arthur

проголосовал за Италию, хотя обьективно не очень в это верю, но все же дико этого хочется все же то что тренером сборной является Липи думаю многое изменило в игре всей сборной в целом :victory:

■ VALENA ARAMOVNA GAMBARIAN We've lived in Sumgait since 1954. We raised three sons. My husband, Aleksandr Gambarian, worked up until retirement in Trust No. 2 as a mechanization specialist, he was a musician, too, and I worked in a kindergarten. In all those years, from 1954 to 1988, we didn't see anything bad. The people were good and the city was young, it was built by Armenians, Russians, and Azerbaijanis, working as brothers, they built it together. After all those days of good I don't want to say that the people of Sumgait are bad people. That I won't say. But I will always hold those who organized it responsible. We were brothers with the Azerbaijani people. There were many Azerbaijanis among the guests in my house and among my husband's friends. Let everyone hear it, and know that Shura Gambarian, the musician, brought happiness into all homes, always and everywhere. Weddings, birthdays—he was always there, made everyone happy, and was kind to all. The Azerbaijanis know it, the Russians know it, and the Armenians know it. Then that day came: February 28, 1988. A day I don't even want to remember, such a hard day. We had the day off. We ate lunch and sat down to watch television. And suddenly there was a crowd on the street, a lot of people. Before that day my son Sasha had told me that they were stopping cars on the street, looking for Armenians, and breaking glass. We didn't pay all that much attention to it, we thought, they're people . . . how can that be possible? We didn't think that after 70 years, when our Soviet Union, our people, and our Party are helping the poor, in Afghanistan and other states, suddenly, during peacetime in our Sumgait and in our apartment there would be such a tragic day. First the crowd was at the Kosmos movie theater, and then came closer and closer ... to our home. They asked someone, "Who's motorcycle is that?" They found out it belonged to an Armenian and burned it. A crowd of 500 or 600 people all gathered around the burning motorcycle. In their language they were all screaming, "Armenians, come out, we're going to roast you in the fire!" And it wasn't one or two people doing the yelling, it was all of them, the whole crowd. But then, we didn't imagine that it could happen and suddenly—the whole mob started up our entryway. We closed the windows and the balcony. They came to our door. They had crowbars, weapons, they had everything with them, everything! They were ready to wreck, and kill, and destroy. They started breaking the door with a crowbar: "Open up, we know that there are four of you in there, open up you Armenians! We're going to kill you, come out of there!" And the four of us held the door on the inside: my husband and I and our two sons. We had an axe and some hammers in our apartment. And we held them off, we held the door for half an hour. No one helped us. No one. They broke both of the locks, they put a huge hole in the door. My husband stood in front. They hit my husband with the crowbar. On the head. But he stood true. And after that he helped us. He brought us skewers. He gave them to our sons so they could use them to fend them off: "Don't let them in the house!" And I made out one of them through the hole in the door. I asked him, "What do you want, do you want gold or money, stop—I'll give you everything. Don't kill us!" And then they hit me with the crowbar right in the face . . . My eyes ... It was as though I went blind. They hadn't even broken down the door yet and had managed to hit my husband and me in the doorway. Then my son Sasha tore the crowbar out of their hands. We kept it in our apartment—it was over six feet long. Now they have it at the Procuracy, that crowbar. They want to catch the murderer by his fingerprints. I started screaming. They tore off the front door. It fell down and covered the entrance to the two rooms where we had gone, almost as though it was supposed to close the rooms off, and they ran into the main room and started to chop, and break, and throw out everything that was in there. Then one man came in. I started to shout at him, "Help, help, help us! Help, they've killed my husband!" My husband's nose was bleeding, and then it ran down his throat, he tried to back up, and fell down. He fell down and I screamed, and my sons went on fighting them. My sons drove the ones in the hall out of the apartment. But those who were in the other room closed the door behind them and started to break everything and steal, doing as they pleased. My husband and I stayed in the two rooms and our sons fought with them a long time. Then they left, not coming into the other two rooms. And we were without a father. Defenseless. My son Roman started asking the neighbors—the neighbors were there, they saw that my husband had been killed—to call an ambulance. There was no ambulance. And no police. We sat there the whole night of the 28th. We were afraid: the door was open, broken down. It was cold, it was February. My husband was in front of us, and the three of us sat home, guarding his body. Early in the morning, at six o'clock, our Azerbaijani neighbors all got together, all of them, of course, and the women were crying: "What could we do, we were afraid, we couldn't help you, you must forgive us, we're not guilty. We don't know who did it. There were many people, it was a large mob, we were frightened ourselves. Excuse us for not being able to help you." An hour later the upstairs neighbor came and said, "They're coming for you again! Leave the building!" And we waited for the ambulance and for the police, for someone, to help us. There was no one. The city was dead. The whole government was dead. There were no leaders. No one wanted to help us. And in that condition—my husband lying at home dead—we went up to the fifth floor. Each of us had a knife in our hands. If they attacked us again we would fight with them to the finish, to the last drop of blood. And we took cover up there, on the fifth floor. We sat there and the mob was driving the soldiers out of town with rocks. We saw it all. They beat the soldiers. And after that the crowd again, for the second time, ran into our apartment, directly up to the fourth floor, shouting, "Two Armenians, the sons, are still there. We must kill them!" And they came up to our apartment, but we were on the fifth floor. They burst into our apartment without regard for the fact that there was a murdered person lying on the floor, and they started to steal everything in the two rooms, and they even threw the oil tanks off the balcony, and broke the windows in the bedroom and started throwing the beds and everything in there out the window, down to the very last thing, they threw it outside and burned it all. We heard them throw something heavy out—I don't know if it was my sewing machine or if it was a bed—something really heavy fell, and they were all laughing, "Ha, ha, ha," and started to scream and shout "Hurray!" My younger son, Sasha, said, "I'm leaving, I can't stay here! They've probably thrown Father into the fire. I'm leaving, I can't take it!" I fell down before him crying out, and said, "My son, don't leave, endure, endure, my son!" And he obeyed me, and withstood it. They left. And the father of our Azerbaijani neighbor came in and shouted at his son, "Why did you let them in here?! They're Armenians! Those mobs are looking for Azerbaijanis that are protecting Armenians, and they're killing us because of the Armenians. Make the Armenians leave!" And then another neighbor came in. I told her, "Will you let us come to your place?" She—her name is Nazan—says, "No, no, no, no! I'm afraid. I won't let you in." Then I told our neighbor, "Alesker, please, you have been kind to us, please finish it. Go to the first floor and look to see if they're there. We will go to another apartment." He went downstairs, and there was no one there. My sons and I went down to the third floor. We lived on the fourth floor. Our door was open but we couldn't even go in there to see if my husband was there or not. We went down to the third floor. Rafik Sadraddinov's father said, "No, I can't let you in. I like your sons very much and I respect you, but I am afraid. I don't know what to do." And his son, Rafik, goes over to his father and says, "Father, let Roman and Sasha come here. Whatever comes—we'll meet it together. Don't insult them." And we went into their apartment. They hid us at night in their home, gave us tea, and told us to be quiet. We were quiet. Three hours later they ask, "Are you sleeping?" We say, "What do you mean, sleep, how can we sleep?" They say, "We see from the balcony—our balcony and theirs both face the street that runs from Baku to Sumgait—that a lot of armored personnel carriers are coming into town and there are a lot of soldiers. They're taking the Armenians somewhere—you should go." They turned off the light in the entryway and saw us out, put a loaf of bread in a bag for us and saw us out. We go outside, it's raining, and our belongings are all over the ground. I couldn't look at it all, and we left. I had slippers on my feet, and they were wet. We went out to the street There were armored personnel carriers going by, and my son held up his arm to stop them, but no one stopped. We went to the bus station. There were a lot of soldiers, cars, and buses there. They immediately put us in a bus, and I tell the soldier, "Son, couldn't you at least have come yesterday and helped us. We had it so bad." He answers me, "Mother, don't be afraid, everything will be fine. Get in, we'll take you away from here. Don't be afraid, everything will be fine." And they took us on the bus, the soldiers covered the windows with shields, they all had guns, there was almost one soldier for each of us, protecting us. So that night, at one o'clock in the morning, they took us to the City Party Committee. There were people there, our Armenian people, they're all calling out and crying: some have lost their husbands, some their sisters, and some their fathers; some have their heads cracked open, and all of them are crying out, and me along with them. My son Roman had some friends at the City Party Committee, good friends, Azerbaijanis. They arranged a car for him, asked General Krayev, and he gave them soldiers. And they went back to our home. They brought Father. We went to the City Party Committee the night of the 29th, and on the evening of March 1 Comrades Demichev and Bagirov [First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan SSR] arrived. I told them everything that had happened to us. My eyes were closed, my face was all black from being beaten. I told them of my hardship, I laid it all out for them and then said that we had been there for two days and hadn't even been given a glass of hot water. Comrade Demichev said, "I believe you and will continue to believe you because 1 saw it all with my own eyes." One day passed, and then a second. On March 3 they told us, "You must leave the City Party Committee. We're taking you to Nasosny, to the military unit." And they put us on buses and took us to the village of Nasosny, where the soldiers live, under guard. They took the poor soldiers out of their barracks and put them in tents—it was cold—and put us in the barracks. And all Armenians. There were so many people, a whole crowd, so many victims, we were all there. They settled us all in there and ... we were hidden. Some people needed medical attention, some needed other things, some needed shoes, some people got them, others didn't. One got a pair, they wrote down ten; another got ten cans, they wrote down 100. We personally didn't receive anything. The soldiers fed us. They have a hospital there, they gave me a compress for my face. When we were in Nasosny, Investigator Akhundov handled our case. He asked us about everything in great detail, what happened, how it happened. We told him all about it. He told us, "We'll find them. We won't just leave it like this." He often came to see us and asked questions, and then started saying, we can't find the ones who were in your apartment, because those murderers, no one is confessing. So we can't find them. You will have to find them." How are we supposed to find them? My eyes were filled with blood, what could I see? I do remember the face of one who was standing near the door. They showed us books of photographs and said, "Look, are any of the ones who were in your apartment here?", and I recognized that one. They detained him. He had on a light brown coat, and there was blood on it. But they took him in custody only on March 8. I don't know on what specific charges. His name was Nizami, I don't remember his last name. Now he's in prison. There is a village called Bail in Baku, and it has a prison. That Nizami is now in that prison. But I wanted to talk about something else. Well, after March 9 in Nasosny they told us: "You have to leave the barracks. Can't you see what shape the soldiers are in? How long can they live in tents, it's cold and uncomfortable, and the soldiers are getting sick. Go back to Sumgait: Those of you who didn't have casualties, whose belongings they didn't destroy, return to your homes." They were selling plane tickets right there, wherever you wanted to go. The Armenians started leaving for Krasnodar, Yerevan, Karabagh . . . But we couldn't leave because our father was killed. We asked them to allow us to take him to Karabagh and bury him in the Mardakert District, in the village of Upper Chaylu. At his birthplace. Each person, when he dies—I think, not only Armenians, but Russians and Azerbaijanis, and people of all nationalities—each wants to rest in his own soil. My sons, all of us fought for this but no one would give us a positive answer. They told us that it's bad in Stepanakert, the road is dangerous, they'd shoot at us ... They told us that there would be a common grave. We thought it over and decided against it. Why should he be in a common grave? In 1943 he was drafted into the Army, he was young, my husband, he fought in the war with Japan, he served in Sakhalin, he was a pilot... Why all of a sudden should he be in a common grave? Let him have a place of his own. And I said, "Let's bury him where soldiers are buried instead, here, in Nasosny, let's bury him near them." And we buried him in Nasosny in the cemetery where soldiers and military men are buried. They have a cemetery there, a military cemetery. And now he's there. It would be better if he were in his native soil, of course. But we weren't able to do that. They gave us an apartment in Baku. On April 5 my son Roman and I were at the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Communist Party, we had a meeting with Akhundov. He's the Chairman of the Republic's Party Control Committee. I told Comrade Akhundov, "They gave us an apartment, thank you. But that's not what I need. I would like permission to bury my husband in his homeland." When I said, "He's buried in foreign soil," Akhundov was slightly offended. But he received us very well and said, "I will accept your petition when everything in Stepanakert is fine, I will permit it and I will assist you." When we went to the cemetery at Nasosny there were soldiers there. And they said, "Look, we're burying him, nobody better dig him up." Who needs it, his remains, who needs them, I don't know! What did he do?! The man was sixty one years old, he fought in the war, served in the Army, returned, started a family, raised three sons, educated them, my son Roman went to school in Baku and graduated from the Institute. No one, never, and nowhere, did anyone stop us, not a single Azerbaijani, and say, "What are you doing here?" Our children played outdoors until late evening, our sons, and their pals were all Azerbaijanis. They were together, they went to each other's weddings, they were all friends. Until that day. Until that day . . . Once two people came to see us from the Moscow Procuracy, Valery and Yevgeny, and said that they were replacing Investigator Akhundov. They say, "Valena Aramovna, you must accompany us to the Bail prison today. You'll have a conversation with the person you identified." I had seen that person once since the events. It was on March 20; we were going back to the apartment. Well there was nothing left in the apartment besides Roman's books. We went to get his books. There was nothing left. Everything had been broken. While my sons were collecting the books I went out of the room: there were a couple of things there, I took them to throw them out, not to leave them in the apartment, everything was all torn, why leave it like that? I took them and threw them out. On the way back I look, and the two Russians from Moscow and two policemen are holding someone. They were right at out entryway, photographing him. Suddenly I do a double take: that's the person who was standing near our door! I started to shout at him. I was shouting at him all different ways, in Russian, in Azerbaijani, and in Armenian. I couldn't bear it and I cursed him in different languages. I told him, "Even if the Armenians had done something to you, have you no courage? You go fight them if they have done something to you! Why did you come and kill my husband, he was sixty years old? Why did you kill him?!" They calmed me down and held me. My sons came running up, "What happened? Did someone offend you?" So I went with Valery and Yevgeny to the prison. My son, Roman, was with me. They led in that Nizami, that scum, that scoundrel. I told him, "You should be ashamed of yourself! I'm old enough to be your mother. Why did you come to my door?! Did you know my husband?!" He says no. "Did you know me?" "No." "Were you a friend of my sons?!" "No." Then this Investigator Valery asks him, You scum, who are you? Are you a policeman? A division inspector?" He says no. "Who are you? Why did you go up there?" And he says, "I heard this woman screaming. I wanted to tell my buddy to stop, I felt sorry for the Woman, she was shouting." Talk like that. He says, "No, lady, I wasn't at your door. I only went as far as the third floor. They wouldn't let me come up to your floor." I say, "No. When they broke the lock you were standing at my door. I saw you. I saw—and that's why you hit me in the eyes, so that I would go blind, and never see again." He and I argued and they wrote everything down. He also said, "It wasn't I who hit you, Musa hit you, he's a welder at the tube-rolling plant, his foreman's name is Maksim. Go ask him. He lives in Jeyranbatan, he lives in a private home, he's a tenant, and the other one lives in Sumgait in a 14-story building, there's a store downstairs, and people live upstairs, he has an apartment there." Well, he told us the first and last name and everything, and now I can't remember any of it, nothing at all. He knew them all, and Valery wrote it all down himself. On May 16 my son was again summoned to the Procuracy in Sumgait. Roman went and returned, I look, and he's in a bad mood. I went to him and said, "What's happened, son? What did they tell you?" He says, "The showed me someone there, but I didn't identify him, it wasn't him. He was not the one." And later he says that things are bad again, the rallies have started again, things are bad. He says, "In Baku, in Stepanakert, it's really bad everywhere." Well, I thought, what can we do? I called my second son and said, "Sasha, come here quickly and we'll figure out what to do. We won't wait until Sumgait happens all over again. Let's think of what to do. Either run home, to Karabagh, or somewhere else." We all got together and went for the airport. We arrived at the airport and yesterday we flew in to Yerevan. I ask my people, our Armenian people, our Party, and our government to help us with one thing—first, with the apartment problem, and then, and most important, to help me bury my husband where he was born. May 18,1988 Yerevan

