Because of an illness, Sona Davtyan, 39, grew old right away and she
can hardly move. Her stomach is swollen, fluid seeps into it. People
mock her as if she were pregnant.
“Water collects, my stomach gets swollen, it becomes even more swollen
in the evening. I drink about a bucket of water,” she says.
The museum is about 4 kilometers away from her apartment. She can no
longer go there, so she does her begging closer to home. The farthest
she can get is the building of the Regional Government where “there are
rich ones wearing ties”.
Before, it was easy, she would sit under the wall and passersby would
throw her money. Now she has to come up to them herself and beg. It
makes her job harder, more troublesome. “Some give, some curse. There
are more of those who curse than those who give,” Sona says.
Until 1988 Sona was working at a factory. The earthquake took her job
and her apartment and made her a beggar. Now, the lingering effects of
earthquake are quickly taking her life.
The effect? “I gave up my soul and live underground,” she says.
Before, when she was healthy, she would collect 500-600 drams a day.
That’s more than a dollar, and enough for food and other expenses. Now
she collects less. She can hardly move and is always moaning.
And now, her daily needs include diuretics, which she cannot buy.
She says she expects no other treatment from this life.
“The ambulance has come twice. They do this (she shows how the doctors
pressed on her stomach with fingers) and go. They think by doing so
it’ll get better.” Now she cannot sleep from her stomach pains. “It
hurts so much that I can’t sweep anymore. I cannot bend down at all, if
I bend down my stomach will explode.”
Sona’s home is in the former park of the Polytechnic University, where
residents of Gyumri would walk, before the earthquake. All that’s left
from the park is the metal part of a rusty fountain and the
round-shaped kiosk of a café. Sona, five relatives, and the odd stray
cat or dog in the kiosk.
Sona’s two daughters, who as she says were born from “a known mother
and an unknown father”, live with Sona. The younger, Arevik, 15, goes
to school and wants to become a handball coach. The elder, Armine, has
a two-month old child. Her husband, Samvel lives with them, too. He
works at Gyumri Zoo, cleaning up after animals. For it, he makes 20,000
drams (about $40 a month).
Samvel’s arms are covered with cuts from top to bottom. Some wounds are
still fresh, others are old scars. He says when he gets nervous he cuts
his arms with a razor.
“I did it to myself. Cutting makes me high. When I’m angry I see my blood and relax.”
Samvel, 29, has been convicted three times for fighting for fighting,
and has spent eight years in prison. But he’s been living straight for
the past four years. “I’ve become calmer now,” he says. “I clean under
animals.”
The owner of the kiosk is Chichak, whose company is prostitutes and
former criminals. He grew up at an orphanage with Sona’s mother (her
mother died this year). Above Sona’s bed there’s a black and white
photo that was taken 16 years ago. It is young Sona, pregnant with
Arevik, and little Armine and Chichak. Chichak raised Armine and he
says she actually is his brother’s daughter and that Sona is lying
about the children, so that she is pitied
Family relations have become entangled like the street animals that
share their lives. Besides the family, there are constant “guests” –
old people and women wearing shabby clothes, children with sooty faces
and, like the cats and dogs, one cannot figure out who is whose
relative.
Chichak’s income is his pension.
“Life is very cruel. We’re starving, we miss fruits. The whole world
has eaten watermelons, we haven’t; it has eaten tomatoes, we haven’t.
We give what we get for the electricity, so that we at least see each
other’s faces in the evenings.”
He longs for the past. “Eh, it was very good during Soviet times.”
Last year, Sona, her mother and daughter were given a one-room flat
near the park. They took some of their belongings to the apartment, but
do not live there. Sona says with her bad health she cannot go four
floors up. But the real reason is not her physical state.
Psychologically she cannot turn away from the street, from Chichak’s
kiosk which is her life and her way of living.
It is hard to imagine how, for instance, she will take the street
garbage – which is their fuel – up to the apartment. In the kiosk it’s
easy; they collect whatever can be burnt from the nearby garbage pile.
The fuel is piled next to the kiosk – rags, plastic items, rubber . . .
Things that cannot be burnt are also collected in another pile, from
which scrap metal is occasionally sold for about $20 per ton.
They also collect from the garbage dress-up items. Sona wears rings
that were found in the garbage. And her nails are painted from
discarded nail polish.
But she didn’t find any lipstick and jokes that “the lipstick is left for the next time.”
The old age that has come to her too early has left her hair young. She
jokes that if she finds dye “I’ll dye my hair gray.” And laughs as if
on her last breath.
