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December 19, 2008
1. Hoping for a Smile: Child’s tragedy scars family and future
2. Patriot Pride: Father of seven says service goes beyond comfort
3. The Ghukasyans: "Not enough, no matter how much we work"
4. No Home in the Homeland: "For whom did he spill his blood?"
5. The Khachatryans: 15 Meters and Faith:
6. Tiny Home, Big Problems: "Where can I go . . . ?"
7. "As Good as the Land": Tea without sugar
8. Past and Present: Elderly couple in Shushi struggles for life
in liberated town
HyeSanta 2008: Making a mark while making a difference
This edition of ArmeniaNow marks the fifth anniversary of the founding
of the HyeSanta charity campaign.
In 2003, we first challenged our readers to extend much-needed help to
unfortunate families like many here whom ArmeniaNow journalists
encounter in the course of our routine reporting. Your immediate
response justified our belief that this online journal could serve as
a bridge to compassionate readers who may never set foot in Armenia,
but whose hearts are always here.
Beyond the immediate gesture of offering relief, we also wanted to
establish a tradition in Armenia that had not been a feature of the
media community here. Through HyeSanta we wanted to teach advocacy
journalism in Armenia – to demonstrate that the powerful tool of
information can be an instrument for the good of social welfare.
Additionally, ArmeniaNow wanted to demonstrate to our sponsors that
their charity to us reached beyond our self-serving needs and that our
aim was to turn "donations" into "investments". We exist due to the
generosity of the Armenian General Benevolent Union who, since 2003,
has funded ArmeniaNow as part of its multi-faceted program of
philanthropy in Armenia. For the past two years, the Armenian Assembly
of America has also supported us. Though HyeSanta was independently
created by ArmeniaNow, we hope these respected institutions who have
helped ArmeniaNow will also feel satisfaction in that their belief in
us is repaid in help to others through this charity effort.
Finally, five years ago it was our hope that HyeSanta would become a
demonstration of the willingness of local Armenians to help each
other. The highest achievement of the program may be that, now,
HyeSanta receives equal help internally, as from the outside world.
This year, for example, VivaCell MTS communications company through
its director Ralph Yerikyan has contributed to HyeSanta as part of
that company’s mission to lead other corporations in Corporate Social
Responsibility.
The local office of the Tufenkian Foundation has been a mighty
assistance to HyeSanta almost from the beginning. And, this year, the
Hyastan All Armenia Fund has funded the production of videos produced
by Shoghakat Television (of the Armenian Apostolic Church) which will
be posted on this site next week.
Shoghakat itself has been an invaluable partner of HyeSanta, as video
documentaries of the stories our reporters tell have reached audiences
around the world, where communities receive broadcasts of Armenian
public television programs.
This year, HyeSanta has the good fortune of assistance from
(USAID-sponsored) International Research and Exchanges Board.
We are pleased, too, that the work of HyeSanta has earned attention
from public figures here including elected officials. Parliamentarian
Anahit Bakshyan has been a loyal supporter even before representing
her Heritage Party in the National Assembly. Among other help, she has
provided transportation for deliveries to HyeSanta families through
the services of the Yuri Bakshyan. And, following last year’s program
the Office of (then) Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan was instrumental in
assisting one of our subjects who needed medical treatment in Germany.
Over the years, HyeSanta has engaged in the most basic of assistance
such as installing window panes, to, this year, helping build entire
houses. Cows purchased through HyeSanta funds now have offspring that
are being passed to other needy families. Through the generosity of
our readers/viewers, subjects of our articles and documentaries have
gotten surgeries they couldn’t have afforded, have received
prosthetics for missing limbs, have enrolled in universities on funds
donated through the program. . .
Politicians, physicians, teachers, businessmen have contributed skills
and/or money. But none of it would be possible without the many unsung
donations we get from faceless and often nameless contributors whose
Paypal message may be our only contact.
Thank you for implicitly sharing our belief that "it is better to help
a few, than to ignore everyone". Please go to the HyeSanta donation
page, and choose your method of donating.
John Hughes
Editor, ArmeniaNow
Armine Petrosyan
Director, HyeSanta Foundation
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1. HOPING FOR A SMILE: CHILD’S TRAGEDY SCARS FAMILY AND FUTURE
By Marianna Grigoryan
She carefully takes a piece of fabric with her small hands and wraps
it around her face like a yashmak and then starts to slowly comb her
hair up and down, rumpling her hair…
The cloth on the face is slipping down, the girl tries to arrange it
back to cover part of her face.
"I am beautiful this way," says eight-year-old Diana. "I want to be beautiful."
Diana’s mother Loreta is sitting in one corner of the room looking at
her daughter with sadness in her eyes, then she quickly goes up to the
old TV-set of Soviet make and picks Diana’s picture from its top.
"See what a beautiful baby…" the mother says with a bittersweet smile
on her face as she takes the photograph closer to her. "This is last
year’s photo, before the incident happened."
It was December 19, 2007.
"…I look like a round circle, like a jewel of the ring," Diana
recited, happy and joyful, clad in a snowman’s all-white outfit, at a
New Year event for school first-formers in the village of Tairov, near
Yerevan.
"She had a wedding dress covered with cotton so that it looked like a
real snowman," Loreta remembers.
The matinee had not ended yet and children dressed as different
cartoon and fairytale characters were waiting for Santa Claus when the
hall plunged into turmoil.
Everyone was screaming in terror as the snowman’s white dress was
devoured by fire it caught from sparklers.
