- ZINAIDA POGOSOVNA AKOPIAN
Born 1937
Dispatcher
Kavkazenergoremont Electric Booster Station
Her daughters
- GAYANE (GAYA) VAZGENOVNA AKOPIAN
Born 1970
Orderly
Sumgait Municipal Hospital No. 1
- DIANA VAZGENOVNA AKOPIAN
Born 1978
Second-Year Student
Sumgait Secondary School No. 13
Residents at Building 21/31, Apartment 47
Microdistrict No. 3
Sumgait
-Zinaida: On March 20 we arrived in Yerevan, and the next day they reg¬istered us at the train station and took us to the boarding house. The condi¬tions were wonderful, thanks to our Armenians, who received us. But it's not relaxing all the same. I don't know how everyone else feels about it, but for me it's torture. We don't have a place to call our own. I had a two-bed¬room apartment in Sumgait, my children went to school and we lived well, in friendship. It's painful that in our times, in 1988, in the Soviet period, peo¬ple can break into our apartment and try to kill me and my children, in whom I've put all my efforts and my whole youth. Everything was going well for us: my older daughter was studying at the Institute, the middle one was preparing to enter medical school and was interning as an orderly, and my youngest had been sick for a long time, but had returned to health. I have been though a lot in my life: it's been seven years since I lost my hus¬band, I raised my children by myself. Lots of women have similar fates, but there's nothing to be done about it. But I can't control myself when I remem¬ber what happened in Sumgait on February 27, 28, and 29, it was just a horror, it's indescribable.
On February 27 our relative, Ira, came to visit us. She's better friends with my oldest daughter, and so right away she asked, "Where's Vika?" I say, "Vika's off in Pirkuli on a trip for three days, she's supposed to come back tomorrow." My middle daughter, Gaya, had baked a cake and we sat there talking and laughing, drinking tea. Then Gaya and Diana went to walk Ira home.
They left and a few minutes went by; suddenly I hear noise. I raced out to the balcony—our balcony is right across from the bus station, we live at the corner of Mir and Druzhba Streets—I look and see that there are hoards of people near the bus station and they're all shouting something. What they're shouting I can't understand. Our neighbor is standing on his balcony, too. I ask, "Nufar, what's happened?" He says, "I don't know, I can't figure it out either." I got scared—the kids had gone outside, and I wanted to run after them, but then there was a knock at the door. I open the door and it's the kids. "Mamma," says Gayane, "you'll never believe what's going on out there! It's awful!" Ira says, "Aunt Zina, they're shouting, 'Karabagh! Karabagh! Karabagh is ours!' We didn't know what was going on. They're threatening to drive out the Armenians and slaughter them."
I called my brother, and his wife answered the phone. I said, "Aunt Tamara, don't worry, Ira is staying here with us, and we'll see her home lat¬er." I couldn't shut my eyes all night long, even until morning. I was worried about Vika. My God, what was going on, what had happened?!
-Gayane: That day, on the 27th, we stood on the balcony and observed what was happening, although Mamma wouldn't allow us to watch all of it. There weren't 50 yards between our building and the bus station. We could see and hear everything perfectly. They were stopping buses, dragging peo¬ple out, leading all the passengers out, looking for Armenians. If they found an Armenian on the bus, then it started ... I don't know what to call it...
-Zinaida: It's called slaughter.
-Gayane: The mob would descend on people and beat them. I don't know if they were killing them or not, but when they left them, they lay still, not moving, as though nothing was left of them. One person was lying there and they started dragging him. The police were standing right there, to the side, not doing anything, they didn't take any steps to calm that mob.
It was awful to stand there and watch it all from the balcony. And you couldn't go anywhere, somehow . . . you wanted to be able to see everything so as to tell of it later. We wanted to leave Sumgait that day. What kept us was the idea that we live in the Soviet Union, and that something would be done about it. Where in the world was our government?!
-Zinaida: We couldn't leave town, of course, because our older daughter wasn't home. And at the same time I was terrified for Gaya and Diana. On Sunday morning when I went to see Ira home, our neighbor said, "Zin', you know they went into Valodya's house and smashed everything he had. They murdered his father and two sons." Valodya is our neighbor, he's an Armenian, he lives on the first floor. I think, my God, what is happening?! And in broad daylight!
I saw Ira home and when on the way back I came across a mob shouting "Slay the Armenians! Karabagh is ours!" This was at 12 o'clock in the after¬noon. On the way I stopped into a bread store and the saleswoman says. "They beat our store manager, they thought he was an Armenian and they beat him, but he was an Azerbaijani." And I asked, "Did they kill him?" She says, "No, he's in serious condition." I left there and started to walk home on that same street, but the mob started moving in my direction. I turned off the street and went down the little way that goes toward the Sputnik store. There I met another crowd, but these weren't bandits, these were our people from Sumgait. I was so frightened that I walked without knowing where I as going, I couldn't feel my legs or the ground under my feet. I was walking and there was a boy standing before my eyes. This was on the 27th, around evening time. He ran under our balcony, and the mob surged toward him shouting, "He's an Armenian, get him!" He wore a black coat. They grabbed him, that boy, near the bus stop, I saw it. They grabbed him by the legs and struck his head on the asphalt.
