“On the afternoon of September 19, 2023, I returned home from school and suddenly there was a loud rumble around us and the fragment of an exploded shell hit our door. At that moment, my thoughts were about my sons. It turned out that my youngest son was already called to the police station with the alarm number 1 announced by the Artsakh Police Department. I called my middle son, Nver, he did not answer. No matter how many times we tried to contact my son, it didn’t work. He voluntarily left the workplace and immediately went to the hottest positions with the mayor of Martuni, Aznavour Saghyan, to organize the defense. If our boys did not fight selflessly, they would kill us all. On the morning of September 20, they called my eldest son and informed him of his death. Nver was martyred. He was married for only 23 days…” said Norents Paramazyan, the father of the son, restraining his emotions.
Nver Paramazyan, an engineer by profession, also participated in April 2016 Four-Day and 2020 44-Day wars. He was awarded the “For Courage” medal by Levon Mnatsakanyan, the former Minister of Defense of the Republic of Armenia, and received the rank of senior sergeant. He was martyred on September 19, 2023 while defending the “Kohak” hill in Martuni. His body was taken from Stepanakert to Yerevan and buried in Yerablur.
“My son was a very smart boy. He graduated from the architecture and construction department of the Artsakh State University with honors, worked in the Martuni district administration. He and his young wife were going to continue their education by enrolling in postgraduate studies, but due to the blockade, Nver could not come to Yerevan. Only the wife managed to leave for Yerevan before the blockade, so that her husband could come too, but their dreams about
The 44-Day War of 2020 disrupted their family peace. All three sons fought on the front line, and the father voluntarily joined the village’s self-defense squad at the age of 56. After the ceasefire of November 9, they continued to live and fight in the village, hoping that the Russian peacekeepers will prevent another military aggression by Azerbaijan. But the one-day war of September 2023 changed the expectations of the people of Artsakh.
The family of Paramazyan had to leave the motherland with the grief of loss in their hearts and psychological hardships.
“All the men were disarmed, there was not a single machine gun in the village. If a Turk came in, he would slaughter them all. Not only our village was in that situation, all the communities were under siege and we had to be displaced. We left Mushkapat on September 26. On September 28, we took the hellishly long road to Armenia from Stepanakert with one of our cars,” said N. Paramazyan.
After staying at a friend’s house for 2 weeks in Yerevan, one of the fellow villagers informs them that under the patronage of philanthropist Samvel Karapetyan, 1,500 families from Artsakh who moved to Tashir community are provided temporary housing for free.
“We moved to Lernahovit community, where we were allocated a residential house. However, we are all in an uncertain situation; we don’t know how long we can live here. The villagers welcomed us warmly, and those who can, lend a hand. I applied to the school director regarding job placement. He promised to allocate class hours in the new academic year. My eldest son was settled in Tashir with his family. In a way, we make the ends meet,” said our interlocutor.
They sowed everything in the allocated plot next to the house. Grieving parents do not even want to speak about social and household problems. They say they do not care about anything. The wife, 53-year-old Alina, cannot be forget the pain of losing her son.
“We lived a happy and simple life. My sons never thought of leaving Artsakh. They did everything to keep their hearth burning and building the homeland. We lost everything at once. Our only consolation is that it was possible to move my son’s remains from Artsakh to Yerabyur: we have at least a place to cry,” added the mother with tears in her eyes.
Zara Mayilyan