BESLAN (Russia): Little Alyona Tskayeva glances at the picture of her dead mother and sister then looks around for something more interesting. Her grandmother, Klara Gasinova, puts it back on the shelf, straightening the black ribbon over the photograph — one of the few reminders she has of the loved ones she lost in the school siege in Russia’s Beslan almost one year ago.

“I don’t think she even remembers her mother any more. She used to cry in the night, like she was remembering her, but she doesn’t any more,” said Gasinova, as she smiled fondly down at her 18-month-old granddaughter.

“It is thanks to Alyona that we are still here. Thanks to her, I have the strength to carry on,” said Gasinova, who has looked after Alyona since a soldier carried her out of the school on the second day of the standoff last September.

A photographer captured the burly soldier looking gently down into the girl’s face. The picture became an iconic image of the three-day siege, in which 331 people were killed, more than half of them children.

Alyona’s mother Fatima and 9-year-old sister Kristina Tskayeva were killed in the siege, which started when suspected Muslim gunmen seized the school on Sept. 1 and demanded Russia end its 10-year bid to crush Chechen separatism.

Their demand went unanswered and two days later the siege collapsed into a bloodbath. Gunfire and a blaze that swept the school killed more than a quarter of the 1,200 hostages and plunged the little town of Beslan into mourning.

A year on and a heavy silence still hangs over the town, with few children on the sunny streets.

The school has not been touched. Its shattered roof has allowed winter rain to pulp many of the torn books lying with withered flowers and spent ammunition on the classroom floors.

At the specially built graveyard on the edge of town, black-clad women tend their relatives’ graves, tenderly cleaning the marble surrounds as if smoothing bed sheets for an ailing child.

Psychologists say these are just the visible marks of a grief that has rocked the whole town. The fiercely traditional Ossetian people of Beslan have been slow to come to terms with their pain.

“Many adults are deeply depressed. When you start talking to them they just cry. The whole of Beslan is like this,” said Larissa Khabayeva, a psychologist at a Unicef-funded rehabilitation centre in nearby Vladikavkaz.

“The whole town needs help, they are all traumatised. Even people who were not in the school are in a post-traumatic state.”

Children’s laughter filled the rehabilitation centre, where trained volunteers were leading games and helping the children draw pictures. But the cheerful atmosphere, she said, was deceptive. These children were the lucky ones.

“Of the children we are treating, 50 per cent have not responded to us at all. We are still finding children who just won’t leave the house,” said Khabayeva.

“A third of the traumatised children are under 13, these are children who did not manage to run away. And they will become teenagers and all the hidden problems will become active.”

A macho culture has also prevented men and boys from asking for psychological help — storing up problems for the future.

“Men have to be able to speak about their problems. But this is difficult because our culture does not allow men to cry, to express their emotions,” said Khabayeva.

Roman Bichegov-Begoshvili, who looks a decade older than his 42 years, spends his time smoking in his courtyard and staring at a wrecked car across the way.

He lost his nine-year-old son Kazbek in the siege, and decided to have a new child to help ease the grief — the first child to be conceived to fill a gap left by the tragedy.

“Honestly speaking, I decided to have this child for my wife. She was crying all the time. And maybe I did it for myself as well, to make it easier for me. To help my soul,” he said, pouring another glass of vodka for a guest.

—Reuters