ARPINE, THE YOUNG WOMAN FROM ARTSAKH WHO WON'T BE GOING HOME

For 26-year-old Arpine Harutyunyan the start of the war was not as earthshaking as the end of it.   

On that terrifying morning of September 27 Arpine was awakened – like most Artsakh (Karabakh) residents - by the sound of explosions. At her family’s home in the village of Kolkhozashen about 18 miles from Martuni, she gathered with her mother, sister and two brothers and sought shelter.

Within 48 hours, she was a refugee, living at a hotel in Goris. Her brothers were on the frontline. For six weeks she languished and anguished, mostly at the Mirhav boutique hotel which Trip Advisor says is the best place to stay in Southern Armenia. Not for Arpine ( pronounced AR-P- Neh) who was born in 1994, the year the first Karabakh war ended.

Then in the early morning hours of the 45th day of the war, it was suddenly and shockingly over. “I was heartbroken. I knew I could not go home.”

##

On October 28, the 32nd day of the fighting, I saw her sitting alone and thought immediately of my young friend Ida. They looked so alike. i told her that and she smiled warmly. Then she had a sad and beautiful look as she echoed Angelika Zakaryan, the CivilNET reporter, when Arpine said she hated being at this hotel and she couldn’t wait for the war to be over so she could go home.

The day we met, she was sitting alone at a wooden table in a pleasant garden, a pomegranate the lone food on her plate, a Lenovo ThinkPad on her lap. She didn’t look like a war refugee, rather a young woman on a weekend getaway.

She talks of her life, a life born weeks after the magnificent victory in 1994, a war she would learn that nearly killed her father.

“My mother was pregnant with me when my father was seriously injured in May 1994, but he struggled and miraculously survived.  I was born after the victory in September 1994 and lived for 26 years in unrecognized Artsakh, but with the psychology of a winner.”

That “psychology of a winner” was embellished knowing the great Monte Melkonian fought heroically near her village.

“I would not be wrong to say that every conscious Artsakh citizen knows about Monte. To me, Monte is a patriot, a man who knows how to love and dedicate himself completely.”

The so-called “4-Day War” of 2016 brought fear briefly, but that winner’s psychology prevailed, and by 2017 Arpine was working as a statistician at the Caroline Cox Rehabilitation Center in Stepanakert. The next year, Instigate Mobile, a Yerevan-based software engineering company, announced it was offering programming courses. This was Arpine’s field of expertise and soon she was working for them. She still does.

Then, on the morning of November 10 the war was over. Just like that. Over.

She was in bed at the Mirhav Hotel when she woke up.

“Usually, I don’t get up in the middle of the night, but today I had a strange feeling,” she said. “I woke up at 1:00 AM and opened Facebook for some news. First, I saw Nikol Pashinyan’s post regarding my homeland. I can’t explain what I felt that moment. I didn’t want to believe it. I was trembling all over my body. I thought about my brothers who are on the frontline in Artsakh. I thought about my village Kolkhozashen where my father is buried.”

Hours later she heard about her brothers, Mihran, 24, and Tigran, 19. They were both alive. The surrender agreement gave to the Azerbaijanis the areas they had taken control of. Arpine’s village had not been “taken”, but much of the area around it was under the enemy’s control.

“Yes, it’s good to stop fighting. It can save my brothers’ and other people’s lives. But nobody has the right to give Artsakh to the enemy. It is an insult to our living soldiers and our fallen soldiers. I can only say that they died for the sake of the homeland and now we are alive and homeless.”

Four days after the Russian brokered ceasefire, she’s still at the Mirhav and reflects on the war and what she calls “one signature”.

“I want to be honest. From the first day of the war, I realized that it was serious, that victory would be a miracle. But I did not expect such a result. I did not expect that we would lose Artsakh with one signature and the rest would hang in the air. 

“My village is still ours. I want to thank God. There were 250 residents. At the moment, the women have left with their children, but all the men are still in the village and they will stay there, including many of my relatives, but I personally cannot do that now. I want to repeat that I have lived in unrecognized Artsakh for 26 years, but I will never live in a defeated Artsakh.” 

Arpine Harutyunyan takes back her use of the word “defeated”.

“Or rather not defeated Artsakh, but betrayed. Monte's mission was not continued, and the Armenians closed the last page of history for this land with their own hands.”

