Letter from Lina Shkarban

I was absolutely amazed when Feola phoned me in Moscow, and then came round to my flat for a meal. I am delighted to be in contact once more with people from the Tripartite work camps. I have very precious and important, to me, memories from the three camps I attended, in Nalchik, the USA and then Britain. I gained very useful and important knowledge from these camps at a time when it was so difficult to discuss things openly with foreigners. I recall how we Russians were impressed by everyone's friendliness, and by, as we put it,'what has been achieved by human hands.' Above all I was very much impressed by the activities of Quakers. I remember us being shown round some New York slums by a young Quaker who was living and working there with young disaffected teenagers and wherever he went they greeted him and knew him and respected him. Ever since the Tripartite camps I have had the deepest respect towards Quakers and their attitude to life.

As for me, one of my great regrets is that I never accompanied the Nalchik members on their visit to Tiblisi. I was so concerned about my work in those days that I felt I could not spare the time, and now I know I shall never go. For forty years now I have devoted myself to linguistic studies of a language called Tagalog, spoken mainly in the Phillipines. I have an MA and Ph.D from the Institute of Oriental Studies, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dear Sacha Chicherov worked there too, on the Econmy of India, and we loved and respected him greatly. I still work there, as a Leading Researcher, and have had about ninety articles and two books published, the last one in '95, most of them about Tagalog. I suffer quite badly from asthma, and often work from home. Please make sure you include my name if you write to my e-mail address, which is at the Institute:

Email: yazyki@orientalia.ac.ru

My address is: Moscow 125445,
Leningradskaya Shosse 112/1,
korpus 3, flat 630
phone number is Moscow, 458-22-20.