которого Артура, Рауль джан? Их тут несколько По никам плиз пишите, чтобы знать кому косточки свои готовить для промывки

Ундиночка, это не почитанием зовется.. а по другому сменится клан, увидим как почитают..

alef - 20%

я думаю тема себя исчерпала и ее можно закрыть.

только что поговорил с ребятами из Тбилиси свет отключался в нескольких районах, всего на каких-то полчаса, ничего страшного не случилось. напомню что пару месяцев назад ночью и до самого утра весь центр Еревана был отключен от света. так что всего лишь blackout маленький.

alef, а может оставим проблемы соседей им, а? тем более нас вроде как о помощи не просили

это что за чудо такое нам тут явилось?

Semetoja 20% за наезд на глобал модератора

Люди, дзер цавы танем, СОВСЕМ НЕОБЯЗАТЕЛЬНО ПЕРЕСЫЛАТЬ ЛС для того чтобы требовать у модераторов действий по освобождению от конкретного юзера который посылает ЛС. ЛЮБОЕ ЛС может быть рассмотрено как спам. ЛЮБОЕ. Допустим я получаю ЛС от какой-то девушки в признаниях в любви. Мне не хочется этих признаний, не хочется этих ЛС. Для меня это ненужная информация, то есть СПАМ. Я тогда имею полное право потребовать у модератора каким-то образом обеспечить мое спокойное пребывание на форуме без всяких ЛС. Да, я могу поставить игнор, НО я могу также потребовать у модеров наказания для юзера, который давадита арел. И если отсылатель ЛС потребует доказать что его/ее ЛС действительно существуют, в этом случае можно даже не только модерам ЛС откправить, но и отдельную тему открыть и опубликовать ЛС в открытую. Идти на это или не идти - личное дело каждого отдельно взятого юзера. :wallbash: :wallbash:

Ардани демк ес Еще раз: 4.16. Запрещается использовать возможности режима личных сообщений, а так же e-mail участников для рассылки спама. И в конце: является ли ЛС (с любым содержанием) спамом или нет решает не отправитель ЛС, а его получатель.

