Mrs. Naira takes out a passport from her small purse, with burnt edges and completely covered in ash. The coat of arms of Armenia and the inscription “Republic of Armenia” on the front page are faintly visible on the blue passport. “They handed it to me like this: muddy. Look, it’s burned on this side,” she turns the document and shows the burnt part.
The passport belongs to Nikolay Saghyan. He was the husband of 63-year-old Naira Yeghyan. This is the only thing they found from him at the site of the explosion in Stepanakert and handed it to his wife. More than a year has passed since Nikolay Saghyan, 64, was reported missing. He is one of 22 citizens who went missing as a result of the explosion at the gas station in Stepanakert. Like many, this Artsakh man was standing in line for gasoline when the disaster struck.
Mrs. Naira lived with her husband in Stepanakert. On September 19, around noon, they were supposed to have lunch, but they didn’t make it. “My husband and I were getting ready to have lunch. When we heard the sounds, we dropped everything and ran to the basement. There were loud gunshots. We stayed there for a day, then they announced that the war had stopped,” she recalled in an interview with Forrights.am.
The news of the forced displacement from Artsakh reached the couple, but they did not have gasoline. “My husband went to different places several times to get fuel, but he couldn’t, he returned empty-handed. On September 25, he told me to stay ready, he was going to get gasoline from the warehouse, after which we would hit the road. Two hours passed, there was no news. It was already four o’clock, everyone was leaving. I was sitting and waiting for my husband. I spoke to him at four o’clock, he said he would come. After five o’clock, I heard a loud noise, but I didn’t think it was an explosion. It had started raining at that moment, so I thought it was thunder. I started calling again. At first the calls were going through, then the phone was turned off completely.”
Mrs. Naira was waiting for her husband at home when neighbors started looking for bandages, iodine, and other first aid supplies. “They said, ‘What medical supplies do you have? Give them to us. There were none in the hospitals.’ I learned there that there had been an explosion and the warehouse was on fire.” The woman, who has health problems, went to the Stepanakert hospital to look for her husband.
“It was a terrible situation. I saw people burning there. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t go inside; I was afraid. Then I came out and waited,” the woman said, that she waited for her husband in the yard all night.
“I was sitting in the yard until sunrise, sitting on a bench under the window, and the neighbors were with me.” Days were passing, Stepanakert was gradually emptying. Mrs. Naira was left almost alone in their apartment building.
“The neighbors kept coming and telling ‘Let us take you with us.’ I said, ‘No, my husband is gone, I’ll find out his whereabouts and then I will leave.’ I was hoping to find him, because they found his passport, not too badly burned: the cover was a little burned, I thought he might be found unharmed. It was already the 27th of the month, there was no information. I left in distress. I made a statement on Facebook that I was a lonely elderly woman, I had no way to get out of Artsakh, a boy came and took me out with his family,” says Mrs. Naira and notes that before leaving Artsakh, she applied to the Artsakh Rescue Service and the Red Cross to find her husband.
The Investigative Committee of Armenia has a missing persons’ proceeding. Mrs. Naira said that she was invited once, but no information was provided about her husband.
Mrs. Naira was left alone after the tragedy with her husband. She has no children. She now lives in Yerevan, at the house of one of her relatives. She has disability and is physically unable to work.
Narek Kirakosyan
Narek Kirakosyan
Narek Kirakosyan is a journalist, works on the principle of "a person is an absolute value".