Alone with Myself

Alone with Myself or How to Reach You, Descendants! by Leonid Karakhanovich Hurunts. A posthumous publication of entries from 1975-1982. Translated from the original Russian to English by Learn for Artsakh. 

Part Five: Bonfires in Karabakh and Reports from a Hospital Bed

My Carthage

One smart person said that with the current rapid development of modern communications, the world has shrunk to the size of a soccer ball. And here is this soccer ball in my palm. I see all parts of the world on it. All cities. Even our little Stepanakert. Such vigilance comes over me when I look at the world from the roof of my native house in Norshen.

Yes, I can see far from the roof of Norshen. From here I travel not only to distant Mongolia, to the North of our country, the Far East, or close Zangezur, but also to Karabakh, to the people of my land. Of course, I can't just be a traveler here. And if sometimes I see good and bad in a greatly exaggerated form, it is only from love.

And here is my Norshen, thrown high, high, under the very clouds, she ran up the ridge of the mountain with white-stone frequent houses: gleaming dully, they overlap each other with rusty iron roofs. Here is the country road, familiar to me from childhood with every pothole on it. The road that through the mountains and valleys connected our village with the whole world. A narrow mountain path, trampled by the hooves of horses, ridden by single-axle carts, green at the edges from roadside grass. This is the road of my Norshen. My beginning, illuminating my path for many, many years.

Four bulls, pair after pair, pull a small plow. Behind the smoky layer of overturned earth, wild pigeons waddle and, taking off, entering into a fight among themselves, deftly peck out worms from the furrow. They will reach the end of the rut along the viscous furrow - and back again, still hunting and hunting for prey.

On the back of the first pair of bulls is a boy. He is still very young, but, as they say, you can't knock him down with a hat, he is already a worker, and that's why he is a cattleman, second-year cattleman. He sits important and somewhat puffed up - he seems to like his job - and, without much need, famously snaps his whip over the back of the bulls. The boy's face is almost invisible. A homemade straw hat, reddened from the sun, fits over his eyes. Only a peeling nose and chin are visible, weathered and tanned black.

Sometimes, clinging to the root, the plowshare makes a strained ringing. If a healthy root is caught, the plowshare is not immediately able to overcome it, the bulls bend down to the ground, fall on their front legs for more emphasis, pull with all their might until the root gives in with a crack. With the little boy on the back of the bull, various transformations also take place. First, the hat flies off his head. Then he himself flies over the heads of the bulls. The bulls are again in the furrow, and the plow again draws its mournful song from the monotonous creaks, and the boy with his head sunk in his hat, again important and puffed up, as if nothing had happened to him, is already on the bull. Neither the boy nor his hat is accustomed to such embarrassment.

The boy cattleman is me.

Here, on the steep mountain, the boy collects blackberries. On his bare feet are white boots. White boots are from the silver web, which at this time entangles everything around: blackberry bushes, juniper, burdock, rocks and crevices. Blackberries are dark purple berries, sweet and juicy to the teeth. Passing by a blackberry bush and not tasting its berries is missing one meal.

The boy didn’t so much pick berries as he ate them, putting them in his mouth in handfuls. His lips and teeth are blue. From blackberries. And the legs and arms are scratched. Also from blackberries. Such is the retribution for the treat, for the fabulous pleasure. Blackberry branches are equipped with unbearable thorns, which, like vigilant guards, protect the sweetest berries from animals, wild animals, even birds. From anyone, but not from the village boys who graze all day long in the mountains, on the most inaccessible steeps. By the way, blackberries grew everywhere, but we climbed higher into the mountains, where it is more difficult to collect it, and therefore it is sweeter, more tempting. It seemed tempting to us everything that was difficult to get, that was forbidden. Grapes from someone else's garden, black mulberry, which we rarely meet. 

The boy in white boots picking blackberries is me too.

Along the country road, quietly creaking with unlubricated wheels, the cart climbed uphill, into the village. In the back of it - a half-dead young man. A misfortune happened to the young man: wanting to show off to his peers, he sat on an unbroken, untrained horse, and the horse, not understanding his conceited thoughts, threw him over his head, disgracing the inept rider. This young man, who shattered his hand because of stupid arrogance, is also me...

Everything in life has been given to us in large handfuls, both good and bad, sad and joyful, but why do I, having lived a long life, again and again return to the first steps of my life, in them I look for answers to questions that disturb me?

I have rarely been sensible when it comes to Karabakh. I can't, even now, judge her impartially.

People of my age are well aware of the song: "Soar with fires, blue nights" [1]. This song still excites the memory, takes us, adults, through the distance of years to that first fire, when the words of the pioneer oath sunk into the heart like a hot coal.

Norshen, those four bulls pulling a small plow, that blackberry bush, which, before bestowing the sweetest berries, scratched my arms and legs until I bled, that cobweb that dressed me in white boots, is the same fire that shines on me even now, entangled with a delicate silver cloth - my childhood. I can’t even imagine that I could be born in some other place, that my childhood could pass under a different sky ... And if you, my reader, were not born in Karabakh, then there is no big trouble. You, too, were born somewhere, your childhood passed somewhere, and this somewhere is your universe.

And here is the road, the road of my childhood, trampled by hooves, ridden by wheels, with traces of iron hubs of carts, now densely crossed out by car tires, a mountain road that began God knows where and going God knows where!

