- KARINE (KARINA) GRIGOREVNA M.
Born 1964
Secretary-Typist
Azsantekmontazh Trust
Sumgait Construction and Installation Administration
Secretary of the SMU Komsomol Organization
Resident at Building 17/33B, Apartment 15
Microdistrict No. 3
Sumgait
On the 27th my sister Marina and I went to the movies, the seven o'clock show, at the theater that is across from the City Party Committee, about 50 yards away. The SK theater. They were showing an Argentinian film, "The Abyss." Before the film we noticed about 60 to 70 people standing near the podium at the City Party Committee, but they were silent, there's no conver¬sation whatsoever, and we couldn't figure out what was going on. That is, we knew it was about Karabagh, but what it was exactly, what they were talking about, if someone gave a speech or not, we didn't know. We bought our tickets. There were 30 or 40 people in the theater. This was a very small number for that large movie theater. The film started. About 30 minutes later they stopped the film. A crowd burst in. About 60 people. They came up onto the stage. Well mostly they were young people, from 16 to 23 years old. They demanded that an Armenian woman come up onto the stage. They used foul language and said that they were going to show what Azerbaijanis were capable of, what they could do to Armenian girls. I thought that's what they meant because they had demanded a girl specifically. Marina and I were sitting together. I told her to move over, there were some Russian girls sitting nearby. So that if someone recognized me or if something happened, they would take me, and not Marina. It got quiet, 2 or 3 girls jumped up to run out, but the door was closed—it's only opened at the end of the show—and they returned to their seats. Everyone in the theater was looking at one another, Russians, Azerbaijanis, people of various nationalities. But no one reacted at all, no one in the auditorium made a sound. They were silent, looking at one another, and gradually started to leave. Some guy, a really fat one, says, "OK, we've scared them enough, let's leave." They leave slowly, pompously. It seemed to me that those people were not themselves. Either they had smoked a bunch of anasha, or had taken something else, because they all looked beastly, like they were ready to tear anyone apart. Then it was all over, as though nothing had happened at all. The film started up again, it was one of those cheerful films which should have only brought Pleasure, made you happy to be alive. We could barely sit to the end. So it had started at seven, it was over by nine, and it was dark . . .
Marina and I were walking home, Lenin Street, that's the center of town. Lenin Street was packed, just packed with young people. They were shout¬ing, something about Karabagh and something about Armenians. We weren't especially listening, because the way we were feeling we didn't know if we were going to make it home or not, and just what had happened, anyway? Public transportation wasn't running. Incidentally, when we came out of the theater we saw police, policemen standing there. The director of the movie theater was looking at the doors, because when they were leaving they had broken the glass, the doors there are basically all glass. Everything was broken. He stood there grief-stricken, but looking as though nothing really big had happened, like some naughty boys had just broken them quite by accident, with a slingshot. Well, since he looked more or less calm I decided that, nothing all that super serious had happened. We went out very slowly; we wanted to catch a bus, we live literally one stop away. We didn't want to go on foot, not because it was dark, but because something might happen. We flagged down a cab, but the driver didn't want to take us. We told him we live near the bus station, and he said he'd take us to the bus station and not a yard farther. I said, well, OK ...
So we got into the cab and managed to get there. Something incredible was happening at the bus station. There was a traffic jam. Public transporta¬tion was at a standstill and everyone was shouting "Ka-ra-bagh," they're not going to give up Karabagh. I go home and tell my family what's going on, and there's immediate panic in the house. Mamma says, what should we do? Like the end had come, they were going to come, kill us, that's it ... Somehow we managed to cheer ourselves up: Nothing that bad could hap¬pen. Where are we living anyway, just what kind of social order do we have? Somehow we manage to calm Mamma down. And we went to bed. But no one could sleep. Everyone made as though nothing had happened.
That was on Saturday. In short, the day went by. We didn't go anywhere and didn't call our relatives. No one did anything. Because . . . life goes on. That day I realized something was approaching, but what exactly, I couldn't guess.
On the 28th everything was like it was supposed to be, we lived like we always had. There were five of us at home: Mamma, Papa and us, three sis¬ters: Lyuda, Marina, and I. My sister Lyuba was in Yerevan at the time. We sat at home and no one went out. Later we learned that a demonstration had started that morning. It all started . . . They were smashing up stores. We were sitting at home and didn't know anything about it. Then a girlfriend or mine, Lyuda Zimogliad, came by at around three o'clock I think. We worked together, we did our apprenticeships together, she's a Russian girl. She said that something awful was happening in town. I asked, "Don't they wan Armenians? Well what are they after, if they're already in that state?" She says, no, nothing like that, it's just a demonstration, but it's awful to watch it Somehow, it feels like a war has broken out. Public transportation has been stopped ... The cabs, the buses, well it's just a nightmare.
Then Papa decides to go to the drugstore, my mother was having allergy problems at the time . . . He left the house and our neighbor, Aunt Vera, asked him, "Where are you going? Stop! There are such terrible things going on in the courtyard; aren't you afraid to go out?" Papa didn't know what she was talking about. She simply pushed him back into the entryway. He came home and told Mamma. Mamma said, "Well, if Aunt Vera was talking like that it means that something is really going on." But we didn't go see her, she's a Russian, she lives across from us. I had to see my friend out. Around five o'clock I tell Lyuda, "Ok, look, it's time for you to go, it's late already, I'll see you out." Mamma says, "You don't need to go, it's too late already, you can see what the situation in town is." So we decided to stay home. Dinner was ready. Mamma says, "Let her eat with us, then she can go." We sat down at the table. But no one was hungry, no one was in the mood, we just put everything out on the table to calm ourselves down, and make it appear that we're eating. We turned on the television, and the show "In Fairy-Tale Land" was coming on. We cleared the table.
