My War diaries - October #ArtsakhStrong

On September 27, 2020 Azerbaijan has declared war on the civil population of Artsakh in the middle of a global pandemic. Since then,  the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has been bombarded heavily, cities, hospitals, kindergartens, schools and civilian residences. Thousands are being killed including soldiers and civilians, more than 60 000 have been displaced from their homes, mostly women, children and elderly...

I kept a diary of these days, while I was engaged like many of us in Yerevan on providing humanitarian aid to the refugees and those affected by the conflict. 

I am reposting here my previous posts, so I remember...

October 1 - Day 5 of war: the worst part these days is to wake up to the suffocating uncertainty and fear each morning.

After managing a few hours of sleep, send a message to loved ones in NK, hold your breath and wait with anxiety for them to respond that they are ok.

Then quickly and hysterically go over the news feed or whatever info available(not much) to try figure out how worse the situation became in the few hours that you passed out, hoping that damages are scarce, not more than what your heart can handle.

Then try to breathe...

October 3 - Day 7 of war. I don’t know what to feel anymore, fear? Panic? Sadness? Anger? This morning I am thinking about the aftermath of all this. If we stay alive and sane, How are we going once more to deal with all the consequences that war leaves behind, losses, destruction, dismantled infrastructures, destroyed homes, orphaned children, widowed women, the hate, broken bodies, broken souls...

The already extremely sad entrance walls of schools will be filled once more of new fresh photos of fathers, uncles and brothers of kids, who were killed these days. And children will walk in their classrooms under the heavy gazes of these portraits remembering each and every day those who are no more with us.

those among us who survive this, will spend another lifetime cleaning up after all the mess that war will leave behind, pick up the pieces, try to restore and heal the souls... reconstructing the roads and houses would be the easiest part, it’s the rest that I am afraid of.

Many of you are writing asking how to help. If I don’t answer back, it is because honestly I don’t know how...but it helps a lot that you are asking and offering support.

Talk about what’s happening here among your circles. Donate to

Hayastan All Armenian Fund Հայաստան համահայկական հիմնադրամ

to ensure the humanitarian aid. Check on your friends, relatives here, talk to them if you can.

Yesterday, I was practicing with my kids what to do during an emergency air raid. It is so sad to see how children grow up so fast in these situations.

I wish I could predict the end of this war in the coffee cup, i wish it was as easy as that, I wish I had all the answers and appease everyone...but there is so little I can do and feeling so empty right now.

Armenian Pregnancy Chronicles #2: Women Solidarity!

I am traveling so much during this pregnancy. And I feel that my baby is enjoying it very much, since she/he is not giving me any hard time, sitting quietly in the warmth of my belly. From time to time kicking vigorously to remind me that he/she is there when I get caught up in a heated discussion during my seminars.

I am now in Shushi, just came back from a dynamic meeting at the Women’s Resource Center here. Gohar and I started this branch of the Center 3 years ago with the help of Gayane that I met in Shushi during the summer of 2001, when I was volunteering with Land and Culture organization. Since then, Gayane and I bonded immediately. At that time her children were very young and I used to visit her with my daughter on my back for coffee some homemade sweets and long discussions. She used to tell me about her life in Karabakh; the war, how she met her husband and then her experience as a young mother in a war-torn city. We used to think together of different ways to improve the life of women here and what were some of the important issues they were dealing with.

Women's Resource Center of Shushi

I wouldn’t imagine that 7 years later we would be working together on developing a women’s center in Shushi. So much changed since then.  It was a real challenge to bring together women and create this unique space where they were accepted fully and given the opportunity to voice their concerns and talk endlessly of their dreams and losses for the past years.

During this trip, I realized how much the center has evolved and how important it started to become to all the women using it. Many contributed to this over the years; Briony and Julia provided the space for free, Tamar gave up her life in Paris to spend a couple of months in this harsh town to help the staff organize, Ani taught English and gave hope, Hasmig introduced non-violent communication, Lusya implemented video workshops, Tatevik, Anush, Gayane, Shushan, Lucine, Nina and other volunteers made endless trips back and forth from Yerevan to help with programs and activities. And many more contributed in different ways. Today the center is open 4 days a week, provides many services to the women in Shushi and surrounding areas. It is also a safe haven for those needing a space to talk and share their problems and find solutions for different issues they are faced with.