Along this road, my ancestors carried a message to Peter the Great, in which the people of Karabakh asked for help from Russia in liberating Karabakh from eastern invasions. Is it not along this road that the Atarbekovs, the inhabitants of the village of Kasapet, Avan Yuzbashi [2] and his brother Akop, on July 18, 1805, unnoticed by the enemy, crept up to a small handful of Russian soldiers and led them out of the encirclement? Two brave men, whom the military historian of those years V. Potto would later call the saviors of the detachment ... A few centuries ago, on this road, near that spring, Prince Vachagan met a peasant girl named Anahit, who struck him with her wisdom. Vachagan, as the legend tells, subdued by the girl's mind, married her and was happy.

The road, the road of my childhood! My friend, my brother Vasak Poghosbekyan, left on this road to the Patriotic War and did not return. Many, many Norshen residents have left ... At the entrance to the village, their names are carved in marble. I carry this wound in my heart, and it does not heal.

No matter how long a Karabakhtsi lives outside of Karabakh, it has already been proven that Karabakh remains eternal for him, the Carthage that is not easily destroyed.

More than forty years have passed since I left Norshen, but I never doubted for a moment that I would return here someday.

I now live in Yerevan, rightfully called one of the most beautiful cities in the country. I am glad that it is growing hour by hour, building up, becoming prettier. But no matter what it becomes, I will not forget my Karabakh. I am from Karabakh, and that says it all!

It may be objected to me: “And how will your Carthage continue to shine for centuries, if every year Azerbaijan imperiously attacks it, takes people away from it? And in your Norshen, God, so little people are left already, the population has decreased almost by half.”

Yes, that's right, the population in the village is decreasing. But it is also true that, no matter how the city calls or takes people away, the earth remains earth, it fed and will feed us, amd man’s concern for bread and harvest will remain unchanged ... And if this is so, then my Carthage will also stand, there will be people devoted to her ...

It seems that now everything has fallen into place, it has become clearer why in this sketch I returned to the first colors of my childhood, again climbed onto the roof of my house in Norshen. When you have a roof, something incorruptible, the globe shrinks to the size of a soccer ball, to a globe that you can pick up.

Notes

[1] "Soar with fires, blue nights!" is a Soviet boy scouts/pioneer song. The pioneers were a compulsory youth organization of the Soviet Union for children.

[2] Avan Yuzbashi is a famous Armenian figure of the Artsakh liberation struggle against the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran in the 1720s. 

My Carthage marks the end of Fires in Karabakh and begins the second half of Hurunts' book - Reports from a Hospital Bed

Report from a Hospital Bed I


“I, who wrote only for the reason

that my sad time did not allow 

me to act”  

Tyranny by Vittorio Alfieri


“Who will tell about us, if not

ourselves. We, tied to the horse's

ass of an imperfect age."

Leonid Hurunts

On July 1, 1976, I had a heart attack. In addition to my old bleeding ulcer, I now have two major ailments. I didn’t know where to go from one, now there are two. But what is curious is that all 72 days that I needed to cope with a newly appeared illness, the ulcer was silent. What a sweet disposition! How grateful I am to it.

Don't ask how it happened that I got here. I do not answer such questions. The first condition for the treatment of a heart attack is sleep and rest. And no worries. If you want to stay alive, close your ears so you don't hear anything, close your eyes so you don't see, and turn off your brain so you don't think. Only by turning oneself into a slave, one can count on a successful outcome, the benevolence of the ocean angel who guards at the bedside.

I am now a prisoner. A prisoner of various medical prescriptions, whose name is goodbye independence and freedom of thought. And I patiently bear the unenviable fate, fulfilling all the commandments of a heart attack. The exam is passed, the angel flies away, pleased with me. And I stick my tongue out at him. I haven't been a slave for one minute, angel. I only pretended, pretended to be a slave.

Three days, three nights. Oh, those fabulous three days and three nights. My God, and what is not played out in fairy tales for three days and three nights. Building castles in the air for lovers. The princes marry and the wine flows like a river. Good conquers evil. The wicked die, but the righteous prevail. And the sun shines on everyone equally. But my three days and three nights were fatal. I barely saved my skin, the angel almost carried me away on his wings.

Despite all the prohibitions, I will say: people come here not from a good life. Each of us has his own executioner. If it were possible to write such a book: Reports from a hospital bed. To tell of executioners who killed with impunity. But such a book will never see the light of day. Whether you want it to or not, the living voice of truth will shine in it. And where there's truth, there's dissent. They're inseparable friends. Your executioner is still the same strangler of truth and justice. An evil that has a green street.

Take it easy, Hurunts. You're on death row. You can't think, you can't listen to the voice of justice. Remember, sick, suffering Hurunts, the angel can return.

To hell! To hell with executioners of all stripes: both heavenly and earthly. I entrust my life to nature itself. I am no longer a prisoner of medical prescriptions that are not worth my independence, my freedom.

Poor Melsida Artemyevna, my poor doctor, you want to restore my vitality at the cost of losing my freedom of action. But I will not accept the elixir of life from your hands at the cost of humility. I will reason, think to myself. And write.

How did I get here? I received a telegram from Moscow. The widow of my comrade, who died in the war, asks for help with the hotel. I went to work and brought myself to the office of the director of the hotel, a former KGB officer. I had a disagreement with him, and he settled with me in full. Fortunately, he called an ambulance, showing humanity that was not characteristic of him.

