The woman who was the world’s oldest woman died in August at the age of 129 in Russia, where she lived. Mirror.
Koku Istambulova, a survivor of Stalin’s repression, was due to celebrate her 130th birthday on June 1 next year and rose to fame in Russia after entering the country’s record book.
However, Istambulova stated in several interviews that she admitted that she saw longevity as a “punishment”, as she had not been happy for “a single day” of her life, during which she lived through the “horrors of various wars”. much misery.” and for the heartbreak of burying two children when they were children.
One of her grandchildren, Iliyas Abubakarov, revealed this week that his grandmother was eating normally at her home in Chechnya on the day she died. “She was joking and talking. Suddenly she felt nauseous and complained of chest pain. We called the doctor, who told us that her blood pressure was very low. They gave her injections, but they could not save her. He died in silence, completely clear, prayerful,” he said.
Koku Istambulova, who was Muslim, had five grandchildren, all children of a daughter who is also deceased, and sixteen great-grandchildren. She was buried in her native village, in Bratskoe.
Although her date of birth is believed to have been June 1, 1889, the centenarian’s passport only listed the year of birth, not the day or month.
In the various interviews she gave, Istambulova recalled the day when the Chechen people were deported en masse by Stalin to Kazakhstan, 75 years ago. “It was a bad, cold and dark day,” he said of an event that took place in February 1944, recalling that the wagons in which the Chechens rode were full of dirt, garbage and feces and that there were bodies of dead people. were thrown from the carriages to be eaten by hungry dogs.
Istambulova also said that several women died from ruptured bladders because they were ashamed to go to the toilet on crowded and smelly trains.
All because Stalin believed that the Chechens were collaborating with the Nazis. “They told us we were bad people and that was why we had to leave,” he said, recalling the “scary” Nazi tanks passing by the door of his family’s home.
In Kazakhstan he lost his two children, who did not survive the adverse conditions. “There were no doctors, no one to treat them. My youngest son contracted a disease and died very quickly. These kinds of things happened in every family. When women gave birth, the children often died because there were no midwives, only neighbors and friends,” he recalled. “I was staying alone with my daughter Tamara,” he added.
After thirteen years of exile in Kazakhstan, Chechens were allowed to return to their homeland after Stalin’s death. But when Istanbulova returned, many houses were occupied by Russians, so she had to work on building a new house.
Source: DN