READ More on CIVILNET, the Armenian News Agency here; . -
https://www.civilnet.am/news/2020/11/14/In-Goris-Artsakh-refugees-reflect-on-a-land-lost-with-one-signature/408058

FRONT LINE CAMPAIGN WORKERS LIKE RALPH WAXMAN HELPED WIN THE "BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICA"

In a war, nobody ever knows the names of the front line soldiers except for their family or friend. Only they can tell you a name or a soldier who actually fought in the 2nd Battle of Fallujah or who defended the tractor factory in Stalingrad.

Same thing goes for the front line soldiers in the “Battle for the Soul of America”, those front liners who make the phone calls, go door-to-door hammering home their and their candidates views, trying to convince anyone to vote for their person.

Here at Krikorian Writes we would like to single out one of those front line workers because we know him, Ralph Waxman.

Waxman, a community activist, comedian, Osteria Mozza server and a kind, decent, goodhearted human being with a mind that frequents the gutter, has been working the streets of Arizona, going door-to-door, getting warmth and harassment. getting hugs and threats, and getting his word across that America needs Joe Biden.

I’ve singled out Waxman among the tens of thousands of workers who make this campaign happen and made it successful because he’s a friend, he works for my girlfriend, he’s dedicated to helping the downtrodden, loves Bruce Springsteen and, perhaps most importantly, because I owe him a few bucks.

But, it is those Waxmans of America that helped win this election for Generals Biden and Harris, for Colonels Abrams and Lewis, for all those other famous folks you know of and who urged you to vote for the Democrats. Its is those Ralph Wamans who fought the battle in the trenches. They fought it and won.

CNN'S JOHN 'THE SPEW' KING SHATTERS RECORDS FOR NUMBER OF WORDS SPOKEN ON TV

“You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, Instead of the bum, which is what I am.” - Terry Malloy in “On The Waterfront”

Try and picture CNN’s political analyst John King playing Terry Malloy, the role considered by me to be the greatest performance of Marlon Brando’s - or any actor’s - career. King’s version of the movie’s classic taxi cab back seat scene where Malloy explains his life to his brother Charlie. would go something like this.

“You don’t understand. I coulda had class, provided that 78% of the opponent’s available fist space, including 88%-92% of the index, ring and fuck-you fingers, traveling at a speed of 103 miles per hour during 45% or less humidity conditions and his fist clenched to at lease 75% clenchibilty, connected with my jaw while i was leaning back 16. 3 to 19.3%, there by reducing the power of the punch by 34%, I coulda been a contender, if, of the 1, 508 boxers in the light-heavyweight class. at least 67% of them had either server back aches that needed 600 to 800 grams of Motrin every 168 minutes, and I coulda been somebody if 89.7% of the actual “somebodies decided to take up another craft. “

I prefer Brando’s Malloy. To me, King’s version has too many numbers, but I’m not a numbers guy.

If you are a number gal or guy . you would be mesmerized by John “The Spew” King’s record breaking performance the last three days on CNN. King shatter all known record for using percentage points, for saying the word “if” and for leaving a sizeable portion of the viewing public looking at each other and saying. “What the hell is he talking about?”.

BREAKING NEWS - At press time, Ruth Krikorian, a spokeswomen for MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki said he would attempt to break the record tonight. She offered this Twitter feed to promote her case. https://twitter.com/CallMollie/status/1323659899922911233

THREE CHILDREN WAIT OUT THE KARABAKH WAR IN A STEPANAKERT BOMB SHELTER

4 November, 2020

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, three children I visited earlier this week are not war refugees. That’s because although they were forced to flee their homes because of war, they did not cross into another country. Instead, they went across town to a solid structure with a reinforced basement that can better protect them from falling bombs than their own dwelling could.

With their mother leading the way, they fled their home in Stepanakert, the capital of Karabakh, where war erupted the morning of September 27.  For the past month they have been at this fortified school that doubles as a bomb shelter and a rest stop for soldiers. The children’s father, a baker, has stayed at his bakery making bread for the troops.

Officials estimate at least 60% of the region’s population of roughly 150,000 have left their homes because of the war, some to the homes of family in Yerevan, some to abandoned buildings, some to a building that can take the punch of an explosion better than their own home.

Compared to those squalid camps you may have seen from the war in Syria, this converted school is not miserable, but the heart still aches, especially when you see your own family in the faces of these “non-refugees.”

