“I am already the head of the house: I have to go to work to be able to take care of the family,” says Gor, who was forcibly displaced from Artsakh. The 16-year-old boy has no time to think about education after being transferred from the city of Chartar, NK to Sevan, Armenia. The worries of his mother with health problems and his minor brother fall on his shoulders. There is a cruelty in the memories of those forcibly displaced from this city: everyone witnessed the night funerals and Gorn and his family have been also participants. They had to bury his 42-year-old father at night so that the enemy would not notice the human gatherings and shoot. “I was at school on September 19. I left at 12:30 to come home I was already reaching home when I heard voices: there were young schoolchildren, girls, I took them to the shelter. I went home. Daddy was already taking his clothes to go out. My heart felt something. I said: papa, don’t go. But he went. He told us to go to the shelter,” the son remembers the last meeting with his father, contract soldier Vitaly Abaghyan.
When it became known that the people of Artsakh should leave their homes, Gor made a decision.
“Two days after we buried daddy, they said that everyone should leave Karabakh. I went and got fuel, came back and said: ‘I have to take father’s car as a souvenir.’ The car had problems. I sent off my mother, my brother, our folks by car. They were telling me to leave the car and go.
I didn’t leave it: t was the last memento, it was my father’s car, I had to take it with me. I filled up the fuel, set off alone. I saw Mama’s family in Stepanakert. I was alone all the way. The fuel was not enough, I was cold, but I did not turn on the heater to save gasoline. There were seven kilometers left to the Hakari bridge, I noticed that the fuel was running out.” Gor’s father’s acquaintances met him here. They gave him three liters of gasoline so that he could cross the illegally installed checkpoint of Hakari and reach Kornidzor. Enemy militants stopped the car at the checkpoints.
“They found out that I was 16 years old, they brought me water and sweets. I said that I don’t need it. I took the water to fill it in the car. Then our parents arrived in Kornidzor and we came to Vayk together. We didn’t get a house; we stayed in the car for two days, after that we came to Sevan. Now I haven’t found a job. I want to get a house close to Yerevan so that I can work.
Narek Kirakosyan