It doesn't matter who he is, driving me into a corner. It doesn't matter. One school, one training: to poison a person. But I do not consider him the main executioner. Our executioner, like a hydra, has many heads. There were others before him - many, many executioners. He just delivered the final blow. I've talked to many patients. Every heart attack patient has his own KGB man. I won't list them, it would take a long time. They are ordinary cogs, parts of some infernal machine that generously supplies multi-headed hydras, killers of all stripes. It executes us both physically and morally.

My masseuse is still a young woman. She has been at work for eight hours. Not a single free minute; massages, massages our flabby, exhausted bodies, bringing them back to life. Once, she asked me to wait - she had to go get her paycheck. I didn't have to wait long, she was back in ten minutes, flushed and out of breath. Apparently, she ran so as not to make me wait. I was touched by her attention. She put her paycheck on the table. Two tens and five rubles.

“All the earnings?” I asked.

“Yes, advance. For 15 days,” she replied calmly. Not a shadow of discontent on a young beautiful face.

I stopped asking questions. I'm a heart attack patient. I am not commanded to reason, to ask idle questions to which there is no answer. A young woman does not work for today's life, but for later, in order to receive a penny in her old age. And not a sound of displeasure. Is this not the discovery of our civilized age? An unusual age that managed to twist a person into a ram's horn, squeeze out of him everything human, all vital human needs.

Do not argue, do not contradict - the sign of this age. A healthy person has been turned into a heart attack patient, who has a taboo on everything. To argue, to argue means to put oneself outside the law, to enroll oneself as a dissident. And there, you know, a direct road to a psychiatric hospital.

For three days the real Sodom and Gomorrah reign in the hospital.  The corridor is bustling. Not enough Jupiters to illuminate the significance of the day. They've brought in a new heart attack patient, from the elite. Doctors tiptoe around. Walking patients are corralled into wards so they don't dare stick their noses out. The patient's in a suite. There's a permanent plaque on the door: "The patient is asleep." They don't turn on the TV in the hall. Today FC Ararat is playing, many people are eager to watch the match, but there is no place. Taboo.

Two professors came from Moscow. They brought miracle drugs. The corridors are full of visitors. No one is allowed to see him, except for a select few. But visitors come. The sick are not allowed to show themselves in the corridor, but they, outsiders, are at ease here. They walk along the corridor, anxiously murmuring, in the secret hope of being rewarded later, when he recovers.

I have nothing against him. This is the kindest person who deserves the highest honors. But they bowed not to him, but to his position. And it's disgusting. A hundred times more disgusting to see next to such attention to one, organic disrespect, indifference to the fate of the other.

Melsida Artemyevna allowed me to read. But she does not know that I also write.

From Moscow, having heard about my illness, my son Armen came. He brought me a great gift, a book by P.P. Vladimirov, Special Region of China. Here is the reading! The book was published after the death of the author, having lain in manuscript for almost 30 years. Certainly not the fault of the author. I read it and my heart skipped a beat. Another Sorge [1], stuffed by Stalin.

The truth of Vladimirov was not heard, just as Sorge's signals about the impending attack by Nazi Germany were not heard. We paid dearly for this deafness. Being involved in the life of the whole world does not mean being deaf to the cries resounding right under your nose, especially if this cry erupts from your native land, which is not even marked with a dot on the map of the planet.

Karabakh is my home, my shelter and stronghold. My pain, my joy. How can I empathize for the world, closing my ears from the cries that come, tormenting my heart, from my home? Karabakh is my grave illness, and a sick child is more than a dove. What is the world worth if a man is offended in it? What are all the words of friendship if my hearth is desecrated, trampled by an ignorant man? And what are we worth if we turn a blind eye?

Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky, addressing his students, instructed: “Beware of the habit of falsehood and lies. Don't let their bad seeds take root in you. Pull them out mercilessly. Otherwise, the tares will grow and stifle in you the most precious, most needed sprouts of truth.”

But the great master's warnings hung in the air. We did not heed them, though they did not apply only to the people of the stage. The tares are growing, choking out all living things before the eyes of the whole country, and no one is going to weed them out.

They say that a glass of water cannot put out a forest fire. But I still try. Glass after glass I pour my weak water on the flaring fire of a national disaster, whose name is "the habit of falsehood and lies." Lies that flooded the whole country, the atmosphere of the Jacobin dictatorship that hovered everywhere. Our brother Soviet man, if he is not a thief, if he is not some simpleton who knows how to make a living, if he is not one of those for whom a very real, not fairy-tale tablecloth has been invented, and not a fairy-tale self-branded tablecloth, and in addition to it various closed distributors, never has enough time to think about himself and about time.

Do you remember the parable of the trainer? The parable is about the trainer who was frightened of the lions in his enclosure and decided to get rid of them and take them to a zoo. He was advised against it: "Why the zoo? Change the bollards where the animals sit. These bollards are too wide and too comfortable." The bollards were replaced with narrow, uncomfortable seats, and the animals, busy with their problem, forgot about the trainer. The narrow benches exist for us too, we are just like those animals, we can't think of anything else, we just don't have time to think of anything else but a piece of bread.

For a heart attack patient, the bench no longer exists. Lie down and think. Here I am, thinking. And no one guesses that I am no longer a sucker, busy only looking for food.