The first two I meet, a 6-year-old Maneh and her sister Mary, 9, remind me a lot of my own family. Maneh is the name of my goddaughter, my nephew Mesrop Ash’s daughter and Mary is a live ringer for my cousin Greg and Lorenza’s daughter Francesca. I stare into their face and envision my goddaughter and niece in a bomb shelter. It is a sad vision. Maneh and Mary are sitting on a bed, staring at a hot plate warming a large pot of Tanabur (aka Spas), a traditional Armenian yogurt soup with wheat berries and herbs.   

When I start asking questions, first of Maneh and then of Mary, they have that unblinking stare that seems to say ‘unless you are my mother or bringing me some food what could you possible say to interest me?” It’s not a mean look at all. It’s adorable and sweet, but it definitely says “you’ve got nothing for me.”  Mary’s looks says: I am in a rough situation here, I’m dealing with suicide drones and you’re asking questions? Really?   

Little does she know that although I might not have anything for her, it turns out I do have something for her little brother.

As Mary stares, with a seemingly permanent smile, Edward, 5, wearing pants and a sweater, comes up to us and starts singing. He is wearing the world’s cheapest sun glasses, worse than the type you get after your eyes are dilated. I reach into my computer bag and pull out my sunglasses and tell them all a story, which my fellow journalist Angelika translates.   

“These sunglasses have been with me in my darkest hours. In the worst times they have brought me comfort. When I cry,  I put them on and no one can see my tears. And when I sing I put them on and I look cool. I want you to have them.”   

I hand them to Edward who slowly takes them after looking at his sisters, then puts them on with much enthusiasm, Maneh has to straighten them. Edward beams and swings from side to side. He looks like a 6-year old Armenian Ray Charles. And then he starts to sing.  Lika translates.

I was a violet in a garden.

And you were a dream

You were born on a dark night

But now you are a violet only for me.

As Lika translates for me, I wish I had those sunglasses back. Edward hands them back to me, but I let him know they are for him to keep. I look over at his sister Mary. She’s still staring, but I think I catch her nod ever so slightly. I think I showed her something.

As we leave, without my sunglasses, I hug them all goodbye. I stick my hand out to Edward and he slaps it hard. Kid got cool fast.

And to come clean, those sunglasses never hid my tears. I bought them last week in Yerevan.

And don’t let the United Nations fool you. These kids and the tens of thousands of others, around the world, are all refugees. Seek out an organization you trust and help them out.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE STEPANAKERT

30 October, 2020 19:40

By Michael Krikorian

“Riding high in April, Shot down in May” – Frank Sinatra line from  “That’s Life”.

April to May? Hell, at least it took Frank a month to do what Angelika Zakaryan heartbreakingly did right before my eyes in a 15-minute journey from ecstasy to agony.

Angelika, also known as Lika, 26, is a journalist from Yerevan-based CIVILNET news agency who has been writing a personal daily diary of the war in her native Nagorno Karabakh for the last month. Her columns are brutally raw, innocent and heartfelt.  

I met her on Day 27 of the war in what has become her new home: a school with a sturdy basement that has been converted into a bomb shelter. Our meeting had been prearranged by Salpi Ghazarian, the director of the Institute of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern. Before I left Los Angeles,  Salpi said “You’ll like Lika.”  I said nothing, but thought to myself  “No, I won’t.”  I almost never like anyone who someone else says I will. But, in this case, I was wrong and Salpi was right.

Angelika has this engagingly bright smile, the kind that nearly closes the eyes, that now often masquerades her sadness and anger. But, that smile also makes her darker thoughts all the more powerful when they break past her inherent goodness. When a kind person wishes ill will on someone, it hits much harder than when a commando says he will slaughter the enemy.

We engage in some small talk before we hit the streets of Stepanakert.  It’s no surprise - if you know me even a little - that “Casablanca” comes up. And Lika loves that movie, too, and even quotes one of the lines from Ilsa, aka Ingrid Bergman. “I hate this war so much.” 

She also says the war has introduced her to Joan Baez and the song “Donna Donna”, which I’ve never heard.

Our first stop is another school converted to a bomb shelter. There are children here. After an hour or so, we leave to get some lunch.

On the way, in our van driven by Arshak, a veteran of the war here in the 1990s, Angelika gets news that sends her spirits soaring, sends her “riding high”.  Her brother is home from the front. Arshak speeds the Honda van to her house. As we get near, another car is pulling up and a man is getting out. It’s her brother.

