‘SOMETHING BROKE INSIDE ME’: ARMENIANS WHO FLED AZERBAIJAN SPEAK
By Erin Henk // October 23, 2013
The Armenian Weekly August 2013 Magazine
The woman sitting across from me stopped speaking. Tilting her chin
downward she closed her eyes and shook her head slightly.
No.
Oh, I said, startled as I looked up from my notebook. I saw there
were tears running down her face.Oh, it’s OK. You don’t have to go
on. I turned to my interpreter. Please tell her she doesn’t have to
continue if she doesn’t feel comfortable. I wanted to reach across the
table and place my hand on her arm, to offer a reassuring touch. A
sign of consolation. A pause. She nodded through the tears. A stiff
smile crossed her face for a second, revealing a trace of relief. Her
hands in her lap, she remained motionless.
I’m so sorry, I said. Please tell her I didn’t mean to make her
uncomfortable.
The woman had stopped herself midsentence, choking up while recounting
the story of her neighbor in Baku. They had lived in the same
apartment building for years. It was where, in the courtyard, the
resident families would hold cookouts during warm summer evenings,
where their children would play together, and where they would
share meals during the holidays. It was the same building where she
and her husband spent years remodeling the floors, the bathroom,
and the kitchen to make it truly comfortable. And it was where one
night a group of angry Azerbaijanis broke down her neighbor’s door,
grabbed her by the arms, and threw her from the window, four stories
to her death on the concrete below. Then, in some twisted final act,
the Azerbaijani men combined their might to hurl her large wooden
bureau out of the window so that it landed on top of her.
I took a breath. Where to go from here? I thought.
This woman was one of the many displaced Armenians from Baku who
I interviewed for my master’s thesis. The quest to complete the
thesis was bumpy, to say the least; I switched topics at least three
times over the course of several months before settling on one that
continues to fascinate me-the human face of violence and war. I did
so by focusing on the Nagorno Karabagh conflict, specifically the
pogroms of Baku, and the Armenians who fled Azerbaijan because of them.
Setting out on an equally trying road of finding people to interview,
I spent weeks searching, traveling up and down the East Coast to
interview those who were forced from a place that their families
had called home for generations. Through my interviews I tried
to figure out how conflict-induced displacement had impacted the
cultural identity of some of Baku’s Armenians, now members of the
Armenian Diaspora. I set out to explore the way people relate to
others within their own ethnic group and their sense of belonging to
that group. And while I focused on how this group of people expressed
their identities through symbolic ethnicity-like language and the
Armenian Church, for example-what moved me the most was much of
the material I didn’t include in the final product: the stories of
abrupt and horrific violence, the heart-wrenching and shocking tales
of neighbors turning against neighbors, incredible loss, struggle,
survival, and subsequent rebirth.
After some silence the woman suddenly surprised me by continuing.
After that, I hid, all night long in a closet and then again for
the entire next day. As soon as I could, I left on the ferry to
Turkmenistan.
The long-simmering dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over
Nagorno-Karabagh finally erupted into violent clashes in 1988 when
pogroms were waged against Armenians by Azerbaijanis, first in the
small industrial city of Sumgait, located about 20 miles outside of
Baku. While tensions had culminated in several episodes of violence
around Armenia and Azerbaijan up until that point, they were nothing
compared to the gruesome violence of Sumgait. When about 50 people
assembled in Sumgait’s Lenin Square for a rally protesting Karabagh’s
unification with Armenia and demanded that Armenians leave Azerbaijan,
violence exploded on a seemingly unimaginable scale, engulfing
the city as gangs tore through, vandalizing property, looting and
destroying homes, and smashing and burning cars. People were hacked
to death with axes. Metal pipes were used as crude weapons. Homes
were destroyed. Women were gang raped in public. Some people were
dismembered, some were set on fire. Thirty-two people died in the
Sumgait pogroms-26 Armenians and six Azerbaijanis.
Many Bakvetsis were incredulous; the violence that struck Sumgait
was atrocious, so horrifying, that most never believed it would be
able to permeate a multicultural, downright cosmopolitan
city like Baku-where Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis, and
Armenians not only intermingled but were friends. While discrimination
was embedded in the social strata, the differences between these
ethnic groups were mostly overlooked in daily life.