We hear some noise out in the courtyard. I go out on the balcony, but I can't see what's going on, because the noise is coming from the direction of the bus station, and there is a 9-story building in the way. There is mob of people ... I can't figure out what's happening. They're shouting something, looking somewhere, I can't make out what is going on. I go down to a neigh¬bor, she's an Azerbaijani; we've been friends of her family for about 25 years. I go down to look from their place. I see people shouting, looking at the 5-and 9-story buildings near the bus station. Just then soldiers set upon them, about 20 people, with clubs. The mob runs off in different directions. I even see several people from our building. They are looking and laughing ... I decide that means it's not all that bad if they are laughing: it means they're not killing anyone. But now the crowd suddenly dashes toward the soldiers. One of the soldiers cannot manage to get away, they start stomping on him with their feet, everyone's kicking him ... I become ill and go home, and explain in general terms that horrible things are going on out there ... I can't speak . . . Well, they've probably killed that soldier, the way that crowd is ... If each of them kicked him just once . . . They took his club away from him and started to beat him with it. But it was far away and I couldn't see if he got up and left or not.
I become terrified and go home and say, "Lyuda, don't go anywhere, stay at our place, because if you go out they could kill you or ..." Then the crowd runs over closer toward our building and stands at the 12-story building and starts shouting something. We go out onto the balcony. All of our neighbors are also out on theirs, too. Everyone is standing, staring. The mob is shouting and about 5 minutes later comes running toward our build¬ing. As it turns out, at the 12-story building the Azerbaijani neighbors went down and kept them from coming in. There's only one entryway there, they could stop them.
They all run up to our building. Mamma immediately starts closing the windows, afraid that they might throw stones. They have stones and they break the windows, all of them. There are very many people. We have a large courtyard, and it's packed with people. They spill up to the first floor so they don't crush each other. They crawl up on trees, posts, and garages. It's just a huge cloud of people. They break and burn the motorcycle of the Armenian Sergey Sargisian, from our building. We close the windows and immediately hear tramping in our entryway. They come up to our fifth floor with a tremendous din and roar. It's incomprehensible. Mamma told me lat¬er that they were shouting Father's name, "Grisha, open the door, we've come to kill you!," or something like that. I don't remember that, I was spaced out, kind of. Mamma says, "Into the bedroom, quickly!" In the bed¬room we have two tall beds, part of our dowry; Mamma says, "Hide there, they probably won't come in there, they'll ask something, say something, and leave." She says, "We'll tell them that we live alone here." I can't imagine that my parents will stand out in the hall alone talking with some sort of beasts ... I go to them and say that I'll stand together with them, I'll talk with them if they come, maybe I can find a common language with them, all the more so if they know me: I speak Azerbaijani more or less, and I can find out what they want. I told Marina and Lyuda to hide under the bed, and my sister Lyuda, I can't remember if I told her anything or not.
Then . . . they open the door: it's like they blew on it and it broke and fell right into the hall. The crows bursts in and starts to shout: Get out of here, leave, vacate the apartment and go back to your Armenia; things like that. I tell them, "What has happened, speak calmly. One of you, tell me, calmly, what has happened." In Azerbaijani, they say, "Get out of the apartment, leave." I say, "OK. Go downstairs. We'll gather everything we need and leave the apartment." I realize that it is senseless to discuss any sort of rights with them, these are animals. They must be stopped. The ones standing in the doorway, the young guys, say, "There are old people and one girl with them. Too bad!" They take two or three steps back. It seems as though I have paci¬fied them with our exchange. Then someone in the courtyard shouts, com¬manding them: "Don't you understand what you are saying? Kill them?"
And that was it! That was all it took. They grab Papa, carry him into one room, and Mamma and me into another. They put Mamma on the bed and start undressing her, beating her legs. They start tearing my clothes, right there, in front of Mamma. I don't remember where they went, what they did, or how much time passed. I had the feeling that they beat me on the head, on my body, and tore my clothes, all at the same time, I don't even know what I said. The atrocities started. I was savagely raped in that room. They argued among themselves who would go first.
Later, I remember, I came to. I don't know if I'm dead or alive. Someone comes in, someone tall, I think, clean-shaven, in an Eskimo dogskin coat, balding. He looks around at what's happening. At that instant everything stops. It seems to me that he is either their commander or ... that somehow everything depends on him. He looks and says, "Well, we're done here. They are beating Mamma on the head. They break up the chairs and beat her with the chair legs . . . She loses consciousness, and they decide that she's dead. Papa . . . was out cold. They want to throw Lyuda off the balcony, but they can't get the window open. Apparently the window frames are stuck after the rain and the windows can't be opened. They leave her next to the window. She was thinking about being thrown out the window and passed out. She's not a real strong person anyway . . . He looks at me and sees that I'm saying something, that I'm still twitching. Well, I start say¬ing the opposite of what I should be, which is humbling myself and plead¬ing. I start shouting, cursing . . . they don't get any entreaty out of me. I already know that I'm dead, why would I humble myself before anyone? And he says that if that's what I think, since my tongue is so long . . . maybe he thinks that I still look quite appealing ... In short, he commands that I be taken outside.