I feel a burning shame every time I dive into the memories of Karabakh - persecuted, torn away from mother earth. Not able to throw off the yoke of the rapist. Everything here is defiled, defiled by the sovereign hand of the self-appointed lords-emirs: its history, its today, its tomorrow. Everything is crossed out, trampled into the dirt. Only violence and evil reign here, an atmosphere of unheard-of arbitrariness.

When it comes to Karabakh, its fate, hopes, pain, no Calvary can stop me. I will be indignant, cry for help, although I know in advance: there will be no help, no one will respond to my cry. We are deaf to other peoples' misfortune. Indifference and herd mentality could well become the emblem of our time.

You see, my notebook, I do not control memories. When a guest knocks at the door in the middle of the night, you will not refuse him shelter. That's how I am in a hospital bed - I can not turn away from them, from uninvited guests, from the memories that are always with me. Even in a dream. And my glorious Norshen, of course, is here. How can you leave your father's house, if it is in your heart?

Slept well today. Especially after the third noxiron tablet. My head hurts a little, but it's okay, it will pass. Pain in the heart is less and less. My damaged myocardium is scarring. And the stomach ... I knock on the nightstand three times. It is supposed to be so - so as not to jinx it. Excellent, excellent, he is behaving so far, the sore is sleeping.

Well, you see, Melsida Artemievna, what a patient you have. Everything is in order, everything is going well. There is just no peace. What is not, is not.

Do not be afraid and do not worry about me, dear Melsida Artemyevna, and you, Sofya Misakovna. I promise you, this Kevorkov, who is bogged down in my language, will no longer be allowed near me.

Naive, my attending physicians! Do you think that with strict gatekeepers you will fence yourself off from hardship, protect your patients from the evil that is constantly hunting for us? It gets us here too, finishes off its victim in a hospital bed.

I am silent. I am silent. Let them fail too, the killers of my peace and sleep, fail on all accounts.

Naive Hurunts. I wanted to write a book, Reports from a Hospital Bed. I wanted to gather together all the killers who sent their unfinished victims here. But I won't have enough time or paper to write down even their names.

Are you familiar with the expression "through the ranks"? The guilty soldier was driven through the ranks, and each inflicted his blow on the victim. Go figure out whose was stronger. What will change if you find the main offender among your offenders?

The three-part movie "The Days of the Turbins" based on Mikhail Bulgakov's play was shown on TV. It's beautiful. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I want to say only about one part that shocked me. A young man from Zhitomir named Larionchik says with regret that he is the only son his mother has, so he will not be taken into the army. That line rang in my ears like thunder in a clear blue sky. Only son! They won't take him! Dear Larionchik! Did you know that in Baku some old men had all their sons taken away. For our Patriotic War. And nobody came back. They all died.

A year after the war they came for the parents, mad with grief, at night, lifted them right out of bed, loaded them into freight cars and sent them to Siberia. They just got under the hot hand. They were cleansing the city of the unreliable. Only Armenians turned out to be unreliable, and the old men were Armenians. And you say you're your mother's only one.

My nonsense! That was under the Tsar. We, who gave tsars a slap on the wrist, shouldn't follow their example, spoil people with tenderness. These are not the dark times.

Stalin's character was not reliably known to anyone. Therefore, they were afraid to openly persecute Armenians. They were clever and cunning. They disguised their crimes under various plausible pretexts, always fulfilling the directives of Asad Karaev, which were not abolished by anyone. As I have already said, everything was used: kulakization, loans and taxes. Even during the war they did not forget about their unrelenting pressure on Armenians. The German cut off the Caucasus from Russia. It was necessary to clear Baku of unreliable people. It's all motivated. The mosquito wouldn't prick their noses. They went about their business. Echelon after echelon began to expel unreliable people from the city. And surprisingly, all, literally all the unreliables turned out to be Armenians. But the Germans were driven away from the Caucasus. The danger was over. But after the war, Armenians continued to be expelled even after the war, up to the 1950s.

I repeat, under Stalin they were still fidgeting, looking for plausible pretexts, they were afraid to act openly, bluntly. What if Stalin finds out? What if he doesn't like it? And they searched, searched for workarounds.

With the departure of Stalin from the stage, the picture changed dramatically. Now there was no one to beware of. Especially now, when Heydar Aliyevich Aliyev, a worthy successor to Asad Karayev, is at the head of the republic. True, he does not write such directives, but he faithfully fulfills what has already been written. No tricks. Without any pretexts or tricks. And this straightforwardness of his affected the localities. Kevorkov is the offspring of this straightforwardness. He also barks loudly so that the owner will appreciate his diligence.

No, I definitely chose the wrong time to visit Kevorkov. The man had just assumed a new, very high position. Everything was given to him in advance: both the order and the post. You had to earn them. He needed sacrifices, solid proofs of loyalty, servitude, servility and, first of all, dislike for Armenians. Especially those who came from Armenia. In this sense, I was a tasty discovery. Why shouldn't this buffoon take advantage of the situation, showing himself in all his glory? And he did, with witnesses: a Russian woman, an employee of the regional committee, and the secretary of the city party committee. The conversation was more than strange: Kevorkov spoke to me as the leader of the Dashnak party, no less, immediately pouring a tub of obscenities on Armenia's head ....

And by the end of our “conversation”, the secretary brought tea. I looked with surprise at the belated sign of hospitality and, without touching my glass, left the office.