“Stop! Stop!” she screams . “That’s my brother.” I slide open the van’s side door and before I can even get out, Lika is climbing over me and onto the street. She rushes to her brother and they embrace for a long, silent time.

Lika’s brother has been on the front since the beginning. His closest friends, all volunteers, have previous army experience. They have all survived so far, though several other young men they fought alongside, near Martakert, have been killed. Angelika hardly says a word as he and I talk briefly. She’s beaming, bouncing on her toes, hands either clasped behind her back or touching his shoulders.

She says we will go to the best store open and bring back some things to eat. Less than 15 minutes later, we are at a store called Gurman, a corner market type of place the size of a Seven-Eleven. I wander around, grab some chocolate bars and notice that Lika is off by herself near the toothpaste shelves. She’s on the phone.   

When she approaches me a minute later, she’s not the same jubilant young woman I was just with. She looks like another person. I’ve never seen anyone “shell-shocked”, but I’m guessing they look like Angelika now. Her mother just called to tell her that her favorite cousin has been captured by the Azerbaijani military.   

“I don’t know what to think,” Lika says. “I can’t even cry.”

She stands numb in the little market as men in army uniforms pass by. “I’m so afraid. He has a heart of gold. I’m so afraid of what they will do to him. Beat him. Or worse.”

I don’t know what to say. What can I say? I don’t say anything.

##

Yesterday, I left Stepanakert. I had to say goodbye to Lika, so I go to the school-turned-bomb shelter, three-blocks from my room at the Park Hotel.

At the school, two metal doors are locked with thick iron chains. My phone doesn’t work. I call out her name. Then loudly. Then I yell. Nothing. Then, I think, hell I’m in a war zone, and from the ceiling of my lungs, I roar out “Angelika! Lika! Angelika.” I think of Terry Malloy yelling for Edie Doyle in “On The Waterfront”. Then I see her appear through the dirty windows. She is so relieved to see me. “I thought they were yelling for me because the Azeris were coming to get me.”

That is her worst fear, she tells me as we go downstairs into a converted classroom where she sleeps.

“I would be more afraid of Azeri hands than Azeri bombs. If a bomb fell on me, I wouldn’t be afraid. I wouldn’t have time to be. But if they got their hands on me? The things they would do to a woman. It’s not that I don’t fear the bombs. If you are a human being you have to be afraid of bombs. But, I think they would do the most horrible things to me. But, still, as much as I hate this war, I am here.”

Lika reports her brother is back at the front. There is no further word about her cousin, although the International Red Cross has been alerted.  

She drifts off in thought and comes back.

“Do you remember the fires in Australia a little while ago?  The world was so worried about the koala bears that were hurt and killed in the fire. I love koalas. But I wish people would care about Armenians like they care abut koala bears.”

Soon, we say our goodbyes. I go sentimental and steal a line from Casablanca. Swapping out Paris for Stepanakert. She walks back to her new home.

That night, in the calmness of a Yerevan hotel room, I look up the Joan Baez song “Donna Donna” and I understand why Angelika Zakaryan loves it so much.

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered

Never knowing the reason why.

But whoever treasures freedom,

Like the swallow has learned to fly.



A GLENDALE DOCTOR ON THE KARABAKH FRONT

27 October, 2020 23:40

By Michael Krikorian

The good Scotch flowed smoothly in a spacious Glendale backyard on Saturday night a month ago. It was September 26 and Dr. Alexander Gevorgyan, a surgeon who specializes in facial reconstruction, was enjoying his friends’ tales of hunting in the mountains near Bishop, California as they indulged on a Macallan 18 year-old scotch whiskey and the even more rarefied Macallan 25.

Then someone’s phone rang. It was Sunday morning in Karabakh and war had erupted. Azerbaijani forces were bombing the eastern towns of the mountainous region populated almost solely by Armenians. 

By Monday, Gevorgyan was organizing efforts with his co-workers to send relief supplies to Armenia and on to the frontline. Blankets, bandages and coats were among the essential items they gathered to send. But, considered the most urgent supplies to sent were tourniquets, that dreaded battlefield dressing vital to stopping extreme blood loss.

For the next several days, Gevorgyan, who was born in Gyumri in 1979 and moved to Yerevan following the devastating earthquake in nearby Spitak in 1988, anguished over what he could do to help. But, deep down he knew he had to go help the wounded. He told his wife, Anet.

