She survived three days as a hostage and the destruction of the school where she has passed nearly all of her 72-years. Now Lydia Tsaliyeva is heading home, and her life may be in danger all over again. Only this time the threat comes from her neighbours.Since the end of the siege in Beslan, Tsaliyeva has been recovering at a hospital in Moscow. But in Beslan, she has been transformed from principal into villain, a scapegoat for the massacre of hundreds of children, parents and teachers. She was the principal at School No 1 when masked guerrillas demanding independence for Chechnya took students and teachers hostage.In the anger that has consumed Beslan ever since, many have pointed to Tsaliyeva, blaming her based on rumours that she hired Chechens to renovate the school over the summer, allowing them, knowingly or not, to hide weapons there for the siege. But Tsaliyeva hired no outsiders, according to local officials. The teachers and custodians did the work. But the names of the head custodian’s Dagestani nephews were mistaken for Chechen names, fueling the conspiracy theories. Dagestan and Chechnya are neighbouring Russian republics.‘‘It’s stupidity, it’s ridiculous,’’ Tsaliyeva said from her hospital bed. She said the school has never had the money to hire outsiders to do repairs. The idea that she would let strangers plant weapons, she said, pains her. Born in the Chechen capital of Grozny, she moved at 9 with her family to Beslan. She graduated from School No 1 and later went to work there. For the past 52 years, she has served as a teacher and administrator at the school. Her family members were at the school the day the siege began — two grandchildren, her sister and her sister’s grandson. Tsaliyeva was injured so badly that she was flown to Moscow for treatment.While many have urged her to stay away , she insisted she would try to visit the families of everyone who died. But she hasn’t seen the messages sprayed on the remaining walls of her burned-down school — ‘‘Everybody will take revenge on you, everybody, including children,’’ read one. ‘‘If she wasn’t guilty,’ one woman was overheard asking another, ‘‘why did they let her eat and go to the bathroom?’’ Tsaliyeva got no special treatment, according to former hostages, but the guerrillas interacted with her more than other adults because she was the principal. — LAT-WP