I made it home but I just couldn't calm down. My oldest daughter was in my thoughts. I was thinking, my daughter's coming home now, they'll stop her bus and she'll be gone. There's no police, no protection, nothing. It's like they had all died, there's no one, nothing, no authorities whatsoever. I can't even find the words for it! I look and see an Ikarus arriving. Before going to the bus station they stop near our place, across from the Kosmos movie the¬ater. So this Ikarus stops there and the gang is yelling, the Azerbaijanis are running toward it yelling, "Armenians, out!" And I see them take the Armenians and beat them, killing them. I can't watch it any more. It was a nightmare. I just couldn't watch it. But Gaya was standing there watching it, and I scolded her. She says, "Mamma, I have to see it, I have to know what's happening, I have to see it with my own eyes so I can tell our people of it later. So our children will know."
-Gayane: We saw a great deal on the 27th. They caught no less than 20 people before my eyes. I can't say for sure if they killed them or not...
-Zinaida: There were too many people there, the mob was too big. You couldn't make anything out. But I saw that boy in the black coat with my own eyes. He was 18 or 19 years old.
-Gayane: I think he was older, probably, about 22. A tall fellow, a big guy, in a coat. He was walking quickly, but when they shouted that he was an Armenian, he tore off running. And the mob went after him. They caught him right under our balcony. I don't know. I don't think there could have been much left of him after that. You can imagine what happens when a crowd attacks one person. It was a mob, big, angry, and featureless. You know, there was a similarity in the way they were dressed, mostly they were wearing long black coats. You couldn't even tell them apart, they were all wearing black and they all looked alike.
-Zinaida: When they picked up that boy and struck him against the asphalt and he cried "Mamma!" 1 ran into the room. I couldn't watch any longer. An awful lot was going on right then, in various places, it wasn't only that boy, several people were being beaten up. You couldn't see all of it at once, but when that boy cried "Mamma!" I immediately started watching only him.
—Gayane: On that first day it went on from about six in the morning until twelve at night. At midnight they dispersed and the police took their place They were scattered about in all districts. But how can you explain the fact that by morning, when it had already started getting light, around seven o'clock, our police were gone? The police disappeared and yielded their positions to the bandits. In the morning they started gathering at our inter¬section again, at the bus station and at the entrance to downtown. From morning on all the roads and mass transit stops were covered, and by nine o'clock you couldn't even see the ground. There were thousands of people in the crowd. Again they began stopping vehicles and checking for Armenians.
-Zinaida: They had signals. I realized that when I noticed that they made a cross with their arms, they crossed their arms over their heads. The cross, evidently, meant that the vehicle had Armenians in it. They let the Azerbaijani cars through, and they stopped the Armenian ones and started their pogrom.
-Gayane: They stopped a white Zhiguli and asked the driver what his nationality was. He got out and said they were from Baku. "But what is your nationality?" He says Armenian. They immediately start shouting, "Ermeni, Ermeni!" And he says, "What's going on? I'm coming from Baku. I don't live in Sumgait." "Doesn't matter, who cares if you're from Baku or Sumgait." Anyway the crowd pounced on him and started beating him, and they dragged a woman—his wife, probably—out of the car. At this point the police came and took the two and led them away. Then the mob started smashing the car, and then burned it. The flames blazed ... it was a horrible fire! Then everyone ran away, they thought the car was going to explode. About 20 minutes later another car comes along, a green Moskvich. They ran up shouting "Ermeni! Ermeni!" But this time they didn't pull the people out of the car, they didn't beat them. Maybe they burned them along with the car, because no one emerged from the flames. The neighbor boy Vakhit was standing on the balcony too, acquaintances of his walked by below, and he asked them and they said, "Yes, they burned them along with the car." About two hours later a whole wedding procession came by, and there was a doll on the first car. We thought they were Armenians, but the cars started to honk loudly. They were Azerbaijanis, and they were immediately allowed through.
-Zinaida: The driver waved his hand as if to say 'get out of the way.' The whole crowd parted and the procession passed through freely.
-Gayane: By the way, at the marriage hall, which is right in the courtyard of our building, there was a wedding that day. The Azerbaijanis were cele¬brating and dancing. On the streets there was grief and death, people were being killed, and people were celebrating the whole time.
-Zinaida: Before the apartment itself was attacked I asked Gaya to call and find out when the tourist bus was supposed to arrive. She went to her girlfriend's in the building, she lives in the first entryway, on the third floor. Gaya came back and said, "Mamma, the bus is supposed to come around eight, after eight." You can imagine what I was feeling, how hard it was: Vika knew nothing about what was happening and was coming to meet her death. Then I heard shouting. I raced to the window and see that the belong¬ings of our neighbors from the second entryway are being thrown outdoors. They were thrashing about with the pillows and the feathers were flying like snow. I started to cry. I am walking around the room, crying, wailing: Vika's not here, what will come of her . . . Gaya, of course, was consoling me: "Mamma, nothing will happen to her, don't worry, calm down, she's in good company, they'll look out for her."
Diana: I saw the green car burn. The car was burning when we went out onto the balcony. Gaya pushed me away, telling me to get off the balcony. I left. Then they came up to the balcony and asked if there were any Armenians here.
-Zinaida: You're right, I forgot about that, that was on the 27th.
Diana: There's a small, grassy area in front of our balcony; there are trees planted there. The mob asked if there were any Armenians in the building. All the neighbors said, no, there are no Armenians here. There weren't a lot of Armenians in our building, but there weren't just a few Armenian fami¬lies, either.
