Naira Aghajanyan, a native of Stepanakert, has worked in cultural centers for 33 years, and for the last 10 years she was the director of the H. Tumanyan Republican Children’s Library of Artsakh. The library met modern standards, had 13 employees, and all the favorable conditions for working were created.
“To leave everything you have created all your life and leave empty-handed, taking with you just whatever fits in a suitcase… We, like other Artsakh residents, were able to save only ourselves. The most terrible day was September 19, 2023. My daughter was supposed to return home from university. My husband immediately went out to find my daughter… Everything turned upside down at once. With terrible and inexplicable feelings, I was forced to go down to the basement, and my husband, under the shelling, was searching for Nare, entering all the basements one by one on the road from the house to the university. It was a terrible situation: there was no connection. Later we learned that my daughter had reached Renaissance Square when the war began. Nare, who had lived through two wars, screamed in terror at the first explosion, so much so that a young woman with her two little ones grabbed my daughter too by the hand and quickly took her to the basement of the Vallex Garden hotel complex. My daughter was in such shock that she could not even call, she kept shaking for a long time. Only hours later, towards evening, an stranger called and informed us of my daughter’s whereabouts. Although I did not hear my daughter’s scream, it is still in my ears. Those feelings cannot be described in words,” Naira Aghajanyan said.
Since our interlocutor’s apartment was in the central part of the Square, she witnessed terrible scenes from her 5th-floor balcony in the following days. They had no basement and were taking refuge in the Vallex Garden shelter, where people were also provided with food. Then the displaced people who had escaped from the regions took refuge there. They had instantly left their homes and arrived in Stepanakert in torn and dirty clothes. Gradually, people of Stepanakert began to silently gather their necessary belongings and leave the city. Day by day, the lights in the houses were getting fewer and fewer, and in the distance, the road leading to Shushi, clogged with cars, could be seen.
“You don’t want to leave your house, but you also don’t want to be the last one to leave, because there would be unforeseen situations and at those moments nothing goes through your mind except to be saved. Azerbaijanis were already roaming the city. We had to leave as soon as possible. The explosion of the fuel depot on September 25 was another shock for us. At those moments, everyone was thinking about saving their family, and then we realized what a terrible event had happened next to us. At that moment, we were still in Stepanakert. We were evacuated on September 28-29. The first time, when tried to leave, we only got as far as the Church of the Holy Mother of God in the capital, because the flow of cars was so heavy that there were traffic jams and we could not move. The day was coming to an end. We got out of the car and entered the church. That was the last moment that my daughter and I entered the church, where an unusual atmosphere reigned. The church paraphernalia – candles, crosses, and everything were free. And I told to those present to take something and save it. We too took crosses, lit candles and left. The feelings were terrible and my husband decided that we should still return to our house and wait for the next day,” my interlocutor shared about her difficult experiences of those days.
Turning back from the road was another shock for Mrs. Naira. According to her, upon entering the apartment, she felt a terrible cold. She had sorted out the things in the house, collected some and left some, because it was not possible to fit them all in the car. In those feelings, she suddenly remembered the difficult days of the blockade, when they tried to resist in conditions of severe shortages and sometimes even the absence of food, and even those deprivations seemed more blissful to her than forced displacement. The husband lit the stove and, with what was left in the house, they decided to prepare something to take with them the next day.
The husband, a writer and member of the Union of Writers of the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh, Hamlet Martirosyan, was forced to burn his books. He managed to take only a few copies of everything and put them in his car, and to prevent the Turks from getting hold of them, he burned the rest with his own hands, which is a great tragedy for a writer.
There were no longer any residents in the building. Everything was echoing. Naira finally closed the door of the apartment and left. Their family was forced to evacuate on September 29. The husband was not a professional driver and, together with fellow journalists from Armenia’s Public Television, they crossed the checkpoint with great difficulty, which Naira compared to the road to Golgotha. They had agreed that if someone was suddenly arrested at the checkpoint, the others would take care of the women and children.
“We, the people of Artsakh, have been through hell, and the basic warm attitude shown in the village of Tegh was inexplicably touching. Now we have to start everything from scratch. You have to be a rock to withstand all this. Now we live in a rented one-room apartment, which is close to my daughter’s university. My husband does not work. After the deportation, my relatives have scattered to different places, and for a year now I have not had the opportunity to visit my mother, who is over 80, while I used to see her every Sunday in Artsakh,” said Naira Aghajanyan indignantly. They have many problems. For some time, she was unable to overcome the tragedy that occurred and, after solving her social and domestic problems in one way or another, she was placed in the National Children’s Library in March. On behalf of herself and other people from Artsakh, she is grateful to the library’s management for reaching out to them in those difficult moments, showing a special attitude, and solving the problem of employment. Naira still hopes that one day the situation will change and they will return home.
Zara Mayilyan