Maria Gharibyan, a 62-year-old resident of the village of Karmir Shuka in the Martuni region of Artsakh, was a teacher for 39 years. Another year, and she was supposed to retire and enjoy her well-earned rest, but the most terrible thing happened to her family. On the way to forced deportation, just eight km’s from the Hakari Bridge, the woman’s heart stopped.
Maria Gharibyan is buried in the cemetery of the city of Masis. Her daughter, 38-year-old Hermine Kocharyan, says, “At least, we have a place to cry. “The pain is getting deeper; you have difficulty in believing what happened. She never complained about her health, she didn’t complain at all. We can’t come to terms with what happened.”
“To say that after 2020 we have lived fully and been happy would be a lie. You cannot live happily seeing the enemy every day. But we were on our land, we were among our surroundings, we were with our friends, we were with our relatives. That gave us strength. But full-throated laughter wasn’t for us. And now it’s even more so not for us… Now everyone lives for their child, in uncertainty. I really can’t imagine the future yet, my future. Every second we hope that one day we will go through that road again… How many times we have gone through that road!”, says the daughter of the deceased woman.
Hermine says that on September 20 of last year, she and her family were first displaced from Karmir Shuka, then spent days moving from village to village, and then set off for Stepanakert [capital of NK], during which they already encountered the newly installed Azerbaijani checkpoint. “That feeling was terrible: we are on our land, but the enemy stops you and asks questions.”
Hermine remembers in detail what happened on the way of leaving Artsakh.
“We left Stepanakert in early afternoon. There were probably 8-10 km left to reach the Hakari Bridge… At that time we were standing. The closer we got to the bridge, the longer we waited. You would get there faster on foot than by car. Our neighbor got out of the car, we got out too and we talked. At that moment, we heard my mother’s last laugh. My sister also says that we hadn’t seen my mother laugh in recent years. When she smiled, her whole face smiled… We were talking, then she said that she had to take something out of the trunk. Dad took out the trunk, mom said, ‘I don’t feel well, my head is spinning.’ Our neighbor is a nurse. I called her, but whatever she did, it was impossible to change anything… it was already too late… When I saw her color, I realized that she was already… Then dad got worse, we took him by car too… After that, dad didn’t drive a car anymore.”
According to Hermine, the hardest thought that torments her is that they were with their whole family with their mother, but they couldn’t help her in any way. “We called an ambulance, but it was such a situation that it was impossible for it to come, to approach. Our neighbor’s son put her in his car, took her out of there. Azerbaijani and Russian doctors looked at her near the bridge, but it was already too late, nothing could be done. They recorded a cardiac arrest in Goris… they say, even if the ambulance had arrived, nothing could have been done… Our situation was terrible. The incident happened when it already was morning, we only reached the bridge in the evening. My father had warned there about us, they welcomed us… Sometimes I think, how did we survive, how did we endure, how did we manage… When we were already on the Armenian side, Armenians ran towards us. They immediately helped us, took us to Goris, where we had had friends…”
Ani Gevorgyan
Ani Gevorgyan is a journalist, photographer, and the winner of the Freedom of Speech Award. She has participated in photo exhibitions at the UN headquarters (New York) and the Geneva office, the Palace of Europe (Strasbourg), Paris, Rome, Berlin, Vienna and elsewhere.