-Gayane: They fell upon the apartments on the 28th. There were terribly many of them. Our courtyard is huge, and it was completely filled with them.
-Zinaida: Katusev had made an appearance on television earlier. He said that two people, Azerbaijanis, had been killed in Karabagh. And when he said that. . . you know how bees sound, have you heard how they buzz? It was like the buzzing of millions of bees . . . and with this buzzing they flew into our courtyard, howling and shouting. I don't know how to describe it. By this point we were afraid to watch from the balcony, but when I looked out of the bedroom window—the Znaniye Bookstore is down there, and Armenians live on the second and fourth floors—I saw their things being thrown out the windows. I realized that they would be upon us any minute. I shouted to Gayane, "Gaya, hide the gold." That's honestly what I told my child. I grabbed Diana. I didn't know what to do! Vika still wasn't home, and it was already getting dark. I was afraid to look at the time because I was already horrified as it was.
-Gayane: Just in case, we changed the television channel from the Moscow station to the Azerbaijani one.
-Zinaida: And turned it up loud.
-Gayane: We never listened to Azerbaijani music. It just didn't do much for us. In all those years we almost never listened to it. But sometimes we would watch some entertainment show or film on Azerbaijani television. And that was it. And here we had it turned up full blast. So they would think we were Azerbaijanis.
-Zinaida: Well you can imagine, they're slaughtering Armenians, robbing them, and we're listening to this concert music from Baku. Our Azerbaijani Neighbors suggested we do it, they knocked on the door and told Gaya to turn on Azerbaijani music. But we already had it on anyway. Turn on the lights, they told us, so they will think you're not Armenians. They're saying the Armenians are afraid to turn on their lights, they're hiding.
-Gayane: Apparently there was some kind of arrangement, because we noticed that the lights were off only in Armenian apartments, that is, the Azerbaijanis were warned, and every last one of them had their rights on. When we turned the lights off two of our neighbors came immediately, and later, another one. "Turn on the lights," they told us, "please. Nothing will happen. Be calm. Nothing will happen."
-Zinaida: "We won't allow them to come into your apartment."
-Gayane: We believed those people. We had never done anything bad to them.
-Zinaida: After the whole nightmare, about March 15, before we left for Armenia, when I was coming into the building they were all crying. The Azerbaijanis were crying, saying, "Can it be there is no God? How could they raise their hands against your family? You never did anyone any harm, you never refused anyone anything, not in hard times, or in time of fortune, or in time of mourning. How could they give you away? How could they sell you down the river?" They really had given us away. Some of them pro¬tected us, but others gave us away. They sold us down the river.
-Gayane: I was wearing slacks that day, and when it all began I became cautious for some reason and I changed my clothes. Azerbaijani women don't wear pants. Young Armenian and Russian girls in Sumgait wore pants, but the Azerbaijanis found that very strange. And I thought I better put on a skirt, otherwise they won't believe me if I told them we were Azerbaijanis. There was nothing else we could do. No other way out. I was forced to turn myself into God knows who. I let my hair down, tousled it, and threw a scarf over my head.
-Zinaida: And she told me, "Mamma, you hide. Take Diana and go into the other room. You two look more like Armenians. They'll figure out that we're Armenians right away." But how could I go away and leave her there?!
-Gayane: I went out onto the balcony. It worked out better that way. We were the only Armenian family in the fourth entryway. This gave us hope: we were the only ones, the neighbors wouldn't let them in. They, the Azerbaijanis, would fear for themselves and for their children. I looked and saw someone crawling up on the balcony from below, it was easy to get up onto our balcony. When we would lose the keys the neighbors would let us into their places and we would crawl across onto our balcony and get in that way. So I turned around and saw a guy with a knife on our balcony. He looks at me and shouts, "What nationality are you here?"
-Zinaida: At the same time they were knocking on the door.
-Gayane: "What nationality are you?" he's shouting. Well at first I was frightened, but then I got control of myself and answered in perfect Azerbaijani, "You should be ashamed of yourself, asking a question like that. Can't you see I'm an Azerbaijani? If I were an Armenian would I come out to meet you face to face and look you in the eyes?" He looks at me and tells the people with him, "Yes, Azerbaijanis live here." From below they tell him, "Check it out, it can't be, they have to be Armenians." And he asks me again, "What nationality are you?" I say, "Can't you see?" I started fuming. I could not say anything else. "You're blind, that's for sure! You can yell all you want, but that won't make us Armenians." I hear them breaking down our door, and Mamma went toward the door. I say, "I don't have time to deal with you, they're breaking down our door." I go to the door and ask, "Who is it?" They answer, "Open up!" I say, "Wait, why are you breaking the door? What's going on? I'm opening up." We never locked the lower lock, it was broken, but now they had locked it out of fear, and I couldn't get it open. I say wait, I'm looking for the key. I opened the door—it was almost broken down already. I opened the door and they burst in. I say, "What's going on? Why are you breaking down our door?"
-Zinaida: Then they started climbing in from the balcony. They're shout¬ing, "Why don't you open the door?" And I say, "Well you've already come in the balcony." Then Diana sees their knives, runs into the bathroom, and closes the door. Gaya cries out, "Mamma, Diana ran into the bathroom!" I ran to the door and forgot that we were pretending to be Azerbaijanis, and said in Armenian: "Diana, open the door!" Gaya tried to calm them down, and I'm shouting with tears in my eyes for Diana to open the door.