"My child was burning inside that flame," Loreta says. "Her dress had
burned out and her skin had burned out and drooped. No one dared to
approach her. I don’t remember what was happening… I was told later
that at that moment I was screaming and was putting out the flames on
my child."
Accompanied by a large crowd of teachers, parents, villagers and
family, Diana Atabekyan was taken to a resuscitation department in
hospital.
"I was injected with a tranquilizer," remembers Loreta. "Then they
told me that the hospital was crowded, but I did not feel a thing. I
could not hear anything, or see anything. It was like a nightmare."
"Blood was needed. People helped with whatever each of them could. I
only remember that they said my daughter was hopeless… I can’t
remember anything else," says Loreta.
Diana’s medical record says: "Heat burns on the face, in the area of
abdomen, two limbs and thighs. Burned skin disease."
Doctors began to struggle for the child’s life and for about a month
doctors did not give any hope to the Atabekyans that the child would
overcome the crisis and survive.
"Forty-five percent of Diana’s body was burned. Fourth-degree burns.
They said there was no hope. And until today many doctors are just
astonished at how the child survived," says Loreta. "She underwent
three surgeries and thank God survived. But what we had to go through
is beyond description."
Loreta says that Diana was unconscious for a long period.
"Her face had been burned. She could not speak. Nor did she weep. She
was constantly under the influence of medicines, in shocks, crying in
her dream – I’m burning, burning…," says Loreta.
After Diana spent some time at hospital, her parents, Loreta and
Masis, who had saw numerous hardships and bitterness in life, took the
child home.
Years ago an extreme social condition brought the Atabekyans from
Armenia’s southern Goris province to the village of Tairov, which is
very near Yerevan.
Masis, 42, maintains the family by working as a laborer.
"I was a medical worker in Goris, but we did not have either a house
or a garden. In short, we had a terrible life there," Loreta says.
"And we had to relocate."
While in Yerevan, for some time they found shelter at a friend’s, but
then in 2003 they moved to Tairov.
Their second daughter, Milena, was born in Tairov.
"We lived in a very bad condition and I thought we would not be able
to raise the second child, but I did not even have money for an
abortion and I am now very happy I didn’t," Loreta says, hugging her
four-year-old Milena.
The Atabekyans live near a dusty road, in a rusty and old metal small shack.
"This is the cheapest, we have come here for this," says Loreta. "We
lived in an apartment before moving to this hut, and we stayed awake
all night long to protect our children from scorpions. A scorpion had
bitten my Milena. We pay 20,000 (about $65) a month to rent this
shack. You can’t find anything cheaper."
The wallpapers on the metal house’s walls are torn in places. A few
old toys, an old table from Soviet times, a couch, a cupboard and an
old TV-set are the furniture of the "drawing-room".
A narrow corridor leads to a small bedroom where the girls, Loreta and
her husband sleep on two old beds. There are no elementary living
conditions in the house. There is no kitchen, water, toilet or
bathroom.
"When we returned home from hospital with Diana, all were helping us,
however our situation was very heavy. We were on the verge of going
mad," Loreta says.
After bringing their daughter from hospital, the Atabekyan family with
numerous psychological and social problems, began to center all
efforts on Diana’s rehabilitation.
"It was winter, it was cold, but all day long we heated the house
since Diana could not wear clothes, she was taking medicines, we
lubricated her body with ointments," Loreta says.
Paying 70,000 drams (about $230) for electricity a month – precisely
as much as the family’s whole monthly budge, the Atabekyans overcame
the crisis with active assistance from friends and relatives.
"We had lots of problems," says Loreta, without losing optimism. "The
child’s body is growing, but it is short of skin, her body does not
breathe. She needs massages, bathing. Her muscles are contracted, she
needs a plastic surgery, but such surgeries are not done in Armenia.
And we have no possibility to solve all problems by ourselves."
Diana pulls up her clothes. From her nose downwards her body is
blackened from burns, burns are from the neck down to the abdomen and
down her back to foot, spreading over arms and hands. Her right hand
is disabled.
The girl touches with her hands her body, begins to scratch her feet,
belly, she feels embarrassed but makes an effort to smile.
"We don’t know how we will survive this winter. There is no work, and
no hope there will be any," says Loreta. "No one will understand what
we have gone through… My husband and I had sat for days around the
table and did not speak a word. We want to work, create a future for
our child with our own hands in order to see Diana’s nice smile…"
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2. PATRIOT PRIDE: FATHER OF SEVEN SAYS SERVICE GOES BEYOND COMFORT
Vahan Ishkhanyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
As the gate squeaked, the door opened and a pregnant woman came out
with a man in a military uniform following her. The smile spread over
his face as if we had been old friends, and he invited us inside:
"Come in! Come in!", though it was the first time we met. Poverty and
cold inside, faded walls with huge holes, a balcony with broken
glasses, beds and a table with meager food, pickles and a half empty
bottle of vodka… "Sit down! Sit down!" said the home master gladly.
Had we started to drink with him, he would never ask who we were and
why did we arrive. So I had to ask him: "Don’t you want to know who we
are?" Replied the home owner: "Its of no importance".
Armen Avetisyan, a soldier known for his feat in the village of
Achajur, has been defending the border near to the village of
Vazashen, since 1988 when the Karabakh War started. He took part in
the fights in Lachin corridor, on the Karabakh front.
