Sevak, who was under the hand of his grandma, was shaking all the time, moving his eyes and speaking something. I asked him what he was thinking about. “I am not thinking, I have already decided. I will go to serve in the army, later I will become a policeman. I have decided to become a policeman,” Sevak says. Generally Sevak is very nervous and he doesn’t like when people are making noise in their small and narrow room. He says, “I will become a policeman in order to arrest everyone. People are speaking a lot, they are making me angry. I will arrest my grandma, my neighbors as well, I will throw them into prisons. They are speaking and making me nervous all the time.” Sevak was speaking so nervously that his teeth were shaking. “I will arrest you too; you are asking too many questions and making me nervous. There are rats in my home, they have bitten my leg, I will tell them to bite you too, they are too scary and cold. When my leg was bitten, I felt that the rats were cold,” said Sevak and described how the rats looked like. During the four years of his life, this child has liked cats, he says that cats can frighten rats and he believes cats can protect him. They are living in an awful and scary basement floor room of the 3rd dorms of Nor-Aresh community. The room stinks and the walls are very scary and it seems that these people are living in prison. Once you are setting foot in this room, it seems that you are in prison because everything is pressing on your soul. Sevak is catching pneumonia. His grandmother, Larisa Matevosyan, is taking care of the child because Sevak and his mother were forced out of the dorms they were living in. “The director of the dormitory near the Hayrenik cinema house allowed them to live in a room in their dorms, but now they have to leave, they are being forced out despite the fact that the room is free,” says Mrs. Larisa, whose room is so small that it is hard even to imagine that several people can live there. Several days ago Larisa’s daughter was beaten by the people of the building in order to make her leave the building, that is why Sevak is staying with his grandma because he is afraid… Mrs. Larisa is a volunteer war participant and a member of the union of veterans of Arabkir community. Her husband passed away recently. There are many scars on her body. She is very disappointed and says, “Let God not allow any wars happen, but if there are any, I will not go to the border to fight. I even regret for fighting during the war because I haven’t got anything but harm. This room has been bought by my mother for us, but if I knew that it was on the basement floor, I wouldn’t let her buy it. After my commander Mr. Leonid died they are not giving even my war participation document to me,” says Mrs. Larisa, who got a deep body injury after fighting for one year and seven months. After that injury she was taken to morgue with dead bodies, and later her life was saved. “I don’t want to return to the past because it is very painful. Now my biggest problem is connected with my grandson. I am asking and begging those people who have money to help me to cure this child,” she says. Sevak has a bad sickness – gonococcus, which is connected with the nerves. Mrs. Larisa is blaming her daughter’s husband in that sickness and says that he has left his family long ago. Often the child’s body is shaking and even sometimes his head is aching. Mrs. Larisa’s doctors assure that this sickness can be cured, but they need money for that purpose. “If we have money, we can cure the child, this sickness needs a long-term treatment. Only in order to take the child to hospital and register him there we have to pay 40.000 dram.” Mrs. Larisa says that in order to treat the child in the 3rd children’s hospital they will have to pay minimum 500 dollar. Sevak, who was listening to his grandma, was getting nervous and his body was shacking in the corner of the room. When he got nervous he started yelling, “Stop it, don’t speak! I will arrest you.” Later he tried to change the topic of conversation and told me that he likes movies about vampires. Mrs. Larisa says that because of this illness Sevak likes blood and stories about vampires. The living conditions of this child are making his health conditions worse. Besides pneumonia Sevak has caught also rheumatism. Mrs. Larisa used to work as office cleaner, but now she doesn’t have a job because another person works in that position now. They are not receiving family support because they are considered to be able to work. She says she used to trade with goods, but after pneumonia sickness she cannot work. During the war she jumped from a high place and as a result her kidneys were moved to a side and she was operated on, and now sometimes she has pains in her stomach. “We are not dogs, we are human beings. If we are living in dorms it does not mean that we are not human beings. I am asking, begging people to come and see where we are living. Last year I changed the only window of my room, some officials from the municipality came here and told me to pay 2000 dollar so that they allowed me to construct some more territory in front of my wall. They have sold the bathroom and everything, and now we are living like dogs. How can we live? Journalists are coming here, writing stories about us, after which we are being threatened that if we do that again they will do something bad to us,” says Mrs. Larisa and assures that they are living like in hell.
Upon leaving I looked for Sevak, but he was not there and had gone to a neighboring room. It is hard for Sevak to listen to stories about his sickness because if no one helps to cure him, he cannot go to school, army and cannot become a policeman. If no one helps him, Sevak will become like many disabled citizens of Armenia, who are dreaming of the government to give them 8,000-10,000 dram a month to buy medicines.