можешь

continuation of LYUDMILA GRIGOREVNA M. witness: All the lists were taken to Bagirov. I don't remember how many dead were contained in the list, but it's a fact that when Gukasian came in a couple of minutes later he was cursing and was terribly irate. I asked, "What's going on?" He said, "Lyuda, can you imagine what animals, what scoundrels they are! They say that they lost the list of the dead. Piotr Demichev has just arrived, and we were supposed to submit the list to him, so that he'd see the scope of the slaughter, of the tragedy, whether it was one or fifty." They told him that the list had disappeared and they should ask everyone who hadn't left for the Khimik boarding house all over again. There were 26 people on our second list. I think that the number 26 was the one that got into the press and onto television and the radio, because that's the list that Demichev got. I remember exactly that there were 26 people on the list, I had even told Aleksandr Mikhailovich that that was only a half of those that were on the first list. He said, "Lyuda, please, try to remember at least one more." But I couldn't remember anyone else. But there were more than 30 dead. Of that I am certain. The government and the Procuracy don't count the people who died of fright, like sick people and old people whose lives are threatened by any shock. They weren't registered as victims of the Sumgait tragedy. And then there may be people we didn't know. So many people left Sumgait between March 1 and 8! Most of them left for smaller towns in Russia, and especially to the Northern Caucasus, to Stavropol, and the Krasnodarsk Territory. We don't have any information on them. I know that there are people who set out for parts around Moscow. In the periodical Krestyanka [Woman Farmer] there was a call for people who know how to milk cows, and for mechanics, and drivers, and I know a whole group of people went to help out. Also clearly not on our list are those people who died entering the city, who were burned in their cars. No one knows about them, except the Azerbaijanis, who are hardly likely to say anything about it. And there's more. A great many of the people who were raped were not included in the list drawn up at the Procuracy. I know of three instances for sure, and I of course don't know them all. I'm thinking of three women whose parents chose not to publicize what had happened, that is they didn't take the matter to court, they simply left. But in so doing they didn't cease being victims. One of them is the first cousin of my classmate Kocharian. She lived in Microdistrict No. 8, on the fifth floor. I can't tell you the building number and I don't know her name. Then comes the neighbor of one of my relatives, she lived in Microdistrict 1 near the gift shop. I don't know her name, she lives on the same landing as the Sumgait procurator. They beat her father, he was holding the door while his daughter hid, but he couldn't hold the door forever, and when she climbed over the balcony to the neighbors' they seized her by her braid. Like the Azerbaijanis were say¬ing, it was a very cultured mob, because they didn't kill anyone, they only raped them and left. And the third one ... I don't remember who the third one was anymore. They transferred us on March 1. Karina still wasn't herself. Yes, we lived for days in the SK, in the cultural facility, and at the Khimik. They lived there and I lived at the City Party Committee because I couldn't stay with Karina; it was too difficult for me, but I was at peace: she had survived. I could already walk, but really it was honest words that held me up. Thanks to the social work I did there, I managed to persevere. Aleksandr Mikhailovich said, "If it weren't for the work I would go insane." He and I put ourselves in gear and took everything upon ourselves: someone had an infant and needed diapers and free food, and we went to get them. The first days we bought everything, although we should have received it for free. They were supposed to have been dispensed free of charge, and they sold it to us. Then, when we found out it was free, we went to Krayev. At the time, fortunately, you could still drop by to see him like a neighbor, all the more so since everything was still clearly visible on our faces. Krayev sent a captain down and he resolved the issue. On March 2 they sent two investigators to see us: Andrei Shirokov and Vladimir Fedorovich Bibishev. The way it worked out, in our family they had considered only Karina and me victims, maybe because she and I wound up in the hospital. Mother and Father are considered witnesses, but not victims. Shirokov was involved with Karina's case, and Bibishev, with mine. After I told him everything, he and I planned to sit down with the identikit and record everyone I could remember while everything was still fresh in my mind. We didn't work with the identikit until the very last day because the conditions weren't there. The investigative group worked slowly and did poor quality work solely because the situation wasn't conducive to working: there weren't enough automobiles, especially during the time when there was a curfew, and there were no typewriters for typing transcripts, and no still or video cameras. I think that this was done on purpose. We're not so poor that we can't supply our investigators with all that stuff. It was done especially to draw out the investigation, all the more so since the local authorities saw that the Armenians were leaving at the speed of light, never to return to Sumgait. And the Armenians had a lot to say. I came to an agreement with Bibishev, I told him myself, "Don't you worry, if it takes us a month or two months, I'll be here. I'm not afraid, I looked death in the eyes five times in those two days, I'll help you conduct the investigation." He and I worked together a great deal, and I used this to shelter Karina, I gave them so much to do that for a while they didn't have the time to get to her, so that she would at least have a week or two to get back to being her¬self. She was having difficulty breathing so we looked for a doctor to take x-rays. She couldn't eat or drink for nine days, she was nauseous. I didn't eat and drank virtually nothing for five days. Then, on the fifth day, when we were in Baku already, the investigator told me, "How long can you go on like this? Well fine, so you don't want to eat, you don't love yourself, you're not taking care of yourself, but you gave your word that you would see this investigation through. We need you." Then I started eating, because in fact I was exhausted. It wasn't enough that I kept seeing those faces in our apart¬ment in my mind, every day I went to the investigative solitary confinement cells and prisons. I don't know . . . we were just everywhere! Probably in every prison in the city of Baku and in all the solitary confinement cells of Sumgait. At that time they had even turned the drunk tank into solitary con¬finement. Thus far I have identified 31 of the people who were in our apartment. Mamma identified three, and Karina, two. The total is 36. Marina didn't identify anyone, she remembers the faces of two or three, but they weren't among the photographs of those detained. I told of the neighbor I recog¬nized. The one who went after the axe. He still hasn't been detained, he's still on the loose. He's gone, and it's not clear if he will be found or not. I don't know his first or last name. I know which building he lived in and I know his sisters' faces. But he's not in the city. The investigators informed me that even if the investigation is closed and even if the trial is over they will continue looking for him. The 31 people I identified are largely blue-collar workers from various plants, without education, and of the very lowest level in every respect. Mostly their ages range from 20 to 30 years; there was one who was 48. Only one of them was a student. He was attending the Azerbaijan Petroleum and Chemical Institute in Sumgait, his mother kept trying to bribe the investiga¬tor. Once, thinking that I was an employee and not a victim, she said in front of me, "I'll set you up a restaurant worth 500 rubles and give you 600 in cash simply for keeping him out of Armenia," that is, to keep him from landing in a prison on Armenian soil. They're all terribly afraid of that, because if the investigator is talking with a criminal and the criminal doesn't confess even though we identified him, they tell him—in order to apply psychological pressure—they say, "Fine, don't confess, just keep silent. When you're in an Armenian prison, when they find out who you are, they'll take care of you in short order." That somehow gets to them. Many give in and start to talk. The investigators and I were in our apartment and videotaped the entire pogrom of our apartment, as an investigative experiment. It was only then that I saw the way they had left our apartment. Even without knowing who was in our apartment, you could guess. They stole, for example, all the mon-ey and all the valuables, but didn't take a single book. They tore them up, burned them, poured water on them, and hacked them with axes. Only the Materials from the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. Oh yes, lunch was ready, we were boiling a chicken, and there were lemons for tea on the table. After they had been in our apartment, both the chicken and the lemons were gone. That's enough to tell you what kind of people were in our apartment, people who don't even know anything about books. They didn't take a single book, but they did take worn clothing, food, and even the cheapest of the cheap, worn-out slippers. Of those whom I identified, four were Kafan Azerbaijanis living in Sumgait. Basically, the group that went seeking "revenge"—let's use their word for it—was joined by people seeking easy gain and thrill-seekers. I talked with one of them. He had gray eyes, and somehow against the back¬drop of all that black I remembered him specifically because of his eyes. Besides taking part in the pogrom of our apartment, he was also involved in the murder of Tamara Mekhtiyeva from Building 16. She was an older Armenian who had recently arrived from Georgia, she lived alone and did not have anyone in Sumgait. I don't know why she had a last name like that, maybe she was married to an Azerbaijani. I had laid eyes on this woman only once or twice, and know nothing about her. I do know that they mur¬dered her in her apartment with an axe. Murdering her wasn't enough for them. They hacked her into pieces and threw them into the tub with water. I remember another guy really well too, he was also rather fair-skinned. You know, all the people who were in our apartment were darker than dark, both their hair and their skin. And in contrast with them, in addition to the gray-eyed one, I remember this one fellow, the one I took to be a Lezgin. I identified him. As it turned out he was Eduard Robertovich Grigorian, born in the city of Sumgait, and he had been convicted twice. One of our own. How did I remember him? The name Rita was tattooed on his left or right hand. I kept thinking, is that Rita or "puma," which it would be if you read the word as Latin characters instead of Cyrillic, because the Cyrillic "T" was the one that looks like a Latin "M." When they led him in he sat with his hands behind his back. This was at the confrontation. He swore on every holy book, tried to put in an Armenian word here and there to try and spark my compassion, and told me that I was making a mistake, and called me "dear sister." He said, "You're wrong, how could I, an Armenian, raise my hand against my own, an Armenian," and so on. He spoke so convincingly that even the investigator asked me, "Lyuda, are you sure it was he?" I told him, "I'll tell you one more identifying mark. If I'm wrong I shall apologize and say I was mistaken. The name Rita is tattooed on his left or right hand." He went rigid and became pale. They told him, "Put your hands on the table." He put his hands on the table with the palms up. I said, "Now turn your hands over," but he didn't turn his hands over. Now this infuriated me. If he had from the very start acknowledged his guilt and said that he hadn't wanted to do it, that they forced him or something else, I would have treat¬ed him somewhat differently. But he insolently stuck to his story, "No, I did not do anything, it wasn't me." When they turned his hands over the name Rita was in fact tattooed on his hand. His face distorted and he whispered something wicked. I immediately flew into a rage. There was an ashtray on the table, a really heavy one, made out of granite or something, very large, and it had ashes and butts in it. Catching myself quite by surprise, I hurled that ashtray at him. But he ducked and the ashtray hit the wall, and ashes and butts rained down on his head and back. And he smiled. When he smiled it provoked me further. I don't know how, but I jumped over the table between us and started either pounding him or strangling him; I no longer remember which. When I jumped I caught the microphone cord. The investigator was there, Tolya ... I no longer recall his last name, and he says, "Lyudochka, it's a Japanese microphone! Please ..." And shut off all the equipment on the spot, it was all being video taped. They took him away. I stayed, and they talked to me a little to calm me down, because we needed to go on working, I only remember Tolya telling me, "You're some actress! What a performance!" I said, "Tolya, honestly ..." Beforehand they would always tell me, "Lyuda, more emotion. You speak as calmly as if nothing had happened to you." I say, "I don't have any more strength or emotion. All my emotions are behind me now, 1 no longer have the strength ... I don't have the strength to do anything." And he says, "Lyuda, how were you able to do that?" And when I returned to normal, drinking tea and watching the tape, I said, "Can I really have jumped over that table? I never jumped that high in gym class." So you could say the gang that took over our apartment was internation¬al. Of the 36 we identified there was an Armenian, a Russian, Vadim Vorobyev, who beat Mamma, and 34 Azerbaijanis. At the second meeting with Grigorian, when he had completely con¬fessed his guilt, he told of how on February 27 the Azerbaijanis had come knocking. Among them were guys—if you can call them guys—he knew from prison. They said, "Tomorrow we're going after the Armenians. Meet us at the bus station at three o'clock." He said, "No, I'm not coming." They told him, "If you don't come we'll kill you." He said, "Alright, I'll come." And he went. They also went to visit my classmate from our microdistrict, Kamo Pogosian. He had also been in prison; I think that together they had either stolen a motorcycle or dismantled one to get some parts they needed. They called him out of his apartment and told him the same thing: "Tomorrow we're going to get the Armenians. Be there." He said, "No." They-pulled a knife on him. He said, "I'm not going all the same." And in the courtyard on the 27th they stabbed him several times, in the stomach. He was taken to the hospital. I know he was in the hospital in Baku, in the Republic hospital. If we had known about that we would have had some idea of what was to come on the 28th. I'll return to Grigorian, what he did in our apartment. I remember that he beat me along with all the rest. He spoke Azerbaijani extremely well. But he was very fair-skinned, maybe that led me to think that they had it out for him, too. But later it was proved that he took part in the beating and burning of Shagen Sargisian. I don't know if he participated in the rapes