“Dad, don’t go. Mom, don’t let dad go. Something might happen to him.” These were the last words that little Lilit said to her father, Babken Adamyan.
On the morning of September 19, Babken returned home from the positions. As usual, he had taken his daughter to school and waited. As soon as he returned home, Babken received a call that he had to leave for the positions urgently. When the war began, his wife Armine and two children, Lilit and Vera, rushed to the shelter. “We were in the basement when we learned that our mayor had been killed. I hoped that Babken was at least just wounded, not killed” recalls Armine Danielyan.
Today, Armine recalls the details of that day with long pauses. Lilit blames her mother for what happened. “Lilit was little. As she saw Babken wearing a military uniform, she started crying. She was telling me not to let Babken go.” She couldn’t do anything, just huged Lilit, and her husband left the house. “We were getting ready to have dinner when the shelling started. I was only thinking about saving my children. I didn’t know what condition my husband was in.”
When she was in the shelter with her children, she called her husband, but couldn’t get through. She says that no matter how dangerous the situation was, she always had information from her husband, but this time she couldn’t get any news from Babken. “We all cried when we learned that our mayor had been killed. I was looking at his children and I didn’t even think that my children had lost their father too.”
On September 20, Armine’s father came to them and asked his daughter to go to the hospital. He had worked at the pharmacy for many years and everyone knew him. “Everyone who saw me said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but I still didn’t know if Babken was alive or dead,” sshe recalls.
Armine was told the terrible news that her husband was killed while being in the hospital. Right there, she expressed her desire to see her husband for the last time. Even today, she remembers the condition in which she found her beloved husband’s body. “Babken’s head was completely covered in blood. I had fallen on his body and didn’t want to let him go.” The flow of bodies was increasing and it was no longer possible to stay there. Armine was forced to leave her husband’s body and return to her children.
On the evening of September 23, Babken Adamyan’s body was buried in his native village, in the Chartar family cemetery. “We were waiting. I don’t know what we were waiting for. They were holding the bodies of the victims, but they couldn’t hold them for long. We buried him in his father’s village,” Armine recalls.
I didn’t lose just my husband, but a good and caring friend
With her two daughters, Armine has now settled in Vanadzor, Armenia. The family was forcibly deported from the city of Martuni, NK on September 26. “I didn’t know what to take from home. Babken had many medals. I carefully arranged them all on our table, folded the military uniform and left it on a chair. I wanted the enemy to see whose house they had entered,” Armine recalls. Babken Adamyan was posthumously awarded the “Battle Cross” medal Iin Armenia, which Armine carefully keeps in her husband’s memorial corner.
Armine regrets most that her husband’s grave was left in Chartar, NK. She says that she wishes there were at least a place where she could bowe down and cry. “I have applied to all possible organizations to exhume the body, but there is no news yet.”
They do everything to keep Babken’s memory alive in their new apartment. Armine often recalls the years she spent with her husband, saying that Babken was very caring not only for her, but also for everyone. Babken loved Lilit and Vera, who were born from their marriage, very much, and wherever he went, he took the girls with him.
Today, Babken’s two daughters are trying to overcome their loss. Little Lilit constantly says that her father will return, and her older sister often interrupts her: “Papa will never come back.”
Portraits of Babken are everywhere in their apartment: Lilit paints them. “Babken took Lilit everywhere. She almost never went anywhere without him, all his friends knew the girl.”
The little girl talks to Armine more often, while Vera has withdrawn into herself and almost never talks about her father. “Recently, Lilit came to me and said, ‘Mom, you’re lucky that you have a dad and that he’s alive.’ I didn’t know what to tell her. I told her that Babken has become a star and is watching over us,” she recalls.
After her husband’s death, Armine often wonders if she will be able to help her daughters achieve their goals and see them happy.
Shushanik Papazyan
