Anush Hayrapetyan was born in the village of Petrosashen, Hadrut region, NK. In the 90s, she was forced to leave the village because the Azerbaijanis set it on fire. She moved with her family to the village of Khtsaberd in the same region. After the high school, she moved to Stepanakert to continue her studies.
“I started a beautiful family in Stepanakert, about which I have always dreamed of,” Anush says frankly in an interview with Forrights.am.
The Azerbaijani attack on civilians on September 19, however, interrupted the happiness of the people of Artsakh, including Anush.
“It was a hellish situation on September 19 in Artsakh. I was working in a children’s playground. The war started when the children were sleeping; we somehow managed to get them down to the basement. I could not imagine that there would be a war with Russian peacekeepers there. They told us that they were here, there would be no war. It was like hail falling from the sky: they were hitting Stepanakert from Shushi. I could not contact my children, there was no communication. I heard terrible things, that a shell fell on “Kaltsevoy” (meaning the famous ring of Stepanakert), a child died due to cardiac arrest,” Anush recalls the inhuman actions of the Azerbaijanis, while not knowing what she would see when she reached her house.
“As soon as I arrived at “Kh-Telokom”, a shell fell a little below our house. It fell as if there was an earthquake. It was dark. I looked at the sky: they were firing so hard that the sky was shining. I entered the basement and started looking for my children with the light of my phone. It was a terrible situation. One person heard that his child had been killed in the positions, the other was looking for his children in the basement of the school, but could not find them. The children were crying, thinking that they wouldn’t find their parents. Stepanakert was rumbling all night.”
During all that duration, Anush had no news from her husband who served in the police. “I heard about the painful ceasefire. On the one hand, I thought that there would be no victims, on the other hand, I was losing my homeland. My husband came home on the 24th of the month. People were already panicking, going to the Russians, then coming back. I didn’t know what to do. My husband came, said that we would leave Artsakh a little later than others. The police should have stayed and been on duty,” says Anush and remembers that in those days there was information circulating that the Azerbaijani side would not allow those in service and their families to leave Artsakh. “Everyone started burning the army and police uniforms. I too burned everything I had for 20 years. When he came to put on his military uniform, he saw that it was gone, he got angry. He went and got new clothes, I prepared them, and he went to work. That day was already the 25th of the month. He called me, said get ready, take what you have, I will take you away and then you will not be able to come home. The enemy had already reached the Armenavan district of the town.”
A few hours later, information about the explosion of the gasoline warehouse spread in Stepanakert. “My husband’s brother’s wife called, said that her husband had been brought to the hospital, I went with my children. In the meantime, I called my husband, said, ‘We are going to the hospital, to your brother, come,’ he said, ‘I will come.’ It was not my husband that answered the phone, but one of his fellow soldiers. As I could not hear his voice well, I did not understand that it was not him. The friend did not say that Eric was also injured in the fire and he too was in the hospital…”
While Anush was looking for her husband’s brother in the hospital among the burned people, not knowing that her husband, Eric, was also among the injured, she called him periodically. “When I found out my husband was in the intensive care unit, I somehow managed to get up to him. He, being in so much pain, said, ‘Why did you come? Everything will be fine, go home.’ They had to transfer him to Armenia, but could not manage it. It was only on the 28th of the month that they succeeded,” Anush said, adding that her husband had gone to the gasoline depot to look for her nephew.
After Anush sent her husband to Armenia in an ambulance, she and her children also set off on the road of migration. “I was taking a step, then coming back, thinking, how can I leave my house? The road was terrible; one of the cars in front of us was on fire. When two cars were on fire, I thought our car was next. On another segment of the road, a person had died in a car. We reached the Hakkari Bridge. After checking our car, they [the Azerbaijanis] made my children get off. I was very scared. They checked for 15 minutes, it seemd 15 years to me.”
Upon reaching Yerevan, Anush went to Erebuni Hospital. “He was already in a coma. I arrived at the hospital at night; they didn’t let me in. I sat on the stairs at night, praying that my husband would be saved. When the sun came out, I begged a lot, and the doctor let me in. He was in a coma, but I knew from that silence what he wanted to tell me. I left, and my husband’s life ended.”
Anush went through these trials while pregnant. “I promised that the child she dreamed of would be born, even at the cost of his life. I had a difficult pregnancy: a blockade, an explosion, forced displacement. My husband did not see our third child.”
Anush named her third son after her husband, Eric. The child has health problems and is undergoing rehabilitation treatment.
Narek Kirakosyan