My nurse came to give me an injection. Nothing else to it, I hide the notebook. I'm all attention. They’re giving me curantil and nitroglycerin. The nurse leaves happy. My partner behaves quietly. They just took out the IVs. Thank God I'm past that stage.

I no longer remember how, after the departure of my nurse, the scoundrel Kevorkov again "appeared" to me. After all, he doesn’t give a damn that he is an uninvited guest, what Tuwim or Tagore would say about him. Or what we, his contemporaries, will say. One smile, an approving nod from Heydar Aliyev, his idol and inspirer for the survival of Armenians from the "parish" entrusted to him, is enough for him.

It has long been said: for a hundred good people, one scoundrel is enough to finish a man. One Kevorkov is enough for my life.

A few years will pass, maybe a year or two, time will take away this name, will cover its black trace. I assure you that no one who knows him, as Tuwim figuratively put it, will be bored by such a loss. And while he is there, smoking our air, we will talk about him again and again, tempting the reader's patience, about his new and new intrigues, one more mind-boggling than the other.

It was at the electrical plant. There was a reporting and election party meeting. Candidates for bureau members were nominated. Of the eleven candidates, two are Azerbaijanis. Recall that the workers and employees of the plant are mostly Armenians. One of the nominated candidates from the Azerbaijanis passed unanimously. He was a good worker, an advanced production worker. He was loved at the plant. Against the other there were objections. He did not pass. The next day, Kevorkov called the administration of the plant, a party activist.

“What happened yesterday at the reporting and election meeting is called Yerevanism. If this continues, you can lose your party card,” Kevorkov said bluntly. Those called to the regional committee did not immediately find what to answer. 

The worker who spoke at the meeting against the second candidate takes the floor, “Speaking against G, I had in mind his business qualities and nothing more. G often skips, is undisciplined, and does not fulfill production plans. Why choose this for the bureau?”

Kevorkov interrupted the speaker, not allowing him to finish. Didn't want to listen to others. “There you are,” he points his finger at one of those present. “Why did you vote against?”

The man got up, "With what kind of employee G. is, I know better. I'm the head of the workshop. G. is an idler and a worthless man. However, enough has been said about him here. I have nothing more to add.”

“But you didn’t say the main thing,” Kevorkov remarked. “You voted against for a completely different reason."

“Interesting! For what?”

“Because of Yerevanism,” Kevorkov said menacingly. “You voted against because your relatives live in Yerevan.”

“But my relatives also live in Baku,” the head of the shop answered him with a grin.

“Well, God bless them. But I'm talking about relatives who live in Yerevan.”

And on and on it goes. Those called to the regional committee received a healthy thrashing, and the rejected candidate became a member of the party committee.

Every minute spent in a hospital bed seems to me not time wasted, but gained. It gives me the opportunity to sum up the results of my life at my leisure.The outcome of bygones! Is it possible to squeeze all that has passed over your head, what you have gone through, into a few lines? The life of each of us, if you are not a servant or a buffoon, is a continuous overcoming, earthquakes of the soul, different Golgothas....

A month before the heart attack, I visited Ashgabat - I was invited to the congress of Turkmenistan writers. Frankly, I was very pleased with this invitation. One of my uncle's sons, Artavazd Hovhannisyan, lived in Ashgabat. He was brought here after many wanderings around the wide world. Fled from the village during dispossession, now he is almost fifty. War veteran. Works as a driver. Still a strong, well-built man. He has four sons. All of them are like their father - fine, strong.

I salute Turkmenistan and its people. The cousin lived well. Two rooms in a new house. Prosperity. Children. grandchildren. Small garden with vineyard. But he, Hovhannisyan, was irresistibly drawn home to Norshen. A year ago, he sent a letter to the collective farm board with a request to take him and his sons to the collective farm. He was refused. According to some lingering law that forbade kulak families from returning to their village.

Just think: four young guys, excellent workers, plus young parents, all six people, are languishing from longing for their home, their native land, and the collective farm is poor from desertion, from the lack of workers. In addition, the father's house is falling apart, in which no one lives. Once a beautiful house, turned into dust, wrecked. And there is not just one, not just two such abandoned houses in Norshen. They are without number.

When the war began, no one remembered that the Hohannisyans were former kulaks. They, like everyone else, were given summons. On the same day, all four brothers were mobilized. No one had ever taken an interest in their fate before. How did they grow up, small children who had no way out in life, who were manipulated by whoever they could? But, left to their fate, they did not break down, by some miracle they survived without becoming thieves or scoundrels. All four brothers, remembering no evil, went to defend the homeland. They fought fiercely, as honest sons of their country, their Fatherland, should fight.

One of the brothers, Anushavan Hovhannisyan, died a heroic death in battle. Three others returned with medals. During the entire war, no one reminded them of their kulak origin. They were trusted with a machine gun, a cannon, and a mortar. But now the war is over. And again they remembered the long-dead father ...

But back to Turkmenistan. The next day, together with Artavazd, we went to the bazaar. I love Eastern bazaars. The market was bursting with fruits, herbs, watermelons, melons. In the aisle to the vegetable row, against the wall, I saw an elderly peasant selling roses. The old man, somewhat embarrassed, offered his goods to those passing by. By the accent, I immediately identified: ours, Karabakh.

“Well, father, dropped everything, left, and came to such a distance? On your own land, you could probably do more necessary work?”