I no longer saw or remembered what was happening to Marina and Lyuda, I don't know if they are alive or not.
They take me outside. They are dragging me by my arms, by my legs. They are hitting me against the wall, the railings, something metal. . . While they are carrying me someone is biting me, someone else is pinching me I don't even know. I think, my God, when will death come? If only it were sooner . . . Then . . . they carry me out, throw me near the entryway . . . and start kicking me. I lose consciousness . . . What happened after that, how many people there were, I don't remember.
I come to after a while, I don't remember how long. A neighbor is bring¬ing me clothing. I'm entirely covered with blood, she puts a dress on me. I remember that I said the same words over and over again: "Mamma, what happened, Mamma, what have they done to us, where are we, whose house are we at?" I can't make sense out of anything. There is a guy standing over me, I sort of know him, he served in Afghanistan, his name is Igor, he brought me indoors. When they all went to the third entryway and killed a person there, Igor gathered his courage, took me into his arms, and brought me to the neighbors', even though he's small-minded, he put himself at risk. Igor Agayev is Azerbaijani; he served in Afghanistan. There are three broth¬ers. The older brother also served there, I think; now he's stationed here, on the border, in Armenia. Igor brought me to the neighbors', and then helped me come to my senses, saying, "Karina, I know you, calm down, I'm not one of them." How do I know who's who and what's what? I come to, and they clean me up. I was covered in blood. Then Papa ... I saw Papa, I saw Mamma. And Marina, too . . . Igor was there when they dragged Marina and Lyuda out from under the bed . . . Marina . . . Lyuda said that she was Russian, they said, we'll let you go, we aren't touching the Russians, go. And While they are dragging Marina out she decides she's going to tell them she's Azerbaijani. Igor immediately grabs Marina's and Lyuda's hands, because he knows Marina, and knows that she is Armenian and is our sister, and takes her to the second floor to a neighbor's and starts pounding on the door so she will open up. She opens the door and Igor pushes them in there. So they survived.
My sister Lyuda lost consciousness after the bandits started stealing things. While they were going downstairs, taking things downstairs, then coming back up again, Lyuda seized the opportunity and crawled under the bed and stayed there. Then, when she was herself again, she found a torn night shirt and put it on, and some sort of robe and went to a neighbor's on the fourth floor, the one whose apartment I had watched the crowd from, the friend of ours, and knocked on the door. The neighbor opened and said, "I'm not going to let you in the apartment because I'm afraid of them. But I'll give you some stockings and we'll leave the building." Lyuda says, "I'll stay at your place because of what's going on, they keep going up and down the stairs." It was just for a moment, just a moment in life, but the neighbor wouldn't consent. Lyuda came back to our place and lay under the bed . . .
I came to. Mother was there. I can't remember my supervisor's telephone number, but something had to be done. Somehow I remembered and called, and he came to get us. He didn't have any idea what was going on. He thought we were simply afraid, he didn't know that they were killing us and that we had passed between life and death. He came and got us and took us to the police precinct. There they looked us over. I was having trouble walk¬ing, my lungs hurt badly, it was hard to breathe . ..
My supervisor's name is Urshan Feyruzovich Mamedov. He's the head of our administration. They took us there. When we were leaving, I saw a great number of buses full of soldiers at the entrance to town. The buses were ordinary passenger buses. There were very many soldiers. We left around eleven, right after eleven. If these people could stop what was happening, they could save a great many lives . . . Because the crowd was moving on, toward the school, and what was going on there ... I think everyone knows, not only in Sumgait, not only in Yerevan. Because there they murdered them all one after the next, without stopping. After us.
I think 14 people died in Microdistrict No. 3, and 10 to 12 of them were from Buildings 4, 5, and 6. In our building one person died, and one old woman died from Building 16, that's the building in front of ours. There young Azerbaijani men stopped the mob and wouldn't let it into their build¬ing. Incidentally, when we were at the neighbors', Marina called our rela¬tives to warn them, so they would all know what was happening. 1 called an aunt in Microdistrict No. 5. They have three neighbors who are Armenians. I said, "Run quickly, I can't explain what's going on; hide, do what you can, just stay alive. Hide at Azerbaijanis', ones who won't give you away" At that moment three people came in, policemen. I think they were Azerbaijanis. I was in such awful condition, my face was completely distorted, my lips were puffed up, there was blood, my eye was swollen, no one thought I would ever see anything out of that eye again . . . my forehead was badly cut, and one-half of my face was pushed out forward. No one would have thought that I would survive, get my normal appearance back, and be able to grasp anything at all. I started to scream at those people, why did you come, who sent you here, no one wants you here, haven't you killed enough people yet, what are you doing here? One of the soldiers said, "Don't scream at us. We're Muslims, but we're not from the Sumgait police. They called us in from Daghestan.' So at that point the Daghestan police were there.
When we got to the police precinct there were an awful lot of police there, there were soldiers, police with dogs, ambulances, firemen ... I don't know, maybe they were waiting for people to bring them the goners and the seri¬ously injured to treat them there in the police precinct. I don't know what they were there for. There were also doctors from Baku there. They exam¬ined Lyuda and me and said, "These women need to go to the Maternity Home, but we don't know what to do with the rest."
