A Year of Memory and Pain: Servicemen slain in 2012 border ambush
remembered in Berd
FEATURES | 26.04.13 | 13:29
NAZIK ARMENAKYAN
ArmeniaNow
Aram Yesayan’s 21-year-old widow Meline Hovhannisyan
By GOHAR ABRAHAMYAN
ArmeniaNow reporter
For a year now two-and-a-half-year-old Luiza has seen her daddy only
in a photo. The little girl talks to the picture every morning, but
memories of her father are fading away with each passing day. What
grows instead is the need for paternal love and a sense of grief for
the lost parent.
`My daddy is gone to Yerevan to bring some juice for Luiza,’ says the
little girl as she hugs and kisses the portrait in a black frame.
Enlarge Photo
David Abgaryan’s 25-year-old widow Asya Badalyan
Enlarge Photo
Arshak Nersisyan’s mother Svetlana Poghosyan
Luiza’s father, Aram Yesayan, was one of the three servicemen who were
attacked and killed by a larger group of Azeri commandos in a major
border violation in April 2012. The attack occurred in the
northeastern section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, not far from
the town where the contract servicemen’s families live.
Many in this border area are convinced that at the cost of their lives
25-year-old Aram Yesayan, 28-year-old David Abgaryan and 21-year-old
Arshak Nersisyan prevented a great tragedy as the heavily armed
infiltrators could have inflicted many more casualties and losses,
including on civilians, unless they encountered the Armenian
servicemen who engaged the enemy.
The residents of the town of Berd in Armenia’s Tavush province,
serving in the army on a contractual basis, were going up to their
military outpost for duty on that fateful night.
Arshak Nersisyan’s mother Svetlana Poghosyan tells about the incident
in which her son was killed.
`When a hand grenade was hurled at the car Arshak managed to get out
and start engaging the enemy even though he had no weapon. An
investigator later said he had been riddled with more than 60 bullets
below his waist. When his body was found he still had his phone
switched on, as he had phoned someone to warn of the attack. He had
stones in his hand as he fought off the armed commandos. But what
could he have possibly done with those stones?’ the 44-year-old woman
says, adding that ropes, masks and maps had been found at the scene by
investigators, showing that the passing vehicle with Armenian
servicemen wasn’t the prime target of the attackers.
`What they had on their mind was not the kids [the servicemen], they
had come on another mission – either to capture the post or keep the
village of Aygepar under fire, or enter Movses. They just stumbled
into the guys… As they say, every cloud has a silver lining,’ says the
mother.
Arshak got married only five months before he was killed. After a
two-year compulsory military service he returned to his native Berd
and enlisted for contract service, which is probably the most popular
and highest-paid occupation in Armenia’s borderline areas.
His mother says he married a woman he was in love with in December
2011 and before the woman’s parents agreed to a wedding he had to run
away with her and lived away for a few weeks. `They were a good
family,’ remembers Svetlana Poghosyan as she shows Arshak’s room where
everything remains unmoved since his death.
The only addition is the black rimmed photographs of Arshak on the
table that he himself had made. His military uniform and only tuxedo
that he wore for a prom and later for the wedding are kept with care
in a wardrobe. Arshak’s 20-year-old widow returned to her father’s
house; although she frequently visits her deceased husband’s family,
she cannot speak about him, as she starts choking every time
overwhelmed by a tide of emotions.
Elsewhere in this town David Abgaryan’s 25-year-old widow Asya
Badalyan has had both the greatest loss and acquisition of her life
during the past year.
`We had been married for six years, but could not conceive a child. He
was a very good and caring husband. Our only dream was of having a
baby and when he learned that at last I was pregnant, he said he would
go for his duty and then return and take me to Yerevan for a checkup.
He went away never to come back again,’ says Asya, who gave birth to a
baby boy seven months after her husband’s death.
Asya’s son was born on December 5, his father’s birthday, and she
named him David, too.
`I will be both mother and father for David Jr. From now on my life is
only for him, I will do anything for him to have all he needs, I’ll
always tell him of his hero father,’ says the young mother.
Another young woman, who lost her husband in the Azeri attack last
year, works at a baker’s shop in central Berd where she unsuccessfully
tries to wrap her pain in the fragrance of pastries. But the place
keeps constantly reminding her of her Aram, who also used to work
there.
It was at this pastry shop that 21-year-old Meline Hovhannisyan and
her future husband Aram Yesayan met.
`He was a chef, and I was making pastries. He was six years older than
me. The first time he saw me he stared at me. He confessed his love to
me. Then we had a relationship and eventually got married,’ remembers
tearful Meline.
The red-cheeked, child-like looking woman already lives as a widow
together with the large family of her late husband.
`My husband liked my hair long, so I will never cut my hair. He was
very strict, very jealous, but he was also very kind and exceedingly
caring. I feel better in my husband’s home than at my father’s. This
is my home and my child’s home,’ says Aram Yesayan’s widow, who is
raising his daughter Luiza today.
April 27 will see the first anniversary of the three servicemen’s
deaths. Their families, as they have done many times during the year,
will again walk up to a hilltop cemetery in Berd . . .
From: A. Papazian
http://armenianow.com/society/features/45648/armenia_azerbaijan_border_deadly_violation_anniversary_servicemen_berd