The old man lashed out at me. Angry, mercilessly, as if I had inadvertently hit him where it hurt most. “Did I ‘leave’?” The old man shouted almost in a frenzy. “Ask those who ‘abandoned’ me! Those who drove my family away from our native land.”

After calming down a little, he added, “One hundred and four families from our village of Shushikenda live here. Talk to them. They will tell you what and how.” I didn't ask any other questions, but I understood everything.

There was something to flee from in Karabakh for many many years. I saw refugees from Karabakh in Tashkent, Dushanbe, they also reached Alma-Ata, Karaganda, Semipalatinsk, Petropavlovsk.

At the word "Shushikend" the face of my interlocutor lit up from within. And I thought, I couldn’t help but think, what this still strong peasant, cut off from his native land, could do, what all one hundred and four families could do at home, in their Shushikend, Shushi, if there were no shadow of Stalin over them. The Kevorkovs did not grow out of nowhere.

My son was in the army. In peacetime. He is an artist, and before his military service he had managed to graduate from an art institute. In the unit he met a fellow countryman from Leninakan, an ignorant and clueless man. Once, in a moment of revelation, he confessed to my son: "When I return home, I'll become a spectator." That's what he said: "spectator."

My son only laughed at the dream of his ill-fated countryman and forgot about him ... But a year or two after the service, they met again. And what do you think: the artist is not busy yet, he has no apartment, his canvases have not yet been recognized, he is in need. But the one who did become a "spectator," he has two cars - a working one and a weekend one, does not know how to account for money. True, he now calls himself an inspector. Progress!

One wonders how it is that in the midst of such rampant idiocy, when everyone around us seems to have conspired to weed out the human being, to dehumanize him, to scrape him off, suddenly someone normal comes along who is able to say: "I don't think so. A rare relic among the quicksand of the desert. About one such person, I want to tell.

When my uncle Harutyun Hovhannisyan was dispossessed, his son Artavazd was ten years old. Yes, all the brothers were minors. Expelled from their native village, for some time they huddled with their sister Amest, who lived in Stepanakert. The uncle could not imagine what grief they bring to their daughter and her husband by their appearance in their house. Amest's husband Bagrat Barseghyan, a communist, worked as a teacher, taught at school and at a technical school. Bagrat was immediately summoned to the district committee.

“Which of the outsiders lives with you?” They asked him without prejudice.

“Father-in-law with his family. They are not strangers to me.”

“Who is he, your father-in-law? Your ‘outsiders’?” They asked him with a mockery, although they already knew everything.

Such an interrogation angered the teacher, but he calmly replied, “Harutyun Hovhannisyan.”

My uncle was known by name throughout Karabakh. He was a great winemaker and a kind man.

“So, did you shelter the strong well-off peasants?” They asked him harshly.

“I couldn't leave old people on the street. Yes, I feel sorry for the children.”

“It's a pity. And where did he hide his party face? Do you pity the kulaks? Do you regret your membership card? By chance, does it not overtighten your pocket?”

The teacher darkened his face with indignation. But, holding back his anger, he asked,“What do you propose to do?”

“Expel the outsiders.”

“I can’t do this,” the teacher said dully, but firmly. “Small children, old people…"

In one day, the teacher lost his job and party card.

Amest became the victim of this story. She could not bear the misfortune that fell on her husband, on her family, she became seriously ill, she was stricken with paralysis. She lived for twenty years, bedridden. Caring for her was difficult. Everyone was tired of her: mother, sisters, brothers. Only the husband did not get tired. Former teacher, former communist, night watchman Bagrat Barseghyan. And I don't remember him ever complaining about his fate.

I was at Amest's funeral. What a crowd it was! The killers also came to see their victim on their last journey. They showed me the one who once took away the membership card from Barseghyan. I looked at him and thought: no, my friends, the Kevorkovs were not born in a day.

I dream of writing about a wonderful person, Bagrat Barseghyan, who did not allow himself to be turned into a toy in the hands of obsessed tyrants and soulless crooks.

By four o'clock the attending physicians leave. Only the duty officer remains, who looks into the ward either on call, or once in the evening. And we know the hours of injections, different procedures by heart. Conspiracy is in full order. I take out a notebook. Again I am in the power of memories. Again before my eyes is Karabakh - its fate, its pain, hopes - everything that fills me to the brim.

By the way, do not think that there is some preconceived opinion about Karabakh. Nothing like this. The whole world knows about little Ossetia cut into two halves, about their dream to unite, about the problem of Abkhazia ... And no one manages to solve their problem. This is not an accident. The saying is true: as long as there are wolves, you need sheep.

I remember the first secretary of the regional committee of Karabakh, Armenak Karakozov. I remember his entourage: Mukuch Arzanyan, Shahen Poghosbekyan, Hayk Arustamyan. A book could be written about each of them. All of them were gone in one day. Stalin had long arms, he got everyone, even if he was far away. Our blood poured out like gushing rivers.

They may object to me: excuse me, why is there no power over Kevorkov, will he continue to create chaos? Formally, the government exists. And the rights of citizens are protected by law, by the Constitution. But also formal. Any person in power can reshape both the law and the Constitution according to his own understanding, to his height, and nothing will happen to him. As in the well-known saying about rogue merchants: "They hang a ram's head, but they sell dog meat."