He was wounded twice. Fragments in his back still remind. He has no
intention of having the shrapnel removed, unless: "I’ll wait till iron
gets higher in price to sell," said Armen laughing. Doesn’t it hurt?
"Not any more. Let it stay in me as a memory of the war. We are all
mortal; let me take this with me from this world."
Armen, 44, is on a military service day and night in arms for 14 days
a month, and spends the rest of the days in the military unit. He
rarely sees his family. With our visit, he had taken a leave to see
his third son Andranik off to the army.
The price for the 20 years of service to the fatherland for, a father
of 6, is this extreme poverty. A seventh child is due any day. His
wife Mariam underwent surgery a year ago; doctors said she couldn’t
get pregnant again. They were wrong.
Mariam wanted to end the pregnancy, but the doctor stopped her saying
‘you are all torn into pieces inside, it may be dangerous’. She was to
spend the last two months of her complicated pregnancy in bed. But how
could she, when her husband is on service and the family chores are on
her shoulders? Their 4th son Aram, 11, suffers sharp kidney pains, the
other two, Artur,7 and Amalia, 2 are too young and need care. Their
elder son Ararat is in prison for stabbing a person in an army brawl
between Armenians from the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
The injured had survived, but Ararat was sentenced to 4.5 years. He
now still has 18 months to serve.
A family member last visited Ararat several months ago. It was one of
their sons who went to see him, because Armen was on duty, and Mariam
could not leave the children alone. The parents have not seen the son
for a year, and the visits became absolutely impossible when Ararat
was moved from the Nubarashen prison in Yerevan to Artik. The family
has no means to get to the new place of his confinement.
They will wait before he is released. Mariam worries over Ararat’s
kidney problems. He takes pills, but needs care. Ararat used to be a
football player, a wing. He had applied to the military academy, but
failed the entrance exams.
The medical check-up at military conscription had found spots on his
lungs. He was taken to the hospital, but Armen says he appealed to the
military commission to take his son to the army: "I told my son,
people served for you to sleep peacefully, now you go serve, let them
peacefully sleep."
His other son Anushavan, 21, has also served in the army with his unit
located in Karabakh and is already demobilized.
Where will Andranik be taken, to Karabakh again, where the service is
believed to be the hardest? "Wherever he gets, it’s his destiny. He is
a man, he has to serve. I am so happy I can see off a son [to the
army]," says Armen gladly. The 7th will be a boy again. They have not
decided the name, but definitely it will start with ‘A’ like his and
his children’s names – their first and last names, all starting with
‘A’.
This was the first year Armen started to renovate the house, to make
it larger to have his son married, so that the family had space to
live. But he did not manage to finish it. The home remained trapped in
the cold winds, because there was no means for repair. They will spend
the winter months in the lower story now resembling a shed with a dirt
floor, broken window panes and pealing walls.
A gas pipe stretches above their gate, but there is no money to have
it connected, so they will be forced again to somehow find wood to
heat the house this winter.
Armen’s salary including an employee incentive pay is 163,000 drams
per month (about $525). Nothing more, no help comes from anywhere.
They buy 3 sacks of flour a month that makes 36,000 drams (about
$115). A box of detergent lasts just two days.
Armen used to be a company commander before 1998, and his salary then
was four times less. Poverty forced him to abandon the service and
leave for Russia to work. He returned six months later with plenty of
debts: "I wanted to try, but failed and returned, I had a cow that I
sold to pay the interests on my debts. I can’t be a labor migrant,
man, mine is the weapon, and killing Turks, and keeping the
fatherland. Well, that’s what God gave me. He gives wealth, cars to
others, and gave me this patriotic fever. I like weapons. If I have to
choose between a jeep car and a TT pistol, I will take the TT. They
say, do you know how many TTs you can buy for that jeep, and I say I
get seduced when I see weapons and don’t care what’s next to it."
When the situation on the border complicated in 2003, Armen took up a
contract service. He has lost 6 friends-in-arms in the 4 years spent
on the border – the snipers are on the alert to shoot as soon as they
see a soldier.
They have neither place nor time to cultivate soil or tend animals.
Besides, their property is liable to landslide, so is impossible to
cultivate. "It has collapsed, we can’t use a tractor to dig, or else
we will be buried with it," sadly says Mariam, who does not have
Armen’s optimism.
On the way to Ijevan the driver heard us talking about Armen and
continued: "Armen? He is a great guy, there is no one like him around,
he has been fighting from the very first day, but there is no one to
value that."
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3. THE GHUKASYANS: "NOT ENOUGH, NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE WORK"
Sara Khojoyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
Winter comes early to Amasia region of the Shirak province. The
residents of the Aregnadem village take the stoves out of storage and
into their homes.
The large family of Ghukasyans, though, has no need to get to the
storage room; they will have to bring their stove standing in the
corridor-kitchen to the bedroom-living room.
They use the stove in summer time to cook, and to cook and heat in the
wintertime. The two-room house is blackened with smoke from burned
manure – the only available fuel.
The problems of the village are particularly vividly seen in the
family of Hrant, 40, and Gohar, 37. They have no opportunity to earn
to provide themselves for the greater part of the year, living in a
house damaged during the 1988 earthquake that never saw inside
repairs.
The elder children of the family, Gurgen, 18, and Garik, 17, see no
future for themselves in the village, and wait to be conscripted to
the army, to leave the village after they return, as most of the young
people in the village do. School aged Astghik, 15, Gevorg, 11, and
6-year-old twins Anna and Armine, have no other interest but their
lessons and the TV that the family bought on credit.
