Almost two years after her son’s death, from the sound of every car, every creak of the door Gayane Manucharyan still thinks that it is her son, Harut returning.
“No matter what I do, he is no more: so how can you be relieved with a stone? I do it for my peace of mind, I’m alone at home all day because I can’t go to Yerablur cemetery often, I have to smoke incense near the monument here, I light a candle at home every week, I sit and talk to myself, I look around, I see that everything here has been done by his hands, I hear the sound of a car, I get out the house because it seems to me he is going to come… Tt’s true that my sister’s children are by my side, but I tell them that as long as you are by my side, you cannot give me my child’s sweetness. But what should I do?…” says Gayane.
The Manucharyans moved to RA after the events of Sumgait [a city in Azerbayjan where Azeris started pogroms against the Armenian population in 1988, as a respond to peaceful demonstrations of the Armenians in Karabakh] . Here the family started a new life. The mother of the fallen soldier remembers all the difficulties she went through while raising her son.
“I remember how I raised my son in a socially safe manner, how I escaped from Sumgait, brought him to Armenia. Then his father died. He had to go to school that year, and I didn’t know what to do. At that time we lived in a dormitory, he went to school here. I got married for the second time. Since the second grade [of her son], that man came and took care of us until he grew up. The child was still studying in the village when he died. My son went to the military academy after Vazgen Sargsyan on his own and studied. I was not aware of anything. I wanted to send my son to European countries with my refugee passport, but then I found out that he went and got citizenship without asking me. He told me. “Mom dear, what kind of a boy wouldn’t go and serve in the army?”
During the war, Harut was first in Mataghis, then in Jabrayil, and finally in Hadrut. It was there that he was killed.
“On that day, 300 people were taken out of the blockade, he was the only one who was killed, but I don’t know how it happened, no one tells me any details about the incident… Now, his friends come and go, they call, when something happens they call and say: how can we help? Recently, one of his friends came with his wife and children, even from the time of his service in Zabra’il, when he was a commander there, his soldiers are calling. They are in touch,” says Mrs. Gayane.
Harutyun Manucharyan’s mother is going to republish the book she made about her son, as well as continue the work on his memorial stone.
The monument is a spring, it is placed next to the Manucharyans’ house, near the village road. Mrs. Gayane offers travelers water from her son’s spring.
Ani Gevorgyan