in our apart¬ment; I didn't see, I don't remember. But the people who were in our apart¬ment who didn't yet know that he was an Armenian said that he did. I don't know if he confessed or not, and I myself don't recall because I blacked out very often. But I think that he didn't participate in the rape of Karina because he was in the apartment the whole time. When they carried her into the courtyard, he remained in the apartment. At one point I was talking with an acquaintance about Edik Grigorian. From her I learned that his wife was a dressmaker, his mother is Russian, he doesn't have a father, and that he's been convicted twice. Well this will be his third and, I hope, last sentence. He beat his wife, she was eternally coming to work with bruises. His wife was an Armenian by the name of Rita. The others who were detained . . . well they're little beasts. You really can't call them beasts, they're just little beasts. They were robots carrying out someone else's will, because at the investigation they all said, "I don't under¬stand how I could have done that, I was out of my head." But we know that they were won around to it and prepared for it, that's why they did it. In the name of Allah, in the name of the Koran, in the name of propagating Islam—that's holy to them—that's why they did everything they were com¬manded to do. Because I saw they didn't have minds of their own, I'm not talking about their level of cultural sophistication or any higher values. No education, they work, have a slew of children without the means to raise them properly, they crowd them in, like at the temporary housing, and apparently, they were promised that if they slaughtered the Armenians they would receive apartments. So off they went. Many of them explained their participation saying, "they promised us apartments." Among them was one who genuinely repented. I am sure that he repent¬ed from the heart and that he just despised himself after the incident. He worked at a children's home, an Azerbaijani, he has two children, and his wife works at the children's home too. Everything that they acquired, every¬thing that they have they earned by their own labor, and wasn't inherited from parents or grandparents. And he said, "I didn't need anything, I just don't know . . . how I ended up in that; it was like some hand was guiding We. I had no will of my own, I had no strength, no masculine dignity, noth-ing." And the whole time I kept repeating, "Now you imagine that someone did the same to your young wife right before your own eyes." He sat there and just wailed. But that leader in the Eskimo dogskin coat was not detained. He per¬formed a marvelous disappearing act, but I think that they'll get onto him, they just have to work a little, because that Vadim, that boy, according to his grandfather, is in touch with the young person who taught him what to do, how to cover his tracks. He was constantly exchanging jackets with other boys he knew and those he didn't, either, and other things as well, and changed himself like a chameleon so they wouldn't get onto him, but he was detained. That one in the Eskimo dogskin coat was at the Gambarians' after Aleksandr Gambarian was murdered. He came in and said, "Let's go, enough, you've spilled enough blood here." Maybe Karina doesn't know this but the reason they didn't finish her off was that they were hoping to take her home with them. I heard this from Aunt Tanya and her sons, the Kasumovs, who were in the courtyard near the entryway. They liked her very much, and they had decided to take her to home with them. When Karina came to at one point—she doesn't remember this yet, this the neighbors told me—and she saw that there was no one around her, she started crawling to the entryway. They saw that she was still alive and came back, they were already at the third entryway, on their way to the Gambarians'. They came back and started beating her to finish her. If she had not come to she would have sustained lesser bodily injuries, they would have beat her less. An older woman from our building, Aunt Nazan, an Azerbaijani, all but lay on top of Karina, crying and pleading that they leave her alone, but they flung her off. The woman's grown sons were right nearby; they picked her up in their hands and led her home. She howled and cried out loudly and swore: God is on Earth, he sees everything, and He won't forgive this. There was another woman, too, Aunt Fatima, a sick, aging woman from the first floor, she's already retired. Mountain dwellers, and Azerbaijanis, too, have a custom: If men are fighting, they throw a scarf under their feet to stop them. But they trampled her scarf and sent her home. To trample a scarf is tantamount to trampling a woman's honor. Now that the investigation is going on, now that a lot is behind us and we have gotten back to being ourselves a little, I think about how could these events that are now called the Sumgait tragedy happen? How did they come about? How did it start? Could it have been avoided? Well, it's clear that without a signal, without permission from the top leadership, it would not have happened. All the same, I'm not afraid to say this, the Azerbaijanis, let other worthy people take no offense, the better representatives of their nations, let them take no offense, but the Azerbaijanis in their majority are a people who are kept in line only by fear of the law, fear of retribution for what they have done. And when the law said that they could do all that, like unleashed dogs who were afraid they wouldn't have time to do everything, they threw themselves from one thing to the next so as to be able to get more done, to snatch a bit more. The smell of the danger was already in the air on February 27. You could tell that something was going to happen. And every¬one who had figured it out took steps to avoid running into those gangs. Many left for their dachas, got plane tickets for the other end of the country, just got as far away as their legs would carry them. February 27 was a Saturday. I was teaching my third class. The director came into my classroom and said that I should let the children out, that there had been a call from the City Party Committee asking that all teachers gather for a meeting at Lenin Square. Well, I excused the children, and there were few teachers left at school, altogether three women, the director, and six or seven men. The rest had already gone home. We got to Lenin Square and there were a great many people there. This was around five-thirty or six jn the evening, no later. They were saying all kinds of rubbish up on the podium and the crowd below was supporting them stormily, roaring. They spoke over the microphone about what had happened in Kafan a few days earlier and that the driver of a bus going to some district had recently thrown a small Azerbaijani child off the bus. The speaker affirmed that he was an eyewitness, that he had seen it himself.. The crowd started to rage: "Death to the Armenians! They must be killed!" Then a woman went up on stage. I didn't see the woman because people were clinging to the podium like flies. I could only hear her. The woman introduced herself as coming from Kafan, and said that the Armenians cut her daughters' breasts off, and called, "Sons, avenge my daughters!" That was enough. A portion of the people on the square took off running in the direction of the factories, toward the beginning of Lenin Street. We stood there about an hour. Then the director of School 25 spoke, he gave a very nationalist speech. He said, "Brother Muslims, kill the Armenians!" This he repeated every other sentence. When he said this the crowd supported him stormily, whistling and shouting "Karabagh!" He said, "Karabagh has been our territory my whole life long, Karabagh is my soul. How can you tear out my heart?" As though an Azerbaijani would die with¬out Karabagh. "It's our territory, the Armenians will never see it. The Armenians must be eliminated. From time immemorial Muslims have cleansed the land of infidel Armenians, from time immemorial, that's the way nature created it, that every 20 to 30 years the Azerbaijanis should cleanse the land of filth." By filth he meant Armenians. I heard this. Before that I hadn't been listening to the speeches closely. Many people spoke and I stood with my back to the podium, talking shop with the other teachers, and somehow it all went right by, it didn't penetrate, that in fact something serious was taking place. Then, when one of our teachers said, "Listen to what he's saying, listen to what idiocy he's spout-ing," we listened. That was the speech of that director. Before that we lis¬tened to the woman's speech. Right then in our group—there were nine of us—the mood changed, and the subject of conversation and all school matters were forgotten. Our direc¬tor of studies, for whom I had great respect, he's an Azerbaijani . . . Before that I had considered him an upstanding and worthy person, if there was a need to obtain leave we had asked him, he seemed like a good person. So he tells me, "Lyuda, you know that besides you there are no Armenians on the square? If they find out that you're an Armenian they'll tear you to pieces. Should I tell them you're an Armenian? Should I tell them you're an Armenian?" When he said it the first time I pretended not to hear it, and then he asked me a second time. I turned to the director, Khudurova, and said that it was already after eight, I was expected at home, and I should be leaving. She answered, "No, they said that women should stay here until ten o'clock, and men, until twelve. Stay here." There was a young teacher with us, her children were in kindergarten and her husband worked shifts. She asked to leave: "I left my children at the kindergarten." The director excused her. When she let her go I turned around, said, "Good-bye," and left with the young teacher, the Azerbaijani. I didn't see them after that. When we were walking the buses weren't running, and a crowd from the rally ran nearby us. They had apparently gotten all fired up. It must have become too much for them, and they wanted to seek vengeance immediate¬ly, so they rushed off. I wasn't afraid this time because I was sure that the other teacher wouldn't say that I was an Armenian. To make it short, we reached home. Then Karina told of how she had been at the movies and what had happened there. I started telling of my experience and again my parents didn't understand that we were in danger. We watched television as usual, and didn't even imagine that tomorrow would be our last day. That's how it all was. At the City Party Committee I met an acquaintance, we went to school together, Zhanna, I don't remember her last name, she lives above the house-wares store on Narimanov Street. She was there with her father, for some reason she doesn't have a mother. The two of them were at home alone. While her father held the door she jumped from the third floor, and she was lucky that the ground was wet and that there wasn't anyone behind the building when she went out on the balcony, there was no one there, they were all standing near the entryway. That building was also a lucky one in that there were no murders there. She jumped. She jumped and didn't feel any pain in the heat of the moment. A few days later I found out that she couldn't stand up, she had been injured somehow. That's how people in Sumgait saved their lives, their honor, and their children: any way they could. Where it was possible, the Armenians fought back. My father's first cousin, Armen M., lives in Block 30. They found out by phone from one of the victims what was going on in town. The Armenians in that building all called one another immediately and all of them armed themselves with axes, knives, even with muskets and went up to the roof. They took their infants with them, and their old women who had been in bed for God knows how many months, they got them right out of their beds and took everyone upstairs. They hooked electricity up to the trap door to the roof and waited, ready to fight. Then they took the daughter of the school board director hostage, she's an Azerbaijani who lived in their building. They called the school board director and told her that if she didn't help them, the 17 Armenians on the roof, to escape alive and unharmed, she'd never see her daughter again. I'm sure, of course, that Armenians would never lay a hand on a woman, it was just the only thing that could have saved them at the time. She called the police. The Armenians made a deal with the local police to go into town. Two armored personnel carriers and soldiers were sum¬moned. They surrounded the entryway and led everyone down from the roof, and off to the side from the armored personnel carriers was a crowd that was on its way to the building at that very moment, into Block 30. That's how they defended themselves. I heard that our neighbors, Roman and Sasha Gambarian, resisted. They're big, strong guys. Their father was killed. And I heard that the broth¬ers put up a strong defense and lost their father, but were able to save their mother. One of the neighbors told me that after it happened, when they were looking for the criminals on March 1 to 2 and detaining everyone they sus¬pected, people hid people in our entryway, maybe people who were injured or perhaps dead. The neighbors themselves were afraid to go there, and when they went with the soldiers into our basement they are supposed to have found Azerbaijani corpses. I don't know how many. Even if they had been wounded and put down there, after two days they would have died from loss of blood or infection—that basement was filled with water. I heard this from the neighbors. And later when I was talking with the investigators the subject came up and they confirmed it. I know, too, that for several hours the basement was used to store objects stolen from our apartment. And our neighbor carried out our carpet, along with the rest: he stole it for himself, posing as one of the criminals. Everyone was taking his own share, and the neighbor took his, too, and carried it home. And when we came back, when everything seemed to have calmed down, he returned it, saying that it was the only thing of ours he had managed to "save." Raya's husband and father defended themselves. The Trdatovs defended themselves, and so did other Armenian families. To be sure there were Azerbaijani victims, although we'll never hear anything about them. For some reason our government doesn't want to say that the Armenians were not just victims, but that they defended the honor of their sisters and moth¬ers, too. In the TV show "Pozitsiya" [Viewpoint] a military man, an officer, said that the Armenians did virtually nothing to defend themselves. But that's not important, the truth will come out regardless. So that's the price we paid those three days. For three days our courage, our bravery, and our humanity was tested. It was those three days, and not the years and dozens of years we had lived before them, that showed what we've become, what we grew up to be. Those three days showed who was who. On that I will conclude my narrative on the Sumgait tragedy. It should be said that it's not over yet, the trials are still ahead of us, and the punishments received by those who so violated us, who wanted to make us into nonhu-mians, will depend on our position and on the work of the investigators, the Procuracy, and literally of every person who lent his hand to the investiga¬tion. That's the price we paid to live in Armenia, to not fear going out on the street at night, to not be afraid to say we're Armenians, and to not fear speaking our native tongue. October 15, 1988 Yerevan