Active volunteer discussing with guests from Martakert

Tonight 5 young women from Martakert (border region of Kharabagh) came to visit. The Center is trying to outreach to the regions gradually.

It takes lots of effort and dedication to sustain a women’s center in a conflict region. Resources are scarce and motivation is low, we face many challenges. But it seems that something is changing, years ago it was difficult to find any local volunteers, today Nelly and some others come over after their University classes to help and want to do more.

Many times I was close to losing hope that anything will happen in this town. But today I left the meeting with a huge smile on my face. I felt so good to see how warm and energetic this center has become and how much the women are trying to do things with so little resources. 

to know more about the women's resource center in Shushi go here.

asylum

Note: I wrote this 2 years ago as an introduction text on the activists blog site of www.pushingthelimits.se

While driving back from Shushi, NKR  (a disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaidjan), I was thinking about the long journey that took me back home. I am an Armenian woman born in Beirut, Lebanon who fled away just after the war of liberation in 1989 when general Aoun wanted to liberate Lebanon completely from the Syrian long-lasting occupation. I was 15 at that time and having a blast camping in the basement of our local church every night after 6 with all the neighbors, while the city was bombarded. Even though the adults in that room were stuck to their radio listening every bit of information with frowning eyes and whispering every now and then ‘ts, ts, ts’ (a middle eastern way of saying ‘oh my god it’s so bad’), guessing which part of the city was under fire or which building was collapsing it did not affect as much us the youth in that same room who were more into playing board games, listening to music and falling in love…

After our apartment was hit with a shell bomb and we almost lost everything, my mother packed all our remaining belongings and her jewels who took us, me, my two brothers and my father to peaceful and ‘politically correct’ Canada. And while sitting in a very calm, nicely colored with perfect benches public park of Montreal, waiting for my dad to pick me up after school, it hit me really bad. I almost collapsed under the tears and cried so hard. Culture shock, post-traumatic syndrome, effects of war, depression, nostalgia, fears… different people called it different names; I call it ‘the awakening’. My life had change drastically.

Due to the genocide that took place in the early 20th century, my grand parents had escaped from their homeland, currently eastern Turkey to finally take refuge in Lebanon. My parents were both born in Beirut and they considered both Armenia and Lebanon as their homeland (as every other diasporan Armenian).

The road taking me back from Shushi to Yerevan, is long and tiring full of potholes. I try to find a comfortable position in the small mashrutka (public transportation, soviet mini-bus) and to sleep, but the large mountains mesmerize me, the only thing Armenia has plenty of. I watch the women working in the fields of the Massis region through my small window; everything seems so quite and serene.

I remember how I finally moved to Armenia six years ago with my husband and 2 daughters despite my mother’s tears and father’s ‘ts, ts,ts’.  I was tired of being a refugee, a guest, a foreigner, I wanted to come back to my roots, try to build a steady, sustainable life on this land called ‘home’. It was also six years ago when with two of my feminist friends Gohar and Shushan, we started a drop-in women’s center in a very tight and dusty old soviet room on the Yerevan State University campus. At first we were 3, then we became 10, then 21. Today we moved to a new location and the center’s activities are getting bigger and bigger, the volunteers are growing in number and age.

We started a new Women’s Resource Center in Shushi, a sister branch. I make the 6 hour trip almost every month and I often think about this amazing journey from the heat of Anatolia, through the fresh breeze of the Mediterranean Lebanese seashore, across the colorful benches of the green parks of Canada to the mysterious mountains of the Caucasus.

Armenia – 10 sept.2008

vanished life

She served the best tea in Shushi. I always visited her during my stay there. It was a long process; at first she boiled the water in this old samovar, then prepared the concentrated tea in a small Chinese teapot with red magnolias design on it. Then she took out the beautiful set of blue teacups, gently kept in an old shoebox under her bed. And the final touch was the delicious raspberry jam prepared from freshly picked fruits of her garden that she presented in a very antique crystal jars.