The main reason the family has no home is Hrant’s status of a refugee.
He was visiting his sister in Baghramyan when war broke out and he
could not return home. He met Gohar and they married when he was 21
and she 18.
Hrant worked as a driver in a military detachment, but lost his job,
after an accident damaged his eye. The young family was forced to move
to the village of Tsaghkut in Shirak province, where the father of the
family, then still of 5, found another job as a driver.
"At the beginning, when we had just married, there was work, and we
didn’t have so many children, so we used to get along. But the
conditioned worsened within the course of time, while the number of
children grew…" says Hrant.
Then the next misfortune hit.
"My elder sons were 5 and 4, when they got kidney problems. We spent
several months in the hospital. We did not return to Tsaghkut, because
roads were closed in winter. We came to Amasia, because the hospital
was close to us, to get there in case bouts of pain began, or the
level of nitrogen increased [in their bodies], so that we could get
them to the hospital quickly," Gohar says.
The family moved to Aregnadem in 1996. "We used to live at grandmother
Knar’s, at the beginning. We used to take care of her, and also lived
there. Her husband was in Russia. When he returned, he sold the house,
because he was going to take his wife with him. So, we moved in here,"
Gohar goes on. "But we have just this place; we sleep all together."
The family of 8 lives in just two rooms; the elder sons live in an
unheated room, the other six – the twins and Gevorg sleep together,
and teenager Astghik sleeps separately, in the living room were the
stove is. The room has no ceiling, there are just sooted walls and
wooden roof with old and new cover laid over. Besides, the house is a
community property and does not belong to them.
Head of the village administration Aghunik Hazryan allotted them
another house, also a community property last year. "Astghik was so
happy, when she learnt she will have a separate room, when we were
talking of the house," tells Gohar.
But Astghik’s happiness has not yet come true, because the house needs
repair as the wood of the window frames and the doors is rotten. The
house used to have two rooms, but the separating wall inside was
ruined, and was therefore removed. Now the house is one big room that
needs to be separated into 3-4 smaller ones.
"There are so many things we want: the stone storage for wood in front
of the house, for example, is good indeed, and if we have money, we
will join it to the house, and will have a very nice, big house, and
everyone will have a room. Children are grown up already, they will go
to the army one after the other, and the girls are also grown up, but
have no separate room. You don’t quite know which one is for eating,
for sleeping, or for sitting," says Gohar.
Hrant has recently taken some old but still good window frames from
the neighbors: "People use these for the sheds, but we have no other
way, they would be good, if we paint them. But the floors are also
rotten, I want to take them [the wooden panels] out, to repair, but
have no means. There are people who have the materials but have no one
to repair their homes, while I can do everything, but have no
materials to repair the house and take my children out of this one."
As a refugee, Hrant has written an application to the state bodies to
get a house, but he has not, yet. "We are not the people to go appeal
to the province administration, the parliamentarians. They [the
authorities] say I am on the waiting list, so, I wait."
My only dream for all my life has been having a home," Gohar says.
"But the eye problem of my child bothers me a lot. They say glasses
may improve it, but I have not tried. I took her to Ghukasyan, but
they told me to take to Yerevan. And we have no means to get to
Yerevan."
The Ghukasyans need at least 4,000 drams (about $12) per person for
traveling to Yerevan to take Anna to an eye doctor. But those 4,000
drams do not fit the family budget – 47,500 drams (about $155) – state
pension.
In summer matters are better, when the family can cut and sell hay,
making about 35,000 drams (about $115) in 15-20 days.
They spend a week or two gathering rosehip, in late September. The
crop has been poor this year – two and a half sacks, about 60 kilos
they have sold for 80-150 drams each or have bartered for tomatoes and
potatoes, earning about 6,000 drams.
The Ghukasyans plant potatoes on the piece of land in front of their
house, and Gohar hopes to have the crops this winter. "I had sowed
carrots and cabbages, but none came out," she says and seems she
continues the story of their misfortunes.
"It’s not enough, no matter how much we work. How can it suffice, when
there are four schoolchildren? It won’t suffice even if we just buy
copybooks and pens for them," Hrant says.
Gurgen, 18 will be going to the army soon, but does not know what he
will be doing by the return: "I can’t say what will be then. The
conditions force us to leave, this is not the place [to stay], you
know. There is neither work, not a way to live. It’s better to go
where there is work. If there were a job here, I’d like to stay."
************************************** ***************************************
4. NO HOME IN THE HOMELAND: "FOR WHOM DID HE SPILL HIS BLOOD?"
Lusine Musayelyan
Special to ArmeniaNow from Karabakh,
The only advantage of the basement-like two-room shelter of the
Ghulyan family in Martakert is that theirs is not an ordinary basement
but one with two stories, where they manage to "even feel the warmth
of the sun".
They rent the place. Their home, where they used to live from
generation to generation, was set afire by Azeris in 1991. As a result
Garnik Ghulyan, 47 along with his five children, wife and wife’s
mother appeared in the street.
After changing places for several years, they were finally offered the
shelter they now live in, where, as Garnik’s wife Hasmik says, they
"haven’t seen anything good."
"We used to live here without paying a rent at the beginning. The
owner of the house had escaped the war and, as the unwritten rule of
the war time goes, we had the right to live in the house of an escapee
for free," says Hasmik adding short after they settled in the house
the owner of the place started calling them from Russia daily
threatening to force them "to a worse condition" if they don’t pay
rent.