So they took us, and I lost contact with my parents, my boss, everyone. My boss said, "Don't worry, I'll find you, no matter where you are, no matter what happens." We went to the hospital. There we were examined by a department head from the Sumgait Maternity Home, Pashayeva, I think her name was. She examined us. The ambulance was from Baku; 1 figured out that the Sumgait ambulances hadn't done anything, they didn't respond to any calls. People called and neither the police nor the ambulances showed any signs of life.
That doctor looked me over and I could tell from her behavior that some¬thing very good had happened, for she became quite glad. I even thought to myself, "God, can it be that nothing all that bad is wrong?" She looks me over and says, "Now why are you suffering so? You don't know what your people have been doing, your people did even worse things." And I think, great, I have to deal with her .. . And I felt so bad, I thought, why don't I just die so as not to have to hear more stuff like this from people like her? Here I am in this condition and being told about something that our people did. I just didn't have the energy to say, "How could our people possibly be smart enough to think of something that yours haven't already done?" I stayed there. Then they brought in another woman, Ira B., she was married, and she was raped in her own apartment, too. There were three of us, Ira, Lyuda, and I. The next morning they took Lyuda and Ira away. They didn't do any¬thing to help us. This was in the old Maternity Home, in the combined block. They didn't do anything more than examine me, that was it. I didn't want any shots or tranquilizer, nothing. What shots could have calmed me down? I didn't even want to look at them.
I lay in the ward. Either it just worked out that way or they did it on pur¬pose, but I was alone. I was alone even though the wards were packed. That same evening a woman came by and asked me what was wrong with me, that my face was disfigured. She asked what had happened to me, and I said, "Better to ask your brother what happened, there's no point in asking me, your brother can better explain what happened." She fell into a faint. All the doctors threw themselves at her, and the doctor categorically forbade anyone to come into my ward.
Then people from work came to see me, my boss, his daughter; they brought me clothing, because I was literally naked. The only thing I had on was a dress, but the woman who gave it to me was very short, and the dress Was way up above my knees, and the woman orderly said, "I can't believe you put on such a short dress, who are you showing off your legs to here?" I Went back to my ward thinking, just one more thing from someone. People from work came and brought me something in a sack, apples, I think, three or four pounds, but I couldn't take them. I had become so weak that it was just embarrassing. I said that I couldn't take the apples, and really didn't have any appetite. No one had to bring me anything. Some woman took the sack . . . And, oh yes! . . . Then I heard that the head doctor tell a nurse that my medical history should be hidden or torn up completely so that no one would know that I was an Armenian, maybe they wouldn't figure it out from looking at me. So they must have been thinking that there would be some kind of attack, that something else would happen. That it would be worse. Or, perhaps, someone was outside on the street, I don't know. In any case, I didn't sleep a wink that night.
The next morning they picked me up, a whole police detail, put me in a bus, and off we went. I didn't even know where they were taking me. They took me to the club where the troops were, the very one I was in that ill-fat¬ed evening. I got off the bus. Near the City Party Committee there were a great many troops, tanks, armored personnel carriers; the whole scene was terrible. I saw a few people I knew there, and that calmed me a little. I had already thought that I was the only one left. So there were five or six of us left in Sumgait after that night. I still didn't know what happened to my par¬ents, they didn't come to see me in the hospital, and my boss told me that everything was fine. I didn't know whether to believe him or not. Maybe he was just trying to calm me down, maybe something happened on the way. Then I went to the club and saw a lot of people I knew. They all knew one another, they were all kissing each other and asking, "What happened, what went on?" Two days later they came to see me from work. They were there all the time. Each day they came, showed interest, and were constantly bringing me money. They did everything they could. Of course I'm most thankful to my boss, the only one of my colleagues who didn't lose his pres¬ence of mind and who didn't change his opinions, neither before, nor after, nor in the heat of the moment, no matter what happened. He constantly took an interest. A sincere interest, from the heart . . .
Then, about two days later, the secretary of the Party Committee came, not from our Party organi¬zation, but from the First Trust, which ours is part of, Comrade Kerimov, a very important figure in our town. He made arrangements with the emer¬gency medical personnel to take me away, because if I sat down by myself I couldn't get up or lie down again. There was something wrong with my lungs, it was hard to breathe. They examined me there several times, there were several doctors, they all thought that . . . that it must just be from all the blows, I don't know. They didn't diagnose anything in particular. When 1 was in the Maternity Home I even asked ... I made it a point of insisting that they take me to the trauma section because I felt so awful. There was no way something inside wasn't broken, my ribs . . . Well they took me there and took x-rays and said that everything was fine. There were emergency medical workers on duty in the club. The mother of one of Marina's friends was there. She was the head doctor at the Sumgait Children's Clinic. They had every kind of antifever agent in the world, which was exactly what I needed at that moment, I thought. I said that I was having great difficulty breathing, I couldn't seem to get enough air, something was wrong with me. They put tight bandages around my chest and waist. Later I overheard some people saying that I had been cut all over. I think they just saw me being all bandaged up and decided that my breasts and face had been cut . . . But I wasn't cut.
