2nd Quarter | Module 1: 21st Century Literature

Instructions:
1. Write your output in an A4 size bond paper.
2. Deadline is on October 14, 2024 (Monday).
3. Please comply with these instructions to avoid nullification of submission.

Direction: Read the selection Chechnya by Anthony Marra and answer the questions that follow.

Chechnya
By: Anthony Marra

AFTER HER SISTER, Natasha, died, Sonja began sleeping in the hospital. She returned home to wash her clothes a few
days a month, but those days became fewer and fewer. No reason to return, no need to wash her clothes. She only wears hospital
scrubs anyway.

She wakes on a cot in the trauma unit. She sleeps there intentionally, in anticipation of the next critical patient. Some
days, roused by the shuffle of footsteps, the cries of family members, she stands, and a body takes her place on the cot and she
works on resuscitation, knowing she is awake because she could dream nothing like this.

“A man is waiting here to see you,” a nurse says. Sonja, still on the cot, rubs the weariness from her eyes.
“About what?”
The nurse hesitates. “He’s right out here.”

A minute later in the hallway the man introduces himself. “My name is Akhmed.” He speaks Russian without an accent,
but by now Sonja feels more comfortable conversing in Chechen. A short beard descends from Akhmed’s face. For a moment she
thinks he’s a religious man, then remembers that most men have grown their beards out. Few have shaving cream, fewer have
mirrors. The war has made the country’s cheeks and chins devout.

He gestures to a small girl, no older than eight, standing beside him. “My wife and I cannot care for her,” Akhmed says.
“You must take her.”

“This isn’t an orphanage.”

“There are no orphanages.”

The request is not uncommon. The hospital receives humanitarian aid, has food and clean water. Most important, it tends
to the injured regardless of ethnicity or military affiliation, making the hospital one of the few larger buildings left untargeted by
either side in the war.

Newly injured arrive each day, too many to care for. Sonja shakes her head. Too many dying; she cannot be expected to
care for the living as well.

“Her father was taken by the rebels on Saturday. On Sunday the army came and took her mother.”

Sonja looks at the wall calendar, as if a date could make sense of the times.

“Today is Monday,” she says.

“I was a medical student before the war,” Akhmed says, switching to Chechen. “In my final year. I will work here until a
home is found for the girl.”

Akhmed glowers. Sonja often sees defiance from rebels and occasionally from soldiers, but rarely from civilians.

“I can’t,” she says, but her voice falters, her justification failing.

Sonja surveys the corridor: a handful of patients, no doctors. Those with money, with advanced degrees and the foresight
to flee the country, have done so.

“Parents decide which of their children they can afford to feed on which days.

No one will take this girl,” Sonja says.

 “Then I will keep working.”

“Does she speak?” Sonja looks to the girl. “What’s your name?” “Havaa,” Akhmed answers.

Six months earlier Sonja’s sister, Natasha, was repatriated from Italy. When Sonja heard the knock and opened the door,
she couldn’t believe how healthy her sister looked. She hugged her sister, joked about the padding on her hips. Whatever horrors
Natasha had experienced in the West, she’d put fat around her waist.

“I am home,” Natasha said, holding the hug longer than Sonja thought necessary. They ate dinner before the sun went
down, potatoes boiled over the furnace. The army had cut the electric lines four years earlier. They had never been repaired. Sonja
showed her sister to the spare room by candlelight, gestured to the bed. “This is the place you sleep, Natasha.”

They spent the week in a state of heightened civility. No prying questions. All talk was small. What Sonja noticed; she did
not comment on. A bottle of Ribavirin antiviral pills on the bathroom sink. Cigarette burns on Natasha’s shoulders. Sonja worked
on surgeries, and Natasha worked on sleeping. Sonja brought food home from the hospital, and Natasha ate it.

Sonja started the fire in the morning, and Natasha slept. There were mornings, and there were nights. This is life, Sonja
thought.

Akhmed is true to his word. Five minutes after Sonja accepts the girl, he is washed and suited in scrubs. Sonja takes him
on a tour of the hospital. All but two wings are closed for lack of staff. She shows him the cardiology, internal medicine, and
endocrinology wards. A layer of dust covers the floors, their footprints leaving a trail. Sonja thinks of the moon landing, how she
saw the footage for the first time when she arrived in London.

“Where is everything?” Akhmed asks. Beds, sheets, hypodermics, disposable gowns, surgical tape, film dressing,
thermometers, IV bags, forceps—any item of practical medical use is gone. Empty cabinets, open drawers, locked rooms, closed
blinds, taped-over windowpanes, the stale air remain.

“The trauma and maternity wards. And we’re struggling to keep them both open.”

Akhmed runs his fingers through his beard. “Trauma, that’s obvious. You have to keep trauma open. But maternity?”

Sonja’s laugh rings down the empty hall. “I know. It’s funny, isn’t it? Everyone is either giving birth or dying.”

“No.” Akhmed shakes his head, and Sonja wonders if he’s offended by her. “They are coming into the world, and they
are leaving the world and it’s happening here.

Sonja nods, wonders if Akhmed is religious after all.

Activity # 1:
Direction: Fill out the table with setting and character. Use skimming as a reading technique.

Literary Element Question Answer

SETTING 1. Where and when did the story 1.
happen?
CHARACTER 2. Who are the characters in the story? 2.

Activity # 2:
Direction: Now, answer the following questions below to test your understanding on the given story.

1. What descriptions were given about the setting of the story?

2. What seems to be the conflict surrounding the story?
3. What was the deal made by Sonja and Akhmed?
4. What change in attitude was evident in the main character of the story at the beginning and at the end?
5. Why was it important for the writer to narrate the events that happened during the wars to reveal traditions in Chechnya?