■ LYUDMILA GRIGOREVNA M. Born 1959 Teacher Sumgait Secondary School No. 10 Secretary of the Komsomol Organization at School No. 10 Member of the Sumgait City Komsomol Committee Office Resident at Building 17/33B, Apartment 15 Microdistrict No. 3 Sumgait I'm thinking about the price the Sumgait Armenians paid to be living in Armenia now. We paid for it in human casualties and crippled fates—the price was too great! Now, after the Sumgait tragedy, we, the victims, divide our lives into "before" and "after." We talk like that: that was before the war. Like the people who went through World War II and considered it a whole epoch, a fate. No matter how many years go by, no matter how long we live, it will never be forgotten. On the contrary, some of the moments become even sharper: in our rage, in our sorrow, we saw everything differently, but now . . . They say that you can see more with distance, and we can see those inhuman events with more clarity now . . . we more acutely perceive our losses and everything that happened. Nineteen eighty-eight was a leap year. Everyone fears a leap year and wants it to pass as quickly as possible. Yet we never thought that that leap year would be such a black one for every Sumgait Armenian: those who lost someone and those who didn't. That second to last day of winter was ordinary for our family, although you could already smell danger in the air. But we didn't think that the dan¬ger was near and possible, so we didn't take any steps to save ourselves. At least, as my parents say, at least we should have done something to save the children. My parents themselves are not that old, 52 and 53 years. But then they thought that they had already lived enough, and did everything they could to save us. In our apartment the tragedy started on February 28, around five in the afternoon. I call it a tragedy, and I repeat: it was a tragedy even though all our family survived. When I recall how they broke down our door my skin crawls; even now, among Armenians, among people who wish me only well, 1 feel like it's all starting over again. I remember how that mob broke into our apartment. . . My parents were standing in the hall. My father had an axe in his hands and had immediately locked both of the doors. Our door was rarely locked since friends and neighbors often dropped by. We're known as a hospitable family, and we just never really thought about whether the people who were coming to see us were Azerbaijanis, Jews, or Russians. We had friends of many nationalities, even a Turkmen woman. My parents were in the hall, my father with an axe. I remember him telling my mother, "Run to the kitchen for a knife." But Mother was detached, pale, as though she had decided to sell her life a bit dearer. To be honest I never expected it of her, she's afraid of getting shot and afraid of the dark. A girlfriend was at the house that day, a Russian girl, Lyuda, and Mamma said, "No matter what happens, no matter what they do to us, you're not to come out of the bedroom. We're going to tell them that we're alone in the apartment." We went into the bedroom. There were four of us. Marina and the Russian girl crawled under the bed, and we covered them up with a rug, boxes of dishes, and Karina and I are standing there and looking at one another. The idea that perhaps we were seeing each other for the last time flashed somewhere inside me. I'm an emotional person and I express my emotions immediately. I wanted to embrace her and kiss her, as though it were the last second. And maybe Karina was thinking the same thing, but she's quite reserved. We didn't have time to say anything to each other because we immediately heard Mamma raise a shout. There was so much noise from the tramping of feet, from the shouting, and from excited voices. I couldn't figure what was going on out there because the door to the bed¬room was only open a crack. But when Mamma shouted the second time Karina ran out of the bedroom. I ran after her, I had wanted to hold her back, but when she opened the door and ran out into the hall they saw us immediately. The only thing I managed to do was close the door behind me, at least so as to save Marina and her friend. The mob was shouting, all of their eyes were shining, all red, like from insomnia. At first about 40 people burst in, but later I was standing with my back to the door and couldn't see. They came into the hall, into the kitchen, and dragged my father into the other room. He didn't utter a word, he just raised the axe to hit them, but Mamma snatched the axe from behind and said, "Tell them not to touch the children. Tell them they can do as they want with us, but not to harm the children." She said this to Father in Armenian. There were Azerbaijanis from Armenia among the mob who broke in. They understood Armenian perfectly. The local Azerbaijanis don't know Armenian, they don't need to speak it. And one of them responded in Armenian: "You and your children both . . . we're going to do the same thing to you and your children that you Armenians did in Kafan. They killed our women, our girls, our mothers, they cut their breasts off, and burned our houses . . . ," and so on and so forth, "and we came to do the same thing to you." This whole time some of them are destroying the house and the others are shouting at us. They were mostly young people, under 30. At first there weren't any older people among them. And all of their faces were unfamil¬iar. Sumgait is a small town, all the same, and we know a lot of people by their faces, especially me, I'm a teacher. So they dragged my father into the other room. They twisted his arms and took him in there, no they didn't take him in there, they dragged him in there, because he was already unable to walk. They closed the door to that room all but a crack. We couldn't see what was happening to Father, what they were doing to him. Then a young man, about 26 years old, started to tear off Mamma's sarafan, and Mamma shouted at him in Azerbaijani: "I'm old enough to be your mother! What are you doing?!" He struck her. Now he's being held, Mamma identified him. I hope he's convicted. Then they went after Karina, who's been talking to them like a Komsomol leader, as though she were trying to lead them down a different path, as they say, to influence their consciousness. She told them that what they were doing was wrong, that they mustn't do it. She said, "Come on, let's straight¬en this out, without emotions. What do you want? Who are you? Why did you come here? What did we ever do to you?" Someone tried to explain who they were and why they had come into our home, but then the ones in the back—more of them kept coming and coming—said, "What are you talking to them for? You should kill them. We came here to kill them." They pushed Karina, struck her, and she fell down. They beat her, but she didn't cry out. Even when they tore her clothes off, she kept repeating, "What did we do to you? What did we do to you?" And even later, when she came to, she said, "Mamma, what did we do to them? Why did they do that to us?" That group was prepared, I know this because I noticed that some of them only broke up furniture, and others only dealt with us. I remember that when they were beating me, when they were tearing my clothes off, I felt neither pain nor shame because my entire attention was riveted to Karina. All I could do was watch how much they beat her and how painful it was for her, and what they did to her. That's why I felt no pain. Later, when they carried Karina off, they beat her savagely . . . It's really amazing that she not only lived, but didn't lose her mind . . . She is very beautiful and they did everything they could to destroy her beauty. Mostly they beat her face, with their fists, kicking her, using anything they could find. Mamma, Karina, and I were all in one room. And again I didn't feel any pain, just didn't feel any, no matter how much they beat me, no matter what they did. Then one of those creeps said that there wasn't enough room in the apartment. They broke up the beds and the desk and moved everything into the corners so there would be more room. Then someone suggested, "Let's take her outside." Those beasts were in Heaven. They did what they would do every day if they weren't afraid of the authorities. Those were their true colors. At the time I thought that in fact they would always behave that way if they weren't afraid of what would happen to them. When they carried Karina out and beat Mamma-her face was completely covered with blood—that's when I started to feel the pain. I blacked out sev¬eral times from the pain, but each moment that I had my eyes open it was as though I were, recording it all on film. I think I'm a kind person by nature, but I'm vengeful, especially if someone is mean to me, and I don't deserve it. I hold a grudge a long time if someone intentionally causes me pain. And every time I would come to and see one of those animals on top of me, I'd remember them, and I'll remember them for the rest of my life, even though people tell me "forget," you have to forget, you have to go on living. At some point I remember that they stood me up and told me something, and despite the fact that I hurt all over—I had been beaten terribly—I found the strength in myself to interfere with their tortures. I realized that I had to do something: resist them or just let them kill me to bring my suffering to an end. I pushed one of them away, he was a real horse. I remember now that he's being held, too. As though they were all waiting for it, they seized me and took me out onto the balcony. I had long hair, and it was stuck all over me. One of the veranda shutters to the balcony was open, and I realized that they planned to throw me out the window, because they had already picked me up with their hands, I was up in the air. As though for the last time I took a really deep breath and closed my eyes, and somehow braced myself inside, I suddenly became cold, as though my heart had sunk into my feet. And suddenly I felt myself flying. I couldn't figure out if I was really flying or if I just imagined it. When I came to I thought now I'm going to smash on the ground. And when it didn't happen I opened my eyes and realized that I was still lying on the floor. And since I didn't scream, didn't beg them at all, they became all the more wild, like wolves. They started to trample me with their feet. Shoes with heels on them, and iron horseshoes, like they had spe¬cially put them on. Then I lost consciousness. I came to a couple of times and waited for death, summoned it, beseeched it. Some people ask for good health, life, happiness, but at that moment I didn't need any of those things. I was sure that none of us would survive, and I had even forgotten about Marina; and if none of us was alive, it wasn't worth living. There was a moment when the pain was especially great. I withstood inhuman pain, and realized that they were going to torment me for a long time to come because I had showed myself to be so tenacious. I started to strangle myself, and when I started to wheeze they realized that with my death I was going to put an end to their pleasures, and they pulled my hands from my throat. The person who injured and insulted me most painfully I remember him very well, because he was the oldest in the group. He looked around 48. I know that he has four children and that he considers himself an ideal father and person, one who would never do such a thing. Something came over him then, you see, even during the investigation he almost called me "daughter," he apologized, although, of course, he knew that I'd never for¬give him. Something like that I can never forgive. I have never injured any¬one with my behavior, with my words, or with my deeds, I have always put myself in the other person's shoes, but then, in a matter of hours, they tram¬pled me entirely. I shall never forget it. I wanted to do myself in then, because I had nothing to lose, because no one could protect me. My father, who tried to do something against that hoard of beasts all by himself, could do nothing and wouldn't be able to do anything, I knew that. I was even sure that he was no longer alive. And Ira Melkumian, my acquaintance—I knew her and had been to see her family a couple of times—her brother tried to save her and couldn't, so he tried to kill her, his very own sister. He threw an axe at her to kill her and put an end to her suffering. When they stripped her clothes off and carried her into the other room, her brother knew what awaited her. I don't know which one it was, Edik or Igor. Both of them were in the room from which the axe was thrown. But the axe hit one of the people carrying her and so they killed her and made her death even more excruciating, maybe the most excruciating of all the deaths of those days in Sumgait. I heard about it all from the neighbor from the Melkumians' landing. His name is Makhaddin, he knows my family a little. He came to see how we had gotten settled in the new apartment in Baku, how we were feeling, and if we needed anything. He's a good person. He said, "You should praise God that you all survived. But what I saw with my own eyes, I, a man, who has seen so many people die, who has lived a whole life, I," he says, "nearly lost my mind that day. I had never seen the likes of it and think I never shall again." The door to his apartment was open and he saw everything. One of the brothers threw the axe, because they had already taken the father and mother out of the apart¬ment. Igor, Edik, and Ira remained. He saw Ira, naked, being carried into the other room in the hands of six or seven people. He told us about it and said he would never forget it. He heard the brothers shouting something, inartic¬ulate from pain, rage, and the fact that they were powerless to do anything. But all the same they tried to do something. The guy who got hit with the axe lived. After I had been unsuccessful at killing myself I saw them taking Marina and Lyuda out of the bedroom. I was in such a state that I couldn't even remember my sister's name. I wanted to cry "Marina!" out to her, but could not. I looked at her and knew that it was a familiar, dear face, but couldn't for the life of me remember what her name was and who she was. And thus I saved her, because when they were taking her out, she, as it turns out, had told them that she had just been visiting and that she and Lyuda were both there by chance, that they weren't Armenians. Lyuda's a Russian, you can tell right away, and Marina speaks Azerbaijani wonderfully and she told them that she was an Azerbaijani. And I almost gave her away and doomed her. I'm glad that at least Marina came out of this all in good physical health .. . although her spirit was murdered . . . At some point I came to and saw Igor, Igor Agayev, my acquaintance, in that mob. He lives in the neighboring building. For some reason I remem¬bered his name, maybe I sensed my defense in him. I called out to him in Russian, "Igor, help!" But he turned away and went into the bedroom. Just then they were taking Marina and Lyuda out of the bedroom. Igor said he knew Marina and Lyuda, that Marina in fact was Azerbaijani, and he took both of them to the neighbors. And the idea stole through me that maybe Igor had led them to our apartment, something like that, but if he was my friend, he was supposed to save me. Then they were striking me very hard—we have an Indian vase, a metal one, they were hitting me on the back with it and I blacked out—they took me out onto the balcony a second time to throw me out the window. They were already sure that I was dead because I didn't react at all to the new blows. Someone said, "She's already dead, let's throw her out." When they carried me out onto the balcony for the second time, when I was about to die the second time, I heard someone say in Azerbaijani: "Don't kill her, I know her, she's a teacher." I can still hear that voice ringing in my ears, but I can't remember whose voice it was. It wasn't Igor, because he speaks Azerbaijani with an accent: his mother is Russian and they speak Russian at home. He speaks Azerbaijani worse than our Marina does. I remember when they car¬ried me in and threw me on the bed he came up to me, that person, and I, having opened my eyes, saw and recognized that person, but immediately passed out cold. I had been beaten so much that I didn't have the strength to remember him. I only remember that this person was older and he had a high position. Unfortunately I can't remember anything more. What should I say about Igor? He didn't treat me badly. I had heard a lot about him, that he wasn't that good a person, that he sometimes drank too much. Once he boasted to me that he had served in Afghanistan. He knew that women usually like bravery in a man. Especially if a man was in Afghanistan, if he was wounded, then it's about eighty percent sure that he will be treated very sympathetically, with respect. Later I found out that he had served in Ufa, and was injured, but that's not in Afghanistan, of course. I found that all out later. Among the people who were in our apartment, my Karina also saw the Secretary of the Party organization. I don't know his last name, his first name is Najaf, he is an Armenian-born Azerbaijani. But later Karina wasn't so sure, she was no longer a hundred percent sure that it was he she saw, and she didn't want to endanger him. She said, "He was there," and a little while later, "Maybe they beat me so much that I am confusing him with someone else. No, it seems like it was he." I am sure it was he because when he came to see us the first time he said one thing, and the next time he said something entirely different. The investigators haven't summoned him yet. He came to see us in the Khimik boarding house where we were living at the time. He brought groceries and flowers, this was right before March 8th; he almost started crying, he was so upset to see our condition. I don't know if he was putting us on or not, but later, after we had told the investigator and they summoned him to the Procuracy, he said that he had been in Baku, he wasn't in Sumgait. The fact that he changed his testimony leads me to believe that Karina is right, that in fact it was he who was in our apartment. I don't know how the investigators are now treating him. At one point I wondered and asked, and was told that he had an alibi and was not in our apartment. Couldn't he have gone to Baku and arranged an alibi? I'm not ruling out that possibility. I'll now return to our apartment. Mamma had come to. You could say that she bought them off with the gold Father gave her when they were married: her wedding band and her watch were gold. She bought her own and her husband's lives with them. She gave the gold to a 14-year old boy. Vadim Vorobyev. A Russian boy, he speaks Azerbaijani perfectly. He's an orphan who was raised by his grandfather and who lives in Sumgait on Nizami Street. He goes to a special school, one for mentally handicapped children. But I'll say this—I'm a teacher all the same and in a matter of min¬utes I can form an opinion—that boy is not at all mentally handicapped. He's healthy, he can think just fine, and analyze, too . . . policemen should be so lucky. And he's cunning, too. After that he went home and tore all of the pictures out of his photo album. He beat Mamma and demanded gold, saying, "Lady, if you give us all the gold and money in your apartment we'll let you live." And Mamma told them where the gold was. He brought in the bag and opened