Second Generation Soldiers: A Karabakh veteran’s view of duty and family
KARABAKH 25: BUILDING A REPUBLIC | 07.03.13 | 22:00
NAZIK ARMENAKYAN
ArmeniaNow
Artur and Nonna Yeghiazaryans
By GOHAR ABRAHAMYAN
ArmeniaNow reporter
A veteran of the Karabakh war is holding two photographs in his hands
– one has three little boys in it, the other three soldiers – arms
around one another’s shoulder. At first there seems no connection, but
after taking a closer look the resemblance becomes obvious – the same
eyes, same faces and same expressions in the eyes, with only age and
maturity showing the difference.
Enlarge Photo
Enlarge Photo
`I look at them and think that they take things easier, life tempers
people. I was younger than they are now, when I got married… war makes
people grow up faster,’ says 39-year-old Artur Yeghiazaryan, father of
the three soldiers in the photograph.
Each page in the family album holds a memory of its own, a whole life
lived together with his 37-year-old wife Nonna Yeghiazaryan. They
matured early because of the war.
Artur recalls his school years, when they’d skip classes to go take
part in the demonstrations held at then Opera (now Liberty) Square, in
Yerevan. Later, when he was a first-year student at the history
faculty of Yerevan State University, a demanding sense of duty to
country led him to leave university and go to the frontline.
At 18, he was under Zhirayr Sefilyan’s command, serving at the first
company of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun (ARF)
located in Shushi after its liberation in 1992 (it was later
replenished and restructured into the legendary `Shushi Liberation
Battalion’ or, as people call it, `Dashnaks’ battalion’). Parallel to
his military service Artur, who was also a member of ARF’s Nikol
Aghbalyan student union, fulfilled his long-cherished dream – together
with his friend he founded `Aram Manukyan’ Lyceum in the fall of 1992
in war-torn Shushi. The lyceum is now Shushi’s school N2.
`Our comrades-in-arms were encouraging us to found the lyceum, saying
that the war would be over one day, and the children shouldn’t remain
illiterate and uneducated; the years of war will pass, they said, but
we will lose a generation,’ tells Yeghiazaryan. `Many of the guys from
our battalion taught at that school, but as soon as things would get
hard they would again be part of the battalion, back to the
battlefield.’
In Shushi still frequently shaken by landmine explosions, the lyceum
soon became a unique educational center, where children not only
studied, but were fed, and given clothes from time to time.
`Most of the students’ parents were in the battlefield, many had
fallen there; schoolboys were the men at their houses – in the morning
they tended to the livestock, took them to pastures, then went to
school. In the evening they chopped wood, worked the land. After dark,
when passing by, we saw through windows how they were doing homework
by candlelight,’ he recalls with sadness and great affection for his
former students.
Shushi is where Artur met his future life partner; he and Nonna got
married a few months later.
`Our parents objected against marriage at such early age – I was 18,
while Nonna hadn’t even become of age (she was turning 16). We got
married regardless. My comrades in arms and I went to ask for Nonna’s
hand; my parents were unable to attend [from Yerevan] our wedding
ceremony, because the roads were blocked,’ he recalls.
In 1993 their twin sons Ara and Aram were born – the first twin
infants of liberated Shushi.
`I had a feeling that we were going to have twins; it is in our
genetic pool, and besides, in Artsakh especially twin boys were often
born during those years, as if the nature was somehow trying to make
up for the losses brought by the war,’ recalls Yeghiazaryan. `And a
year later, in 1994, our third son Argam was born.’
In 1995 the Yeghiazaryans moved to Yerevan.
However, today their three sons born in that land stand on guard in
the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno Karabakh.
`When our sons were born at a time of war, we were celebrating the
birth of Armenian soldiers, rather than of our children. We always
knew that they must go serve in the army. To our family avoiding
service is something beyond honor,’ says the Karabakh war veteran.
Ara and Aram are students of Yerevan State University’s Theology
Faculty, and Argam studies at the faculty of Eastern Studies
(department of Turkish studies).
`All three left university to go to the army. They judged it was
better to serve together with their age group, rather than after
graduation,’ says Nonna Yeghiazaryan.
Talking about her three sons makes the mother’s eyes sparkle, she
flashes a bright smile, and casts a nostalgic look at the photographs.
`The twins are very active, while my youngest son is a bit different,
he doesn’t speak much, if you don’t make him speak he can go through
the whole day without uttering a word, it’s like he has his own world.
If at home the brothers might fight and argue, outside they watch each
other’s back, and the same goes for the army,’ says Nonna.
During the 2012 parliamentary elections Yeghiazaryan ran for
single-mandate representation nominated by ARF and lost to his
pro-establishment opponent.
Today, too, the Yeghiazaryan family often visits Shushi. And on the
seventh day of the seventh month of 2007, after 15 years of being
married, they finally had a wedding ceremony at the beautifully
restored white-stoned St Ghazanchetsots Church in their native Shushi.
http://armenianow.com/karabakh/44262/karabakh_25th_yeghiazaryan_family