They took us to the Khimik boarding house. We lived there a long time. Soon appeared representatives . . . They were agitating. At first people would not talk to them, and drove them off. One of the Armenian women shouted, "We demand that Seidov come!" The response was, "It's Seidov who sent us." Seidov is the Chairman of the Azerbaijani Council of Ministers. The woman said, "We'll only see Seidov's daughter, have her come here, we'll do the same things to her that they did to our daughters, and then we'll deal with you agitators." And so on. More of them said, "Have Seidov himself come." This went on day in, day out. The agitators kept coming and coming, this drove us out of our wits. Then people gradu¬ally started departing for Yerevan because they realized it was senseless to stay. Everything got on our nerves: The smell, the small children. There were children at the SK club, children who had literally just come out of the Maternity Home. What were they doing in a club that didn't even have run¬ning water all the time? At first we had to pay to eat there. They even over¬charged us, as it turned out. On the second day someone told us that they would bring us food for free. The children were ill. Everything stank there. Well imagine about 3,000 people in a small movie theater with seating for no more than 500. You couldn't sit or lie down, it was impossible to even move. The stench was awful. Even the smallest infants took ill overnight there. I heard that they were arriving seriously ill in Yerevan, the infants. They have to be washed, they have to be bathed, not to mention that we, the adults, were ill and needed care. People were fainting right and left. I just don't know, everyone was crying, everyone . . . Only the young people, the men, somehow managed to keep it together. But the women were in a constant state of panic. It seemed to everyone that they would come any minute and kill and stab. It seemed clear that we had been gathered together purposely, like during the war, so that they could burn the movie theater and there wouldn't be a single Armenian left. Then people went up to the attic. I didn't see them, I only heard them, because I was lying down and couldn't get up. I lay right on the stage, we had some room there. Apparently they caught two people with either oil or gas. I think they wanted to burn the theater. Maybe someone saw them, I didn't. I was in no condition to open my eyes.
Everyone was suspicious of everyone else. They would ask, "Aren't you an Azerbaijani? I think I saw you somewhere, I think you're an Azerbaijani." They led out all the men and started letting them back in by checking their passports, relatives might be covering for each other. Half of the people did not have any documents. There were people who had run out of their homes in nothing but a pair of pants and slippers, or wearing just a shirt, not like they should have, with their IDs.
So on the 28th, on Sunday, I think, the police did nothing to help us. On Monday everything resumed where it had left off on Block 41A. They didn't spare a soul there: not children, not pregnant women, nobody. They killed, they burned, they hacked with axes, just everything possible. They mur¬dered the Melkumian family whom I knew, my mother worked with them. Their daughter-in-law went to school with my older sister. They were bru¬tally murdered. Only the two daughters-in-law survived. By a miracle one was able to save herself, she ran away, the neighbors wouldn't take her in, so she ran about the building until she found refuge. She was pregnant and had two small children. This all continued on Monday in Block 41A, on the 29th, when the troops were already in the city.
They murdered people, they overturned automobiles, and they burned entire families. They say they didn't even know for sure if the people were Armenians or not. I heard that the Lezgins suffered, too. I'm not sure myself, I didn't see any Lezgins who had been injured. They burned cars so it's very difficult now to say exactly who died and who didn't. It was very difficult to identify the corpses, or rather, what remained of the corpses after they were doused in gasoline and burned . . . it's all very hard to imagine, of course. I heard that many people disappeared without a trace, from the BTZ plant two people, including a woman who worked the night shift, Aunt Razmella, who also lived in Microdistrict 3.
They were stopping buses between Baku and Sumgait. In the evening people who had been visiting Baku were returning to Sumgait, and people from Baku were going home from Sumgait, and there were students, too. They were simply savagely murdered. They were stopping the buses, the drivers immediately did what they were told because there was just no oth¬er way to deal with that hoard of brutally minded people. They stopped the buses, dragged the Armenians out and killed them on the spot. I didn't see it myself, but I heard that they put them all in a pile so as to burn them. Later it was hard to discern from the corpses, well you can't call them corpses, you had to figure out from the ashes who it was. I heard that two fellows saved two women, one a student, Ira G., if I'm not mistaken. She was in the hospi¬tal a long time after that, and she still can't figure out who saved her. She was also brutally raped and beaten and thrown onto a pile of corpses. The fellow pulled her out of that whole pile of corpses, put his coat on her, took her into his arms, and carried her to the city. I still can't imagine how he managed to do that.
I heard that from Engels Grigorian. He knows her, apparently. Well a lot of people went to that hospital anyway. She was in the hospital and singing a song in Armenian, and they wrote the words down, and, I think he still has that piece of paper, because he says that a lot of people now have that song, the one she sang in the hospital where she lay in such bad shape. They couldn't find the guy who saved her. He left her in someone's apartment and called the ambulance, she was in such awful shape that, probably, like me, she couldn't remember anyone's face.
I think that I knew one of the people who broke into our house, maybe I had talked with him once. But I received so many blows everything was just knocked out of my head. I can't remember to this day who he was. Then, it seems, I saw the Secretary of the Directorate's Party organization, where Marina works. She goes to school and works, she goes to night school at AZI, and works by day at the Khimzashchita Construction and Installation Administration. I'm the Secretary of the Komsomol organization at our administration and often met with the secretaries of Party and Komsomol organizations. We had joint meetings. I know them all, I've even talked with them, and he, I know, is from Armenia. An Azerbaijani, but from Armenia. It became obvious that many of those people were Azerbaijanis born in Armenia.
