A horrifying scene. A man rides his bicycle along the al-Rashid coast in Gaza. He cries out in grief and horror – ya Allah – as his phone records a moving image of dead women and children, in pools of blood, left lying amongst their few earthly possessions in suitcases, broken and littered along the road like their bodies. As the Israeli government told residents of Northern Gaza to relocate to the South, some heeded the call in hopes that they might find safety there. They did not make it, killed by Israeli forces on the road.

I watched this scene on X, formerly Twitter, on the evening of November 3. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I couldn’t quite exist. The world broke; it was not possible to be a human in a reality of such profound inhumanity. I sat crying, sobbing, the image continuously replaying. I did not want to watch it anymore. I could no longer bear it, hearing the cry ya Allah, but I felt paralyzed, unable to turn it off.

My reaction was only partially attributable to the video’s own objective display of horror. This could not entirely be the explanation, because since October 7, I have seen images of dead children pulled out of rubble and placed in a line waiting for burial; children who were alive and yet looked somewhere closer to death, whitened with the dust of their home that had just been bombed by Israel all around them; children in shock, unable to cry, unable to speak; children running after the caskets of their fathers, begging them not to leave; children wanting their mothers, but whose mothers could not be found or who had been found dead; mothers burying their children; mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and grandparents wailing at the loss – their personal loss, their collective loss. While I have cried, while I have sobbed, while I have lived in rage for the last month that such an atrocity is taking place, something else happened to me in that moment. 

Protesters hold Palestinian flags and a banner reading, “Stop the Genocide. Free Palestine.” (Wikimedia)

The scene – bodies strewn, a cry of shock and disbelief, the display of humans outside of the space of humanity, as if there is no such thing as a humanity any longer – pulled out of me, out of my unconscious perhaps, scenes I never witnessed but read about. Scenes that I have only read in words and that have produced pictures in my head. I realized at that moment that the video – the documentation of this unfolding reality – was exactly how I had produced moving images of scenes of horror of the Armenian aghed, the catastrophe. Amid the daily images we are seeing of the horror caused by Israel in Gaza as well as in the West Bank and Jerusalem, that scene was what philosopher Roland Barthes called “the punctum,” that one part of the whole image that stings, that takes you somewhere else, that touches you in particular. The history of the aghed was no longer history, no longer in the past. It was happening right now, and I was witness to it.

What has been unfolding in Gaza is the ansahmaneli (infinite, limitless) suffering that Zabel Yessayan wrote about in Among the Ruins. Let us revisit Yessayan’s writing.

“The destroyed city stretches out under the generous and dazzling sun like an endless cemetery. Nothing but ruins on every side…Nothing has been spared. All the churches, all the schools and all the dwellings have been trans-formed into heaps of charred and deformed stones, among which rises here and there the carcass of an apartment building. From the west to the east, from the north to the south, all the way to the distant Turkish quarters, cruel and implacable hatred has burnt everything, devastated everything.”

In these words, how can one not see the rubble, the ruins of churches, hospitals, schools, homes and refugee camps, that Israel has made of Gaza in just a few weeks? In these words, how can one not see the red skies of constant explosions as bombs are dropped all across the land? In these words, how can one not see the skeletal remains of apartment buildings collapsed, sometimes on their sides, sometimes as if inside out, sometimes in the midst of scenes of people desperately digging to find the dead and, by summoning up all superhuman hope, the surviving? “Are you taking me to the cemetery?” asks a young girl as she is pulled out of rubble. “No, my darling, you are living and beautiful like the moon,” responds a man carrying her out. While there is celebration of having saved one, all those involved know quite well that there is no safety anywhere, for any of them.

More words from Yessayan:

“When I saw for the first time these pale orphans with their haggard appearances, gathered together by the hundreds, I was unable – despite superhuman efforts – to grasp the totality of their misfortune, and still today I cannot. Particular details and images come to mind, certainly, but never have I been able to take account of the infinite (ansahmaneli), bloody history that each of these children represents. For a long time I was incapable of attending to any one of them in particular. I heard a confused, uncertain, indefinite (ansahmaneli) tragic ululation, expressed by the totality of these still childish, still distracted gazes that had not yet understood what had happened. This bloodbath, this stream of spilled blood, this despair of a humanity driven mad, caught between fire and blade, all this remained beyond my imagination, and I believe this was the case for everyone involved.”

In these words, how can we not see the ungraspable, a violence without any sense or possibility of sense, a violence without mourning and possibility of mourning, that is unfolding right now, every day? Surely, we can see the reality beyond imagination that Yessayan writes about in the fact that 825 families from Gaza have now been erased from the civil registry. That doctors now have a new acronym, one that became necessary in the practical work they have been trying to do in Gaza: WCNSF – Wounded Child No Surviving Family.  