-Diana: I was sitting on the couch with my doll, Little Red Riding Hood. That guy climbed in from the balcony with a big knife with a yellow handle. They put it up to Mamma's stomach. I ran to the bathroom, opened the door, and slammed it behind me. I was frightened, and started to cry. I shouted, "Mamma, they want to kill you!" And then . . . then they started shouting, "Give us your passports." And Gaya says, "What do you need passports for, we're Azerbaijanis."
-Gayane; I tried to convince them that we were Azerbaijanis, I was trying everything I could. I could get on my knees and plead. I could humble myself, because at that moment I was worried about other lives than just my own. To be honest I didn't care about anything else, as long as my little sister would survive, her life and health had cost us so dearly! I tell them, "What, don't you understand anything?" They started shouting, they were tremen¬dously excited, shouting with terribly loud voices, saying that in Stepanakert their girls were being killed, raped, and tossed around with pitchforks. Why shouldn't they do the same to us? I said, "Who's doing all that? Who is doing it? Some Armenians! What does that have to do with us? Give me the knife, I'll cut my own face." "Now you calm down," they tell me.
-Zinaida: I told them, "Why didn't you deal with them there! There, in Karabagh? Nothing has happened here, no one has been fighting here, not we with the Armenians, nor they with us. Why didn't you give it right back to them there? What've we got to do with this?" I got confused. I had been saying that we were Azerbaijanis, but suddenly I started speaking as though I was an Armenian, but they didn't notice. One of them was next to me, with a knife at my breast. And he says to the others, "What pretty girls." He meant Gaya and my 10-year-old Diana. I was terrified. Gaya started assuring them that we were Azerbaijanis. One guy stood in the doorway and gave us bad looks.
-Gayane: He demanded the passports. I said, "Young man, I don't have my passport here." He says, "Let's have the passport, we won't believe you without your passport." And one of them started hurriedly searching for documents. They turned the wardrobe in the other room upside down, took the picture off the wall, and started pulling the clothes off their hooks, yelling and shouting, "Passport! Passport!" They all started yelling, there was so much noise in the apartment. They were all shouting. My hair stood on end. Suddenly I said, "Listen, my Papa died, 40 days haven't passed yet, we have a Muslim household, we're in mourning, you should be ashamed of yourselves, you've disgraced your honor." And then Mamma started to cry.
-Zinaida: I started crying: "My husband died, 40 days haven't yet passed, aren't you ashamed of yourselves!" In fact my husband had died seven years earlier, in 1981. "We're in mourning, and you burst in here demanding docu¬ments. The documents are at the housing office, I'm filing for my pension." Well it seemed like they believed us. Then one guy said, "They're Lezgins. Can't you see, there are no men here, only women. Leave." Another fellow in the group agreed with him, he also said that we were Lezgins. But a third said, "No, they're Armenians." Well the other two convinced him, I don't know how, and all the rest of them listened to them too. There were abort 50 of them, if not more, all in our three-room apartment, even the entryway was filled. They started leaving. Yes, we're Lezgins, we're Lezgins." They started leaving, and one of them took our tape recorder with him. And the one who had first called us Lezgins says, "Leave that, what are you doing?" They seemed to obey that guy.
-Gayane: He was tall, wearing baggy jeans and a coat.
-Zinaida: With a little moustache, I think.
-Gayane: No, he didn't have a moustache, he was tall with brown hair, he wasn't a bad-looking sort. He didn't have anything in his hands.
-Zinaida: He stood at the threshold.
-Gayane: Yes, he didn't look like a bad guy, and you know, his face seemed familiar to me. I had seen him somewhere. And more than once. But I can't remember where. When he came in I was stupefied, I had a premoni¬tion that he wouldn't be able to remain indifferent. When he said that we were Lezgins and that they should leave, such gladness started to glow inside of me. Hope. They continued to argue on their way out. Some said, "They're Armenians all the same." And that fellow answered, "Even if they are Armenians, it's shameful, the father died, they're mourning, there's noth¬ing but women in the house, there's no men. We should stay out of the apartment." "What do you mean, stay out? We can go in there!" And he said, "No, we should stay out, they're Lezgins, we're leaving here." The three of them protected us.
-Zinaida: No, the two of them. The one in the short coat and the one in the grey suit, who stood at the threshold, about 19 or 20 years old. Well they were all young really. The two of them defended us.
-Diana: Three, three!
-Zinaida: Do you remember the third one, Diana?
-Diana: Yes, he was wearing dark clothes.
-Gayane: The third one was the one who came back. He wore a long brown coat.
-Diana: He wore a long, darkish brown coat, and his hair was dark too. When they left, they told him downstairs that those women were Armenians, and ran back and said that they were going to kill us.