In no other capital in the Soviet Union were people as proud as they
were of being from Baku. After the genocide took place, these were
the people who accepted us. Azeris were the people who accepted us,
one man told me.
There were streets named after Armenians in Baku, there were Armenian
schools and churches, and a specific neighborhood in the center of the
city called Armenikend, or “Armenian Village.” Armenians for the most
part considered themselves integral to the history and the strength
of the city.
Life in Baku, it was beautiful, many of them told me. Parties.
Concerts. Barbeques. Family gatherings. Some had salvaged photos,
which they spread out across coffee tables and in their dining rooms,
showing me life as they had once known it. Birthday cakes. Singing
around pianos. Vacations to the Black Sea in the summer, sunlight
dripping off the palm trees. Sure, Armenianswere second-class citizens,
but everyone was friends with everyone else for the most part, they
told me. Life was rich.
After Sumgait happened, Baku was relatively quiet until a certain
tension and fear gripped the streets, permeating the fabric of the
city. It’s not going to happen in Baku. It’s never going to happen
in Baku, was what many of the people I interviewed said they thought
after Sumgait. Itcould never happen here.
Then it all changed.
Things continued to shift, Armenians were targeted more and more. They
feared for their safety when they were outside. Some were followed
by Azerbaijanis and forced to make a quick escape by hiding in nearby
buildings. Mobs of Azerbaijanis, sometimes as big as 30 or 40 people,
would comb the city, pulling people off of buses and out of crowds in
an attempt to “catch” Armenians. If they couldn’t identify Armenians
based on physical characteristics, the Azerbaijanis would also run
“tests” of shibboleths, like the pronunciation of the Azeri word
for “hazelnut,” (fundukh), which Armenians tended to say with a “p”
instead of an “f” sound.
Eventually, a curfew was imposed. Threats increased. Many Armenians
began to trade their apartments and sell their belongings in
preparation for a way out of Azerbaijan.
In January 1990, rallies eventually broke out in the north of the
country and in Baku following the decision of the Armenian Parliament
to include Karabagh in its budget. When a list of Armenians’
addresses was posted on the front door of the Azerbaijani Popular
Front headquarters in public view, violence erupted in Baku. Ninety
people died in the pogroms, known as “Black January,” in violence
just as horrific as Sumgait.
For one week, it was a bloodbath with no one to stop it, one man
told me.
Azerbaijanis would break into homes, searching for Armenians,
vandalizing everything. Once again, people were assaulted, killed,
raped, and mutilated.
For many Armenians fearing for their lives, the acquaintances and the
neighbors they had known for years turned their backs on them. There
were those who helped, too, of course, like the Azerbaijani neighbor
who harbored one woman and her daughter in his apartment for days
until they could finally be evacuated by a relative in the KGB, who
escorted them out with the Russian families being evacuated from Baku.
And there was the young group of Azerbaijanis who saved one of their
friends from an inquisitive mob, insisting he was just one of them-a
Tartar who couldn’t speak Azeri. Or the kind neighbor who hid her
Armenian friends in her closets and under her bed while Azerbaijanis
raided her apartment building.
We are left with broken hearts, one woman told me. My students asked
me, ‘Why did you leave?’ I tell them that it’s not like they knocked
on my door nicely and said, ‘Go.’ They killed and they raped.
Something broke inside me.
The violence in Baku essentially drove the rest of the Armenian
population out of Azerbaijan. Most-about 200,000-had left by the
end of 1989 and had resettled in Armenia, Russia, and other former
Soviet republics. Over the course of several days during and after the
pogroms, theArmenians of Baku fled for their lives, gathering up their
families and whatever few possessions they could to leave by plane or
by train or by truck or ferry. They left everything behind, and their
stomachs were weighed down with the horrible feeling that they were
probably never going to come back. The 18 Armenians that I interviewed
went to Armenia, and Moscow or southern Russia, primarily because
they had some kind of personal connection to someone living in the
country at the time, some family or friends who could provide support.