Anet was silent for several seconds. Then she swallowed and said, “You know you have kids.”

“I know,” he said. “I have a country, too.”

The couple hugged and he rationalized his case. “You and the children will be safe in Los Angeles. But there are a lot of children fighting and they will need my skills. There are 18, 19-year-old boys fighting. They are our kids, too.”

Anet knew she couldn’t stop him. The only thing she could do was make him promise to come home safely.

Gevorgyan, who has lived in Glendale since arriving in America in 2010, landed in Yerevan Oct. 9 and arrived by car to Karabakh the next night.

####

Tuesday afternoon, a man wearing a black outfit that matches his beard and hair is walking up a narrow dirt path away from the hospital towards a narrow, partially paved street. A dirty van turned into a makeshift ambulance races by the man walking. It is taking two soldiers whose bloody wounds have been staunched at this site to a more sophisticated hospital in Stepanakert or maybe even Yerevan.  As the van drives off, two explosions are heard in the distance. Soldiers and workers implore a journalist not to give the location of the hospital. They don’t think the enemy would bomb here if they were aware of the hospital location. They know it.  

The man in black is Dr. Gevorgyan and, as he is about to sit down on a concrete block, a soldier hurries over and respectfully puts down a red blanket.

The doctor stares at a reporter for couple of seconds. “I heard there was a journalist here who wanted to interview me, but I didn’t want to leave the hospital to talk to anyone. I am not a star. But the commander told me the journalist came from Los Angeles, so here I am.”

He looks around the dusty corner where three soldiers stand guard.    My photojournalist team of R. Ezras Tellalian and Gevorg Haroyan shoot what they can, careful not to photograph anything that could give away our location.

“This is where I arrived that first night. It was absolutely pitch black and there were probably a million stars in the sky above, but I only looked up for drones,” he says. “You can hear them. Then came vans with the wounded, speeding up and making this turn,  down this hill to the hospital. It was chaos. In my training and at work of course I have seen bleeding patients after car accidents, but the quantity of bloody people I saw that night is something you only see in a war zone.”

Morphine and its relatives are used liberally.

In the nearly three weeks he has been here, Dr. Gevorgyan says relatively few of the soldiers who’ve been brought to the hospital have died. However, he says heartbreakingly, some of the soldiers “do arrive with wounds that are not compatible with life.” He stops talking and looks at the blue sky above. In the distance several more explosions are heard.  “Sometimes doctors can’t do god’s work. We are only doctors.”

The teams of doctors and nurses perform their duties with resolute efficiency, he says. “Everyone knows what they need to do and they just do it. Stopping bleeding and extreme pain is the first steps. Number one thing is to stabilize them. I don’t even know their names. We don’t have time to chit chat.”

He gives utmost credit to the special group of people whose job is to go to the actual battlefields – be it a city street or a field – and pick up the wounded. They often have a red cross painted on their car, but lately that doesn’t protect them from being attacked.

The thought that a car with a red cross painted on it is targeted, the thought that he has to tell a journalist not to say their location because the hospital will be bombed, starts to enrage Dr. Gevorgyan.

“I hope this story helps spread the word about what is going on here. To the world. Why is Azerbaijan, a country with 10 million people, getting help from Turkey, a country with 80 million people, getting sophisticated attack drones from Israel, getting Islamic mercenaries from Syria, Libya and Pakistan to fight a Armenia, a country with three million people? Do you know why? I do. It is because those motherfuckers are afraid of us.

“And who is helping Armenia? Is America helping their fellow Christians?”

He stands up. “Tell the story. I have to get back to work.” And Dr. Alexander Gevorgyan walks back down a dusty dirt lane toward a hospital somewhere in Karabakh.

Michael Krikorian is a writer from Los Angeles. He was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and for the Fresno Bee. He writes under the pseudonym "Jimmy Dolan" for the Mozza Tribune. His website is www.KrikorianWrites.com and his first novel is called "Southside".

ANOTHER CEASEFIRE HAS CEASED IN KARABAKH

26 October, 2020 23:10

By Michael Krikorian

“What ‘cease’? says Gevorg Haroyan, a CIVILNET photojournalist, with a very rudimentary knowledge of English, allowed to go to one of the fronts of the war here. “Only fire.”

As he stood Monday afternoon on a ridge overlooking a valley a few kilometers from the embattled town of Martuni, Haroyan and a team of journalists from seven countries, accompanied by several soldiers, watched and sensed / experienced as explosions of varying significance detonated, some outgoing, some incoming.