Indira Gandhi almost paid the price of the presidency for violating the Constitution. And Nixon at Watergate just got burned. Almost landed behind bars. Aliyev is his own judge, his own power. All laws, the whole Constitution is in his pocket. Long ago usurped them. Usurped the truth, usurped justice. 

Aliyev declared me a nationalist. You see, he goes along, and I go across. I noticed long ago: the friendships and love which need assurances and vows are no longer friendship, no longer love.

I have more than twenty books behind me, and they are all about friendship. Behind Aliyev is the flight of Armenians from Azerbaijan, from all districts, persecution of them in the service, unsolved murders, atrocities with cutting off hands, legs, cutting off ears, noses, gouging out eyes, crucifixion.

So, I am on one side of the scale with my books, Aliyev with his verbiage about friendship is on the other. And imagine - Aliyev pulls me down. Actually, no one weighs: Hurunts and Aliyev are incomparable figures. Is it really justice? Such childish talk. Mkhitar Gosh argued back in the 12th century that "law and justice are an indispensable condition for the life of the state." He thought so, our naive old man! All talk about laws and justice these days is childish babble. As Aliyev says, so be it. Aliyev's decision is not subject to appeal. Bravo, Aliyev. Lynch the victim, who's your judge? Nobody will stop your hand. This is not how we were raised.

Raising the banner of internationalism, declaring it the cornerstone of our system, our life, we grind down this stone day by day, stubbornly reducing it to nothing.

Whoever you are, my reader, if you don’t feel the fire of burnt Shushi in you, if the cries of children, women, elders who fell on the night of “long knives” [2] in the twentieth century did not reach your ears, if you think that there is nothing to stir up the past, put these notes aside, don't read them.

I am not calling for revenge. I only warn you: under the glorification of friendship, brotherhood, the coals of nationalism are swelled, capable of repeating the Shushi tragedy, returning the night of “long knives,” of which our children will become victims. Be vigilant, people!

I noticed long ago that we have the “right person” in our honor. The one who agrees with his superior comrade in everything does not enter into conflict, is loyal and unconditionally fulfills everything that is sent down from above. Such an employee is always favored. You can offend honest people. And the more honest they are, the better. Such is our "nationwide corruption of man." No matter how ignorant the government may be, it cannot but reckon with the people, cannot do without a person in whom the “I”, the personality, is still preserved. And without the individual there is no society. It degrades, falls into a primitive state. It is worth losing your "I", as you are already a savage. I am not a darling of fate, but a thousand times spat upon and cursed victim. However, I do not despair. I'm not afraid to call white white and black black. I'm not afraid to call things by their proper names. I write books without looking into any saints. I know that I will not see the fruits of my labors, but conscience is also worth something, it is more durable than life. Well said by Tyutchev:

“Take courage, my friends, fight diligently,

Though the battle is unequal, the struggle is critical”

Corrupted souls. How many of them are in my Karabakh. Forked people, saying one thing, thinking another. Vain people, “what-do-you-want?” people. It turns out that everything can be done with a person, twisting ropes out of him, having a primitive bait in his hand - a piece of bread. Damn you, a piece of bread that a person cannot do without, capable of bringing him to his knees before any false God.

They encourage us writers to study life. So I studied it and realized how much we hold lies in esteem. Once upon a time, lies were punished, injustice was considered evil. Now they have a green street. 

Truth, truth. Does it exist, this truth? Did anyone see her yesterday, the day before yesterday? Who saw her last? Maybe she's in jail, in a damp basement, waiting to be rescued from there? How to help the poor thing?

The “war” for Karabakh is the best proof of the brilliant absence of this truth. Pravda itself signed this, taking under the protection of Kevorkov's Lie, Aliyev's Lie, Kevorkov's inspirer. (See Pravda editorial of May 29, 1975.)

Not without curiosity. Many letters sent to Moscow complaining about everything that is happening in Karabakh come to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia to take action. This is how Moscow understands our pain.

All progressive mankind mourned the massacre of Armenians by Turkish bashi-bazouk soldiers. Upton Sinclair wrote: "Armenians in Paris demanded liberation from the Turks, and the Turks at home were in a hurry to kill every single Armenian ..."

Something similar to this is happening now, in our days. We cry, we talk about the persecution of Armenians in Baku, in Nagorno-Karabakh, Kirovabad, in the Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Aliyevs calmly continue their unrelenting pressure on the Armenians. We can safely say that the tragic day of April 24 continues in these places. It is 60 years old.

The Kommunist magazine No. 6, 1963 wrote: “On September 24, 1920, the Dashnak government of Armenia declared war on Turkey in order to create a “Great Armenia” with the inclusion of almost half of Asia Minor in it.”

Here the comrades from Kommunist act not so much as commentators as falsifiers. According to the Treaty of Sevres, all the lost regions of Western Armenia went toArmenia. Why lie: the Armenians did not want half of Asia Minor, but the return of the original Armenian lands, forcibly seized by the Turks. And why this ironic, disrespectful tone in relation to our people, who were bleeding, but did not lose their dignity?

I often ask: would I and many, many Karabakh people love their land so powerfully and zealously, if it had not been kicked at every step, if it had not been offended. How not to remember Omar Khayyam:

You've been overtaken by your reward

Forget it

The days rush by

Forget it!

The wind is careless: in the eternal book of life

Could move the wrong page....

