The Storyteller (42) | The disappearance of an orthodox family

(1)

There, at the far end of the world, is nothing but bitter cold, steep mountains, pine forests, sleeping bears, and hungry wolves. Can one really live here?

The Lykovs did it.

(2)

In the Tyumen province, near Siberia, the Karp Oslipovich Lykov family lives with 4 families by a river, relying on agriculture, enjoying a stable and quiet life, until the 1930s Bolsheviks came to power in Russia declaring atheism, chasing religious people, punishing every Orthodox who insisted on Remaining a Christian, including the Lykov family, who, as soon as the Soviet forces arrived in their village, ordered its people to leave, and killed the brother of the head of the family, Karp.

The family lives in that isolation in the hope that the Tsar will return to power one day, so that they will be able to return to their normal lives again, but life goes on without news of that reaching them, until they get used to what they are in.

The land is narrow for him and his family, and he and his wife decide to flee with their two children, Savin and Natalia, after they collected what they could carry of their needs and agricultural seeds, and set out on their journey towards a safe place devoid of people.

Their steps lead them to the icy desolate taiga forest, located in an isolated point connecting Siberia and the far north of the North American border. They decide to settle there with what little they have, after they find what looks like a cave or hut carved into the rock.

They burn wood to get warmth, and in the summer they grow what can be eaten in the rest of the seasons, so that 4 years pass in this harsh primitive life, during which they give birth to Dmitry, and 3 years later their daughter Agafia, so that the family numbers 6 members.

(3)

The two children, Dimitri and Agafya, live one of the strangest human stories. Both of them have not seen anything related to humanity and its construction. The world for them is the place in which they live, and according to what they hear from their parents, there are cities, villages, people, governments, worlds and stories somewhere, but they do not see them. And they are not destined to live in it.

The family lives in that isolation in the hope that the Tsar will return to power one day, so that they will be able to return to their normal lives again, but life goes on without news of that reaching them, until they get used to what they are in.

The wife is interested in teaching her children to read and write without thinking about how they will benefit from that, so she used the books of the old Bible that they carried on their travels, to learn through them, and she asked her husband to extract birch sticks for her from the surrounding trees to make something like a pen, and they used to dip them in Honeysuckle liquid as writing ink.

For years, the family relied on the tools that their members brought with them from their home to use in cooking and storing food, but over the years they became severely rusted and became unusable, which prompted them to rely on birch wood, which is abundant in the surrounding trees, to make what looks like vessels for making food or storing and preserving it from insects.

Years pass, and Dmitry reaches 20 years old. The family is in very difficult circumstances, as it is about to perish after all its agricultural seeds have run out. Dmitry offers to hunt animals as a new source to feed the family, and despite his lack of advanced hunting methods such as bows or weapons, what What he read in the Bible about setting traps was inspiring.

Sometimes he digs a trap and covers it with leaves, and at other times he chases the prey until it becomes exhausted and its speed weakens, so it catches it. His family was impressed by his ability to bear hunting in these very cold weather. He goes out and is absent for several days to return with his new prey, while the family sufficed on tree leaves or any plant. growing in the area.

(4)

On the other side of the world, the Second World War had ended, and a new world had formed, so countries collapsed and others arose, but the family does not know anything about what is going on.

While the father was weakened by age, his son seemed to adhere more to the religious rules that the family believed in, and he was showing strictness and harshness in implementing them with everyone in a way that made his father worry about his son taking over the reins of family affairs after his death.

At the same time, Natalia was less interested in what was going on around her, as she settled for performing her natural role in the family without possessing anything special or difference, while Agafya, the youngest and last daughter in that family, was distinguished by her speaking voice as if it were a musical note that extends and lengthens in the words until the listener imagines that she is She is not good at talking, or she suffers from a speech crisis, but the girl naturally liked to speak in this way and enjoyed it until it became her nature.

With the winter of 1961, conditions become more difficult, and Mother Akulina is less able to bear it, after her decision was every time to give up her share of food for the sake of her children, and the result was that she died that winter without Dmitry's repeated hunting being able to help her. The family was afraid that their fate would be the same as that of their mother, so they ate tree bark that they put on their bodies and feet, and their lives remained in that harsh pattern of life in the following years without any sign of hope for survival.

(5)

The year 1978 arrives, and a group of geologists arrives in an area close to their place of residence, and it was surprising that their helicopter found a hut in which people live, which was a strange and surprising event, given that the distant miles around them from all directions are completely devoid of human life.

The other surprise is that the family's place of residence is only 150 miles away from the nearest civilized area, and the Soviet government does not have any records of neighborhoods in this desolate spot, which made their presence in that place a strange event.

The exploratory team of 4 researchers at that time decides to go to that family to get to know them, bearing gifts for them, and armed with pistols in anticipation of any surprise.

The team arrives at the hut made of black, semi-torn cloth. The elder of the family, Karp, comes out to them, anticipating and afraid, barefoot, and wearing a patched shirt and pants.

The sisters, Agafia and Natalya, were terrified and frightened, and began to weep and wail when they saw that team, thinking that they were Bolsheviks, and that they had found them to kill and punish them, and they kept repeating, "This is from our sins, this is from our sins."

The family did not calm down until the geologists decided to step back and remain silent for a while, offering the family some types of food such as tea, bread and jam, but they all seemed strange to the family that they had not tried for nearly 40 years, so they rejected them all.

(6)

The team decided to move away and make its dealings with that group on separate visits in which the souls gradually calm down, and the family can become more reassured in dealing with them, and after a few visits and the ability to open conversations, they were able to know the whole story, when it began, and when they left from their country to here, and how For the past forty years they have been ignorant of the world and what is happening in it.

The team's attempts continued for 3 full years, during which they offered the family assistance in all available ways, such as taking them to hospitals, returning to civilization, and obtaining a suitable life, food, clothes, treatment, and other things, but the family believed that they had passed that stage, and that they would not be able to leave. from that isolation.

The result is that by 1981 both Savin and Natalia die of kidney failure, while Dmitry contracted pneumonia - it was likely at the time that it was - as a result of an infection from a member of the team, who offered him help and insisted on taking him by plane to a hospital for treatment, but he refused and actually died within A short time, for the family to lose 3 of its members at once.

(7)

That harsh succession of deaths caused the team to insist on the return of the family, and to tell them that many of their relatives live in their old villages now, but what remains of the family, which is the father Karp and his daughter Agafia, found that it was too late for that, so the team helped them improve their place of residence, and made it suitable for life Better yet, until Karp died in his sleep in 1988.

The last member of the family, Agafya, survived for decades after that, until she reached the age of 73 in 2016, and that year she did what was considered a surprise, when she called a satellite phone that she got from the team of scientists, to seek medical help due to severe pain in her leg. She was flown to a hospital, but she insisted on returning to her isolated home.

Later in 2021, a wealthy Russian businessman volunteers to build a luxurious home for her in that isolated province, so that she can live better in it, but she refuses to do so, considering that this kind of exaggerated luxury life does not suit her, and Agafia is still alive until this moment, and is considered One of the oldest witnesses of ancient and modern Russian history.