Another ceasefire had ceased. 

At 8:00 am, local time, Monday, October 26, a ceasefire between Armenians and the attacking Azerbaijani forces was to go into effect throughout Karabakh, which has been a war zone for a month. The ceasefire had been announced the day before with much fanfare. Even the heretofore-silent American President Donald Trump publicly referred to it in a campaign rally.   

But, this ceasefire hadn’t even officially begun when, inexplicably, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan accused the Armenian forces of “grossly” violating the agreement. How does one violate an agreement before it starts, social media asked. The Azeris quickly deleted this statement, but it did not help their credibility and supported skepticism about their commitment to a ceasefire.   

Shortly after the 8:00 am start time, the Ministry of Defense of Artsakh announced that the Army was strictly adhering to the agreement.

By early afternoon, this was all a moot point as the artillery shells were heard throughout the region.

The van carrying the journalists was forced to continue traveling by soldiers and came to a stop near an abandoned store. From near a 20-foot wide crater in the adjoining field. A single German shepherd appeared and curled up against a twisted metal fence. Whenever an explosion was heard, the solders went quiet, the journalists worried and the dog yelped loudly, then put his head back down.

A crusty, silver-haired man about 65 years old with a Kalashnikov slung across his back walked by the group. He smiled big time at one journalist and said “Fuck them” about the other side in this war, and walked down the road.

Another Kalashnikov carrying man, this one 34, overhears the older guy’s comments and laughs. He is a history teacher in peacetime, but since September 27, he has been in battle. He looks forward to the day he can return to the classroom and teach his students about this particular bit of history. He says he will teach this chapter “with a lot of pride.” When asked who are some of his favorite people of all time to lecture about to his history students he quickly said “Hannibal”, referring to the great Carthaginian general who fought - and the defeated the Romans famously in 216 BC. at Cannae and in 217 BC. at Lago Trasimeno just a few kilometers from Panicale, Umbria. He laughs again and says “You know General Hannibal was Armenian. And he treated his soldiers with much respect.”.

Read this and other stories on Civilnet, the Armenina online newspaper. click or copy and paste this link https://www.civilnet.am/news/2020/10/26/Another-Ceasefire-Had-Ceased/404220

Michael Krikorian is a writer from Los Angeles. He was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and for the Fresno Bee. He writes under the pseudonym "Jimmy Dolan" for the Mozza Tribune. His website is www.KrikorianWrites.com and his first novel is called "Southside".

In a Bombed-Out Church, Karabakh Soldier Leaves the Battlefield to Marry Sweetheart

25 October, 2020 07:51

When American actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier in Monaco in 1956 there was a lot of media covering the wedding. A quarter century later, at the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Charles in London there were throngs of press clamoring for photos. And in 2014, the media hullabaloo to get to the marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in Italy reached a feverish pitch.

But, all those weddings – and likely every other wedding in history – can’t compare to the percentage of media present at the October 24, 2020 wedding of Mariam, 25, and Hovik, 25, in Shushi, Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh).
Accompanying the couple were two friends plus the priest. Surrounding them were 60 members of the press from at least nine countries. That works out to 92% of those in attendance were media, a record unlikely to be ever broken.

Sometime before war broke out on September 27, when Azerbaijani forces assaulted the Armenian autonomous region known as both Nagorno Karabakh and Artsakh, Hovik and Mariam, his high school sweetheart from Martuni, set October 24  as their wedding day.

When the bombs started falling, Mariam’s family fled to Yerevan, for safety, but she stayed behind in Stepanakert. Hovik was rushed to the front with his army unit.

Fighting was fierce and he lost many friends. As they lay dying, Hovik thought of his wedding and the Armenian tradition that a soldier should replace his fallen comrades with children of his own.  He was determined not to delay his marriage.  To top it off, it is considered bad luck to postpone a wedding.

So, the plans held. Hovik received permission from his military superiors to have a two-day leave to get married in Shushi at the St. Ghazanchetsots church on the anointed day. Then, on October 8, the church was severely damaged by Azerbaijani air attacks. The church was attacked twice.

But the wedding was bound and determined to happen. Hovik and Mariam had planned to keep it quiet. It would only be them and two friends - the best man and maid of honor. But, as Armenians are apt to do, somebody spilled the beans and word reached the press center in Stepanakert.  

