Mirror | rorriM

“I ask, which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower, and yes, the backbone to best protect us?

The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight.

There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust our future and that man’s name is ——–.

There are some crazy men who would kill us if they could. So ——- has told us: ‘All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.’

But where is the national unity in this country when we need it most?

Now, while young ———- are dying in the mud in ——- and the mountains of ——, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the ——-‘s manic obsession to bring down our leader.

What has happened to the nation I’ve spent my life working in?

I can remember when ——- believed that it was the duty of ——- to fight for freedom over tyranny.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, ——- worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s ——– leaders see ——- as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes me madder than someone calling ——- troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the —–, —–, —–, and ——- who have been freed because ———- led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the millions of men, women, and children who are free today from the ——- to the ——-, from ——- to the ——, because ———- built a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the —— soldier. And our soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad; they preserve it for us here at home.

Right now, the world just cannot afford an indecisive ——–. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger, our ——– has had the courage to stand up. And I am proud to stand up with him.

God bless this great country and God bless ———–.”

According to her, that is how things are done in Tajikistan. Yet for all her romantic talk, she is quite a cynic where love is concerned, and not without reason. Masha was 23 when she fell in love with her husband. But shortly after their marriage-when she was pregnant with their son-he left for St. Petersburg to look for work. There he fell for a Tatar woman. At one point he told Masha that he wanted both her and the Tatar woman. Masha wrote him a sentimental poem in Russian that she pulled out for me to see-why it was written in Russian and not in her native language, I don’t know. Masha seemed convinced that he cried when he read her poem, though I’m not sure how she could possibly have known if he was thousands of miles away in St. Petersburg.

Gradually he stopped returning her letters. She waited for three years, but didn’t hear from him: no fight, no divorce, no money; just an ambiguous and unresolved situation. She said she heard from his friend that he now has a daughter with the Tatar woman. But Masha still loves him and claims the Tatar woman tricked him.

I took Masha to a restaurant that night. My most vivid memory is of us going to the bathroom. It was certainly better than pissing in a bucket: the walls were made to look like ivory, with brown circling lines painted on a cream-colored backdrop. The faucets were big and old-fashioned. The entire room smelled like wood. Masha wouldn’t leave. First she washed her hands for nearly ten minutes, scrubbing dirt out of the creases in her palms. But then she just stood there. She looked so out of place, yet so happy. I took a picture of her and promised to send it to her Tajikistan address. But if I do, she might never get it, seeing as it seems like she plans on staying in Moscow.