Kashatagh resident Anahit Harutyunyan has been baking bread for soldiers in her house since the first day of the war. She left the house when the bomb fell in the garden. She was unable to move items. Nobody helped Anahit, nobody provided her with a car. She ran away, taking only a few of her daughter’s new clothes. And VTB Bank (Armenia) sued Anahit Harutyunyan because she could not pay for the washing machine and refrigerator bough with the bank loan. “The Turk enjoys it and I have to pay?” the Bread Baker asks.
In her house in the village of Aygehovit in the Kashatagh region, she fed all the soldiers; both those who were fighting and those who were tormented, hungry, wounded, retreating from Jebrail and taking a short break in Kashatagh.
“The army was staying at our house: 2 hectares of land, all the harvest on that land. There are orchards of pomegranate, persimmon, all colors of peppers — huge wealth hectares long. We used to bake bread and not have time to feed everyone: the army was so hungry, exhausted and withered,” tells Anahit.
Her house, not far from Kubatli military unit, was the exact spot where the war erupted. She received this house in 1998, when she left for Artsakh with the hope of a good life. But the resettlement program of Artsakh failed. In 20 years, the family received nothing from the state. There was not even water. “The water was provided recently, but we did not even have a chance to drink it. Azerbaijanis will drink. They gave me a burnt house, the windows covered with tin sheets, there were no walls or anything inside. I have not had electricity for 7 years. I made a vegetable garden. Slowly selling the crop, I bought animals, built a house, a garden. During escape, I sat on the road to Kornidzor and cried a lot,” says Anahit.
On the morning of September 27, the family was going to go to Goris for business, but woke up from an explosion.
The head of the village came and said, “Get out, go.” She took her children to Vayk, to her sister’s house, and returned home with her daughter, Angel, to bake bread for the army.
Anahit and her husband Sanasar had many difficult moments in those days. There was a day when they ran away from home to the mountains, hid in caves, escaped from the explosions, but returned home again. They left only when it was impossible to stay. “I wanted to take something, take it with me, but how could I take anything? There was no car, nothing. I called the governor and said, please, I beg you, provide a car, at least I will take the property bought with the loan. He said he was in Jebrayil, but wasn’t Jebrayil already fallen at that time? He was not telling the truth. And then I saw him on TV saying that he had evicted everyone with their property and everything. My husband went to the forests to bring the animals, but he couldn’t,” Anahit recalls her bitter days.
In the post-war life, the Bread Baker herself longed for bread. The family lived in Vayk for several months, at relatives’ house, then they came to Yerevan and rented a house. But the government did not give the 30,000 drams [about $60] as rent compensation. “Armenia’s welfare office blames it to Artsakh, and Artsakh — to the Armenian government. At the end, the welfare office told us to apply to the government, but nobody would let me enter the government building. We hear about help every day. All I ever received was food once, once I received help from France, once I received two aids, from the military, Malatya prefecture.”
Anahit’s husband is a laborer if he manages to find a client, and Anahit has no job. She was unable to become a laborer due to spinal problems. She lives on 68,000 drams provided by the government, which she and her daughter Angela receive, but that amount is hardly enough to pay the rent.
She has not paid the bank debt for 4 months. She has no hope that she will be able to pay 600 thousand drams for the refrigerator and the washing machine loan. After learning that the bank had filed a lawsuit, Anahit lost sleep.
“I will be sued. I have baked bread for the soldiers, I have worked all my life, I have built a house. And now, I will be judged,” she says.
Anahit saw her refrigerator and washing machine, the beautiful carpets of her house, which she bought from Iran in her previous life, in the videos distributed by Azerbaijanis.
Syuzan Simonyan