Naira Grigoryan, who was forcibly displaced from the occupied Republic of Artsakh, told in the framework of “Artsakh: Armenian Genocide 2023. Stories of Survivors” documentary project that she was displaced from Noragyugh village of Askerani region.
“After the war of 2020, we returned to Artsakh. We had both the fear and the longing for the homeland. We had returned to our village, Noragyugh. The longing for our homeland forced us to endure everything: we were left hungry, without electricity, without gas, but all the same, we lived better in those conditions than here,” our interlocutor said.
According to her, she even cannot talk about the blockade. It will not be possible to tell.
“We lived in the lines for bread, in the lines for food. Whenever we were able to buy something, we were happy. We thought: we are taking something home. We lived in this way. When the war in 2023 was unleashed, I was at home with my daughter. We did not imagine what happened to us at that time. That fear, that feeling… It was a terrible situation. We thought that Karabakh was destroyed within seconds. Then we went and took shelter in the basement. We were told that we should leave, but we did not believe it. We baked bread together with our neighbors. Every day we baked bread 3-4 times, sent it to Stepanakert airport to help the displaced people there, but we had to leave… We didn’t believe it. No, again… That was not true for us,” Mrs. Naira says.
She says that they left with a conviction that they will come back again, like in 2020. They did not take anything with them.
“We didn’t even take normal clothes for the children. We traveled for a day till Goris. We crossed the Hakari bridge with great fear. There was a Turk, he counted the people, and he touched me with his hand every time he counted. I was afraid, I was shrinking. The Turk’s hand touched, it was very unpleasant. He counted how many women, how many girls, how many boys, how many adults there were,” our interlocutor recalls.
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Details in the video.
Hasmik Sargsyan