-Zinaida: They had all left, and we had started to calm down a little, and I closed the door. And then there is a knock. I told Gaya, "Take Diana and go into the other room." My daughters went into the dining room, and I opened the door. There was a guy there who said, "Run, hide! They're coming to kill you now!" We ran up to the third floor. We had some good neighbors up there, Azerbaijanis. I sent the kids and stood there alone, not knowing what to do. I was so far gone . . . Out of a whole room I couldn't even think of anything to take. I even forgot to take my work documents; at the time I had been preparing a report to send to Baku, and the documents were at home. I couldn't see anything ... I could only see Vika, my older daughter. I sent Gaya and Diana upstairs, and stood there asking that fellow, "Should I close the door and leave everything like this?" He says, "What do you mean, door? Get out of here, they're coming to kill you! What are you standing there for?" And I ran after the children.
-Gayane: We barely had time to get up to the third floor when they burst into our apartment and started shouting, "Where are the Armenians?" We were already at the neighbors'. They had an infant at the time, and the neighbor said, "Don't you worry, I'm not letting anyone in this apartment no matter what."
-Zinaida: On the third floor there I started asking the folks, our neighbors, to go meet Vika. The bus was due to arrive at eight o'clock. I dissolved in tears, Gaya was soothing me, Diana was next to us, she was crying too, and I'm already thinking that I've lost my older daughter, but deep in my heart I still believe she's alive . . . And my tears choked me. I was going out of my mind. But no one could leave the building, the courtyard was packed with people, swarming with them. From the balcony the neighbor in whose apartment we were hiding asked the bandits, "Where are those Armenians, the ones who were at home? Where did they make off to?" They told him they didn't know. They asked him where he lived. He answered, "Can't you see, on the third floor." He asked them specially to divert attention from his own apartment. We heard them taking free reign of our apartment, and they threw our color television off the balcony and it exploded.
-Gayane: Mamma was crying the whole time. She fell into a faint and we brought her around and held her back, because the whole time she kept making for the door to go outside, alternately raving and sobbing, shouting, and calling Vika. She didn't notice us, probably because we were next to her. Her thoughts were only on Vika. The neighbors who were hiding us were calming her too, offering tea.
-Zinaida: We are very grateful to them. Thanks to them my children and I are alive, well, and unharmed. When they were throwing our belongings out and burning them—the beds, the pillows, and the chairs—our neighbor came to us and said, "How lucky you are that it's not you standing there naked, but some other woman instead. You're from our part of the building, you lost your husband, you have children, thank God you're not in her posi¬tion, we wouldn't have been able to take it. I don't know what I would do." He of course wouldn't have done anything, he was just trying to calm us down. In the yard they were torturing our neighbors, fellow Armenians. They lived on the fifth floor, in the third entryway. A married couple, Vanya and Nina, and their three children. Their last name is V. They hid their two daughters, and stayed with their son to defend themselves, they even got boiling water ready, and an axe, and held them off for a long time, but then . . . They beat up the husband, dragged the wife outside, and stood her naked next to our burning things; her husband was lying at her feet on the ground. The crowd shouted, "Look at the naked Armenian!" They were going to throw the poor woman into the fire. The neighbors came out, an Azerbaijani woman threw her a scarf, and she covered herself with it, and the neighbors led her off to their apartment. All the neighbors saw and heard it...
-Gayane: Mamma wouldn't allow it but I went to the window and saw her standing there, and they took skewers that had been heated in the fire and stuck them into her body. Our neighbor, who lived in the same entry-way as Nina—she lives with us in the same boarding house now—saw what they had done, Nina showed her, from her knees up, almost up to her neck, her whole body was covered, riddled, with wounds.
-Zinaida: In the morning, during the night of the 29th, rather, after one o'clock, two buses approached the station. I wanted to run out. By then I didn't care any more if I lived or died, but Gayane wouldn't let me go, and the neighbors said that I would bring disaster to them and they would be slain along with their children. Gaya was crying and said that I forgot about them, my other children, but I could only think of Vika. I imagined her torn to pieces, I'm a mother, and they're just children, they don't understand. I would have jumped off the balcony and run to the soldiers for help. I was going to do it but Gayane wouldn't let me: "Mamma, please! Mamma, I beg of you!" The neighbors were sleeping and Gayane woke them with her cries. So we held on that way till morning.
On the morning of the 29th I told our neighbor I was going to go down¬stairs to our apartment, maybe Vika was lying there, murdered. He told me he would go himself. He was gone for about five minutes, but it seemed like an eternity to me. He returned and said there was no one there, nothing. I went down too, stole down like a mouse, and slipped in—everything was thrown all about. I didn't go to the soldiers because the armored personnel carriers were far away, farther than the bus station. I began looking for the briefcase with my work in it. I was miserable because of my daughter, and at the same time because of my work. My documents were there, my travel papers—I worked in the transport division—and my trip sheets.
-Gayane: Mamma is a very responsible person, she was always ready to work around the clock to do her job.
-Zinaida: I look around and I can't find the briefcase. I didn't care about the fact that everything had been stolen out of all three of my rooms, that everything was smashed, and the furniture was broken, I worried about that later, but at first I was concerned about the lost documents. I went into the kitchen. My daughter had hidden some valuables in the gas stove: my ring and my earrings. It was all there. Five minutes passed and Gayane ran in and said, "Mamma, hurry." And Diana came downstairs too. Gayane found her coat among the debris, and Diana found her track shoes, her coat, and some of her dresses.
