Igor Morev was born in Moscow on August 22^nd, 1963.  He began to learn the violin at Dunaevsky children’s music school, then later at the Gnesin Music Academy under Rusin.  He was a member of the Siberian violin ensemble, then later with Vladimir Ponkin’s symphony orchestra at the Maliy Theater.  Still later, he joined the national symphony orchestra under Evgeny Svetlanov, and the orchestra of the Stanislavsky & Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater.

Igor and his wife raised three children: 18-year-old Ivan, 16-year-old Varvara, and 6-year-old Seryozha (Sergey).  I, his wife, worked alongside him in the orchestra at ‘Nord-Ost’.  On the night of October 23^rd, we were taken hostage together. 

Right after finishing the music institute, Igor joined the Siberian violin ensemble, where I had been working.  I had two children from a previous marriage, but we decided to start a new life together.  Work and family, this is basically what we lived for.  Naturally, I can say that those years were very happy.  Igor was a very unusual person to me.  He lived only for his family, and loved us all very much.  He raised the older children as his very own.  We were a very happy couple.

Some acquaintances invited us to join ‘Nord-Ost’.  We were there from the very beginning, but not as part of the permanent troupe, but as temps.  We were happy to have a lot of work that season.  We were taking the place of colleagues that night, but there was nothing surprising about that, all through September we had been replacing someone.  It was just Fate, and you cannot do a thing about it.  It was just that that day was the only one that week when we would be working together. 

When it all began, we called the children, and told them what was going on.  They were already very self-sufficient.  They youngest one, of course, still did not understand.  I still do not understand, for that matter.  I just cannot get it through my head how it all turned out, that there was a life, and then it ended.  It all seems to me so ridiculous, that everything should return to normal.  But, obviously, it will not… 

While we were sitting there, we understood that no one was going to pull troops out of Chechnya on our behalf.  We knew in what country we were living…

When they sent in the gas, I was asleep, and felt practically nothing.  I was asleep, Igor wakened me and told me to wet a hankie and breathe through it.  I saw that he was already doing the same, but he fell asleep.  I noticed some kind of a smell, and understood that it was gas, and thought: “Thank God he’s asleep!”  I could not imagine that he would not wake up.  I came to in a bus somewhere on the way to the hospital.  Many of us never even lost consciousness, and they remember everything that went on in the theater.

The most terrible thing for me is that I remain alive, and do not know when I will see Igor again.  Life is still so long…  I know that I will never meet another person like him.  There just is not anyone like him, anywhere.  His English teacher at the academy called him “gemstone”: she had seen hundreds of students, but there was only one like Igor.  He was a beautiful person.  He was already ready to help everyone in every way – I was always the one putting the brakes on him.  He was a remarkable violinist, but put his family ahead of his career. 

He always worried about what was happening nowadays in our country.  He had a shining intellect, and good do most anything.  He so loved to play the violin!  He loved music…

We conducted ourselves, I believe, heroically.  We took what pills we had to calm ourselves.  We tried to joke, and do crossword puzzles.  What else was there to do?  Somehow we had to live there, though we understood well that things were not going to end well.  If the terrorists did not shoot us, then our own boys would.  But it turned out that they poisoned us…

"Filarmonik" #4, 2002

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