They took me to various police stations, to the police precinct, and to the Procuracy because the USSR Procuracy got involved in the case, and I iden¬tified the photographs of people who I could more or less recognize. They showed me the people who were in our apartment, they're working on our case, but I can't even recognize them, although it was proved that they were the ones, they're processing it somehow. They tell me that they know that someone held me by the arm and someone else held me by the leg when they were dragging me. There was someone else in our apartment who did not even touch me, he just stole a blanket and an earring or something like that. All these people, all of them, as much as I've heard about them and seen them, they were all from Kafan.
The Secretary of the Party organization is named Najaf, Najaf Rzayev. He was there when everything started. It must have been him because I didn't recognize anyone else in the crowd whom I knew besides him. All the more since I told him, "Listen, you do something, because you know me." He turned away and went toward the bedroom, where Marina was. Well you couldn't see Marina anyway. There was such a noisy confusion of people that you couldn't make out anyone. All of it flew right out of my head, and then gradually I became myself again, at the City Party Committee ... There were military people there. I told them what went on, and they wrote it all down. I told them his name. On March 8 the Secretary of our First Trust Party organization, the one we're part of, came to see us, his name is Najaf Rzayev. I tell Mamma, "If he's here despite the fact that I gave his name, it means that either his alibi has been confirmed or, probably, that they think I'm crazy, not responsible for my words." He said, "What did they do to you, how awful, myself, I hid an Armenian family." Then after some time goes by he comes back again and says something entirely different: "I wasn't at home, my family and I went to Baku." I said, "Marina, what is he saying? He said something totally different before." After that I didn't go to see our Procurator, our case is being handled by a procurator from Voronezh, Fedorov by name. Federov told me that Rzayev's case had just gotten to him, and there were so names involved. What are they doing with Rzayev? Did he prove his alibi or not? They just think that since I was hit in the head I can't say anything for sure, whether it was him or not. It will be an insult if he was in our apartment and doesn't have to pay for it, but at the same time I'm afraid to say I'm a hundred percent sure that it was he. Because no mat¬ter who I name, they tell me, no, you're wrong, he didn't do that, that one wasn't there. All the faces have gotten mixed up in my mind. Who did what exactly I can't say.
When they took me outside there was a whole crowd there, but I didn't see it, because I had my eyes closed all the time. It seemed to me that I always got it because of my eyes, people were always hassling me, for some reason it always seemed to me that my eyes are responsible. When they were beating my face I thought they were trying to put my eyes out. So I had my eyes closed, they took me outside and started to beat me. A young guy, 22, held my arms, he works at the BTZ plant. And right nearby, across the road from us, Block 41, is where all this was going on. Right across the road from us. The BTZ dormitory is over there, that's where he lives. Now he's in custody, they even have proved, as far as I know, that it was he who killed Shurik Gambarian, the clarinet player from the third entryway of our building. One person in our building was killed, it was that man.
A guy comes by who shared a room with the guy who was holding me. He saw that he was holding me by the arms and that he was beating me, but he didn't come over, he just looked and then went into the dormitory. A while after it was all over, people started making announcements in town saying that investigators had been summoned. That guy went and told them everything. Now they've caught him, everything's been proved. Now, evi¬dently, they've been beating him, I don't know what they're doing with them over there, but he himself said that he was working the night shift at the plant. Some young guy came to the plant and said, "Everyone who wants to kill Armenians come to the bus station on Saturday at ten." That was it. He said, the ones who wanted to, went. This was at the BTZ plant, during the night shift, probably, late Friday night. It was at night, they were at the sauna together. And he said, what do you mean, do you understand what you are saying? The others were silent, probably, in their hearts they were thinking, I'm going to go. But they didn't say anything to one another. He said that he thought it important to to go, because he had heard a lot about what had happened in Kafan, that they had killed their Azerbaijani sisters. their mothers, burned villages, and all of that. That guy was also born in Kafan. That is certain. And Marina says that the Secretary of the Party orga¬nization is from Armenia, too.
I've participated in the investigation a couple of times. I'm satisfied with them thus far. They summoned us and asked about what happened, and every word I said was recorded. I met some guy there ... By the way, he was an Armenian. I said that he was in our apartment, but what he did, I don't know. His last name was Grigorian, Eduard Grigorian. He's from Sumgait, from Microdistrict 1. He was sentenced I think, to five years, not his first time. His mother is Russian. I met with him at the KGB in Baku, at the Azerbaijani KGB. They took us there and showed me photographs. There were so many photographs, I think they even photographed those people who were caught at curfew, and I've got them all confused. I say, the face was about like this, the guy in the white coat with the red clasps. But he could take that coat off and burn it somewhere, and it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Well. This guy, Grigorian, I said, he was in our apartment, but he is so light-complected that he looks like a Lezgin. I don't know what he did, I can't remember. Maybe he beat me or raped me. But he was in our apartment. At the KGB he started asking me, pleading with me, there's no need for this, all this stuff, look me in the eyes, you're like a sister to me. I took a look at him and thought, "My God, Heaven forbid that I should have a brother like you." But they were satisfied with my responses, because I said everything without great certainty. I was there with Mamma. Then Lyuda came in, but when she came in she got sick immediately. She wanted to kill him, she crawled over the table at him. She recognized him. When she came to, Lyuda was lying on the balcony, the mob threw her there and all of them ran into the bedroom. We had all kinds of boxes with dishes in them, the dowries for all three sisters. They stole everything in the apart¬ment, leaving only small things. At that moment Lyuda came to and started remembering everything. Well, seeing the faces, hearing the voices . . . Two people were saying they could burn the apartment. Another says, why burn the apartment when I've got three kids and no place to live. So this guy was in temporary housing, he didn't have anywhere to live, he was from Sumgait. They were sure that they would get the apartment. Besides, the neighbors were Azerbaijani. Why should they burn the apartment, they might burn Azerbaijanis. That's what they said. How did they know there were Azerbaijanis there, if they just picked a place, thinking that Armenians lived there? We have a list of the residents for our part of the building, our name is in there, but how could they know that Azerbaijanis lived on the other side of the wall from us? So they didn't set fire to our apartment.