-Diana: Immediately after we got back up to the neighbors they started throwing things around in the apartment under us. They threw a television onto the asphalt, it exploded so violently it sounded like a thunderclap. Then, when Vika wasn't there, I wouldn't eat, and they forced me, but I couldn't eat. Because I loved Vika terribly and she and I had always gone to the movies and gone for walks in the park. When we went into our apart¬ment the next day and everything was broken, right away I started looking for my dolls and my books, but I didn't see anything. When we went back upstairs I managed to take two cups from my tea service, and Gaya took Vika's suit and one of her own dresses. My Italian boots were gone, my brown coat, it was beautiful, there wasn't a one of my beautiful dolls, and my giant lion was gone too, the one that had been on top of the television. He was very large and very handsome. I had two satchels, one for first grade and the other for second grade, one was yellow-green with a boy and a girl on it, they're playing a drum and a violin, and there is a dog sitting there closing its ears, and on the other one were the letters A, B, C, D, E and the numbers 4+5, two girls and a boy with their mouths open like they are singing. They were beautiful satchels. They were gone too. I had many books, I collected them, they were in the bedside tables. And a boy had giv¬en me a little apron and a headband for my birthday, they weren't around either. And I had some big books, fat ones, and they disappeared, only one was left, The Malachite Box. The Adventures of Karlson, Pippi Longstocking, and Fairy Tales of the World were left. All the other books were gone.
-Zinaida: I continued searching for my briefcase, and then my supervisor arrived. He had waited for me until nine o'clock, but I didn't appear, and he thought something must have happened, so he came. He's a Russian, Aleksei Semyonovich Lomakin. Alik Aliyev, the mechanic, came with him. When they saw my wrecked apartment they were just petrified, they could not say a thing. When I saw them I started crying. My Azerbaijani neighbors came in. Some of them were crying, others were helping me pick up. I go on looking for my documents and at the same time put things into the wardrobe. Now that I remember it it's both funny and painful: How could I have thought that I had returned to my apartment and that everything had gone back to normal? Incidentally, later, when I went back to the apartment again, those things were gone too. And the door was gone. After my super¬visor left, in the afternoon, the neighbor said that we should leave, find another refuge. "I'm afraid," he said, "that someone saw you come to my apartment, and that they could kill you and us too." My God, where could I go, it was daytime and those ... I don't even know what to call them, the bandits, those marauders, those jackals, I don't know what to call them, I can't find the words, they were everywhere. Where should 1 go with two girls? When 1 opened the door I had tears in my eyes, and I was terrified . . . And he said, "Go to Alik's, he's an Azerbaijani, too." And I say, "You should have said that earlier, when my supervisor was here with the car, he could have taken us with him." Everyone feared for their own lives. What could I do? I went out into the entryway and stood. And he says, "Any other time I would keep you here a year, or two. But right now, I'm sorry ..." Then another door opened, also on the third floor. I ask the neighbor, "Tayara, can we hide at your place?" She's an Azerbaijani too. She says, "What kind of question is that? Come in!" She hid us. There were many people in the court¬yard, and Gaya and I hid in the wardrobe, and they put Diana under a mat¬tress, leaving a small opening so the child could breathe. Tayara said that when the bandits left she would let us out, and when they came back she would hide us again.
We sat in the wardrobe for about a half hour. Gaya became ill, and I allowed her to get out. My legs fell asleep and felt like cannons. We hadn't eaten or drunk anything for so long, since the 27th, when we saw that hor¬ror—and all of it just snapped in me. Tayara's husband went outside, even though I begged him to stay, saying there should be a man in the house. He said that he'd be in the courtyard, and if anything happened his wife would signal him. She put her passport and all of their documents on the table so if they suddenly came in she could show them that they were an Azerbaijani family. My girls went to the window—and what was going on out there! I feared for my children, that someone would recognize them from the street. Gaya let her hair down and put on a scarf so she would resemble an Azerbaijani, but directly across there was a 9-story building, their windows were right across from us, and I shouted that someone would see her and give us away on the spot. But she kept on looking.
-Diana: I watched too.
-Zinaida: Downstairs the bandits were fighting with the soldiers. The sol¬diers didn't shoot, they didn't have orders to. I saw them throwing rocks at the soldiers, they were young boys, 18- and 19-year olds, and they defended themselves . . . I'm a mother after all, and they were no different from my children. When one of the soldiers fell and his head started bleeding I had to stop looking, I couldn't watch anymore ... I imagined my children in their shoes ...
-Gayane: The troops had assumed their defense that morning and had cordoned off the buildings, and some of the soldiers surrounded the bus sta¬tion, Block 36, and our Microdistrict 3. But they only cordoned them off from the outside. The mob fell upon the soldiers, who started to protect themselves, and the mob surged into the courtyard with the soldiers after it. They caught several Azerbaijanis and started beating them with their clubs. One fell down and they cracked open another's head...
-Zinaida: They show Lebanon on television, and the war in Afghanistan—that's just what it was like. Like in America, how they attack demonstrations with shields and clubs—that's just how it was in our court¬yard.
-Gayane: Don't compare it with America, those were peaceful demonstra¬tions, but these?!
-Zinaida: But how could it happen here and not off somewhere in America! They attacked the soldiers, hurled stones at them . . . Then I thought, where's the tear gas that the Americans use to disperse demonstra¬tors? If they had used gas on those jackals they all would have scattered.
