“You never return from the war. You may come back physically, but not spiritually,” says doctor Artsakh Buniatyan, a participant of the Karabakh war. It seems as though he has found a way out of the situation-he drinks mulberry vodka, or as he calls it the liquid of the sun and offers it to his friends.
After speaking with people who have fought in the Karabakh war, you get the feeling that they have never returned and won’t return from the war. They are living in that status. There’s nothing like the memories of war and sometimes they are the memories you remember the most.
Armen Avanesyan from the village of Maghavuz, or as the villagers call him-Armen da-is always sitting with a pensive look on his face. His eldest son, who was from their village army, was the first to get killed in the war.
In 1993, the Azeri seized the village. He and his family moved to Russia, however he wasn’t able to live there long and came back to Karabakh. Something sparkles in Armen Da’s eyes when he starts talking about the hardships of the war. He remembers how he used to take bags of bullets to the soldiers in the forests.
“The “deer” army was still in the forest. Sergey Chalyan came to me and said that there are dead and injured near the Tartar river, that they don’t know how to cross the river. The Azeri had closed all roads and had blown up the bridge. I went and we tried to take the bodies out somehow. I was showing them the roads to take; they didn’t know the area well and I knew my way around. I was providing them with weaponry and then I took food by horse,” says 71-year old Armen Da.
When I asked Armen Da about returning the liberated territories, he said:
“Everyone knows that you can’t return something you have sacrificed your life for. The Armenian authorities are the only ones that don’t know that.”
While we were talking about the war in Maghavuz, an injured soldier said the following:
“Why are they threatening us with Baku and Jeyhan? We can bomb both in a day if necessary. Do they think that we don’t have people who sacrificed their lives, or do they think that I will let the families of my friends that have died to be in danger?”
The Azeri have attacked the Maghavuz village of the Martakert region of Karabakh two times. The homes were burnt and robbed when the Armenian soldiers liberated the village. The majority of villagers returned and got the village back on its feet. There is no drinking water in Maghavuz after liberation. During the last presidential elections of Karabakh, president Arkadi Ghukasyan paid a visit to Maghavuz and promised to solve the problem of water scarcity in a short while. “The water will flow to the village.” There is no water to this day, however Prime Minister of Karabakh Anushavan Danielyan also made the same promise during his visit to the village. He is obviously an expert in making promises. They only needed 2,000 dollars for building a water pipeline. Karabakh authorities don’t have enough money to solve similar problems and the money they get from the state budget is only enough for them to go on vacation abroad. Today, the “Aznavour for Armenia” organization is trying to solve this problem. There will be a new pump and the ruined sections of the pipeline will be removed.
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