Before the Karabakh Movement the Ghulyans used to live in Russia, but
as the war broke out they moved to the fatherland, "so that Garnik and
his brother could go fight for it."
After the ceasefire Garnik moved to the Defense Army of
Nagorno-Karabakh for service. Several years later he was forced to
retire because of wounds received during the war. He now holds a
status of a 3rd category handicapped.
The elder son of the Ghulyans has also served in the army; their
younger son Grigor, 20, after a year of military service and six
months of treatments in the Yerevan hospitals was waived from duty
because of health problems. He is now disabled, like his father.
However, Grigor is not granted a status of disability; despite his
body temperature does not go lower than 38.5 C, as well as the
weakness and lung problems.
Garnik pays the tuitions of his three student children and the house
rent and also provides for the modest living of his large family with
just the pensions he and his wife’s mother get, plus the state
allowance in just several thousand drams given for his two underage
children.
"We neither starve nor do we need clothes. We have a small piece of
land that brings us some crops. Of course we happen to borrow food,"
says Hasmik, though without mentioning that they have cellophane on
the windows instead of glass and that they don’t have a TV or a radio
set, and that they go to sleep as soon as it gets dark and get up at
the dawn.
There are several iron beds, chairs and two tables; the smaller one is
their elder son’s recent handiwork:
"Is it because of tediousness or the talent in them, but each of my
children try to do something- maybe wishing to make the home a bit
more attractive; my daughter draws, does creative work, my sons do
wood works – woodcuts and models," tells the mother of the large
family with a wistful smile on her face.
"What a father I am if I can’t afford buying even a brush. What can I
do, if my health does not allow me to work, to find a work for my boys
in this town, forced to knock on the doors of the local officials
every Monday asking and begging them to at least lay a roof on my war
damaged house," Garnik laments.
According to the Ghulyans: "the state has set a sum in $30,000" to
restore their house burnt down by the shells. They say, they have
appealed to various charity organizations, local bodies to get help
for many times, but have been unsuccessful.
"The major topic of my children is having a house of their own,
because they tie up their future life with that. One of my sons has a
girl-friend already, he wants to get married, but where will they
live?" says Hasmik hiding her eyes from children.
"I always ask myself: if I am treated this way after all that I have
done, and all the doors are closed before me, then what will be the
way these children will be treated?! The solution for this all is that
I leave this place, yes, that I leave for Russia," says Garnik hardly
concealing his anxiety.
Hasmik, weeping, says keeping her words secret from her husband, he
wants to borrow some money to move to Russia: "After seeing all this,
after liberating all these lands, why should we leave? For whom has my
husband spilled his blood?"
One thing is clear for the parents of five children: The day will come
when the threatening letters from Russia will end; when their dream of
a home will be reality; when music and children’s laughter will fill a
home where glass window panes replace plastic bags. The parents,
though, are not sure if that dream can be realized in their homeland .
. .
************************************************ *****************************
5. THE KHACHATRYANS: 15 METERS AND FAITH:
By Gayane Lazarian
Earlier in the morning when the clouds shrouding the village of Tatev,
which is in the southern Armenian ‘world of Syunik’, start to
withdraw, the village in the bosom of late autumn begins to wake up.
Red, yellow and brown are everywhere. Some tree branches are already
covered with snow, but next to them ripe apples shine bright as if
trying to prolong autumn in the Syunik mountains for several more
days.
Detached from and unaware of the rest of the world, people in Tatev
live with their own cares and problems, making sure they are on time
with the autumn sowing campaign, that they have stored up enough
forage for cattle, watching the weather… and answers to everything end
with a question.
"They live somehow, trying to make both ends meet. What should they
do? That’s their lot. But the good thing is that in the last few years
they don’t leave the village," says the village head, showing the way
to the Khachatryan’s hut.
Everything is so beautiful that even the village’s muddy streets where
shoes forget about urban welfare do not put a visitor off. Narrow
village lanes with peculiar houses with typically long balconies
alternate each other.
A sound of an axe cutting wood disturbs the tranquil serenity of the
village. I follow the direction of the sound, and still before I enter
the yard I understand that the family I’m looking for lives here. A
middle-aged man with powerful strikes hews a piece of wood in two.
Then he puts his slanted cap right, looks up and notices my glance.
Smiling he invites me in.
To a smile he replies with a smile which also carries a greeting and
an invitation. The man comes forward to meet me. I briefly present the
purpose of my coming and try to go inside. I feel he avoids inviting
me into the house, but I try to do it in a delicate way and eventually
he gives up and we walk inside.
Inside, right next to the door, Charzhok’s wife Greta, 49, is washing
up dishes in a basin. A sack of flour is lying on the floor, several
heads of cabbage. I make another step forward, there is still room to
set a foot. The heater has become hot-red from fire. Greta’s cheeks
are also red-hot. She feels ashamed of receiving guests.
"I feel embarrassed, but that is our life," says Charzhok, 57.
An earthen floor, earthen walls, a ceiling built of logs stuffed again
with earth. The walls are decorated with a modest chain of red pepper
and garlic hanging like beads on a thread. The door is like a thick
pasteboard. Four beds with care covered by covers. There is neatness
next to squalor.
"This used to be my ancestral house’s tonir (for making bread), my
father’s house is a little that way. But I got married and left it, my
brother lives there together with his family," and then trying to
justify their living place, he says: "Our forefathers used to live in
tonirs on the earthen floor and that’s why they were so healthy."
