People of the Caucasus Series. Irina Parastaeva, South Ossetia
Shop #22 sold bread in the Gagloev Street in the area where the Jewish community used to live in the city of Tskhinval. In 1989, when first signs of the confrontation between the Ossetians and the Georgians started to emerge, almost all members of the community left.
Irina Parastaeva is 64, and she remembers the shop since she was four. She used to come to Tskhinval from the village of Bakatykau together with her grandmother to visit Eva, a relative. Eva was single and prided herself on having been a member of the Communist party since she was 17.
The shop specialised in selling fabrics and was run by a Jewish family at the time. Once Irina saw a doll and asked her grandmother to buy it for her. The seller refused to sell the doll, and Irina still remembers the pain she felt from the refusal. And she made a doll herself, using sprigs for legs and cloth for the rest of the doll body. And she’d play with it for a long time.
After the 1970, the shop started to sell foodstuffs and bread. And it was closed for good after being damaged during the 2008 August war.
