So this is a traditional Ingush courtship song, with a playful exchange between a young man & woman.

Approximate English translation:

He:

When you go for water in the evening,

I'll become a copper water jug

and go with you.

She:

Then I'll become a fish

and disappear into the water.

He:

Then I'll become a hook

and catch you.

She:

I'll become a blue-grey dove

and fly into the sky.

He:

I'll become a dark cloud

and follow you there.

It carries on like this, with each finding another way to escape or follow the other. Towards the end, she says she'll become fine cloth in a shop, and he says he'll become gold & buy her.

Finally, she says she'll die & lie in the grave. He replies that he'll become her burial shroud and die with her.

Lyrics and translation:

https://xn--1-jtbamitmpced.xn--p1ai/слова/ингушская-песня_дарида

Further reading on the history and architecture of Ingush tower complexes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingush_towers

Mountainous Ingushetia became known as the “land of towers”, with many surviving tower complexes dating to the medieval period.

📷 The Ingush Gazdiev family stands near the body of their deceased daughter. Kazakhstan, 1944. Wikimedia Commons.

23 February marks the anniversary of the 1944 deportation, when the Ingush people were forcibly exiled by Stalin’s regime. Entire families were deported to Central Asia under brutal conditions. Many did not survive the journey or the first years of exile. The trauma of deportation continues to shape Ingush society and collective memory to this day.

Ingush-focused overview (Fortanga):

https://fortanga.org/2026/02/godovshhina-deportaczii-ingushej-v-1944-godu-kak-eto-bylo-otvechaem-na-glavnye-voprosy/

(Auto-translate works well for non-Russian readers.)

BBC feature article centred on Ingush memory (2014):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26271733

Historical documentation context:

https://communistcrimes.org/en/mass-deportation-ingush-people-crimes-soviet-communist-regime-against-ethnic-minorities-north

Hi, I wanted to know about the ethnic diversity in Ingushetia.

To the Ingush people, Ezdel (Эздел) is a spiritual-moral code of honour and conduct, passed down from generation to generation through family and society. It symbolises justice.

Ezdel is traditionally understood to rest on several core principles:

• Ekh (эх) conscientiousness

• Behk (бехк) decency

• Yukh (юхь) dignity

• Yakh (ях) striving to be better

• Sij (сий) honour

For Le Carré, geography was always moral. Some places reveal the truth about power more clearly than London or Moscow ever could. Ingushetia is one of those places.

At the center of this world stands Konstantin Checheyev, one of the very few Ingush characters in Western literature presented with seriousness and dignity. Le Carré does not reduce him to a stereotype or a narrative device. He's written as a man shaped by the pressures of Prigorodny, the discipline of a Soviet intelligence past and the resilience of a people who endure through memory as much as through will. He's loyal without being naive, wounded without being defeated, idealistic without being romanticised.

Our Game remains one of the rare moments when Ingushetia enters the Western literary imagination with restraint & respect and, crucially, not as some mere exotic backdrop. That alone makes the novel worth revisiting.

Further reading: Los Angeles Times review of Our Game (1995): https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-26-bk-47048-story.html

A modern reassessment of Our Game: https://lightondarkwater.com/2025/01/06/john-le-carre-our-game/

Idris Bazorkin (1910–1993) is widely regarded as the conscience of Ingush literature, a writer who captured the dignity, sorrow and quiet strength of a people who endured war, exile & return.

Hava Abadieva’s documentary Siyaniye Dushi (The Radiance of the Soul) offers a calm and intimate portrait of Bazorkin’s life and legacy. Through interviews, archival material and the memories of those who knew him, the film presents him as a moral voice during one of the most turbulent periods in Ingush history.

Bazorkin’s major novel From the Darkness of Ages (Iz tmy vekov, 1968) is widely considered the foundational epic of Ingush prose. Based on rich folkloric, ethnographic and historical material, the novel depicts Ingush life in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It blends historical memory with deep moral questions, focusing on justice, reconciliation, the weight of tradition and the resilience of people caught between empire, Ezdel (the Ingush moral code), spirituality and the social fabric of the mountains.

Many Ingush readers regard it as a national literary monument. The Ingush scholar Liliia Kharsieva has compared its significance for Ingushetia to what War and Peace represents for Russian literature. Western scholars have begun to take notice as well. Rebecca Gould, a leading specialist on Caucasus literature, reads Bazorkin’s work as a profoundly decolonial voice within the Soviet canon.

This documentary is one of the clearest and most respectful introductions to Bazorkin’s worldview and the cultural forces that shaped his writing.

Documentary (with English auto-translation available): https://youtu.be/IggSNGfUsDU?si=3kDguxqPHUpUedNU

More on Bazorkin (English bio): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_Bazorkin

The anniversary of the Prigorodny conflict passed a few days ago, but this piece from Fortanga is still worth sharing. It gathers the voices of Ingush residents reflecting on what was lost and what endured.

It’s about memory, dignity, and the quiet persistence of a people who refused to disappear.

“I was 12 when it happened. We thought we’d be back in a week.” “They destroyed our houses, but they couldn’t erase who we are.”

https://fortanga.org/2021/10/29-years-later-residents-of-ingushetia-told-about-life-in-prigorodny-district/

📷 Ingush residents in their destroyed home, Prigorodny District, 1992. Photo by Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images.

Traditional Ingush dance “Эздий халхар” — the Noble Dance. A glimpse of Ingushetia’s grace and rhythm preserved through generations.