One of Charzhok’s sons, 14-year-old David, is at school. The other,
16-year-old Navasard is in the orchard, but he does not come in, even
after his mother calls him.
"He knows there are strangers at home, and he feels ashamed of coming
in. He doesn’t even bring his friends home. He is a boy, he feels
embarrassed," the mother says.
The Khachatryan family lives relying on God. The family benefit paid
every month is enough only for one sack of flour, which now is sold
for 12,000 drams (about $40). The rest they spend to pay for the
electricity bill and a little is left for pasta, and granulated sugar
bought from the local store.
Village head Murad Simonyan says that a small garden had been
allocated to the Khachatryans from the reserve funds belonging to the
rural community so that they at least can have potato in winter. In a
small land near their house they grow cabbage and carrot, they have a
few apple trees and that’s all. Charzhok does not forget to mention
the one cow that they have, the apple of their eye, which they take
good care of.
To the question what they will have for dinner tonight, Greta shrugs
her shoulders and says: "We have potato, beans, God is gracious, we
won’t go hungry, we will get over it."
"We eat like villagers, we don’t complain, we buy meat whenever we
can, when we don’t we go without meat," Charzhok adds, proudly.
Villagers say that Charzhok is a hardworking man and does not shun any
work only to maintain his family. Village head Simonyan says that
Charzhok even agrees to dig graves only to earn a living for his
children.
The Khachatryans, for their part, are thankful to their fellow
villagers. Greta says that everyone helps as far as they can.
"Neighbor Nora lent her donkey to us, and one donkey today is worth
40,000 drams (about $130). It is good that they go on it to the forest
to fetch some firewood," says Greta. "And we buy from the local store
on credit. There’s no other way. They are children, they want clothes,
they go to school, there are lots of things they want, not everything
is limited to food alone. We are thankful to them for their support.
Or else, we would have gotten lost."
Charzhok keeps smoking and no matter how hard he tries to turn the
conversation into a more humorous tone, he can’t hide the misery that
reigns in the family. He confesses that it is 18 years they have lived
in this hut and he does everything to be able to expand their living
space a little to make room for the boys, but he can’t.
"My boys were born and raised here. I barely managed to feed them,
life has become too complicated. This is our situation – in summer or
winter, sleeping, washing, having diner, we and this 15-square-meter
space," he says.
The couple does not complain of their health and say that this is the
only thing they’ve got in their ‘reserve fund’. In the end, Charzhok
does not forget to say that he has authored 115 verses.
"But there they are, all put to sleep," he says.
He has written since 1970. He recites some of his poetry and evaluates
himself. And in the end he adds: "Faith is a companion and hope of a
person’s life. But for faith, we would have gotten lost in this life a
long time ago."
*************************************** **************************************
6. TINY HOME, BIG PROBLEMS: "WHERE CAN I GO . . . ?"
Ruzanna Amiraghyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
"The district militia officer of ours, God bless him, he brought us
here saying ‘Do something if you can.’ So did I. There was a huge pile
of garbage here, a pesthole for cholera. So all of us together with my
children, we worked and brought the place to an order. We bought this
little shelter and brought it here," says Anush Manukyan, a resident
of the Shengavit community in Yerevan, who lives with her three
children – a son and two daughters, and her daughters’ three children.
"I used to collect empty bottles, sell liquid bleach. I somehow
managed to buy this [temporary house] and gathered my children under
one roof," Anush recalls.
This 48-year-old woman, who shoulders the burden of her family bought
the shelter eight years ago. The family cleaned the piece of land by
hand, taking away garbage and stones. Modest as it is, it is an
improvement over their previous "residence" – in a cemetery in Karmir
Blur (near Yerevan).
"An acquaintance of mine, one of the neighbors, he said there was a
place there, and took us to that place."
"We used to rent an apartment, but were thrown out, when we failed to
pay the rent. So, we were left in the street. We then lived in the
cemetery. We had no home, no conditions. Scared of scorpions, I used
to sit up the nights embracing the kids, before the dawn… we couldn’t
sleep, even if we wanted. There were concrete panels above our heads.
It used to be a dismantled electric substation, when we moved into it.
And there were graves all around," Anush says.
The Manukyans found them self facing hardship 14 years go, when
Anush’s in-laws threw her out of her husband’s home. Three underage
children went into the streets with Anush, all with serious hereditary
health problems.
Anush’s children Armen, 30 and Armine, 26 took after their father. The
illness, fortunately, has spared Anush’s youngest, Lilit.
"My son can’t do anything. He is unable to work. He was beaten in the
army on his kidneys. He had escaped, faced trial, but still can’t have
his urinary bladder treated. He is 30, but suffers incontinence. I can
neither take him to hospital, nor help in any way," Anush continues.
Due to changes in her former husband’s family after the divorce Anush
and her children lost their official registration of residence.
However, returning from the army, Armen, got his military card from
the district he used to be registered at, which, Anush says, means,
Armen’s name was not removed from the registration list, although not
restored in the list of civilians. Armen has so far been unable even
to get his passport.
"He can’t demand a place to live because he has no passport; they
don’t give a document he is registered there, because his name was
removed in the passport department," explains Anush.
Several years ago Anush’s daughters got married. But, as the mother
says: "None were lucky enough. None of the husbands had the quality…
They now have children – one, and two. They now face the hardships I
faced. It’s the same story."