Eventually, these 18 people came to the United States, primarily as
refugees, where they started over a second time.
For some, seeking refuge in their historic homeland, Armenia, after
the pogroms seemed logical. Even though they spoke Russian at home
instead of Armenian, and even if they had no family members to host
them, they thought they would have the space and the support to
rebuild their lives in Armenia, and the shock of displacement would
be lessened. For some it was a source of pride. This was our land,
our soil. We’re going to have our roots there, they said.
Sometimes it was viewed as the only option. We left Azerbaijan to
go to Armenia because we had no other choice, one told me. There was
nowhere else we could go. But it wasn’t always the easiest experience.
For some, life in Armenia meant struggle, and they were treated as
outsiders. Some were criticized for having lived so far from the
motherland or for not being able to speak Armenian. Others told me
of being yelled at or even spit on, being called “Turks” or shortvatz
(flipped) Armenians who had been happy living with the enemy.
Having come from a cosmopolitan city like Baku, many were in shock
when they suddenly found themselves living in refugee housing in rural
areas, where they were forced to grow their own food or wash their
laundry by hand. Our house became a refugee camp, said one person
whose three-room apartment in Abovyan was typically filled with 17
displaced relatives at any given time.
Others had similar experiences living in Russia, where they were called
“black,” a derogatory name for people from the Caucasus, or where they
were physically assaulted simply because they were perceived as being
different. This discrimination grew more persistent after the fall
of the Soviet Union, concurrent with the rise of Russian nationalism.
During the 1990s, the United States allowed those fleeing persecution
in the Soviet Union to come to the U.S. as refugees. Many Armenians-up
to 100,000-came to the United States between 1989 and 1996, and many
received priority refugee status in the early 1990s. Most of the
people I interviewed arrived on U.S. soil with next to nothing-broken
suitcases and no more than $300 in their pockets. As adults who
had established themselves as engineers, teachers, musicians, and
scientists back in Baku, they had to reinvent themselves.
Some took jobs in factories or cafeterias while they tried to learn
English. Others pursued their educations and tried to get ahead.
Struggles continued for some, and lasted longer than expected. And
often, a question arose: Did we make the right
decision to come here?
For most I spoke with, the answer is yes. Armenians are no strangers
to collective trauma and violence. It’s no surprise these 18 people
displayed the resiliency and the strength needed to not only rebuild
their lives, but to succeed after being affected both directly and
indirectly by violence that is so often the consequence of geopolitics.
I’ve lived in Azerbaijan. I’ve lived in Armenia, Russia, and now I
live in America. Obviously I can adapt, one participant said. You
have to lose part of you to become part of something else.
Over the course of more than two decades they have turned themselves
back into engineers and teachers. Some have become activists and
writers in places like New Jersey and Boston and Washington. Some have
become mothers and fathers and grandparents. Some have connected more
to their Armenian roots. Others say they are indifferent.
Those I interviewed had many ways of describing how they thought
of Baku now: a shut door, a closed page, a home erased, just as
evidence of the Armenian presence in Baku has been washed away with
the defacement and destruction of monuments and cemeteries.
For many, Baku is now just a piece of their history, the memories
of which remain in the recesses of their minds. Perhaps that’s what
happens when there is really no way of going back home. Very few said
they would ever go back, even if they were allowed to.
There is no such place, one woman told me. That’s all. It’s gone.
While researching this topic, I found that while the violence of the
pogroms was recorded, the long-term impact they had on the Armenians
from Baku had scarcely been touched. More than once I was asked why I
was interested in this topic. No one really cares about this anymore
anyway, some said. Still, I was fascinated. And perhaps at the very
least, I hoped to make some contribution to documenting stories that
haven’t really been told.
Toward the end of my interviews, one woman made a remark about how
Baku Armenians are a dying people. My generation, that’s it. Our
kids-they won’t remember, they won’t know. I will try to pass the
memories, though. We still remember my dad’s aunt. She was a Genocide
survivor. She was 8 or 10 years old and they escaped the Genocide. We
still remember her telling us about it. So we will probably do the
same with our kids.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/10/23/sumgait/