The word was out. A soldier got to leave the battlefield to marry his sweetheart in a bombed-out church. Talk about a fairytale wedding.

Today the wedding happened under a beautiful blue sky and with no air raid sirens wailing.

Miriam, dressed, or course, in a traditional white dress appeared from the sidewalk and started walking toward the church. She was surrounded by cameramen and reporters, many wearing helmets, a few wearing Covid masks. Halfway to the entrance to Sourp Ghazanchetsots, Hovik, wearing non-traditional wedding outfit of army fatigues, greeted her. The two kissed quickly and led the throngs inside.

With a eight-meter wide hole in the ceiling, and a enormous pile of rubble on the church floor, they were married in a brief, solemn ceremony surrounded by the mob of press.

Outside, the couple released to white doves and gave some brief interviews.

“My parents were married in war time,” Miriam said. “I strongly believe and hope we will be the last generation married in wartime.  And I know Hovik will return to me.”

The two got into a white Honda Civic and took off. Hovik has to return to the front tomorrow. Tonight is the night.

READ this story on Civilnet here copy and paste this link if you can’t click on it. https://www.civilnet.am/news/2020/10/25/In-a-Bombed-Out-Church-Karabakh-Soldier-Leaves-the-Battlefield-to-Marry-Sweetheart/403943

Also Read: On Karabakh Frontline, Faith Remains a Key Weapon

Michael Krikorian is a writer from Los Angeles. He was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and for the Fresno Bee. He writes under the pseudonym "Jimmy Dolan" for the Mozza Tribune. His website is www.KrikorianWrites.com and his first novel is called "Southside".

THE SPECIAL FORCES PRIEST WHO GOES TO THE FRONT LINES IN KARABAKH

25 October, 2020 02:07

On Karabakh Frontline, Faith Remains a Key Weapon

By Michael Krikorian

If you can imagine a priest who was a badass, you’d get Father Varazdat, a priest who wears two uniforms. 

Father Varazdat Najaryan stands - a rock solid 6-foot, two inches -  in front of the Holy Savior Church in downtown Stepanakert dressed in his black priest robe and pulls it aside revealing his army fatigues. He’s heading today to the front lines of the war. He knows war well. He was in two of them as a member of Armenia’s Special Forces Unit.

But, these days he goes to the front in hopes of inspiring the spirituality of the men fighting the invading Azerbaijanis.

“First, we go to the front to inspire the soldiers, to strengthen and encourage their faith, to expel fear from them,” Najaryan says. “But what often happens is the opposite. They inspire us. We see their honor and courage and we are strengthened.”

On the morning of September 27,  Najaryan was at home in Yerevan preparing for service at St. Anna Church when someone yelled out, “They are shooting at Armenia.”

That was the beginning of the Azerbaijani offensive to take Artsakh, the mountainous autonomous region also known as Norgano Karabakh. Instantaneously, Father Varazdat felt the call of duty. “I knew I had to be here. The earth of Armenia was calling me

Soon he was at the church in Stepanakert and then to the front lines, a varying, ever changing battlefield, that has found him in many places and often transforming himself. “You go to the war as a priest, but once you are there, you turn into a soldier. A Kalashnikov is never far away from me.”

Still, having seen so much, he offers his take on war and compares the AK47 to faith. “Yes, you need a rifle, it helps, of course. It is a strong weapon. But, an even stronger weapon is spirituality. Confidence in good faith is an actual physical weapon. It gives you real physical strength. Not only in a spiritual, mental way, but in an actual muscular way. Your arms are stronger. Your legs are stronger. You are more focused. Your determination mounts.”

And, he says, if you’re fortunate to be surrounded by similar fighters – and Armenians are – it only increases your instincts to fight and survive and surmount the odds.  “You are not only fighting for yourself; you are fighting for the 100 around you, behind you and to your sides.”

He talks about the “many miracles” the soldiers in Martouni, in Martakert have told him.  When pressed, he tells of one tale.

“A soldier had a thick New Testament in his breast pocket in front of his heart. He was hit by a projectile and the Bible stopped it from hurting him.”

What book of the Bible, he is asked. Was it Luke? Matthew?

Father Varazdet Najaryan smiles and says “The next time I see him, I will find out.”

READ THIS ON CIVILNET HERE, please copy and paste - https://www.civilnet.am/news/2020/10/25/On-Karabakh-Frontline-Faith-Remains-Key-Weapon/403923