Lilit, Anush’s younger daughter, has twice been married, and has
divorced in both cases. Two of her sons – Vahram, 6 and Narek, 3, born
from each marriage, are under full care of their mother. Lilit’s
monthly income, however, is the social allowance in 20,000 drams
(about $65), and the 3,000 dram (about $10) daily for the work at a
sauna in the neighborhood, which can hardly suffice a lonely mother to
provide two underage children with the least necessities, especially
with the recent increase in prices taken into account. And the
kindergarten Lilit takes her elder to costs 8,400 drams ($27.50) a
month.
The boy is of school age, but the mother and the grandmother decided
to leave him in the kindergarten for another year. They say there have
been two reasons for this: one, lack of means to buy clothes, shoes,
and stationery and get ready for the school, and second, Vahram lags
somewhat behind his peers in his development and is not ready to go to
school yet. The child demands special attention and treatment before
going to school.
"Children are deprived of any kind of good. They want clothes, they
want to have a father… I am capable of neither motherhood, nor
fatherhood… I am a semi-person," says Lilit, who gets no help from the
children’s fathers.
Lilit’s sister, Armine’s family situation became so bad, she spent 18
months in psychiatric hospital, turning the duties of motherhood over
to Lilit.
"She used to feed both Narek and her daughter, both at a time. It was
Lilit who took care of the child, when it got ill. We have been
bearing it all on our shoulders. She hasn’t even known about it. She
used to run away and get lost…" Anush says.
After checking out from the hospital, Armine’s condition somewhat
stabilized, but the mother still gets medicines from the hospital once
in two months for Armine. And frequently, Armine appears to be unable
to take care of her child, because of fits of anger.
"I remember this kind of sick people used to get apartments to live
separately. This kind of people need to be separated, need to get a
home," says the mother.
Recently a large hemorrhage has appeared beneath Armine’s ribs, in the
left side of her belly. The mother has taken the daughter to
specialists, who, having recommended an immediate surgical
intervention, have demanded 160,000 drams (about $525) for the
operation.
"I have no means to have the operation done. I told I have no money,
how can I pay for it? Sometimes when it bothers her I promise her to
take to the doctor. But how can ?"
Lilit has appealed to proper bodies trying to somehow solve her sons’
and also her whole family’s housing problem, but has received negative
answer, so far.
"I have appealed to all the proper agencies, the district
administration, to have them give my children apartments. I sent the
appeal three months ago; they gave me a paper saying they can’t give
me an apartment. They are boys, how long can I keep them in this
place?! It’s a domik, (the Russian word for "hut"). I keep both of
them pressing to my bosom when they sleep, because of the cold. I
have no bedding, I get wool from here and there to make blankets to
keep my children warm."
"The situation is horrific. Look at the torn wall paper, everything is
broken inside! The water pours down on our heads when it rains," Lilit
continues pointing to the ‘home utilities’.
Environment is just another issue here in this isolated location in
one of the industrial districts of Yerevan, besides the lack of
utility conditions. Dust of the asphalt plant in the neighborhood have
already created problems to Lilit’s youngest son Narek, who has got
troubles with respiration.
"We take children to hospital regularly, every week… Narek coughs;
they say it’s all the asphalt dust in his lungs," says Lilit.
Anush also says despite their registration at Shirak 45 her family may
once again appear in the street, because the land lot their house
stands on is not privatized.
"It does not belong to us. If they take this away we will go back to
the life we used to have. I’ll find another power substation or a
place to put the domik… Where can I go to be able to live? It’s
impossible. I can’t fasten it to my back and go. I will have to sell
then this wood [the wooden panels the house is made of], gather my
children and get somewhere else again."
************************************* ****************************************
7. "AS GOOD AS THE LAND": TEA WITHOUT SUGAR
By Lusine Musayelyan
Special to ArmeniaNow from Karabakh,
It is already three days that four-year-old Tehmine has been asking
her mom for candy, but her mother can’t afford to fulfill her little
one’s elementary wishes. Stifling her emotions from the child’s
waiting looks in tears, the mother, 38-year-old Larisa, continues to
rock the cradle with her 9-month-old Amalik, speaking about her past
under the accompaniment of the rusty metal cradle’s extraordinary
creak.
"We found this cradle inside one ruined house… it’s a half-ruined
thing, but it is good to lull the child. I have to rope up the baby
tight from several places to prevent it from falling, but my attention
is wholly drawn to the cradle while the baby is there asleep," Larisa
says.
The large family of 43-year-old Arayik Osipyan is the poorest of the
re-settlers in the village of Verin Shen in the Nor Shahumyan district
of Karabakh. They had moved to Verin Shen from the village of
Charektar, and still before that they had lived in Vardenis. They view
Verin Shen as their last harbor.
As the Karabakh movement began, Arayik and his parents left Martunashen.
The parents and their six underage children sleep together, dine
together, take a bath in a two-room lodging where even the electric
lamp scantily gives light.
Part of the house’s furniture was made by Arayik himself, and the rest
they got from different places.
Arayik says that their furniture recently was replenished with a
fridge and a sewing-machine: "I had found a beehive in the forest and
sold it and bought these things."
The refrigerator whose only use can be decorating an antique shop,
serves only for milk. When they do not have milk, they turn it off.
The financial income of the Osipyans consists of the allowances paid
by the state for the children, which makes a total of 54,000 drams
(about $175) and 1,200 drams (about $4) that the state pays to cover
the expenses of electricity.