I don't know, I was in such bad shape that if all of it had come to a halt when I was outside, if someone had asked me what was happening, I would have said that a civil war was going on. Well, maybe not civil.. . but proba¬bly civil, because when they were beating me I opened my eyes and saw that all the neighbors were standing on their balconies and watching, like at a free horror film. So a civil war was going on, and only the Armenians were being fought. If it were a world war or something like that, they would have been fighting everyone. But they only fought us. Then I met some women from our building, some Azerbaijanis. They are crying, they tell me, "Karina, we saw all of it, how could it happen?" They're asking me! Well I just don't know what to call it if a normal girl can stand there and watch what hap¬pened to me. I think that if it were the other way around either I wouldn't have been able to take it, or I would have tried to avert it, like that one Azerbaijani woman did in front of our building. A woman lives there, an awful, dissipated woman, if you can call her a woman, the dissipated life she leads. Two Armenian families live there, in her part of the building. She came out on the balcony and saw what was happening to me and started to scream and curse. She came down to the entryway and said, "You'll come in this entryway over my dead body." So not one of them took it in his head to go in that entryway. Some folks were saying that those people were so out of control that they didn't even know what they were doing. I don't think that's true. They knew very well what they were doing if they didn't even lift a hand against that woman. They couldn't have cared less about her, but the fact that she was an Azerbaijani stopped them.
They were just beasts, they had smoked so much. When they came to our place they were all chewing something. I noticed: Everyone who came into the apartment was chewing something. I think, my God, maybe I just think that? Maybe I'm losing my mind? But no, they're all chewing something. Maybe it is some kind of drug, it must be, because ... At first glance they all seemed to be such normal people, young, clean-shaven, looking exactly as if they had come to some sort of celebration. But they were shouting some¬thing. The didn't talk, they shouted, as though there were deaf people there. They screamed and screamed: "Yeah, killing, killing, we're killing the Armenians!" Only they didn't shout "kill," they shouted "gurun ermianlary." Gurun literally means "kill," or "destroy."
That's how it was! I'll continue. We hid in a captain's apartment, he's an Azerbaijani, his wife is a Tatar. We were sitting in their apartment, their kids were out in the yard. Their kids knew a whole lot. This was in our part of the building, on the third floor. When Mamma came to and couldn't find Lyuda she took Papa's hand, this was while the looters were stealing things, but they didn't pay attention because they were stealing things. Apparently they had already ceased killing and switched to stealing. Mamma found the courage to...
A boy said to my mother, "Where's the gold?" Mamma said he must have been 12 to 14 years old. He even looked Russian, he was so fair-skinned. But the Azerbaijanis from Armenia are fair-skinned. I noticed they were all on the fair side. He shouted, they were all smashing things, and he asks Mamma where the gold is. We kept our gold in the wardrobe with our important papers. In a little black bag, we kept everything in there. Mamma doesn't really like to wear gold. She probably never even wore those things from the time they were bought for her. They took everything that was lying on the cheval glass. Mamma thinks that the gold saved us. Because they threw themselves at the gold, and Mamma grabbed Papa, who was trying to breathe. They had closed his mouth, bound his hands, and put a pillow and a chair on his face . . . They had shoved something into his mouth so he would suffocate. Mamma grabbed him and tore all that stuff off ... He had something in his mouth, he was having trouble breathing, his nose was filled with blood. Mamma grabbed him and started running from the fifth down to the first floor because no one wanted to open their doors to them. Mamma said that by accident, completely by accident that person opened his door, he was sleeping, and said, half-awake, "What's happened?" He sees that they are bloody. Mamma said, "At least go and find out what's happen¬ing to my daughters, even if they've burned them or murdered them, at least bring the corpses." He went looking for us. At that moment Lyuda was under the bed. She says that after they left it seemed that someone was calling her name. When he quietly called her she couldn't get out from under the bed. She wanted to get out and was calling softly. She thought she was shouting, but in fact she was either silent or was only talking to herself, it just seemed to her that she was shouting. When she got out from under the bed everyone was gone. And again.
She thought that she had lost her mind. I'll never leave here, never! To hell with it! It just seems that way to me, I'll come to eventually. But then, when everything had settled down, stopped, that man brought Lyuda down, and Igor carried me in from out¬side. Or first I was brought in, then Lyuda, I don't remember what order it happened in.
