Lida is 40 years old and she was born in Baku. She lives with her 4
minor children and mother in Bagratashen in a one room house built by
the Norwegians. “I remember how I was born, but I don’t remember the
others,” she says. Armen is 12 years old and is the oldest child.
Mariam is 11 years old and Maria is one and a half years old. Lida’s
husband left her 10 years ago. Two of her children have been born as a
result of “market relations”. This is a usual thing in residencies
close to the stations and markets. Neighbors claim that Lida has had
not 4 but 6, and in some cases, even 8 children due to contacts since
she was not able to stop the pregnancy. She does not plan on having
anymore children. The Belgian “Doctors Without Limits” organization
helps her out. The other children have disappeared and are not found.
Lida wants to remarry or just have a boyfriend. “He will keep food on
the table and it will be good for me.”
Grandmother Asia receives a state pension of 6,200 dram. The poor and
minor children do not receive grants from the state because Lida has
not been able to organize and present the right documents. She neither
has a passport nor a refugee booklet. Lida doesn’t even have money for
taking a photo or getting to Noyemberyan. She goes down to the market
every Tuesday and earns some money by carrying loads. She is ashamed of
saying where she works. She just says “I work as a janitor at some
restaurant.” The money she gets only pays for dry bread three times a
day. Sometimes she gets enough to buy sugar. The Belgian organization
gives rice for the soup. Wood for heating is brought from the market
(trash and plastic bottles which are used for smoke more than for
heating. The walls, glasses, beds and the floor of Lida’s house, and in
general, everything is smoke-black. The only thing white is Mrs. Asia’s
face and everyone’s eyes. The children’s faces and hands are
smoke-black. The raw rice gets black before it is put on the fire to
cook. Lida does the laundry with cold water and without soap. The vivid
clothes have turned gray from the smoke. The family members bathe two
to three times a year. “There is not water or soap, the girls working
at the MSF take us to the shower room and bathe us. What can I do?
There is not even any wood for me to heat the home,” complains Lida.
Upon seeing us enter the house, Lida washed her two children’s faces
and hands. When we returned three hours later, the color of their skin
had turned darker. They had not played with smoke. The air of the room
was smoky.
The grandmother and the youngest son sleep on one of the two beds,
while Lida and Maria sleep on the other one. Armen sleeps on a couch
made out of a board. Mariam sleeps in a pile of rags. They all sleep
with their clothes on. Twelve year old Armen and eleven year old Mariam
have never attended school. They have not seen anything besides the
items in their room and don’t know what’s going on in the world. They
don’t have any friends. “I call them to come over to eat apples and
play, but they just go home. They don’t play with anyone. They are
scared of people like savages,” says the neighbor’s young daughter
Anushik. Anushik is right. They really act like savages living in the
21st century. The children are not paid attention to by society and the
state. The village where the family lives has its own customs, police
department and a garrison. People here work loads of money. Lida got
amazed when she saw a 10,000 dram bill. “Is this money? How much is it?
Is it a lot?”
The village chief of Bagratashen Hovsep Ogumtsyan has built an open-air
bathroom with boards for 40,000 drams. This was all the village chief
could do for the family. The money was provided by the foreign viewers
of the BBC’s “On-line news” web site (thanks to photographer Ruben
Mangasaryan’s publication). When we offered a certain amount of money
for building a heater and buying wood, the village chief immediately
rejected it, claiming that he doesn’t have the time for that. Only the
BBC web site viewers know about Lida’s family and they are the only
ones lending a helping hand. This time a Japanese woman had sent some
clothes, food and other accessories. The toothpast and toothbrushes
looked weird for the kids. They didn’t know how to play with the new
“toys”. When we asked some questions to one of the children, he could
barely talk. “I don’t know” was all he could say. They had forgotten
how to speak due to being separated from the rest of the world for so
long. They were jumping from one tree to the next like monkeys. If they
were afraid or felt shame, they would get under the rags or the table
and stay there. It was impossible to find them in the room. They were
pretty trained to sit in different positions in front of the camera,
almost like professional models. The children felt their instinct tell
them that a toy horse was coming by hearing the noise of the footsteps.
They imagined that the horse was bringing them food and clothes. That
is why they were doing what was being told. Besides, that is the only
way for them to communicate.
A couple of more years and the two oldest children-Armen and
Mariam-will be able to go down to the Bagratashen market and help out
their mother by doing janitorial work and carrying loads. Nobody knows
for sure if Armen will not turn into a criminal or Mariam will not
become a mother of many children as a result of getting involved in
“market relations”.