See If They Will Not Live Again.........Araxie Cass

SEE IF THEY WILL NOT LIVE AGAIN

ARAXIE CASS (AB’22)

One hundred years after my family fled the Armenian Genocide, I went to Armenia for the first time on a family vacation. This land of grassy slopes, ancient stone churches, and blazing summer sun was unfamiliar to me, but it drew me in like no other place I had been before. One day, our guide, Hayk, and his dad invited us over for coffee. We talked about painting over tiny cups of coffee, dark and thick with fine grounds. One cup led to another, and a year later I was in Armenia again to help my mom, Anahit, with a photography and writing project documenting stories of nonviolent resistance in two regions of the country under military threat. It was in cups of coffee that I learned the stories of a tiny unrecognized republic called Artsakh1, the border villages of Tavush province in Armenia, and what it means to live a life of resistance in a conflict zone.2 Originally, the project aimed to show the beauty and history of Armenia to the world. But as we traveled through Tavush and Artsakh, people started asking us to tell their stories. Since the Armenian Genocide, one of the weapons used against Armenians is the denial of the facts of our existence.3 In an act of resistance, people invited us to drink coffee and listen.

I. Azerbaijan was our home When we first walked into Ruzanna Avagyan’s office, she was finishing a meeting with an older man who sat on the other side of her wooden desk. She wore a businesslike blue dress and spoke in Russian, in a tone that sounded like she was giving him instructions before he left. Saro,4 our translator, guide, and all-purpose friend, introduced us, and Ruzanna asked whether we liked sugar in our coffee. Once we were all seated around the table next to the desk with our tiny white cups, Ruzanna explained to us that her client’s name was Sasha and he had come to her about the loss of his refugee paperwork. We started off asking questions about the refugee organization that she ran. Between statistics and sips of coffee, she began to unravel the story of how she came to Artsakh. “I was nineteen years old when my family left Sumgait,” she told us. “They went to Stepanakert and I went to Yerevan.” As Ruzanna spoke, I looked at her, as if to keep some semblance being included in the conversation.. Her words were unintelligible to me, so I found myself trying to read her half smiles, the lilt of her speech, and the deep, slightly sad look of her brown eyes.5 Then I looked at Saro, who translated, delivering the story edited and annotated for me to better understand. “She didn’t see the bad things I saw,” he said, and his eyes darkened for an almost imperceptible moment, before he returned to his authoritative tone, making sure we had our history straight. “Until 1988, we can say, it

1 Artsakh is the ancient Armenian name for the region. It is also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, an amalgamation of Russian and Azeri words. 2 Folktales have no barriers and can pass through centuries from generation to generation and can live as long as a nation lives. - Hayk Kachatryan, Queens of the Armenians 3 Sometimes it seems almost amusing that the Armenian Genocide is still denied when the evidence is written so clearly in the letter from my mother’s great uncle after he survived the Turkish army (where Armenians were forced to dig their own graves) and in the photographs of our crucified ancestors we saw as children and in the splinters and wounds that still divide my family. I used to find it baffling how all the reliable sources said that the border between Armenia and Artsakh was not there, when I had driven across it. 4 Saro’s full name, Sarasar Saryan, literally translates to “mountain mountain mountain,” and is perhaps the best illustration of Artsakh’s national motto, We Are Our Mountains. 5 Armenians like to say that you can always recognize Armenian eyes (hye achker), because they carry so much sadness.

was normal.” “Our neighbors told us that the pogroms were an answer to the Karabakh movement,” Ruzanna continued. “Our neighbors were very polite with us. We knew each other well. My father was an electrician and he was very close with them and they respected him very much. He made a khorovats grill on their balcony for them, and thanks to their good relations, my family and some other Armenians didn’t suffer as much. Our building was long and had seventeen Armenian families. My neighbor told me that because of our friendship, no one was killed in our building. A group of hooligans came, but our neighbors defended us and sent them to another house. The town became bloody, and we realized we couldn’t stay. Our neighbors helped us get out, and we left on February 29th.”

She and Saro went back and forth confirming the dates. My notes are full of scribbled dates and numbers, proof that their experiences were real. 6 “There were Soviet soldiers,” she continued. “But they did nothing while the Azeris were killing Armenians. The bandits were mostly from other places, not Sumgait, but Azeris from Agdam or Armenia. My father told me that there was a woman in the family who was nine months pregnant, who was killed by being burned alive. First they cut her open and took the baby out, and then they burned her. They said it would be like this for all Armenians.”

“My family was saved because we could speak good Azerbaijani,” said Ruzanna. “Baku Armenians have a recognizable accent,” Saro explained, as if remembering a story of his own. “They would get on the busses and take everyone who had the Armenian accent. Some Azeris were killed in Armenia because of their accent too.” “My family went to Baku first, then came back to Sumgait to get our property,” Ruzanna said. “After that I went to Moscow with other Armenian activists to meet Gorbachev. We wanted to build a second Sumgait. We liked Azerbaijan; it was our homeland. It was a multinational republic, and we had autonomy there. We waited for Gorbachev, but after 3 days his deputy came and told us, ‘Why did you raise a panic? If you don’t want to live in Sumgait, go to Baku.’” “Some Armenians went to Baku and they were killed there,” Ruzanna continued. “We were moved to a village called Putyatina in Russia. All ten of us went there, but I returned with my sister to Yerevan,7 because the village life wasn’t for us. We were city people.” The statement seemed almost mundane, like something you’d find in a conversation about where to buy a house, not a story of fleeing from ethnic cleansing. “After I came to Yerevan,” Ruzanna said, “I was an activist, and I helped to organize a hunger strike for Artsakh to unite with Armenia.8 After a month, we returned to Sumgait, thinking that maybe we could continue our life. But my family got a phone call in Sumgait saying that they would be killed because I was an activist. So they came to Stepanakert, and tried to exchange flats with Azeris who were forced to leave Artsakh. But because of my activism, they couldn’t make the exchange, so they lost all their property in Sumgait. On September 2, 1991, Artsakh declared independence. There was a “vrezh”9 group of Sumgaitis in the war, and my husband was in it. During the war, more refugees died than local people. Some said it was a compliment. We felt like heros.”10

6 When international groups and experts discuss the Artsakh conflict, no one ever mentions the Baku and Sumgait massacres. The refugees from these massacres are not recognized as refugees. On paper, it is as if they didn’t happen. 7 Armenia’s capital and largest city. One of the three cities on earth I have spent enough time in to know my way around comfortably. 8 A woman...remains in her logical role...as caregiver and mediator, activist and public speaker...skillfully [waging] the struggle of the oppressed. - Zabel Yesayan, leader in the Armenian Revolutionary and Feminist Movements, 1911 9 Vrezh means “revenge” in Armenian. After the Genocide, people started naming their children Vrezh because surviving was revenge. 10 I do not say that we must take up the swords...in order that we alone may live on the land. But I do say we must learn self-preservation in order that the Turks and Kurds may not annihilate us. - Raffi, Armenian nationalist writer, 1881