World’s ‘oldest woman’ who died aged 129 ‘never had happy day’ | World | News
Koku Istambulova was 129 when she died (Image: Ekaterina Sazhneva; MK; EAST2WES)
A woman thought to be the oldest person ever to have lived passed away at the age of 129.
Koku Istambulova, a survivor of Stalin’s repressions, was set to turn 130 in June 2019, according to recognised pension records in Russia.
She was believed to be older than a woman listed in the Russian Book of Records who passed away last month purportedly aged 128, officials thought.
Koku made headlines last year when she declared that she had not experienced a single happy day in her lengthy life.
Her grandson Iliyas Abubakarov reported that she had her usual supper on Sunday, January 27, 2019, at her village home in Chechnya.
“She was joking, she was talking,” he said.
“Then she suddenly felt unwell, she complained of a chest pain.
“We called the doctor, we were told that her blood pressure had dropped, and injections were made.
“But they failed to save her.
Koku Istambulova was was born when Queen Victoria was on the throne (Image: east2west news)
“She died in a quiet way, fully conscious, praying.”
She has been laid to rest in her home village Bratskoe, leaving behind five grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren.
A Muslim who was born before the last Tsar Nicholas II was crowned, she outlived the Soviet Union by a generation, as per her internal Russian passport.
Her date of birth was claimed to be 1 June 1889 – during Queen Victoria’s reign in Britain.
However, her passport only provided the year of her birth, not the precise day and month.
In extraordinary and moving testimony broadcast last year she spoke emotionally of the appalling day her native Chechen people were deported en masse by Stalin to the steppes of Kazakhstan 75 years ago.
She recounted how people died in the cattle-truck trains – and their bodies were cast out of the carriages to be devoured by starving dogs.
If her age was accurate, Koku was 54 at the time, having previously lived through the coronation of the last tsar Nicholas II two days before her 7th birthday – and his overthrow when she was 27.
“It was a bad day, cold and gloomy,” she said of the February morning in 1944 when the entire nation was expelled from their mountain homeland in the Trans-Caucasus.
Koku Istambulova says she had never had a happy day (Image: social media / east2west news)
“We were put in a train and taken … no one knew where.
“Railway carriages were stuffed with people – dirt, rubbish, excrement was everywhere.”
Emphasising the brutality of Stalin’s action, she told journalists firmly in her native Chechen language: “Write that – there was excrement in the carriages.
“We were not allowed [to go] anywhere.”
Young Caucasus girls died because from the rupturing of their bladders – they were ashamed to go to the toilet in the crowded stinking trains.
Older women tried to crowd round them to shield their embarrassment as they relieved themselves.
“On the way to our exile, dead bodies were just thrown out of the train,” she said.
“Nobody was allowed to bury the dead.
“Corpses were eaten by dogs.
“My father-in-law was thrown out of the train in this way.”
A paranoid Stalin had accused the Chechens of collaborating with the Nazis.
“We were told that we were bad people and that’s why we had to leave,” she said.
Before the war, she remembered “scary” Nazi tanks passing her family home.
She endured devastating personal losses in her Kazakh ordeal – her two sons both died in the brutal conditions.
“There were no doctors, no-one to treat them,” she said.
“My younger boy came down with something and passed away really quickly.
“Such things happened in every family.
Koku Istambulova survived two world wars (Image: Luiza Tsagueva / east2west news)
“When women gave birth children often died because there were no obstetricians, only neighbours and friends.”
Weeping, the elderly woman said: “I only kept my daughter Tamara.”
She remained exiled in Kazakhstan for 13 years before, following Stalin’s death, people were permitted to return to their homeland.
Upon her return, numerous houses had been seized by incoming Russians – so she began constructing her own home, complaining her husband was “too lazy” for the work.
She acknowledged that despite her earlier assertion, the day she moved into her own house, constructed with her own hands, after returning from internal Soviet exile was “happy”.
“I built it myself, the best house in the world,” she said.
“I lived there for 60 years.”
Asked about the secret of longevity, she previously said: “It was God’s will.
“I did nothing to make it happen.
Passport of Koku Istambulova indicates her year of birth, 1889 (Image: Ekaterina Sazhneva; MK; EAST2WES)
“I see people going in for sports, eating something special, keeping themselves fit, but I have no idea how I lived until now.”
Her secret to longevity was fermented milk, but she avoided meat and soup.
She questioned: “Why did Allah give me such a long life and so little happiness?….
“I would have been dead long ago, if not for Allah who was holding me in his arms.”
Koku stated: “It is hard to live when all who remembered you died long ago.
“And it is very scary to die, however old you are.”
The oldest recorded human was Jeanne Calment, from France, who lived 122 years, 164 days, passing away in 1997.
French scientists have dismissed a recent claim from Russian researchers who argued she assumed the identity of her deceased daughter and was not as old as records indicate.