I write this not to navel-gaze, not as an exercise in exploring my own feelings. I write this as a plea. Every Armenian, whose sense of history and identity has been shaped in one way or another by the mass slaughter that took place in the hands of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, should be called to this cause as their own cause. Every Armenian who has been watching the mass deportation – the ethnic cleansing – of Armenians from Artsakh in devastation, in horror and in rage should be called to this cause as their own cause. The genocide – the senseless catastrophe – that Israel is doing to Palestinians today is a part of the Armenian cause. To speak about this and to act against this in any way we can is our responsibility as survivors. 

What do the residents of Yerevan do when a man beats or screams at a woman or a child on the street? They simply cross the street and continue on their way, because it’s not their job, and they don’t want to invade someone else’s private life.

Last week, my friends and I were walking through the streets of Yerevan. On Friday evenings, the city is filled with groups of people, always on the move and always with something to say. The area around Swan Lake in central Yerevan was crowded as usual. From the noise of the buzzing city, a woman’s scream suddenly stood out: “I said no, leave me alone,” followed by the threatening, thundering voice of a man. His voice was so terrifying that it created panic among the people walking on the street and sitting in the garden. One group of people changed their path, while others walked away with evasive glances in the direction of the screaming voices.

“What’s going on?” I asked, startled by the threatening voice, and I rushed forward. “Wait, aghchi (girl), it’s dangerous,” my friend said, managing to grab my clothes before I could move closer to the commotion.

As the noise grew louder, a small woman emerged from the bushes, holding the hand of a child who clung to her. A burly man was walking towards them with his hand raised in a menacing and intimidating manner.

My friend and I approached them with uncertain steps. She held onto my shirt to prevent me from going too far. A little ahead of us stood a man with an uncertain look, seemingly hesitant about whether to intervene or not. His legs swayed from side to side but never forward.

Suddenly, the man grabbed the woman’s wrist. She managed to break free from the man’s grip and ran towards a row of taxis while clutching the child’s hand. The little girl looked terrified. The woman, presumably her mother, was practically dragging the child behind her. The little one would turn around every few seconds, looking in the man’s direction with big, tearful eyes—he was following them. 

This time, I was the one pulling my friend’s clothes. We positioned ourselves between the abuser and the woman, attempting to act as a barrier. Approaching the woman, we offered to order a taxi since she had no money. While we were negotiating with a taxi driver, the man appeared beside us.

My hands began to shake as I witnessed him forcefully seat himself next to her in the back seat of the car. The woman started crying loudly, her lips trembling as she repeatedly begged, “Get out, get out.”

The driver sat with his hand on the car keys, unsure of what to do. The man shouted imperatively, “Drive, I’m her husband!”

At one point, I lost all hope and didn’t know what to do. It was my friend’s voice that snapped me back to reality. “Hopar (uncle – a term for addressing older men in Armenia), please don’t drive.” Hopar hesitated, torn between the pleas of three women and the demands of the one man.

I instructed my friend to open the front door of the car to prevent him from driving while I asked the abuser to get out of the car. Asking, of course, was not a way to change a person’s decision who probably solves all of his issues with the help of his fists.

I decided to take an extreme step. “Get out now, or I’m going to call the police,” I yelled, feeling ridiculous even as I confronted him.

I recalled a domestic violence incident I encountered a year ago. A man had been abusing his wife for years, and the police had only imposed a one-year probationary period. I also remembered the many cases when women turned to the police to report their husbands’ abuse, and instead, the police persuaded them to withdraw their complaints and return home to keep the family together, not leaving the children without a father.

I was jolted from my thoughts by the man’s menacing gaze in my direction. I swear, I was anticipating a huge chapalakh (slap) on my face. I stood my ground, fully resolved not to retreat. To my surprise, the expected slap never came. “Call the police or whoever you want, I don’t care. This is my child,” he shouted, turning his attention back to the terrified child and woman.

“Ara (a slang form of address in Armenian), let it go. It’s none of your business. It’s his wife and child,” the driver intervened. The driver represented the collective image of our society, the prevailing public mentality that one should not intrude into the family’s personal life, the pervasive idea that a wife and child are the husband’s property, and he can do with them as he pleases.

The proprietary attitude of the abuser and the driver’s supportive words pushed me over the edge. I started yelling in a confident tone, reciting curses I had heard in various movies. 

Suddenly, the man got out of the car, looking bewildered. “I will call my father,” he declared and walked away with unsteady steps. I couldn’t believe that we had managed to rescue the woman and the child from the abuser. I had mentally prepared for the worst-case scenarios.

After the man left, two young men sitting on a nearby bench who had quietly observed the entire incident approached us. Their eyes were fixed on the woman. “Who was he, and what does he have to do with you?” they inquired. “He’s my ex-husband,” the woman replied, trembling. There is no “ex” in Armenia; if you were once his wife, you forever belong to that man. That’s why the man told the driver, “She is my wife.”

“What did you do to provoke him like that?” one of the boys asked, reminding me of the policemen who try to find the guilt of the victim in all cases of violence. It is common to hear questions like: “What were you wearing when you were raped?” “What did you do or say when you were beaten?”

“Guys, what business is it of yours who this man is or what he wants from this woman? Go sit on the bench and continue observing the world from your vantage point,” I said in a rude tone.