"The money is not enough. My children are half-bare. They have no
shoes, nor warm clothes. My middle daughter still goes to school in
her summer shoes. The other day, my other daughter came from school in
tears, saying he did not want to go to school anymore because everyone
was wearing sheepskin coats and she didn’t have it," Larisa says,
adding that the children’s allowances are not enough even for buying
food.
The couple say that two sacks of flour are barely enough for their
family a month.
"Last winter we bought half a sack of potatoes and for three months on
we ate boiled potatoes. This year, we can’t afford even this," says
Arayik.
The children do not attend school during cold months because they do
not have warm boots and clothes.
"The other day the heel of my son’s shoe came off and my child
remained barefoot. I wish we only could find the heel to paste it back
somehow until we see what we can do about it," Larisa mutters
encouraging herself.
This family that has had to go without the most ordinary food has seen
a lot of hard days. The mother tells that there were days when she fed
her children with corn seeds: "I said – perhaps the new dawn will
bring goodness, but then it turned out that the goodness was the corn
seeds that we had to eat for days, until I had the courage to ask from
a neighbor a few cups of flour and a few potatoes."
The Osipyans continue to live "on credit" even today. They buy goods
from the local store on credit and repay the debt when they receive
the social allowance money.
"We have lots of debts and mainly for foodstuffs," says Arayik and
remembers his debt of 60,000 drams (about $200) for the horse that he
bought months ago.
It is due to this horse that there is at least something
hope-inspiring in the Osipyan house – it is warm in there, since they
have firewood – the boys go to the nearby forest to fetch firewood on
horseback.
Arayik has "retired" from this job – cutting wood a few years ago he
had his eye hit and damaged, and recently he began to go completely
blind. He says he does not even think about an eye surgery. At one
time he could not even find $100 to prevent blindness.
The Osipyans continue to live, with love and faith that one day it’ll
be good and the sun will shine above their house brighter than
usually.
"Since we live here, this is our homeland. We love this village very
much. And the people who live here are as good as this land," says
Osipyan, as if trying to show he is able to see the good amid the
daily nuisances. He, then, invites us to a cup of tea, albeit without
sugar.
*********************************** ******************************************
8. PAST AND PRESENT: ELDERLY COUPLE IN SHUSHI STRUGGLES FOR LIFE IN
LIBERATED TOWN
By Lusine Musayelyan
Special to ArmeniaNow from Karabakh,
The mother who lost three sons continues to struggle for her husband’s life.
Lying on a bed in the corner of a small room, with catheters attached
to his body, an old man still braves his condition and according to an
old custom tries to greet his guests by reciting from his favorite
poems – but the excruciating pain has rendered him unable even to
speak…
The family of 80-year-old Liparit and 75-year-old Nora is one of the
many in Shushi who have shared the difficult fate of the town and
their generation who had to flee from ethnic persecutions.
Liparit and Nora were forcibly displaced from Baku in 1988. Still
during the "carefree" years of life in Baku, they saw the death of
their underage son who had suffered an incurable disease.
No sooner had they managed to resettle in Shushi than the Karabakh war
began and the other two sons of the elderly couple volunteered to join
the defense forces.
"One was married, had two children, the other was not. One day the two
of them decided that they would go to defend their homeland," Nora
says, pausing for a moment as if reluctant to continue to tell about
the tragic end of her sons’ lives. Within two years after joining the
military, the two sons died after being wounded many times in battles,
leaving their parents alone.
During the war Liparit was voluntarily helping wounded soldiers at
hospitals in Stepanakert "with whatever he could". Now his assistant
is his wife, who, unlike him, is still on her feet.
"Every time I have to lift him up and take to the toilet, or take him
to the yard to take him to hospital by taxi, very often forgetting
that I am bad and weak myself," says Nora.
The elderly people live without help. Their two grandchildren rarely
visit them, "only one comes and only to ask for money because they are
poor". Nora and Liparit live on a total of 53,000 drams (about $175)
per month. The spend 20,000 only on medicine.
Although they are strapped for cash, Nora still does not complain. She
says they can somehow make both ends meet. She even manages to get
some sour cream and juice for her husband every morning.
They use electricity sparingly and turn the lights on in their
three-room apartment only when it is total darkness outside.
White towels hanging in a room reminding of a kitchen attest to the
care of the lady of the house; the rest is squalor. The bathroom "is
relocated" to the balcony "because the wood-burning heater can be used
there", if, of course, there is firewood. Nora says there are still a
few pieces of wood for taking bath this year.
Liparit is in one room; in another is his wife’s bed and library.
There Nora can spend "a couple of hours a day on my own to read
through the encyclopedia."
"My husband cries like a baby from morning till night. He can’t stand
the pain. Even the neighbors feel embarrassed because of hearing him
crying, and they complain. And I bear it with great difficulty. What
should I do? After I lost my sons, my heart became a stone. I have no
one except him…"
After looking after her husband for four years, the woman began to
have serious problems with blood herself and recently she learned that
she has sclerosis.
"I am afraid of going to the doctor because he will tell me I have to
get treatment," Nora says, adding: "If I go to get treatment, who will
look after this man?"
"I am surprised at how these people who have seen so much pain manage
to preserve their kindness and smile," says Julia, a neighbor who
lives close by.
"During these years when I had a large and happy family I was an
atheist. And today my only hope is God. I believe that God will not
disregard me and my husband, even with the aid of medicines but one
day he will recover," says Nora.
Nora wants nothing more. Perhaps only to save up a little to buy
firewood in order to be able to take "a 10-minute bath at least once a
week."
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