This man is Samvel Movsisyan. He will soon turn fifty years old, but will never get to have his own home where he was supposed to live a normal life with his wife and three sons.
Samvel is a refugee. After leaving his two-story home and garden in 1992 and not being able to take his most necessary items, he managed to save himself, his wife and his daughter and, after a long road, made it to the Vardenis district
“Do you know how we got out of Shahumyan? The fourth [Russian] army had entered and they told us that there was no use in resisting because we couldn’t,” remembers Samvel Movsisyan who has been living in this home located in the Kartchaghbyur village of the Gegharkunik region for the past fourteen years. Whoever has been to Vardenis can imagine that living in this wooden home, which is a meter above the ground, is like committing suicide. Vardenis is a high-mountain area where cool winds blow year-round and the winds are even stronger during the winter. Samvel’s home used to be a campground during the Soviet Union where people usually stayed during the summer.
There is only one room in Samvel’s home where he, his wife, his high school graduate daughter and two young adult sons sleep. There are only two beds; the kids sleep on the floor and the soil can be seen in-between the wood. Their belongings and clothes are also stuffed in this room, but they don’t occupy much space. Samvel is unemployed, although he has graduated from the Mechanics Department of the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute (currently the University of Architecture). He has worked by profession in Shahumyan for a couple of years and hasn’t had the chance to work with his profession ever since taking refuge.
“I get a 20,000 dram subsidy, which is enough for a bag of flour, this, that, then we go to the coast and fish.”
Since the locals are the only ones who know how to fish there, Samvel goes in the evening and buys the fish and dries them near his house. It seems as though the fish drying in the sun symbolize his life. These fish used to swim in the water, just like Samvel used to live in his birthplace Shahumyan fifteen-sixteen years ago.
“It’s like I’m living a second life,” says Samvel and remembers how he left Shahumyan. “We didn’t take anything with us. We had no clothes. There was someone working in the vegetable garden and simply got up and left. What could we have brought with us? We made it to Haterk by foot and crossed the forests. There were people who simply wore one piece of clothing and left.”
Samvel says that they were welcomed well and settled in easily, but later “they forgot about us”. During the years of the Karabakh war, he thought it was maybe because of the war. He looked at it objectively. After the war, he thought it was because the country was just starting to get back on its feet. He also looked at that objectively. Now he understands that “you can be a refugee for two to three years, but how can you be a refugee for fourteen years?”
Two years ago, the government showed signs that it actually cared about refugees-mortgage certificates were handed out, but this family didn’t need that. Samvel was happy when he received the certificate and thought that they would finally get a home, however the house sellers didn’t sell anything to him after they saw how much the state had given him.
“The amount of money was 780,000 drams, or 1500-1600 dollars, but the certificate stated that we could buy a three-bedroom home with all the communal conditions.”
Samvel tried to purchase a home for two years and then the government stopped handing out certificates and left the people in a state of uncertainty. “Well, we applied to the government and they said ‘yes, we’re going to discuss the certificates at the session, raise the issue, but they might not give it back’, I don’t know,” says Samvel. (As a matter of fact, this is not the first time. “168 Hours” will publish the stories of the refugees living in the hostels of Sevan). The attempts to purchase a home took two years.
The homes with normal conditions in Kartchaghbyur or the neighboring villages cost 8-10,000 dollars, in other words, nearly four times more than the amount stated in the certificate. Samvel has no hope that the government will grant the amount of money corresponding to market prices in case they get the certificate. He simply doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He won’t be able to purchase a home anytime soon by selling dry fish near the Yerevan-Vardenis highway. “If the day goes well, I sell some fish; I buy what I have to buy for that day or pay back my loan to the store,” he says. He didn’t really have big hopes for my visit, but liked the attention. When I was leaving, he took out three dry fish wrapped in a newsletter.
“Take it and you’ll eat it on the way back,” he said in a convincing tone.
When we tried to refrain from taking the fish in order to not hurt his sense of dignity, I noticed a look of pain in Samvel’s eyes and imagined how he would respect and honor his guests from the city if he were living in his home in Shahumyan or Kartchaghbyur; it doesn’t matter where-at least he would live a normal life.