat. “They are boys and if they have some argument, Aliar would beat my sons. He is very temperamental person,” said Sevda.

Davit Managadze, a lawyer for the Human Rights Center, said that the grandmother theoretically has right to appeal to the Court and demand to deprive the parents form their right to the children. The decision of the court would depend on the conclusion of the social workers from the Ministry of Education.

Such a finding already exists and states: “Aliar gives an adequate estimation of his family situation and admits that cannot create a proper environment, in which to bring up his sons. Thus, he agrees to leave the children in the children’s home until his life condition improves. Aliar would like to take his children to the chidlren’s home near his residence. He is ready to take care of the boys, and it should be appreciated.

We think that kind relationship between father and his sons should be maintained. Thus, the father should have right to visit the children and have a close relation with them. However, specialist-in-chief for the Central Body for Children’s Care concluded that in the interest of the children, they should stay in the children’s home where they are now.”

Nino Tarkhnishvili, Eka Kevanishvili