“Kooyrik jan (sister and a slang form of address), we wanted to help,” one of them said. 

“Seems like you’re too late, guys,” I replied in the same grumpy tone.

We sent the two young men on their way and exchanged contact information with the woman and her child for further assistance. We continued our walk, constantly looking around, fearing that perhaps that man was stalking us.

A protest against domestic violence in Yerevan (Photo: Institute for War and Peace Reporting)

People in Armenia prefer to turn a blind eye; it’s easier to live that way. It’s simple to cross the street, change your route and pretend not to witness violence. It’s straightforward to pretend not to hear a man beating a woman with a hot iron next door. It’s easy not to hear or see a man murder his ex-wife’s mother with an ax in the hallway. It’s convenient for a police officer to send a woman with broken bones back home to their abuser, because that man has influential connections with high-ranking officials in the local police department. It is convenient to label their actions as “protecting the holy family’s completeness.”

It’s simple to talk in numbers, saying that the highest rate of violence against women in recent years was recorded in 2022 or that at least 10-15 cases of femicide are recorded in Armenia every year. It’s easy to pass laws without considering the practical effectiveness of their implementation. It’s straightforward to label people who speak out against domestic violence, hold protests and declare the presence of pedophilia, femicide and rape in Armenia as “Soros’s bastards.”

It’s simple to pretend that you don’t hear, don’t see, don’t know…but is it easy to carry that guilt throughout your life? I carry a heavy burden that will stay with me forever. I was 17 years old, having just moved to Yerevan to study at university. One night, I heard a noise from the window – a woman was shouting, “Help me, he’s killing me.” I was too afraid to step outside, to move a single step or to call the police. I don’t know what happened to that woman; I don’t know the outcome. That woman’s screams cover me at nighttime. That cry will always be with me, serving as a guiding light, always urging me to stand up against any form of violence.

YEREVAN—Armenia-based photographer and artist David Galstyan’s latest exhibition Nebula is “a story of alchemy: how the mundane transforms into a cosmic phenomenon,” in his words, offering a unique take on the so-called mundane, everyday elements of life. On the day of the opening ceremony of the exhibition on October 28, the moon was passing into the earth’s shadow, creating a partial lunar eclipse. This coincidental alignment made the exhibition even more enchanting and magical, leaving the guests in awe of both the artworks and the overall atmosphere at Latitude Art Space in Yerevan.

Running for two weeks, the exhibition contains over 40 scanographies, each one containing a piece of the home of the Armenian people. As Galstyan put it, the components of the artworks are “anything that is gathered from the ground. I have found these things in my own land. They represent my culture in its most grounded and physical way.” Although each art piece is open for interpretation, abstracted elements of fire, dirt, tree branches and more can be found in them. “To take something unimportant or something ordinary and to showcase it for it to gain life and form and for others to see. Something you step on – to see its beauty,” the artist reflected.

Born and raised in Yerevan, Galstyan studied acting at the State Theatre Institute in Yerevan. It did not take long for Galstyan to find his calling. “After serving in the army, I changed my path and began to express myself through photography,” he said. “I changed my path and found photography more close to my heart.”

For over a decade now, Galstyan’s works have been exhibited both locally and internationally, including at the Emerging Arts Exhibition in New York in 2012, the sixth Beijing International Art Biennale in 2015, the “Hello World. Revising a Collection” Berlin exhibition at Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum fur Gegenwart in 2018 and more. Galstyan was also the cameraman for Lucine Talalyan’s experimental film Post DIY, Adrine Grigoryan’s documentary film Bavakan and the Turkish documentary film A Piece of Armenia. 

“Art allows us to raise questions that otherwise we cannot. Art allows us to raise questions that other fields may not allow,” Galstyan said regarding the role of art in society. At the core of his beliefs, he thinks that in many ways, art reminds people not to think inside of a box. Reflecting on Nebula, the artist admitted, “I cannot say what the influence will be, because we have to allow people to integrate and process that which they saw.”

Galstyan’s technique for the exhibition was scanography. For the creation of each art piece, the artist used a basic scanner, but with a slightly different method than the norm – he chose not to close the top of the scanner. By leaving the scanner open, the information that each piece contains is infinite. There is no limitation on what each piece represents or how it is interpreted. “Because I cannot limit myself to a specific niche, this is an _expression_ of this period of my life, as simple as something that reflects my current times,” he said. 

Galstyan’s studio is at the Art Factory, which is in the same building as the Latitude Art Space. Latitude is an Art Space by the Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation (YBAF), whose mission is to showcase and support Armenian art. Galstyan is the newest member of the foundation, and this was his first exhibition with YBAF.

Latitude Art Space invites everyone to come and check out this exhibition, “where the mundane transcends into cosmic marvels, inviting us to ponder the magic within the every day.” It will run until November 11, and visitors can view the exhibit between Thursday-Saturday from 2:00-7:00 p.m. All the artworks featured in the exhibition are for sale, and a portion of proceeds will go to help families in need from Artsakh.