Epress.am News from Armenia
Whether in conflict, in peace or in the current state of no-peace, no-war, women’s voices on both sides of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border are rarely heard in mainstream discourse. Women often feel like they don’t have a voice whether it be in their personal and family lives, in their community or in the affairs of their country, so reads the introduction to a new trilingual (Armenian, Azeri, English) blog of a cross-border project titled Armenian and Azerbaijani Women’s Narratives Project.
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 (sponsored by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation as part of its “Unbiased E-Media Coverage in Armenia and Azerbaijan” program). 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 second interview in the series.
To read the interview in full, visit the blog by clicking here. No photographs were taken of the interviewees to create a more comfortable interview environment and to respect their privacy.
Here is one interview from the project with Shahla Sultanova originally from the region of Zagatala in Azerbaijan:
I grew up in an Avarian community. We didn’t grow up as Azerbaijani girls, with lots of limitations. Of course, we had some, but not things like wearing long skirts or not. It’s funny but my parents didn’t care what kind of make-up I have, and where I go and who my friends are. We didn’t talk a lot about marriage and at what age I should be married. Or as a girl you should do this or that. My mom is Azerbaijani, she is from a different region. She tried to do this, but it didn’t work because majority of children there are not like she wanted us to be.
I guess, it comes from my community. We grew up like boys and my parents cared about what I wanted. We grew up like boys and we grew in the mountains where you cannot be very ladylike, you know “khanim” kind of girl, like Azerbaijanis say.
On Education, Moving to the US and Doing ‘Men’s Work’
I moved to the United States when I was 28. I thought that it was a problem and that I should change that but in the United States I understood that I was just individualistic and could not live in a communal society. That is shy I did not feel like a minority in the United States. I felt that way more in Azerbaijan, even if I grew up here and I speak the language and even if my mom is Azerbaijani.
I entered the department of English philology at Ganja State University. I cried a lot because I didn’t want to move to Ganja, I wanted to move to Baku but I didn’t have a high enough score, I guess. That was a free education, the only thing that my government gave me and it was worthless, I didn’t learn anything. But I was very active outside of university, I spent a lot of time with youth organizations and some centers.
There I learned that there was a chance for me to go to the United States and get education. I spent lots of time on investigating how I could get to the US, what I can study. I applied several times and failed. Again it’s hard to understand why you fail.
But then I studied in Georgia, at GIPA, it was a scholarship, again it was a free education. It was a very good education, I am happy to be a part of it. It was practical journalism, and I always wanted more. After GIPA where I studied journalism, I went to the US and it was the greatest experience in my life.
At home, my sister and I did a lot of men’s work. But my dad would never cook and if he is home, we should bring him tea. He considers it to be woman’s job. He cannot even take food from the kitchen, we should serve it to him.
I do have friends, I am a lucky person, but they cannot always understand me, especially after I came back from the US. They say that my image, my taste was “spoiled” because I don’t care about… Azeri women care about themselves a lot – like everything, the polished nails, very nice clothes. I don’t care about this anymore. They complain and say that United States spoiled me.
On the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
I disliked Armenians for a while but I think it has changed since that time. Now I don’t care – I had Armenian friends in Georgia and in the United States. I don’t hate them at all, and I don’t see any difference, and I don’t think they are guilty. It’s a political conflict.
I got more mature and I could think beyond Azerbaijan. May be because I am an ethnic minority too. In my region, a few people sometimes say, “We should be independent, we should not be a part of Azerbaijan.” I can understand this but I don’t think it’s smart to think like that or to have that desire. If we are ethnic minorities it does not mean that we should be separated. We still can be a part of Azerbaijan and I guess Azerbaijan is very, very tolerant to ethnic minorities. I can openly say that I am Avar. It’s different in Georgia where it’s difficult to say I am Chechen or Swan. I saw my classmates’ reaction, they have some minorities and people don’t talk about it. I was actually respected.
It’s difficult to talk about Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and Karabakh. I think this conflict will not be solved until the media stop attacking each other, until ANS won’t stop doing things like starting the news from saying that the conflict is continuing.
People need to get educated. The more educated you are the less nationalistic you are, the less you will be in a conflict. If people don’t have a chance for good education, of course there will be all that nationalism. The more they will stay nationalistic, the more the conflict will stay frozen and it’s not going to be resolved.
They should understand that Armenians did bad things to Azerbaijan but Azerbaijanis also did some kind of bad things to Armenians. They shouldn’t hate people because of their ethnicity, they shouldn’t generalize. There are lots of cases in history – French and English had conflicts over hundreds of years but they live in peace now. People should know it. Conflict resolution is not only among politicians, it should be among people too. Even if they say that the borders are open now, if people don’t accept it, it’s a new step toward new conflict. I don’t think they educate people about other conflicts.