it, shook out the contents, and everyone who was in the apartment jumped on it, started knocking each other over and taking the gold from one another. I'm sur¬prised they didn't kill one another right then. Mamma was still in control of herself. She had been beaten up, her face was black and blue from the blows, and her eyes were filled with blood, and she ran into the other room. Father was lying there, tied up, with a gag in his mouth and a pillow over his face. There was a broken table on top of the pil¬low. Mamma grabbed Father and he couldn't walk; like me, he was half-dead, halfway into the other world. He couldn't comprehend anything, couldn't see, and was covered with black and blue. Mamma pulled the gag out of his mouth, it was some sort of cloth, I think it was a slipcover from an armchair. The bandits were still in our apartment, even in the room Mamma pulled Father out of, led him out of, carried him out of. We had two armchairs in that room, a small magazine table, a couch, a television, and a screen. Three people were standing next to that screen, and into their shirts, their pants, everywhere imaginable, they were shoving shot glasses and cups from the coffee service—Mamma saw them out of the corner of her eye. She said, "I was afraid to turn around, I just seized Father and started pulling him, but at the threshold I couldn't hold him up, he fell down, and I picked him up again and dragged him down the stairs to the neighbors'." Mamma remem¬bered one of the criminals, the one who had watched her with his face half-turned toward her, out of one eye. She says, "I realized that my death would come from that person. I looked him in the eyes and he recoiled from fear and went stealing." Later they caught that scoundrel. Meanwhile, Mamma grabbed Father and left. I was alone. Igor had taken Marina away, Mamma and Father were gone, Karina was already outside, I didn't know what they were doing to her. I was left all alone, and at that moment ... I became someone else, do you understand? Even though I knew that neither Mother and Father in the oth¬er room, nor Marina and Lyuda under the bed could save me, all the same I somehow managed to hold out. I went on fighting them, I bit someone, I remember, and I scratched another. But when I was left alone I realized what kind of people they were, the ones I had observed, the ones who beat Karina, what kind of people they were, the ones who beat me, that it was all unnecessary, that I was about to die and that all of that would die with me. At some point I took heart when I saw the young man from the next building. I didn't know his name, but we would greet one another when we met, we knew that we were from the same microdistrict. When I saw him I said, "Neighbor, is that you?" In so doing I placed myself in great danger. He realized that if I lived I would remember him. That's when he grabbed the axe. The axe that had been taken from my father. I automatically fell to my knees and raised my hands to take the blow of the axe, although at the time it would have been better if he had struck me in the head with the axe and put me out of my misery. When he started getting ready to wind back for the blow, someone came into the room. The newcomer had such an impact on everyone that my neighbor's axe froze in the air. Everyone stood at attention for this guy, like soldiers in the presence of a general. Everyone waited for his word: continue the atrocities or not. He said, "Enough, let's go to the third entryway." In the third entryway they killed Uncle Shurik, Aleksandr Gambarian. This confirms once again that they had prepared in advance. Almost all of them left with him, as they went picking up pillows, blankets, whatever they needed, whatever they found, all the way up to worn out slippers and one boot, someone else had already taken the other. Four people remained in the room, soldiers who didn't obey their general. They had to have come recently, because other faces had flashed in front of me over those 2 to 3 hours, but I had never seen those three. One of them, Kuliyev (I identified him later), a native of the Sisian District of Armenia, an Azerbaijani, had moved to Azerbaijan a year before. He told me in Armenian: "Sister, don't be afraid, I'll drive those three Azerbaijanis out of here." That's just what he said, "those Azerbaijanis," as though he himself were not Azerbaijani, but some other nationality, he said with such hatred, "I'll drive them out of here now, and you put your clothes on, and find a hammer and nails and nail the door shut, because they'll be coming back from Apartment 41." That's when I found out that they had gone to Apartment 41. Before that, the person in the Eskimo dogskin coat, the one who came in and whom they listened to, the "general," said that they were going to the third entryway. Kuliyev helped me get some clothes on, because I couldn't do it by myself. Marina's old fur coat was lying on the floor. He threw it over my shoulders, I was racked with shivers, and he asked where he could find nails and a hammer. He wanted to give them to me so that when he left I could nail the door shut. But the door was lying on the floor in the hall. I went out onto the balcony. There were broken windows, and flowers and dirt from flowerpots were scattered on the floor. It was impossible to find anything. He told me, "Well, fine, I won't leave you here. Would any of the neighbors let you in? They'll be back, they won't calm down, they know you're alive." He told me all this in Armenian. Then he returned to the others and said, "What are you waiting for? Leave!" They said, "Ah, you just want to chase us out of here and do it with her yourself. No, we want to do it to." He urged them on, but gently, not coarsely, because he was alone against them, although they were still just boys, not old enough to be drafted. He led them out of the room, and went down to the third floor with them himself, and said, "Leave. What's the mat¬ter, aren't you men? Go fight with the men. What do you want of her?" And he came back upstairs. They wanted to come up after him and he realized that he couldn't hold them off forever. Then he asked me where he could hide me. I told him at the neighbors' on the fourth floor, Apartment 10, we were on really good terms with them. We knocked on the door, and he explained in Azerbaijani. The neighbor woman opened the door and immediately said, "I'm an Azerbaijani." He said, "I know. Let her sit at your place a while. Don't open the door to any¬one, no one knows about this, I won't tell anyone. Let her stay at your place." She says, "Fine, have her come in." I went in. She cried a bit and gave me some stockings, I had gone entirely numb and was racked with nervous shudders. I burst into tears. Even though I was wearing Marina's old fur coat, it's a short one, a half-length, I was cold all the same. I asked, "Do you know where my family is, what happened to them?" She says, "No, I don't know anything. I'm afraid to go out of the apartment, now they're so wild that they don't look to see who's Azerbaijani and who's Armenian." Kuliyev left. Ten minutes later my neighbor says, "You know, Lyuda, I don't want to lose my life because of you, or my son and his wife. Go stay with someone else." During the butchery in our apartment one of the scum, a sadist, took my earring in his mouth—I had pearl earrings on—and ripped it out, tear¬ing the earlobe. The other earring was still there. When I'm nervous I fix my hair constantly, and then, when I touched my ear, I noticed that I had one earring on. I took it out and gave it to her. She took the earring, but she led me out of the apartment. I went out and didn't know where to go. I heard someone going upstairs. I don't know who it was but assumed it was them. With tremendous diffi¬culty I went up to our apartment, I wanted to die in my own home. I go into the apartment and hear that they are coming up to our place, to the fifth floor. I had to do something. I went into the bedroom where Marina and Lyuda had hidden and saw that the bed was overturned. Instead of hiding I squatted near some broken Christmas ornaments, found an unbroken one, and started sobbing. Then they came in. Someone said that there were still some things to take. I think that someone pushed me under the bed. I lay on the floor, and there were broken ornaments on it, under my head and legs. I got all cut up, but I lay there without moving. My heart was beating so hard it seemed the whole town could hear it. There were no lights on. Maybe that's what saved me. They were burning matches, and toward the end they brought in a candle. They started picking out the clothes that could still be worn. They took Father's sport jacket and a bedspread, the end of which was under my head. They pulled on the one end, and it felt like they were pulling my hair out. I almost cried out. And again I realized that I wasn't getting out of there alive, and I started to strangle myself again. I took my throat in one hand, and pressed the other on my mouth, so as not to wheeze, so that I would die and they would only find me afterward. They were throwing the burned matches under the bed, and I got burned, but I with¬stood it. Something inside of me held on, someone's hand was protecting me to the end. I knew that I was going to die, but I didn't know how. I knew that if I survived I would walk out of that apartment, but if I found out that one of my family had died, I would die for sure, because I had never been so close to death and couldn't imagine how you could go on living without your mother or father, or without your sister. Marina, I thought, was still alive: she went to Lyuda's place or someone is hiding her. I tried to think that Igor wouldn't let them be killed. He served in Afghanistan, he should protect her. While I was strangling myself I said my good-byes to everyone. And then I thought, how could Marina survive alone. If they killed all of us, how would she live all by herself? There were six people in the room. They talked among themselves and smoked. One talked about his daughter, saying that there was no children's footwear in our apartment that he could take for his daughter. Another said that he liked the apartment—recently we had done a really good job fixing everything up—and that he would live there after everything was all over. They started to argue. A third one says, "How come you get it? 1 have four children, and there are three rooms here, that's just what I need. All these years I've been living in God-awful places." Another one says, "Neither of you gets it. We'll set fire to it and leave." Then someone said that Azerbaijanis live right next door, the fire could move over to their place. And they, to my good fortune, didn't set fire to the apartment, and left. Oh yes, I just remembered. While they were raping me they repeated quite frequently, "Let the Armenian women have babies for us, Muslim babies, let them bear Azerbaijanis for the struggle against the Armenians." Then they said, "Those Muslims can carry on our holy cause. Heroes!" They repeated it very often. The six of them left. They left and I had an attack. I realized that the dan¬ger was past, and stopped controlling myself. I relaxed for a moment and the physical pain immediately made itself felt. My heart and kidneys hurt. I had an awful kidney attack. I rolled back and forth on top of those Christmas ornaments, howling and howling. I didn't know where I was or how long this went on. When we figured out the time, later it turned out that I howled and was in pain for around an hour. Then all my strength was gone and I burst into tears, I started feeling sorry for myself, and so on and so forth .. . Then someone came into the room. I think I hear someone calling my name. I want to respond and restrain myself, I think that I'm hallucinating. I am silent, and then it continues: it seems that first a man's voice is calling me, then a woman's. Later I found out that Mamma had sent our neighbor, the one whose apartment she was hiding in, Uncle Sabir Kasumov, to our place, telling him, "I know that they've killed Lyuda. Go there and at least bring her corpse to me so they don't violate her corpse." He went and returned empty handed, but Mamma thought he just didn't want to carry the corpse into his apartment. She sent him another time, and then sent his wife, and they were walking through the rooms looking for me, but I didn't answer their calls. There was no light, they had smashed the chandeliers and lamps. They started the pogrom in our apartment around five o'clock, and at 9:30 I went down to the Kasumovs'. I went down the stairs myself. I walked out of the apartment: how long can you wait for your own death, how long can you be cowardly, afraid? Come what will. I walked out and started knocking on the doors one after the next. No one, not on the fifth floor, not on the fourth, opened the door. On the third floor, on the landing of the stairway, Uncle Sabir's son started to shout, "Aunt Roza, don't cry, Lyuda's alive!" He knocked on his own door and out came Aunt Tanya, Igor, and after them, Mamma. Aunt Tanya, Uncle Sabir's wife, is an Urdmurt. All of us were in their apartment. I didn't see Karina, but she was in their home, too, lying delirious, she had a fever. Marina was there too, and my father and mother. All of my family had gathered there. At the door I lost consciousness. Igor and Aunt Tanya carried me into the apartment. Later I found out what they had done to our Karina. Mamma said, "Lyuda, Karina's in really serious condition, she's probably dying. If she rec¬ognizes you, don't cry, don't tell her that her face looks so awful." It was as though her whole face was paralyzed, you know, everything was pushed over to one side, her eye was all swollen, and everything flowed together, her lips, her cheeks ... It was as though they had dragged her right side around the whole microdistrict, that's how disfigured her face was. I said, "Fine." Mamma was afraid to go into the room, because she went in and hugged Karina and started to cry. I went in. As soon as I saw her my legs gave way. I fell down near the bed, hugged her legs and started kissing them and crying. She opened the eye that was intact, looked at me, and said, "Who is it?" But I could barely talk, my whole face was so badly beaten. I didn't say, but rather muttered something tender, something incomprehensi¬ble, but tender, "My Karochka, my Karina, my little golden one ..." She understood me. Then Igor brought me some water, I drank it down and moistened Karina's lips. She started to groan. She was saying something to me, but I couldn't understand it. Then I made out, "It hurts, I hurt all over." Her hair was glued down with blood. I stroked her forehead, her head, she had grit on her forehead, and on her lips . . . She was groaning again, and I don't know how to help her. She calls me over with her hand, come closer. I go to her. She's saying something to me, but I can't understand her. Igor brings her a pencil and paper and says, "Write it down." She shakes her head as if to say, no, I can't write. I can't understand what she's saying. She wanted to tell me something, but she couldn't. I say, "Karina, just lie there a little while, then maybe you'll feel better and you can tell me then." And then she says, "Maybe it'll be too late." And I completely . . . just broke down, I couldn't control myself. Then I moistened my hand in the water and wiped her forehead and eye. I dipped a handkerchief into the water and squeezed a little water onto her lips. She says, "Lyuda, we're not saved yet, we have to go somewhere else. Out of this damned house. They want to kill us, I know. They'll find us here, too. We need to call Urshan." She repeated this to me for almost a whole hour, until I understood her every word. I ask, "What's his number?" Urshan Feyruzovich, that's the head of the administration where she works. "We have to call him." But I didn't know his home number. I say, "Karina, what's his number?" She says, "I can't remember." I say, "Who knows his number? Who can I call?" She says, "I don't know anything, leave me alone." I went out of the room. Igor stayed to watch over her and sat there, he was crying, too. I say, "Mamma, Karina says that we have to call Urshan. How can we call him? Who knows his telephone number?" 1 tell Marina, "Think, think, who can we call to find out?" She started calling; several peo¬ple didn't answer. She called a girlfriend, her girlfriend called another girl¬friend and found out the number and called us back. The boss's wife answered and said he was at the dacha. My voice keeps cracking, I can't talk normally. She says, "Lyuda, don't panic, get a hold of yourself, go out to those hooligans and tell them that they just can't do that." She still didn't know what was really going on. I said, "It's easy for you to say that, you don't understand what's happening. They are killing people here. I don't think there is a single Armenian left in the building, they've cut them all up. I'm even surprised that we managed to save ourselves. "She says, "Well, OK, if it's that serious ..." And all the same she's thinking that my emotions are all churned up and that I'm fearing for my life, that in fact it's not all that bad. "OK, fine, fine," she says, "if you're afraid, OK, as soon as Urshan comes back I'll send him over." We called again because they had just started robbing the apartment directly under Aunt Tanya's, on the second floor, Asya Dallakian's apart¬ment. She wasn't home, she was staying with her daughter in Karabagh. They destroyed everything there . . . We realized that they still might come back. We kept on trying to get through to Aunt Tanya—Urshan's wife is named Tanya too—and finally we get through. She says, "Yes, he's come home, he's leaving for your place now." He came. Of course he didn't know what was happening, either, because he brought two of his daughters with him. He came over in his jeep with his two daughters, like he was going on an outing. He came and saw what shape we were in and what was going on in town and got frightened. He has grown up daughters, they're almost my age. The three of us carried out Karina, tossed a coat on her and a warm scarf, and went down to his car. He took Karina and me to the Maternity Home. . . No, first they took us to the police precinct. They had stretchers ready. As soon as we got out of the car they put Karina and me on stretchers and said that we were in serious condition and that we mustn't move, we might have fractures. From the stretcher I saw about 30 soldiers sitting and lying on the first floor, bandaged, on the concrete floor, groaning . . . This was around eleven o'clock at night. We had left the house somewhere around 10:30. When I saw those soldiers I realized that a war was going on: soldiers, ene¬mies ... everything just like a war. They carried me into some office on the stretcher. The emergency medical people from Baku were there. The medical attendant there was an older Armenian. Urshan told him what they had done to Karina because she's so proud she would never have told. And this aging Armenian . . . his name was Uncle Arkady, I think, because someone said "Arkady, get an injection ready," he started to fill a syringe, and turned around so as to give Karina a shot. But when he looked at her face he became ill. And he was an old man, in his sixties, his hair was all grey, and his moustache, too. He hugged Karina and started to cry: "What have they done to you?!" He was speaking Armenian. "What have they