Naive Omar Khayyam! He did not know that a careless wind could grow into a flurry and no longer move the page, but tear it out with the meat, and blot out life itself. There are some people whose memory makes you want to take your hat off to them. Bertolt Brecht, no longer with us, wrote:

This is how a person is formed -

When he says yes, when he says no

When he his, when they hit him

When he joins them,

This is how a person is formed, this is how he changes himself,

This is how his image appears to us,

When he is similar to us and when it's not the same

Well, how not to bow your head to a person who speaks to you as if reading your thoughts. Yes, there is more to be excited about. It inspires hope that not everything is lost, that a righteous word can still be said. One has only to wonder how these verses could slip through the iron censorship without being noticed:

My time did not spare the heroes,

It did not make out who was right and who was wrong

My time buried the heroes,

without giving them military honors

Time circles, discovering kinship

With a bird that does not distinguish the brave from the cowards,

pecks their eyes

Rasul Gamzatov

I promise not to be a tax collector

To be at the working age,

But a son worthy of him, Even if I have to accept

blows and pain from him ... And if I retreat today, I retreat to start again

Paruyr Sevak

To stand up for my Karabakh against greedy, short-sighted and shameless politicians, no matter how high ranks they may be, is my sacred duty, my duty, to which my conscience, the conscience of a citizen and writer obliges me.

My time has passed. I drew my sword, which had been rusting from idleness for a long time. I leave death in this battle to the enemies. I myself will die ingloriously, and yet not entirely useless. It is dangerous, very dangerous, when power is in the hands of the ignorant ... Talk about friendship and its stubborn, stable destruction from within. How much words, papers are spent on this, but in reality ... We are constantly fanning the extinct coals of nationalism. Could there be an ulterior motive here to drown us in a sea of ​​blood again?

In Trebizond alone, during the massacre in Western Armenia, the Turks slaughtered 120,000 Armenians. They dug wells, cut off the heads of the Armenians, bled the blood into the wells and bathed in it in order to enter paradise. Beautiful women were taken into captivity and their lands were taken away.

All this was then done in Shushi. They drove young Armenian women to the Maidan and forced them to dance naked to the wild laughter of the brutalized crowd of murderers. Then they raped and killed. Everything here was put to fire, to the sword. The beautiful Shushi burned down, set on fire from all directions.

What continuity, what a striking similarity in the skills to kill people!

I think, I think day and night: what is happening in Hadrut, in all regions of Azerbaijan with an Armenian population, is it not a rehearsal of events similar to those that happened before our eyes quite recently, in quiet Lebanon, which became the scene of bloody clashes between Arabs of Christian and Muslim origin. There are reasons for such fears.

Go on, Heydar Aliyev, no one sees the campaign of your Janissaries [3]. You are protected by a smoke screen of dogmas and formulas quite reliably.

Goethe's tempting devil Mephistopheles, who blinded Dr. Faustus, has settled in Azerbaijan [4]. He is full of a sense of revenge, and there is no telling how many more Karabakh Faustuses he will blind. 

The dissident Sergei Palikanov, Lenin Prize winner, told Western correspondents that in our country it is easier to fight for the freedom of Angela Davis than for one's own freedom. 

Nothing to cover. That's right. We are just waiting for the slightest call to rush headlong to help, to lend a hand to anyone in trouble, but only on one condition, if the caller lives on the other side of our borders, in any part of the world. Not so when that call is heard in one's own home. Not even a voice, but a cry for help from an entire nation. It's the kind of cry that makes our ears absorbent cotton and our eyes go blind. Where did we get such "stranger-love" and self-loathing? We support the pain of Palestinians who dream of creating their own autonomy, we sympathize with them, cheer for them, help them. But why do we become deaf and blind when it comes to Karabakh, Abkhazia or Ossetia, where people groan from constant persecution, insults to their honor, dignity and national feelings, when the sovereignty of an entire people is trampled into the mud?

My friend, the wonderful Dagestan writer Effendi Kapiev, took the words of A.M. Gorky: “Hey, you people! Long live your future!" And six months before his death, an ordinary war correspondent Kapiev wrote in his diary: “Hello, man! Blessed are your days and the land that nourished you!”

Kapiev's short life did not work out very well, it was full of struggles, various hardships and barriers. He had his own Kevorkovs, but he passed away, undefeated even by death, having won the fame of a writer and a worthy citizen, a patriot.

It is this "your future" that I serve to the best of my ability. All my cries of injustice are caused by only one desire - to clear the way for people to the future.

Notes

[1] Richard Sorge was a Soviet intelligence officer and spy who worked undercover as a German journalist in Nazi Germany and ran a successful Soviet espionage ring in Tokyo.                                                           

[2] Night of the Long Knives, also known as Operation Hummingbird, was a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as the supreme leader of Germany.                 

[3] A janissary is a soldier of an elite corps of Ottoman troops.     

[4] Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend. He is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life and thus makes a deal with the Devil. The Devil appears to him through his representative, Mephistopheles. He makes a bargain with Faust: Mephistopheles will serve Faust with his magic powers for a set number of years, but at the end of the term, the Devil will claim Faust's soul, and Faust will be eternally enslaved.. The term "Faustian" implies sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain. Doctor Faustus is an Elizabethan tragedy play rendition of the German legend. In this rendition, Faust, or Dr Faustus, is irrevocably corrupted and when the deal ends, the Devil carries him off to Hell

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