-Gayane: They would not have scattered. The soldiers had been there since morning, they didn't bring in fresh troops. They hadn't eaten, they were fine standing there for about three hours, but then they got tired. They weren't even allowed to sit down ... At noon they, the soldiers, attacked them, and then the tables were turned. The mob went after the soldiers, the guys were bunched into a group in the center street and covered themselves with their shields, and the Azerbaijanis surrounded them and threw paving stones at them. And those guys sat there covering themselves with their shields. And meanwhile tanks with machine guns were cruising the streets . . . They always say, "Our children have never seen war." I never even dreamed about it, there was no need to. But then I thought about those peo¬ple who had lived through a war. It was truly horrible . . . The guys were tired, exhausted, some had had their clubs taken away, others, their shields, they had been beaten, they were covered in blood ... So many died! They beat the soldiers with their own clubs and shields. And those guys stood there and couldn't defend themselves, they couldn't open fire. They couldn't even defend themselves, let alone us. It's comical...
-Zinaida: What are you saying? How can it be funny?
-Gayane: No, I didn't mean that: How could something like that happen during our Soviet period? It's painfully embarrassing! And they burned the armored personnel carriers, too. Someone shouted, "Get away, it's going to blow!" Everyone scattered away, and the armored personnel carrier explod¬ed. The soldiers lost their senses. And when they drove the personnel carrier and the bus at the mob out of rage and fury, they drove right up on the side¬walk.
-Zinaida: The bus that had brought the troops. Only the driver was in it. The bus ran over three people straight off, I saw it. And two armored per¬sonnel carriers ran over four more. All in one or two minutes. The bus ran over three, one of the carriers ran over two, and the second, two more. Right on our street there's a dry cleaners and appliance and watch repair places; one of the armored personnel carriers went that way, and they say it ran over several over there, too. But they ran over seven before our eyes. Then the bus ploughed into a book kiosk.
-Gayane: No, that was a flower place. It was a new booth. He drove straight into it.
-Zinaida: The driver jumped out and they dragged the vehicle out to the middle of the road and set it on fire.
-Gayane: And I also saw the troops put a bunch of Azerbaijanis in a bus and take them in a convoy to Baku. There were many arrests.
-Zinaida: Our neighbor, the one who hid us, couldn't take it, and he told his wife that we should leave. They were running around in the courtyard looking for the Armenians. They knew that they were hiding with Azerbaijanis, and they were saying that they were going to check the Azerbaijani families. Poor Tayara got scared too, and started to cry; I plead¬ed with her, I said that I would remember forever how she saved my chil¬dren and me, but where could we go?
-Gayane: She didn't make us leave, she said that she would do anything, but she was afraid.
-Zinaida: I told Tayara that we would just stay a little longer and that at night we would return to our apartment. Then her husband came back and said that a curfew had been imposed. He says, "Zina, you owe us a drink. Gorbachev announced a curfew." And Bagirov [First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan SSR] was on television, he said that two people had been killed in Karabagh, but nothing was wrong, automobile windows had been broken, but there hadn't been any killings. He kept mak¬ing statements, and there were Azerbaijani songs and dances. Tayara turned the TV all the way up. When we learned of the curfew we calmed down, but then a crowd ran into the courtyard again, a large one. Our neighbor told them that there had been only one Armenian family here, but they had already killed them all, there was no one left. We hid in the wardrobe again, and they stuck Diana back under the bed.
-Gayane: Tayara went down to our apartment to see what was happening there, and found two bandits. They asked her, "What are you doing here?" Tayara answered, "I came to take something for myself." "Take all you want, they're gone now."
-Zinaida: Yes, she had wanted to get something for us, at least some bed¬ding. She said, "What are you going to do, empty handed, naked, with three children, nothing remains of your entire apartment." In short, we calmed down, and the crowd raced off to the other building, the one across from us. I don't know what went on there.
-Gayane: The curfew had its effect on the gangs, many started to disperse: they were warned that they would open fire on them. The soldiers didn't know the city, they couldn't get oriented, they drove up and down the main streets, but didn't go into the courtyards. When we were at the City Party Committee they asked people from Sumgait to go with them and show them the way.
-Zinaida: The tanks entered the city on the night of the 29th.
-Gayane: No, Mamma, the tanks had been there earlier, but were near the City Party Committee, where the Armenians were . . . After midnight, on March 1, when I had finally gotten to sleep after two sleepless nights, Mamma said, "Get your things together, they have sent buses for us." As it was we had been dressed the entire time. Mamma went to check it out . . . and came back for us.
-Zinaida: When I came back for the children Tayara said that Vika was alive and well, some guys had come and told her that they had hidden her in a safe place. I both believed it and didn't believe it. We ran out to the tanks. The Gambarians were there, Roman and Sasha; their father, Shurik, the clarinetist, was killed, and their mother was there. Sasha came over and asked about the girls. I was surprised, how did he know my girls? He said that he knew me and the girls. Our neighbor himself went for Gaya and Diana and it seemed like he was taking forever so I went after him. Another neighbor came out, Anna Vasilyevna, a Russian: "Zinochka, my dear, good¬bye and good luck." She kissed Diana. They put us in the bus and the cap¬tain gave the order for us to be taken to the City Party Committee. The bus wouldn't start, so they put us on another one. It was pouring rain.