done to you?!" Karina didn't say anything. Mamma came in then, and she started to cry, too. The man tried to calm her: "I'll give you a shot." Mamma tells him, "I don't need any shot. Where is the government? Just what are they doing? Look what they've done to my chil¬dren! They're killing people, and you're just sitting here!" Some teacups were standing on the table in there. "You're sitting here drinking tea! Look what they've done to my daughters! Look what they've turned them into!" They gave her something to drink, some heart medicine, I think. They gave Karina an injection and the doctor said that she had to be taken to the Maternity Home immediately. Papa and Urshan, I think, even though Papa was in bad shape, helped carry Karina out. When they put her on the stretcher, none of the medics got near her. I don't know, maybe there weren't any orderlies. Then they came to me: "What's the matter with you?" Their tone was so official that I wrapped myself tighter in the half-length coat. I had a blanket on, too, an orange one, Aunt Tanya's. I said, "I'm fine." Uncle Arkady came over and was soothing me, and then told the doctor, "You leave, let a woman examine her." A woman came, an Azerbaijani, I believe, and said, "What's wrong with you?" I was wearing my sister Lyuba's night¬shirt, the sister who at this time was in Yerevan. When she was nursing her infant she had cut out a big hole in it so that it would be easier to breast feed the baby. I tore the night shirt some more and showed her. I took it off my shoulders and turned my back to her. There was a huge wound, about the size of a hand, on my back, from the Indian vase. She said something to them and they gave me two shots. She said that it should be dressed with something, but that they'd do that in the hospital. They put me on a stretcher, too. They started looking for people to carry me. I raised up my head a little and wanted to sit up, and this woman, I don't know if she was a doctor or a nurse, said, "Lie still, you mustn't move." When I was lying back down I saw two policemen leading a man. His pro¬file seemed very familiar to me. I shouted, "Stop!" One of the policemen turned and says, "What do you want?" I say, "Bring him to me, I want to look at him." They brought him over and I said, "That person was just in our apartment and he just raped me and my sister. I recognize him, note it down." They said, "Fine," but didn't write it down and led him on. I don't know where they were taking him. Then they put my stretcher near where the injured and beaten soldiers were sitting. They went to look for the ambulance driver so he would bring the car up closer. One of the soldiers started talking to me, "Sister ..." I don't remember the conversation exactly, but he asked me were we lived and what they did to us. I asked him, "Where are you from?" He said that he was from Ufa. Apparently they were the first that were brought in. The Ufa police. Later I learned that they suffered most of all. He says, "OK, you're Armenians, they didn't get along with you, but I'm a Russian," he says, "what are they trying to kill me for?" Oh, I remembered something else. When I went out onto the balcony with Kuliyev for a hammer and nails I looked out the window and saw two Azerbaijanis beating a soldier near the kindergarten. He was pressed against the fence and he covered his head with his arms, they were beating him with his own club. The way he cried "Mamma" made my skin crawl. I don't know what they did to him, if he's still alive or not. And something else. Before the attack on our house we saw sheets, clothes, and some dishes flying from the third or fourth floor of the neighboring building, but I didn't think it was Azerbaijanis attacking Armenians. I thought that something was on fire or they were throwing something they didn't need out, or someone was fighting with someone. It was only later, when they were burning a passenger car in the yard, when the neighbors said that they were doing that to the Armenians, that I real¬ized that this was serious, that it was anti-Armenian. They took Karina and me to the Sumgait Maternity Home. Mamma went to them too and said, "I've been beaten too, help me." But they just ignored her. My father went to them and said in a guilty voice, as though it was his fault that he'd been beaten, and says, "My ribs hurt so much, those creeps have probably broken my ribs. Please look at them." The doctor says, "That's not my job." Urshan said, "Fine, I'll take you to my place and if we need a doctor, I'll find you one. I'll bring one and have him look at you. And he drove them to his apartment. Marina and I stayed there. They examined us. I was more struck by what the doctor said than by what those Azerbaijanis in our apartment did to us. I wasn't surprised when they beat us they wanted to beat us, but I was very surprised that in a Soviet medical facility a woman who had taken the Hippocratic Oath could talk to victims like that. By happy—or unhappy—coincidence we were seen by the doctor that had delivered our Karina. And she, having examined Karina, said, "No problem, you got off Pretty good. Not like they did in Kafan, when you Armenians were killing and raping our women." Karina was in such terrible condition that she couldn't say anything—she would certainly have had something to say! Then they examined me. The same story. They put us in a separate ward. No shots, no medicinal powders, no drugs. Absolutely none! They didn't even give us tea. All the women there soon found out that in ward such and such were Armenians who had been raped. And they started coming and peering through the keyhole, the way people look at zoo animals. Karina didn't see this, she was lying there, and I kept her from seeing it. They put Ira B. in our ward. She had also been raped. True, she didn't have any serious bodily injuries, but when she told me what had happened at their place, I felt worse for them than I did for us. Because when they raped Ira her daughter was in the room, she was under the bed on which it happened. And Ira was holding her daughter's hand, the one who was hid¬ing under the bed. When they were beating Ira or taking her earrings off, gold, when she involuntarily let go of her daughter's hand, her daughter took her hand again. Her daughter is in the fourth grade, she's 11 years old. I felt really awful when I heard that. Ira asked them not to harm her daughter, she said, "Do what you want with me, just leave my daughter alone." Well, they did what they wanted. They threatened to kill her daughter if she got in their way. Now I would be surprised if the criminals had behaved any other way that night. It was simply Bartholomew's Night, I say, they did what they would love to do every day: steal, kill, rape . . . Many are surprised that those animals didn't harm the children. The beasts explained it like this: this would be repeated in 15 to 20 years, and those children would be grown, and then, as they put it, "we'll come take the pleasure out of their lives, those children." This was about the girls that would be young women in 15 years. They were thinking about their tomor¬row because they were sure that there would be no trial and no investiga¬tion, just as there was no trial or investigation in 1915, and that those girls could be of some use in 15 years. This I heard from the investigators; one of the victims testified to it. That's how they described their own natures, that they would still be bloodthirsty in 15 to 20 years, and in 100 years—they themselves said that. And this, too. Everyone is surprised that they didn't harm our Marina. Many people say that they either were drunk or had smoked too much. I don't know why their eyes were red. Maybe because they hadn't slept the night before, maybe for some other reason, I don't know. But they hadn't been smoking and they weren't drunk, I'm positive, because someone who has smoked will stop at nothing he has the urge to do. And they spoke in a cultured fashion with Marina: "Little sister, don't be afraid, we won't harm you, don't look over there [where I was], you might be frightened. You're a Muslim, a Muslim woman shouldn't see such things." So they were really quite sober .. . So we came out of that story alive. But every day we have lived since it all happened bears the mark of that day. It wasn't even a day, of those sever¬al hours. Father still can't look us in the eyes. He still feels guilty for what happened to Karina, Mother, and me. Because of his nerves he's started talk¬ing to himself, I've heard him argue with himself several times when he thought no one is listening: "Listen," he'll say, "what could I do? What could I do alone, how could I protect them?" I don't know where to find the words, it's not that I'm happy, but I am glad that he didn't see it all happen. That's the only thing they spared us ... or maybe it happened by chance. Of course he knows it all, but there's no way you could imagine every last detail of what happened. And there were so many conversations: Karina and I spoke together in private, and we talked with Mamma, too. But Father was never present at those conversations. We spare him that, if you can say that. And when the investigator comes to the house, we don't speak with Father pre¬sent. On February 29, the next day, Karina and I were discharged from the hos¬pital. First they released me, but since martial law had been declared in the city, the soldiers took me to the police precinct in an armored personnel car¬rier. There were many people there, Armenian victims. I met the Tovmasian family there. From them I learned that Rafik and their Uncle Grant had died. They were sure that both had died. They were talking to me and Raya, Rafik's wife and Grant's daughter, and her mother, were both crying. Then they took us all out of the office on the first floor into the yard. There's a little one-room house outside there, a recreation and reading area. They took us in there. The women were afraid to go because they thought that they were shooing us out of the police precinct because it had become so dangerous that even the people working at the precinct wanted to hide. The women were shouting. They explained to them: "We want to hide you better because it's possible there will be an attack on the police precinct." We went into the little house. There were no chairs or tables in there. We had children with us and they were hungry; we even had infants who need¬ed to have their diapers changed. No one had anything with them. It was just awful. They kept us there for 24 hours. From the window of the one-room house you could see that there were Azerbaijanis standing on the fences around the police precinct, as though they were spying on us. The police precinct is surrounded by a wall, like a fence, and it's electrified, but if they were standing on the wall, it means the electricity was shut off. This brought great psychological pressure to bear on us, particularly on those who hadn't just walked out of their apartments, but who hadn't slept for 24 hours, or 48, or those who had suffered physically and spiritually, the ones who had lost family members. For us it was another ordeal. We were espe¬cially frightened when all the precinct employees suddenly disappeared. We couldn't see a single person, not in the courtyard and not in the windows. We thought that they must have already been hiding under the building, that they must have some secret room down there. People were panicking: they started throwing themselves at one another . . . That's the way it is on a sinking ship. We heard those people, mainly young people, whistling and whooping on the walls. We felt that the end was approaching. I was com¬pletely terrified: I had left Karina in the hospital and didn't know where my parents were. I was sort of calm about my parents, I was thinking only about Karina, if, Heaven forbid, they should attack the hospital, they would imme¬diately tell them that there was an Armenian in there, and something terri¬ble would happen to Karina again, and she wouldn't be able to take it. Then soldiers with dogs appeared. When they saw the dogs some of the people climbed down off the fence. Then they brought in about another 30 soldiers. They all had machine guns in readiness, their fingers on the trig¬gers. We calmed down a little. They brought us chairs and brought the chil¬dren some little cots and showed us where we could wash our hands, and took the children to the toilet. But we all sat there hungry, but to be honest, it would never have occurred to any of us that we hadn't eaten for two days and that people do eat. Then, closer to nightfall, they brought a group of detained criminals. They were being watched by soldiers with guard dogs. One of the men came back from the courtyard and told us about it. Raya Tovmasian ... it was like a different woman had been substituted. Earlier she had been crying, wail¬ing, and calling out: "Oh, Rafik!," but when she heard about this such a rage came over her! She jumped up, she had a coat on, and she started to roll up her sleeves like she was getting ready to beat someone. And suddenly there were soldiers, and dogs, and lots of people. She ran over to them. The ban¬dits were standing there with their hands above their heads facing the wall. She went up to one of them and grabbed him by the collar and started to shake and thrash him! Then, on to a second, and a third. Everyone was root¬ed to the spot. Not one of the soldiers moved, no one went up to her or made her stop her from doing it. And the bandits fell down and covered their heads with their hands, muttering something. She came back and sat down, and something akin to a smile appeared on her face. She became so quiet: no tears, no cries. Then that round was over and she went back to beat them again. She was walking and cursing terribly: take that, and that, they killed my husband, the bastards, the creeps, and so on. Then she came back again and sat down. She probably did this the whole night through, well, it wasn't really night, no one slept. She went five or six times and beat them and returned. And she told the women, "What are you sitting there for? They killed your husbands and children, they raped, and you're just sitting there. You're sitting and talking as though nothing had happened. Aren't you Armenians?" She appealed to everyone, but no one got up. I was just numb, I didn't have the strength to beat anyone, I could barely hold myself up, all the more so since I had been standing for so many hours—I was released at eleven o'clock in the morning and it was already after ten at night—because there weren't enough chairs, really it was the elderly and women with children who sat. I was on my feet the whole time. There was nothing to breathe, the door was closed, and the men were smoking. The sit¬uation was deplorable. At eleven o'clock at night policemen came for us, local policemen, Azerbaijanis. They said, "Get up. They've brought mattresses, you can wash up and put the children to bed." Now the women didn't want to leave this place, either. The place had become like home, it was safe, there were sol¬diers with dogs. If anyone went outside, the soldiers would say, "Oh, it's our little family," and things like that. The soldiers felt this love, and probably, for the first time in their lives perceived themselves as defenders. Everyone spoke from the heart, cried, and hugged them, and they, with their loaded machine guns in their hands, said, "Grandmother, you mustn't approach me, I'm on guard." Our people would say, "Oh, that's all right." They hugged them, one woman even kissed one of the machine guns. This was all terribly moving for me. And the small children kept wanting to pet the dogs. They took us up to the second floor and said, "You can undress and sleep in here. Don't be afraid, the precinct is on guard, and it's quiet in the city." This was the 29th, when the killing was going on in Block 41A and in other places. Then we were told that all the Armenians were being gathered at the SK club and at the City Party Committee. They took us there. On the way I asked them to stop at the Maternity Home: I wanted to take Karina with me. I didn't know what was happening there. They told me, "Don't worry, the Maternity Home is full of soldiers, more than mothers-to-be. So you can rest assured. I say, "Well, I won't rest assured regardless, because the staff in there is capable of anything." When I arrived at the City Party Committee it turned out that Karina had already been brought there. They had seen fit to release her from the hospi¬tal, deciding that she felt fine and was no longer in need of any care. Once we were in the City Party Committee we gave free reign to our tears. We met acquaintances, but everyone was somehow divided into two groups, those who hadn't been injured, who were clothed, who had brought a pot of food with them, and so on, and those, like me, like Raya, who were wearing whatever had come their way. There were even people who were all made up, dolled up like they had come from a wedding. There were people with¬out shoes, naked people, hungry people, those who were crying, and those who had lost someone. And of course the stories and the talk were flying: "Oh, I heard that they killed him!" "What do you mean they killed him!" "He stayed at work!" "Do you know what's happening at this and such a plant?" Talk like that. And then I met Aleksandr Mikhailovich Gukasian, the teacher. I know him very well and respect him highly. I've known him for a long time. They had a small room, well really it was more like a study-room. We spent a whole night talking in that study once. On March 1 we heard that Bagirov [First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan SSR] had arrived. Everyone ran to see Bagirov, what news he had brought with him and how this was all being viewed from outside. He arrived and everyone went up to him to talk to him and ask him things. Everyone was in a tremendous rage. But he was protected by soldiers, and he went up to the second floor and didn't deign to speak with the people. Apparently he had more important things to do. Several hours passed. Gukasian called me and says, "Lyudochka, find another two or three. We're going to make up lists, they asked for them upstairs, lists of the dead, those whose whereabouts are unknown, and lists of people who had pogroms of their apartments and of those whose cars Were burned." I had about 50 people in my list when they called me and said, "Lyuda, your Mamma has arrived, she's looking for you, she doesn't believe that you are alive and well and that you're here." I gave the lists to someone and asked them to continue what I was doing and went off. The list was imprecise, of course. It included Grant Adamian, Raya Tovmasian's father, who was alive, but at the time they thought him dead. There was Engels Grigorian's father and aunt, Cherkez and Maria. The list also included the name of my girlfriend and neighbor, Zhanna Agabekian. One of the guys said that he had been told that they chopped her head off in the courtyard in front of the Kosmos movie theater. We put her on the list too, and cried, but later it turned out that that was just a rumor, that in fact an hour earlier she had somehow left Sumgait for the marina and from there had set sail for Krasnovodsk, where, thank God, she was alive and well. I should also say that in addition to those who died that list contained people who were rumored missing or who were so badly wounded that they were given up for dead. to be continued...

