88-year-old Nunik Mardiyan suffered three strokes after returning from Azerbaijani captivity. “He opened the door out of fear and 10 Azerbaijanis came in with weapons. As soon as he returned from captivity, he had a stroke. If he had not been scared, he would not have had a stroke,” said the old woman’s friend in a conversation with Forrights.am.
“When I came to Yerevan, I had strokes three times,” says Nunik Mardiyan.
Nunik Mardiyan was in Khachmach village of Askeran region of NK in September. In an interview with Forrights.am, she tells that she has a house in the village, and in the summer months she went to Khachmach to till the land. On September 19, when the Azerbaijanis attacked the peaceful population of Artsakh, she was alone at home and thought they were shooting from Armenian positions so that the enemy would not advance. “I thought that ours were shooting. They were shooting and shooting; I thought they were our children, I laid down and slept,” the 88-year-old woman recalled in a conversation with Forrights.am.
She also witnessed terrible scenes. “I saw that the hands of one of the male prisoners were bandaged; I asked what happened, he said, the Azerbaijanis spread my hands and shot my fingers. I did not see, but people were telling that they [Azerbaijanis] did similar things to them. Sznee was in Gyu.
On the morning of September 20, she found out that there was no one in the village, she was left alone. “There was not a single person, not a single animal,” she met armed Azerbaijanis in the yard of her house.
“At the gates, there were armed Turks with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. I thought they were our villagers, I asked: Gevorg, what happened, what are you doing? Then I saw it was the enemy. They took me, brought me a little above our house, told me to sit down. They entered the houses, took everything, slaughtered the chickens. We stayed in our village a day, then they took me to Fizuli (Varanda),” she says, noting that her knowledge of the Azerbaijani language helped her: she was able to convince them not to harm her.
“One of them was touching my earings and said, ‘Grannie, give me these,’ I said, ‘no, these are a memory from my husband, he is dead.’ They said, “Give us your gold, give us money.” I said, “Where would I have money from?”
Nunik Mardiyan remembers that there were four more Armenian prisoners besides her: two women and two men. The Azerbaijanis were interested in whether the women’s sons or, in this case, the grandsons, were soldiers or not, to take revenge. And when Nunik Mardyan offered to take her to her house in Stepanakert, they demanded that she named the Armenian city with an Azerbaijani name. “They said, say `Khankendi’: you don’t have Stepanakert, it’s our “Khankendi”.”
The woman from Artsakh remained in captivity for five days, during which all her rights were violated, including that she did not have the opportunity to contact her relatives. The family thought that she was killed in the village. Only when they brought them to Shushi on the fifth day and handed her over to the rescue servicemen of Artsakh, she was able to talk to her relatives.
Narek Kirakosyan