Everything was so neat in her small one bedroom house and everything smelled of fresh lavender and mint. The old and broken windows were covered with hand sewed flowery curtains. The kitchen didn’t have running water and lacked basic necessities but she managed well and improvised a cooking area and a small container for washing the dishes with water, poured manually from another small metallic container fixed on the wall. The bedroom was very simple and dark. A large bed was placed on one corner covered with different kinds of covers, sheets and pillows all neatly folded. On the other side small carpets lied on the floor to cover the wholes of the wooden floor. But what impressed me most was the silence in this house and the inertia. It seemed to me that nobody really lived there.

But somebody did live there; her name is Laura, she is an Armenian refugee from Baku, Azerbaijan. She managed to flee the city, just before the war started. She left all her belongings there. The only thing she took with her was that old shoebox with the tea set and some of her official papers, a couple of family photos and the key of her apartment there.

Every time I visit her, I find her well dressed and groomed as if she is invited to a big party. In this cold, devastated and grey city of Shushi, her colorful make-up looks almost ridiculous. She tells me in a sad voice: “ I grew up in a big city, you know, I went to University there, had lots of friends, went to all this different parties and had a wonderful time” then she will add in a very sad voice, “but it will never be the same again, you know? After the war, a lot happened. My life changed completely. I don’t have most of my relatives, my friends are lost too, I feel so lonely”, then she sweeps off a tear, try to smile again.

Once I asked her, why she decided to bring the tea set? She smiled but this time her smile made me uncomfortable. “It was my wedding gift which did never occurred…he never came back, but I couldn’t leave it there, I just couldn’t”

After the tea ceremony, Laura washes everything very gently. She puts the teacups in the old shoebox and back in their place under the bed. These short scarce moments of happiness help her continue living a life she never chose.

histoires shushiesques de femmes- 1ere partie

Nano avait 15 ans quand la guerre s’est terminée et Shushi essayait de reprendre des couleurs. Elle ne savait rien de ces ruelles. Elle essayait d’oublier la peur, le danger. Elle voulait s’adapter à cette ville de fantômes.

La mère ne voulait rien savoir. Elle avait un regard vide, qui mettait Nano dans une complète désuétude. Elle venait d’une grande ville lointaine, dont elle ne prononcerait plus jamais le nom. Elle ne voulait plus rien savoir du passé, du présent et du demain. Elle roulait ces cheveux gris en une petite couronne et essayait de lisser sa jupe noire plissée aux cotés. Elle regardait souvent les paumes de ses mains vieillies les serrait fort pour cacher les souvenirs, les peines, les blessures. Puisque ces mains avaient fait tellement de choses dont elle n’était pas fière. La vie parfois nous emmenait vers des recoins sombres ou la réalité devient tout autre ou les conventions n’existent plus, ou la dignité est échangée facilement pour sauvegarder la vie incurable.

-Maman je reviens tout de suite, ça ne sera pas long, je t’assure. Dadi Arus a dit qu’on pouvait trouver de belles tasses en céramique pour le thé. Je reviendrai avant le soir, t’inquiète pas ma chérie.

Nano savait très bien que sa mère adorait le thé et toute la cérémonie qui entourait cet élément important qui demeure le seul inchangé de toute sa vie. Mais elle savait aussi combien elle détestait boire ce thé dans ces petites tasses en métal que quelques soldats avaient laissé derrière eux avant de partir vers le front. Le métal donnait un gout amer au thé et la frustration était insupportable. Nano savait que sa mère ne sourirait plus jamais, par peur peut-être de montrer ses dents jaunies. Mais elle savait aussi que ce thé bu dans une belle tasse de céramique lui changerait un peu les idées et lui donnerait espoir que la vie peut encore être agréable.

La gigouli attendait au coin de la rue. Une petite verte ancienne avec des sièges en cuir noir. Dadi Arus s’impatientait.
- Nano jan, vite aghchi jan, il faut être de retour avant la nuit, sinon…
Nano s’est vite lancée dans la gigouli et hop la petite voiture a disparu derrière les immeubles en lançant au passage toute la poussière du monde.
La mère n’avait pas trop d’attentes pour le futur. Tout semblait noir en ce moment, même le sourire de sa fille si joyeuse l’attristait énormément.