тема открыта

- ROZA ANTONOVNA M. Born 1936 House Painter Retired for reasons of health shortly prior to the events Resident at Building 17/33B, Apartment 15 Micro district No. 3 Sumgait On the 28th my husband came home and said that he was walking near the Sputnik and there were cars burning there. He didn't stop, he didn't ask anyone, but some Russians went by and said that the Azerbaijanis were burning Armenian cars; he didn't stand there looking, he came home. He explained it to me like that and I said, "Who cares what's burning, we don't have a car anyway. How come the Azerbaijanis can burn Armenian cars? " We hadn't even managed to sit down at the table when we heard noise. It was either 4:10 or 5:10. We went out on the balcony and looked: on the street there were two Azerbaijani Zhigulis and one Armenian motorcycle with a sidecar. We see probably about 300 to 400 people attack the motorcycle and tear it up, but as soon as they set fire to it we ran in from the balcony. When we get back in the apartment we get the axe. We look, they're already break¬ing down our door. They come into the entryway and shout my husband’s name: "Grisha, open the door!" and "We're coming." While they were break¬ing down the door I had just enough time to take the axe from my husband and hide it under the couch. They broke down the door and came in. As they came in they told us, "Give us the apartment, you go wherever you want. Go to your Armenia." I was pleading with them, I said, "I'll give you everything, the whole apart¬ment and everything in it, just don't harm us, don't harm my girls." A guy with a moustache said, "They did a good job renovating this apartment. We don't have to burn it, let them leave and we'll take it." Another guy is speak¬ing Armenian, he's an Azerbaijani, but he speaks Armenian. You can see he's an Azerbaijani, but we can't speak Yerevan Armenian like these guys did, the three or four guys who spoke Armenian, and they are saying, "No, we didn't come here to leave them alive. We came here to burn or kill them all. We won't let them out of here." I started crying again. A Russian girl, Lyudmila, was visiting us at the time. Lyudmila and my Marina had gone into the bedroom and hid under the bed, but I had no idea where my other daughters were hiding. I didn't know where my husband or my daughters were. I wasn't feeling well that day: my skin was red all over, in fact we had called an ambulance, and they had given me a shot. And I was lying down, excuse me for saying this, in my nightshirt, when they came in. I didn't have a chance to put on a dress or anything. I jumped up and stood on the bed. When they carried my Lyuda out on the balcony naked and raped her, my older daughter, and lay my oth¬er daughter near the bed and 10 to 20 guys—grown-ups, young ones, even 15-year olds—raped my Karina, well I just... We had some small chairs, twelve of them, they broke all of their legs off on me and cut my head in five or six places, and all the bedspreads were bloody, I still have them. The investigator wanted to take them to Moscow, but I wouldn't give them up, I said, "As long as I live I'm going to keep these bedspreads that have my blood on them. The Azerbaijanis did this." I only heard how they picked up my daughter, naked, and carried her outside like a coffin. They were saying, "The motorcycle is burning, let's take her and throw her in the fire, let her burn along with it. Let your mother hear your screams." I heard all that. Then I see one of them take the axe that I had hidden. He takes the axe and goes out on the balcony and says, "I'm going to chop Lyuda's head off now." And another says, "No, why cut her up, let's open the balcony win¬dows and throw her out." They couldn't get the windows open because it had rained recently and the window frames had swollen, one of the shutters would open but the other wouldn't. They couldn't get them open, so they were unable to throw Lyuda out. When they got the axe to chop her head off one man, who was standing near the door, where I was on the bed, that man made a sign with his hands and stopped them. "Enough, don't chop her head off, what you've done is enough, they're already dead anyway. Let's take everything in the apartment and leave." Then a boy of 13 or 14, a pale one, kind of puffy, I still can't figure out if he was a Russian or if he had mixed blood, or if he was an Azerbaijani or what his nationality was. He beat my legs very hard five or six times with the legs from a chair and said, "Lady, where's the gold? Where's the money? Show me where they are." I said, "Over there in the wardrobe, there's a black bag, everything's in there. Take whatever you want. Just don't kill my children." The boy took the black bag and turned it inside out, and they all threw themselves upon the contents. There was a thousand rubles in there and bonds for another thousand, and my gold jewelry, the jewelry my husband and his relatives gave me when we were married. The people who beat me threw themselves on the money, and just then I practically fly through them, open the other door, and see my husband: gagged, his hands bound, a pillow over his mouth, held down by the seat of a chair, my husband is asphyxiating. I didn't even notice that I was bleeding myself, or what shape I was in, that I was only wearing a nightshirt and that there were so many men in there ... I still can't figure out how I managed. I just took myself in hand, grabbed my husband and jumped out into the entryway and ran up and down the stairs five times asking to be let in. One of them, holding Lyuda's and my fur coat, Lyuda's and my coats, and Karina's raincoat, all those four things and a pair of boots, watched to see where we were hiding. He saw that a man on the third floor opened his door, an Azerbaijani, Sabir. My husband and I, covered in blood, went into his apartment. I said, "Sabir, I don't know where my children are, I know that Lyuda is on the balcony, they are going to chop her up. Go and get her bones so they won't throw them off the balcony?" Sabir went upstairs and 10 or 15 minutes passed. The guy who saw us go into Sabir's apartment started knocking on the door. I asked, "Who's there?" He answered, "It's the neighbor." I didn't open the door because I knew that that guy wanted to come in and kill us. The one who saw where we hid. Sabir came downstairs an hour later, crying. I look, he's come down with¬out Lyuda. I'm crying and I say, "Sabir, you probably didn't want to bring my dead Lyuda into your place. Why did you come without Lyuda?" And he started to cry too, and said, "I'm afraid, there are a lot of them ... Don't be afraid, I wouldn't let them kill Lyuda, Lyuda's alive." Two or three hours went by, and Sabir went up there three times ... Marina and that Russian girl had been under the bed. I didn't know where they were. And Karina, I saw her myself as they carried her naked outside, holding her up in the air with their arms, like a coffin, they picked her up in their hands and carried her outside. Igor came in with Sabir. Igor lives in front of our building. He served in Afghanistan, he received a medal, and lives across from our building, he knows the girls. And his face is familiar to me. I look and say, "Who are you?" He says, "I know your girls." I start to cry and kiss him and say, "What is your name?" He says, "Igor." I say, "Yes, I remember you standing and talking with Lyuda." He says, "I have never been to your apartment, but I know your girls well." He had known Lyuda before. When he found out what was going on in the yard he wanted to come to our place and help, to do something. He came in with Sabir into Sabir's apartment. I ask, "Are the girls alive? Did you see anyone, do you know if anyone has hidden or has run off somewhere? We're in such awful shape ..." He starts to cry and to deceive me, he says, "Aunt Roza, don't cry, I already hid Lyuda, and I hid Marina and that Russian girl on the second floor at Salima's place. Salima opened the door," he says, "and hid her and Marina. I hid Marina and the Russian girl, Lyuda, on the second floor." And I ask, "And where are Lyuda and Karina?" He doesn't know, he says, "It's true that I hid Lyuda, but I don't know exactly on which floor, in what apart¬ment. But there are still a lot of people out in the yard," he says, "when they disperse we'll go looking." And starts to cry. And I say, "No, Sabir is deceiv¬ing me, and you're deceiving me too. Lyuda is probably dead, and you don't want to tell me the truth." A half an hour later they go out and in another half an hour they return. I look and see that Igor is holding Karina by the hand, she's all bloody, com¬pletely beaten up. There isn't a speck of white left on her face, everything's bloody. They came in. Karina didn't know what she was saying, she talked like she was crazy. She couldn't walk by herself for an hour. Then Sabir says, "No, Lyuda's coming." Igor went looking for her. It turns out that she was hidden on the fourth floor. He found Lyuda and brought her to Sabir's. Half an hour later I look and Marina has come. Marina doesn't have any traces of blows. I ask, "Where did you hide?" Marina starts to cry, "When they started pulling the suitcases and boxes out from under the beds, Lyuda and I came out. They saw that Lyuda was a Russian and said, "We aren't harming the Russian girls. Why did you come here?" She said, "I work with them." Then Marina got out from under the bed, and they asked her, "Who are you?" She said, I'm not an Armenian, I'm an Azerbaijani." Then they asked, "How come you're here with an Armenian family?" They tell them, "We go to school together." When Marina and Lyuda went through the door to run away, Igor saw them and hid them at Salima's. And so we all found one another. We stayed in Sabir's apartment until 11:00. But Sabir was afraid to keep us overnight. He says, "They saw you hiding here, I'm afraid that they'll come back and kill us. I have two sons, and they'll kill my sons. What can I do? Chase you out? I have too much conscience for that. I don't know what to do." Karina can't remember her boss's telephone number, Mamedov's, to call him up, maybe he'll help us. Marina gets the number from Karina and calls him up. She called Mamedov. Mamedov, the head of Santekhmontazh. He wasn't home. His wife, a Russian, answers the phone, "What's happened?" We tell her what has taken place. She says, "I'm alone here, my husband's gone, and I'm afraid to come by myself. As soon as my husband comes back I'll tell him." We called again in a half an hour, I don't know, it seems like it's 12:30 or 1:00 at night. Mamedov answers the phone. Karina starts to cry because we're in such horrible shape and there's nowhere for us to stay. "Help us, Mamedov." He gets his daughter and a couple of other people with a car. I don't know if they were from the Sumgait OBKhSS [The Department of Combatting the Embezzlement of Socialist Property and Speculation] or from the Procuracy or where, and they all drive up to our yard. Sabir goes out and checks the license plate to be sure it's them. They came upstairs and saw the shape we were in. Mamedov starts to cry himself. He nearly had a heart attack when he saw us like that, all bloody. He says, "No, there's no way I'm leaving you here, I'm taking you away this instant." We go outside and there are two cars and two men, who say, "We're from the Procuracy. They say that Gambarian was killed here in your courtyard. Do you know anything about this?" We thought that they had killed Sasha, the son. Because when we were at Sabir's, Sabir's son said that they had killed Sasha. But when we went to Mamedov's place, the official said, "No, they didn't kill Sasha, they killed his father." They took us past the station on the way. When we arrived at their place that night there was a gang there, a lot of people. The bandits wanted to stop the car. One guy from the Procuracy went ahead, and the other one followed behind our car. There were five cars there that night, all sailors, at the spot where the commuter train used to stop. We went into Mamedov's place, his wife gave us things to eat and drink. But we couldn't eat anything. We only spent the night there. We stayed with them for more than 24 hours. Then they learned that the bandits were planning to go to the apartments of Azerbaijanis who were hiding Armenians. Mamedov got frightened, too. He says, "What should we do?" We were at his place for more than 24 hours. Then, in the early morning, around five o'clock, he put us in his car and took us away . . . No, from our house they took us to the police station. There were about 100 to 150 police¬men there. I shouted, I screamed, "You dogs! You bastards! Who are you pro¬tecting? Why aren't you going anywhere? They're killing people!" They all lowered their heads and did not respond. There were a hundred people there, and I was covered with blood. My husband couldn't hear anything. His ribs were broken, and he was covered with blood too. They ignored my husband and me and said, "You're standing on your own two feet, so you're alive and well." They took my two daughters to the Maternity Home. Marina stayed with us. Then Mamedov took us to his place. We stayed there for more than 24 hours, then he took us and hid us in the archives at work, where he's the boss. We stayed there from morning till night, till six in the evening. He wanted to take us to Khachmas to put us on a train, but we didn't have any identification with us, nothing. He said that with no ID we probably could not go. At around six he went to the City Party Committee and made some inquiries. He said, "I'm hiding Armenians, I need to take them somewhere, it's already been so many days, I don't know what to do." As it turns out they had been hiding Armenians for two or three days at the SK and at the City Party Committee. He put us in his car and took us to the City Party Committee. Sixty or 70 people broke into our apartment, no less. Our apartment was full of them. When we ran through the entryway, a lot of them were stand¬ing in there, too. And outside we couldn't even see how many there were. Marina saw them when she was hiding at Salima's, through the kitchen win¬dow. She said, "Salima looks and says, Marina, don't look, they'll see that you're here." Marina says, "Mamma, there are three or four hundred people in the courtyard." We didn't see any faces of people we knew, but it seemed to us that they were people from our town. Later they showed us their photographs and the people themselves. Lyuda recognized a lot of them, Karina identified one or two, because they hit her in the head a lot and she lost consciousness. What they took, what they brought, what they did—she doesn't remember any of that. She doesn't remember a thing. Lyuda recognized many of them, and I recognized two. The day before yesterday Marina called from Baku and said that Lyuda had been summoned to the Procuracy. She went. It turns out they found that guy who got the bag with the gold and money out of the wardrobe. Now I'm supposed to go to the Procuracy and identify him. They're holding him there. Is it him or not? I don't know his name ... My husband talks to himself now, he's gone deaf, he doesn't hear. I'm doing poorly myself: I have problems with my blood pressure, my heart, and my nerves . . . How much can you think about it all and be nervous ... I brought up my children ... I worked for 40 years, 20 years as a house painter with men. And I don't have a thing except for beds. We're even lucky that Sabir's wife brought a couple of our beds down to her place in the after¬noon or at night, but we don't have anything else. The government gave us 3,000 rubles. We lived in this city for 40 years and nothing bad ever happened to us. I worked with them, the Azerbaijanis. For 20 years I was the only Armenian in our work brigade. They always told me, "You're an Azerbaijani, you don't even speak Yerevan Armenian." I worked with them my whole life, broke bread with them, shared everything fifty-fifty. And no one ever said, you're an Armenian, you're an Azerbaijani, they never said who anyone was. And the same with my girls. They went to school in Baku; they graduated from the Institute, my older daughter is a teacher, the middle one is a teacher, and the youngest is Secretary of a Party organization. Thanks go to her boss, who helped us so much: he brought us food at the medical facility, and his wife, and our friends, and Marina's organization, too. I wasn't given any assistance, I'm retired. I called from Baku, and said that I'm not retired yet, I'm not receiving any retirement money, and I worked 20 years for that office. Then they gave me assistance in the amount of 100 rubles. We always lived peacefully with them, we had neighborly relations. We didn't know the meaning of the words Azerbaijani or Armenian. We always lived peacefully. Up till then . . . There were strangers there. They started finding out that 3, 4, 5, 6 of them, more, were from Kafan, or Masis or somewhere, born somewhere else, I don't know. Three who I recognized came from Kafan and lived in the dor¬mitory. Originally from Kafan, but living in the dormitory. That's the ones I recognized. Lyuda identified ten people. Where they were from I don't know. We arrived in Baku from Sumgait. Eleven families. We live in one build¬ing. They put in a pole outside and hooked up all 11 apartments, they put phones in, all of us have phones. There wasn't a floor, they put one in. Some people painted the walls, others didn't. They just left things the way they were. Of the ones I know, they haven't given anyone work yet. To be sure, we haven't officially registered as living here yet, I don't know about anyone else. The Gambarians, for example, registered a long time ago, but haven't gotten any work yet. They don't even ask us, "Do you have any money? Do you have anything to eat?" We went from ministry to ministry for a whole month. They reassured us that we would get work, as would our children. A month has already passed. A couple of days ago I called Baku again and told them that none of us has any work, we haven't registered. We need jobs, but no one is telling us anything. All of us are out of work. Only my husband is working, because he had had work in Baku before. And he's working in Baku now. We've already been here 15 days, and he doesn't have any work. We don't know what will happen... We came to Armenia to get an apartment. But we haven't been able to find one yet. We've got plane tickets, we're leaving, but Karina will stay. There are a lot of possibilities in Masis. There are government buildings there, but the Azerbaijanis are asking too much money, and we don't have any money. Ten thousand, 20,000, up to 30,000 rubles they're asking, they say we've got the land, you've got a state apartment. But we don't have any money to pay with. We don't want to stay there. Even our daughters, who don't know how to write Armenian, they never learned, and now they don't want to stay in Baku after living though that kind of misfortune. They don't want to, not even a single day! I'm not sorry that they beat me and did those things to me, I'm not sorry that they made me a Class 2 invalid, that I lie there the whole night shaking, that I can't sleep, that I take medicine. I'm sorry for my daughters. I raised them among Azerbaijanis, and they raped two of my daughters. And they turned into . . . neither girls nor women. No one wants them. They don't have jobs, they don't have anything. They sleep day and night or talk like crazy people. They didn't do anything to anyone! They never did anything to anyone. And in exchange they got that done to them. For two and a half days in peacetime there was a slaughter in Sumgait, and not a single ambu¬lance, not a single policeman, not a single fireman, not a single acquaintance, not a single telephone worked or did anything! Who came to help? No, the central authorities didn't help. If they had, for two and a half days ... I have never been in a war, but I always told my daughters that that's what war was like. And this was worse! The Germans didn't do this! They led around so many naked girls in the city, all their breasts were cut... In Building 6 in Microdistrict 3 they killed so many men and a woman, they threw them into a rubbish heap. But no one wants to hear about things like that... Eighteen thousand Armenians live in Sumgait. Lived there, before it all happened. I didn't know that so many Armenians lived there. When there was a meeting in the SK club, a general spoke and said that 18,000 Armenians lived there. For sure, when they gathered everyone together in the SK and at the City Party Committee we saw that there were a lot of Armenians. And if there hadn't been Azerbaijanis, if they hadn't protected us, then in three days' time not a single one of those 18,000 Armenians would have been left alive. There are a lot of good Azerbaijanis, why hide it. If Sabir hadn't opened his door to us, neither we nor our children would be alive now. Our rooms were full of those bandits: one who's going to do the killing, one who's looking for gold, a third demanding money, one takes the coats, another takes the fur coat, another takes the boots—each had his own job, it was decided in advance who would do what. If Sabir hadn't let us in, if he hadn't hidden us, if Karina's boss hadn't come to get us at two o'clock in the morning, us, Armenians—he's an Azerbaijani from Lenkoran, himself—to take us Armenians to his home and keep us there for two days, we wouldn't be alive today. June 7,1988 Yerevan

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