Home / Armenia / ‘I am from Karabakh, I was born in Azerbaijan, I live in Armenia. I don’t know who I am. I’m human’: Interview

‘I am from Karabakh, I was born in Azerbaijan, I live in Armenia. I don’t know who I am. I’m human’: Interview

Over the past few months, two teams of journalists, writers and bloggers in both Armenia and Azerbaijan interviewed a handful of women of different ages and backgrounds, both in the capitals of Yerevan and Baku and in the regions as part of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Women’s Narratives Project. We asked them about their lives, their hopes and wishes for themselves, their families and their countries. Epress.am will feature the interviews — one a week, published every Monday. This is the seventh interview in this series, and though there are more, we will end our series with this interview. To continue following the interview series, please visit the blog.

To hear the audio recording (in Armenian) and read the interview below in full, click here. No photographs were taken of the interviewees to create a more comfortable interview environment and to respect their privacy.

The interview with Alla took place on Feb. 21, 2011, in Yerevan, Armenia. Alla is 24 years old and works in journalism. Here is her story:

I was born in Azerbaijan, but now I live in Armenia, with my father. My mother died in the summer of 1988; I wasn’t yet 2 years old. At the time we still lived in Kirovabad [present-day Ganja]. My mother died from something absurd when she was 34 years old: while she was eating plums the pit choked her. When mother died, for a few days no one could get close to me, I was shouting, crying. I felt that something wasn’t right, that something wrong was happening, but I didn’t know what it was. My mother’s grave is in Azerbaijan. We were forced to come to Armenia. We hadn’t brought anything with us, only whatever we had on us. A couple of documents, our birth certificates, two, three photos — that’s what we brought with us.

After we moved to Armenia, my father began to work in a factory as an engineer. In the beginnning, we lived with 15 relatives and only my father was working. Next to that factory were dormitories, where we moved. Part of that building was given to those who both worked at the factory and were refugees. Now there are only 9 or 10 families left in the building. The refugees don’t legally own the apartments and the building no longer belongs to the factory. Now we’re waiting for what will happen next. Maybe we will receive apartments in other dormitories, but I don’t know when; perhaps in a year, maybe in 2 years, 5 years.

I have relatives in Karabakh: I’ve been to Shushi. Everyone I know in Karabakh complains about the same things people in Armenia complain about. There’s no work, there are price increases. Our neighbor told me there’s a serious problem there: girls get married very early. Getting married is the purpose of very many. They graduate from school and that’s it, the next step is to get married. But that’s not very different from Armenia. I’m 24 years old, and for many that means I’m late in getting married. There are many who think like that in Yerevan too, but I don’t associate with such people.

My father lived his entire life in Azerbaijan; he was born in Karabakh, but then they lived in Azerbaijan. He knows Azeri very well, apart from Russian and Armenian. I think he regretted coming to Yerevan and now he would very much want for us at least to be outside of Armenia.

People like my father came here when they were 35–38 years old. They were deprived of an important, big part of life. Now they’re 50 years old. It seems, they didn’t feel how time passed. It was the parents’ purpose to get the children on their feet; the children get older and suddenly you realize that 20 years passed. Armenians from Azerbaijan weren’t always made to feel welcome here. We were blamed for many problems.

I don’t know who I am. When they ask me where I’m from, I say that I am from Karabakh, my family is from Karabakh, I was born in Azerbaijan, I live in Armenia. I’m human. I recently started thinking about living somewhere else. I don’t know where; definitely far away from former Soviet countries. There either has to be huge changes in Armenia or you have to just go. But I don’t believe a revolution will happen in Armenia.

I could’ve hated Azerbaijan. I feel it in me, the consquences of everything that happened with us. But I don’t have that hatred children are taught in schools here. We are very much like Azerbaijanis. That’s all. And when we are like each other, we are like each other in the bad things, too. I don’t want my [future] child to go and fight. I want my child to live well. They teach me that I have enemies outside of the country. But I have many enemies inside my country. It’s not the person outside who raises the prices. When soldiers are killed not by snipers, but here [non-combat deaths internally, in the army], when I don’t want for anyone to go to the army because my brother went in the 90s and I know how it is, I cannot respect the army.

Everyone thinks that he is free, that you can speak and act freely. No, you think that which they teach you. If it seems to you that you’re patriotic, you watch random concerts on television and for you that’s patriotism, they’re simply teaching you to be a slave so it’s easier to govern you. So you won’t take to the streets. Society is very ill, it’s scary. You have to think like everyone else, be like everyone else, speak like everyone else, and move like everyone else.

I consider it wrong to judge someone by his or her family. The conept of Azerbaijanis doesn’t exist. There are specific people, specific names, and a specific way of thinking. If we view everything like this — as individuals, not by ethnicity —, everything will be normal. As a nation, all nations are crazy. Individual, separate people are all like each other. That’s all.