-Diana: When they imposed the curfew there were many soldiers on the streets, and they all had clubs and shields. And when the Azerbaijanis attacked them, many of the soldiers died. They threw paving stones—huge rocks—at the soldiers. I saw this myself. The soldiers ran over those Azerbaijanis with the tanks. The soldiers saw that the Azerbaijanis were doing violence to people and they ran over them out of rage. We got scared and they hid me under a mattress and a blanket, and Gaya and Mamma crawled into the wardrobe. And they were fighting right down there on the street. . . Near the building they were blowing up buses and tanks, and cars were burning, and there were many dead in the courtyard. They drove with¬out looking to see if it was a sidewalk or a street, they just drove, and the ones who didn't manage to get out of the way were run over by the tanks. And when we left—it was evening, it was already dark—there were three buses, and one of them had soldiers in it. Mamma ran up and said, "Get your clothes on, let's go." Gaya was wearing slippers, and I had on my blue dress, but it was an old one. I was wearing my old jacket, my old dress, and slippers. And nothing else. Gaya had on a skirt, her Angora sweater, and slippers. It was raining hard, and there were puddles on the street. They gave Mamma an old coat because she was wearing a short-sleeved dress; she put it on and we ran out. We got onto the bus and I was hungry, one of the soldiers from Yerevan gave me rations and carried me from one bus to the other in his arms. I gave him the little glass that remained from Vika's trousseau, and he gave me his telephone number.
-Gayane: In the bus there was a soldier with a shield sitting at every win¬dow. We had to be ready for anything. They took us to the City Party Committee, let us out, and then took us into the City Party Committee building under armed guard. It was jammed with people and you couldn't breathe. We asked, "Are these all us? Armenians?" They answered yes. We were surprised that there were so many Armenians in Sumgait. All those years we lived there and didn't know there were so many Armenians, 18,000. We were struck by that, we had never noticed. Going downstairs the next day I ran into the Secretary of the Komsomol from Vika's plant, the Khimprom. He said that Vika was alive and well. When I told Mamma she of course calmed down some more. But you know, after all that it was hard to believe anything, our faith in everything was just gone. She didn't believe it completely.
-Zinaida: I didn't believe it because I had heard all kinds of things. When we arrived at the City Party Committee we heard everything imaginable! It was the fear of God. I saw many of our acquaintances, they were kissing each other and asking how their children and homes were. Many people already knew that there had been a pogrom of our apartment. They had seen the broken windows. I cried, saying that I didn't know where Vika was. One woman said that they had taken two of her daughters and that she couldn't find one of them; the other had been slashed all over. A second said that her husband and her son had been murdered. That was Nelli Aramian. She lived in Building 6 in our microdistrict. They killed her husband, Armo, and her son Artur. I heard so many things like that that I was already start¬ing to lose touch; my patience had run dry waiting for my daughter. Later an Azerbaijani fellow came to me and said, Aunt Zina, Vika sent me, she's alive and well and hidden in a safe place; if you want I'll call her there and you can speak with her. We went downstairs to the first floor and he called Vika. I spoke with her, heard the voice of my child. She had managed to sur¬vive in that hell. Then I started begging that Azerbaijani to bring her to the City Party Committee. He tried to talk me out of it: "I'll bring her wherever you go, don't worry, I've looked after her better than a brother does a sister." All the same I asked him to get her. He brought her and I calmed down. On the second day there was a meeting with Demichev and people started shouting. One shouted, "Give me my son back!", another yelled, "Where is my daughter?!", a third wanted her husband . . . Bagirov was there too, and he stood there blinking, not saying anything.
-Gayane: When Demichev asked where we wanted to go, everyone shout¬ed, "To Russia!" To be honest we were all frightened of Armenia, there were such wild rumors it was as though we were in a terrible dream, and no one wanted to go to Armenia. But he said that he couldn't evacuate 18,000 peo¬ple to Russia and that he would meet with everyone individually the next day and speak with them. And he also said that today he was going to go look at all of our apartments. On March 3 we went to the military barracks in the village of Nasosny. We were taken care of marvelously by the military. They sent special flights of children right from there to Minvody, Yerevan, and Moscow. One woman left for Moscow with a letter for Gorbachev and Gromyko.
-Zinaida: The worst was truly behind us by then. Everything had passed, but the pain will remain for our whole lives. It cannot be forgotten. Under no circumstances should we, our children, or our grandchildren forget. Who will answer for those who died? For our mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters? Who will bear the responsibility? Who will wash away their blood? Someone should be made to answer, and severely, so it has an effect on the people that did with us as they pleased ... It isn't over yet, now we live here, in Armenia, protected, but the issue isn't resolved. We would like to stay in Armenia, in our homeland, so that all the Armenian people will be united. Then we will be invincible. Armenians won't be scattered through¬out the Soviet Union, about the world, and if we're all together this won't happen again. As a mother of three children, as a woman, as a sister, I ask Armenians to be united so that what happened in Sumgait will never hap¬pen again. Our homeland . .. The only request we have is that we be helped in obtaining an apartment and getting jobs. So that our children can work for the good of Armenia. If we aren't able to, then let our children do it. And if it's possible, we'll work for the good of Armenia too. This is the land of our forefathers. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived here too, it was only later that people dispersed all over. Like a mother, the land here bore and reared us. It is our wife, and will protect us, too. I want but one thing, that our people never see the hardship that our children saw, that your children here, in Armenia, never see anything like it.
May 28, 1988
Yerevan
