When Mrs. Eleonora heard the first explosion on September 19, 2023, she thought it was a military exercise, because she was sure that the Russian peacekeepers would prevent large-scale military operations. But the peacekeepers did not interfere or could not take steps to prevent another military attack by Azerbaijan.
“From the intensification of the explosions and shelling, we understood that a war had started again… I was puzzled: how did the enemy resort to such a step in the presence of peacekeepers? Panic gradually started in the village. Residents gathered in a somewhat safe building, waiting for the development of events. My boys were in their combat positions on alert call number 1. I had no information from them. My eldest son somehow contacted us, but we could not get in touch with Samvel. It was an uncertain, unimaginable situation. Machine guns could already be heard in the village. The residents panicked. People didn’t even take their passports from home. Then the head of the village ordered that everyone should leave and go to the airport. In that mixed state, my eldest son, Garik, who was a lieutenant colonel, reported that Samvel was injured, but after some time, my son finally dared to say that the doctors were powerless to save my son’s life…” – the 77-year-old mother presented the situation.
Samvel Minasyan died on September 19, two days later he would have turned 43. He was buried in the Khnapat pantheon of freedom fighters. Samvel’s wife and two children lived in Stepanakert. The parents, who lost their son at a respectable age, moved from the village to the victim’s house to face the tragedy together with his family. Artsakh Armenians had to take the path of deportation. There was no way to stay. The 15-year-old son of Samvel took responsibility to evacuate and save his family in the pain of losing his father. The young boy got behind the wheel of his father’s car and evacuated his mother, sister, grandparents from Stepanakert.
“We got into the car with difficulty and took the road of uncertainty with empty hands and with an indescribable beating of our hearts. Those were cruel days. On the way, we learned that Haykazov’s fuel warehouse exploded. People who suffered burns from that disaster began to be transported by ambulances and they had to be given priority on the blocked road. It was a terrible situation; the witnesses could not control their emotions, young children were crying from fear and from those terrible scenes and chaos. A woman fainted from hunger and stress. We shared the food we had with people. We crossed the Hakari bridge only after overcoming untold difficulties,” our interlocutor stated.
After reaching Armenia, the family that just lost their son immediately went to Dilijan and stayed in one of the local hotels for a month. Now the retired couple from Artsakh live in a rented one-room apartment in Charentsavan. The immediate family of the killed son stayed in Dilijan, and the parents moved to Charentsavan with the family of the eldest son. Mrs. Eleonora also mentioned that the daughter got married in Talish and that she is one of the first refugees of the Four-Day War of 2016. The family initially settled in the Alashan community proposed by the Artsakh government, then moved to Charentsavan, then to Bjni.
Now the pensioners living alone are helped by their eldest son. They have many difficulties, but they single out the problem of housing, as well as the impossibility of visiting the graves of their dead son and other relatives. According to the pensioners, now they cannot visit their native place of birth, pay respects to the graves of their relatives even as tourists.
“However, our roots remained in Artsakh: our ancestors were born and lived there, all their graves remained in the homeland. They remained attached to their land, and we, like branches of a rooted tree, were cut off by the Turks, scattering here and there. However, our hope for return does not die out, because Artsakh is our historical homeland and has always been sovereign and autonomous, even in the Soviet years. That is the truth and living in Artsakh is our right. In the September One-Day War, the boys from Artsakh did not spare their lives for the right to live in our land. Thanks to the self-defense battles of the boys who lost their lives, it was possible to organize the evacuation of the population. Otherwise, it would be total genocide,” the retired woman added.
Eleonora and Gurgen Minasyan were born in Askeran region. They got married in 1978 and settled in Khnapat village of the same region. They engaged in agricultural work, brought up and raised their 3 children. Until the September 2023 One-Day War, the 87- and 77-year-old spouses lived in Khnapat, not even imagining that one day they would be destined to leave their native cradle and be deprived of their home, their years of earnings, living in an uncertain status at their advanced age.
Zara Mayilyan