A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Sonja, or Sofia Andreyevna Rabina, is a native Russian woman and a skilled surgeon. Sonja grew up in the town of Volchansk with her parents and her sister Natasha. While Natasha was always considered the more beautiful and popular sister, Sonja focused on her schoolwork and eventually pursued medical school in London on a fellowship. In London, Sonja became engaged but broke off her engagement to travel back to Volchansk and protect Natasha. In Volchansk, Sonja began working in Hospital no. 6, and continued to work in the hospital after the city was destroyed by bombs and only three employees remained in the hospital.

Sonja comes across as cold to other characters in the novel. Frustrated that she won’t make small talk with him, Akhmed observes, “Common decency was the one thing he had that she didn’t” (160). However, as a woman in a male-dominated field, Sonja often has to appear tough to gain respect as a doctor. When Havaa expresses that the only thing she can ever become is someone’s wife, Sonja is sympathetic.

It had been a long time, but Sonja remembered what it was to have that face, what it was to feel you were no brighter than the dumbest man, no stronger than the weakest boy, and with those ideas crowding your head no wonder subordination was the only inevitable outcome. (298)

After Akhmed is captured, Sonja raises Havaa and eventually helps her attend university and become a scientist.

Havaa is eight years old at the beginning of the novel. When her father Dokka is captured, he tells Havaa to hide in the woods with her blue suitcase full of souvenirs. Akhmed finds Havaa and brings her to the hospital in Volchansk to keep her safe. Havaa is an intelligent and curious girl with an interest in science. Havaa loves her father and often watched him play chess or listened to him talk about science. When Dokka loses all his fingers, Havaa helps him with small tasks around the house. Once at the hospital, she becomes fascinated with medicine and quickly takes to Sonja, who realizes “the girl, draped in a lab coat that swished against the linoleum, had been following Sonja since dinner. It took the better part of an hour before Sonja realized the girl was imitating her” (297). Havaa grows up to attend university, study science, marry, and live a long life.

Khassan lives with his son Ramzan in the village of Eldár. In 1941 Khassan fought with the Soviet Army in World War II. After the war, Khassan spent years writing a history of Russia but struggled to get it published amid the unstable political situation. As a young college student, Khassan was deeply in love with a woman named Mirza who was married to another man. Mirza eventually became pregnant with Akhmed, and it is revealed later on in the novel that Akhmed is most likely Khassan’s son. However, Mirza raises Akhmed with her husband, and Khassan eventually marries another woman who gives birth to Ramzan. Khassan refuses to speak to Ramzan after Ramzan turns over the names of several villagers to the Feds, even though Ramzan uses his position as an informer to bring home food and insulin for Khassan, who struggles with diabetes. Nevertheless, Khassan spends his days speaking to the stray dogs, since no one else in the village will speak to him.

Dokka is Havaa’s father and a close friend of Akhmed and Ramzan. Dokka is an intelligent, generous man and a skilled chess player. When refugees begin passing through the village, Dokka builds bunks in Havaa’s room. When many refugees struggle to pay Dokka for a bed, “his parameters for payment expanded to include nearly anything. The tokens and trinkets went to Havaa, who collected them as souvenirs” (136). Dokka loses all of his fingers after he and Ramzan are captured by the Feds and tortured at the Landfill. Nevertheless, Dokka continues to let refugees stay in his home. The novel begins after Dokka has been turned into the Feds by Ramzan and captured for the second time.

Ramzan lives in the village with Khassan, his father. However, no one will speak to Ramzan, not even his father, after he becomes an informer to the Feds, turning over the names of dozens of villagers, eventually including Dokka and Akhmed. As the novel progresses, the reader learns that Ramzan was once captured simply for being Chechen on the same day rebels attacked a nearby village. Ramzan endured brutal torture the first time he was captured but refused to give over any names. When Ramzan is captured a second time for smuggling weapons with Dokka, he remembers:

During his first detention in the Landfill, in 1995, in the first war, he had refused to inform […]. Screaming, thrashing, with his manhood half severed, he had said no. He had done that, and now he was ready to start saying yes. (261)

By becoming an informant, Ramzan is able to obtain insulin and food for himself and his father. After Ramzan turns Akhmed’s name in to the Feds, Ramzan tries to explain that Akhmed doesn’t owe anything to anyone but himself. Ramzan also tells Akhmed that he cannot imagine the kind of torture they are capable of at the Landfill, explaining:

You’re thinking that you will be as silent to them as you are to me. But you won’t, Akhmed. You just won’t. You might believe that you will be brave, that you will hew your convictions, but you have never been to the Landfill. (325)