“We were in a bad situation, terrible; they attacked us and we ran away from home to the forests,” 65-year-old Rima Ghalayan remembers this when talking about what happened in Artsakh a year ago. She is from Kichan village of Martakert region.
The women, children and elderly people of the village, some of them barefoot, barely reached the forest near Kichan to escape the Azerbaijani rockets. However, it was not safe there either and the peaceful residents went on foot to the nearby village, Arajadzor.
“We got there on foot, through the forests, scratching our faces, some with slippers, some barefoot. We reached Arajadzor and met them [the Azerbaijanis] there. They threw everything into fire, everything was on fire, the forests were on fire. A military van came, somehow managed to pick us up put us in it, from there somehow we got to the airport [(means the Ivanyan airport, where the Russian peacekeepers were stationed]. They were bombarding behind us,” the woman from Artsakh recalls, continuing that the children had just returned from school, they had not taken off their school clothes yet when they had to leave the house.
“We came out of our house crying and weeping. It was me, my daughter with her children, my son,” says Mrs. Rima, noting that those were unbelievably difficult days for her. At that moment, she did not know whether to think about the safety of her minor grandchildren, her own health, or her son, from whom she had no news. “Then we found out that the enemy had him; we barely brought him back.” It should be reminded that Mrs. Rima’s son is Lernik, who was captured and beaten by the Azerbaijanis.
“They were shooting heavily at cars on the road. We barely reached the airport; there was nothing there either. It was raining, the children were hungry and thirsty, in the rain… there was not a piece of bread. The children were crying: ‘We are hungry, we are hungry’. The Russians did not give anything, neither bread nor water, like the Turks. I told them that it’s raining, let the children get under the roof, but they didn’t care. The sick child was under the rain and they didn’t let to get in. We stayed hungry there, then we came to Stepanakert.” Ms. Rima spent that day with her family in the basement of the Artsakh government, where compassionate people gave the children bread, and in the morning they were forcibly displaced from Artsakh.
Now she has one wish only: “May we be able to stay here peacefully, my dear.”
Narek Kirakosyan