And Mamma said, "Listen, they're all running around down there, shout¬ing something or other, and running toward the other building." It had more or less calmed down where we were. Who's dead, who's alive, we don't know. I tried to call my girlfriend. I had basically come to. Mamma says, "Listen, let's go upstairs, at least get a mattress or something. We don't know how long we'll be here. Maybe they didn't burn everything." I don't get it, all women have that feeling, they want to get something from their homes, maybe not everything was taken? I tell Mamma, "Mamma, what do you need any of that for? To hell with it! We're alive, forget the rest of it, all of it!" She says, "No, let's go get at least something. Maybe we'll leave here, spend the night at someone else's." Mamma went upstairs, and their little boy, their son Alik, was standing on the lookout. He was standing there to see if they were coming. They only managed to run up there and grab something one time. He shouts, "Come back, they're coming!" They didn't have enough time to get a lot, mattresses from one apartment, a blanket from another . . . Mamma got my knitting . . . Someone managed to grab our old things, the ones we never wore, out of the hall. . . Someone took Father's old coveralls. The neighbor, his wife, Mamma and Papa . . . Marina went with them. I was in no condition to leave. Neither was Lyuda. We just sat. They ran out and we closed the door and just then we hear that the mob is on its way toward our place upstairs, they're dragging something again. They were going toward the other building, maybe over by the school, or ... There was an unfinished building over there, people said they were going toward the basement or the unfinished building, they could gradually carry everything over there. Then things more or less calmed down. I tried to call my boss.
Later there was more noise. We were on the third floor, in a one-bedroom apartment, and a woman lives in the one-bedroom place on the second floor, Asya Dallakian. She's an old woman, retired. She wasn't at home, at that time she was usually in the country, she has a married daughter there, and her grandson is in the army. She is only very rarely in town; she gets her retirement money and the apartment is essentially vacant. They started Pounding on her door and broke it down. She had two or three beds in there, something like that, she's a 60-to 70-year-old woman who really does not even live there. Probably she had some pots, a couple of metal bed frames and mattresses, and a television. When her grandson came she bought a television. They started wrecking everything. I started getting sick again. I think, "My God, what is going on around here? When will this end?" We turned off the lights and sat. As it turns out the people who weren't afraid, the ones who knew what was going on, knew not to turn off the lights. We didn't know, but they didn't come to where we were all the same. They all knew very well that he was a captain. He went out and closed the door, and we sat in his apartment. His last name was Kasumov. He's an ex-serviceman, retired, works up at the fire station at some plant or other. He went out and stood at his door. They tell him, "Comrade Captain, don't wor¬ry, we won't harm you, you're one of us." He went upstairs, and they say, "Aren't you taking anything from this apartment?" He says, "I don't need anything." And the women who were standing in the yard . . . we have a basement, full of water . . . the women who were standing in the yard saw. Those guys, they left everything they stole on the first floor and ran upstairs again. The women threw everything they had time to into the basement, to save our property. Some things were left: dirty pillows, two or three other things and a rug. A guy came downstairs, really mad, and he says, "Where's the rug? I just put it right here!" They tell him, "Some guy came and took it and went off toward the school." He ran off in that direction.
Oh! I forgot the most important point. When Igor picked me up in his arms, there were women standing there who saw everything that was going on. They just didn't tell me about it for a long time. The wife of that military man, she didn't want to kill my spirit, I was already dead enough. Later she told me, that after they murdered Uncle Shurik in the third entryway one of them, the ringleader, apparently a young man, said, "Where's the girl who was here?" And he became furious. The woman tells him, "She came to ..." She didn't know what to say: Think something up? Someone carried her off? Then they would comb the whole house and find me and our whole family. So the woman says, "She came to and went to the basement." Now, our base¬ment is full of water. So the whole mob dashes off to the basement to look for me or my corpse. They took flashlights; they were up to their waists in water, water which had been standing there for years, and soot, and fuel oil. They climbed down in there to get me. Then one of them said, "There's so much water down there, she probably walked and walked and then passed out and died. She met her death in the basement. That's it, we can leave, no problem!" I didn't know that, and when I was told, I felt worse. Two times worse. A lot worse! So they didn't just want to pound me flat, something more awful was awaiting me . . .
After that we of course didn't want to live in Sumgait any longer. We real¬ly didn't want to go back to our apartment. When we moved, I went up there and started to quiver and shake all over, because I started remember¬ing it all. Although the neighbors all sobbed, it was all ... so cheap . . . The people who sat in their apartments and didn't help us at a time like that. I think that they could have helped! I don't think that they were obligated to, but they could have helped us! Because that one woman was able to stop that whole brutal crowd by herself. That means they could have, too. It would have been enough for one man or woman to say, "What do you think you're doing?" That's all! That would have done it. There were 60 apart¬ments in our building. Not one person said it! When I was lying on the ground and all those people were standing on their balconies I didn't hear anyone's voice, no one said what are you doing, leave her alone . . . Mamma even told one of the neighbor women that if it had been an Azerbaijani woman in my place they would have dropped a bomb if it would have killed even one Armenian. They would have stood up for one of their own. True, they say that our neighbor from the fourth entryway, an old, sick woman tried to stop the pogrom. The Azerbaijanis have a custom: if a wom¬an takes her scarf and throws it on the ground, the men are supposed to stop immediately. The old woman from the fourth entryway did that, but they stomped her scarf into the ground, pushed her off to the side, and said, "If you want to go on living, you'll disappear into your apartment." So she left. That trick didn't work on them.
Even the neighbors who helped us move told me, OK, fine, calm down, forget that it happened. I said I'd only forget it if I told them right then that it had happened to their daughter—and if that didn't have any effect on them, then I would forget everything, too. Imagine that it happened to your sister. And no one did anything. Anything.
April 25,1988 Yerevan
