Natalia Estemirova had a dry sense of humor and a giant heart. I remember the first time she showed us around her apartment, in the war-weary city of Grozny, she pointed to a huge shrapnel hole in the wall separating her daughter's bedroom from the hallway. "Check out the new design of the ventilation," she said. "I never have time to fix it, so let it stay a part of our interior."
That was classic Natalia -- a single mother and a human rights activist in a place that desperately needed them, she never had time for her own life; there were too many troubles to report on. She was a walking fountain of Chechnya's sad stories: "I want to tell you a story about this man, a widower who was kidnapped from his house in a mountain village and now is being tortured in jail. His two little children live with his mother, who is almost 100 years old." That was the first thing she told me when we met in Grozny in 2005.
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