WE HAVE LESSONS TO LEARN

An interview with volunteer HUSIK GHAZARYAN

– You are a participant of two great wars in Artsakh. After the first one, we liberated our historical homeland. After the second one, 30 years later, we lost smost of it. Do you have an answer? What was the reason for our failure?  What lessons should we learn from what happened?

– During both wars our forces were unequal. When we liberated Artsakh, the Azeris were ten times more in number. They surpassed us in arms, but we won, and the myth of the invincibility of the Armenian spirit was born. The last war showed that the Armenian spirit, no matter how strong, cannot block the way of the missiles dropped from the drones and cannot damage them in the air. The most important lesson of the lost war was that in addition to the spirit, we also need modern weapons to fight successfully. It is necessary to minimize the difference between our and the Turkish military forces with realistic, pragmatic calculations. One more thing, we must help

the families of the victims of the war – parents, wives, children, so that ten, twenty, thirty years later, while fighting for the defense of the homeland, the Armenian man can be sure that if he is killed, his old mother will not live in poverty. The wife and children will not ask for help from the officials… Our war is not over, and tomorrow’s volunteer is today’s child, schoolboy, student. They must see what glory the relatives of the victims deserve, so that they too will be ready to die for the sake of the homeland tomorrow.

This war gave us something else – the murmur of losing the homeland. That pain will make us look for ways to bring back what we lost. I am a Western Armenian. My father is from Mush, my mother is from Sasun. As a child, my two grandmothers, Nane and Balasan, told me about Ergir, our ancestral home left to the Turks, and the massacre. It will be a great pain if the people of Shushi and Hadrut also tell their future children about their lost birthplace.

– And why did grandparents Nane and Balasan tell about the Genocide, not grandparents? It is more of a masculine conversation.

– Grandmothers Nane and Balasan were the pillar of our tribe, the backbone of the family, the trunk of a branching tree, the hearth fire, the handwritten moral code of the family. The heart is big, the hand is open, the soul is boundless love and compassion.

Not to mention Mamo.

– Who is Mamo?

– Mamo is our great aunt, my grandfather’s sister. Mamo’s word was law, Mamo had a reputation.

I like the traditions of the Armenian family very much. Have you ever attended a wedding of people from Mush or Sasun?

– No, I haven’t.

– During the wedding we dance “Mayroke”, “Yarkhushta”, “Govndi”, “Msho gher”.

– Was Mamo higher in status or the grandmothers Nane and Balasan?

– Mamo. I will never forget when Mamo told how they built a house in Ergir. Nothing brought me up like that story. Mamo told how they put the stone on the stone, made a door and a window. He told me with such love and excitement, in such detail that my grandfather’s house rose stone by stone before my eyes, became mine, became a homeland … Then I lost my house, went through the paths of pain, loss, migration.

– Did you participate in the first Artsakh war as a volunteer?

– No, I was a soldier. I took part in many battles, I finally entered the liberated Shushi … I lost many friends. 25-30 years have passed, but I still have nightmares, hellish episodes from the past.

– In your opinion, how should we overcome this defeat?

– We did not lose to the Turks, but to ourselves. The Turk is the same Turk, cowardly, timid, hiding behind a mercenary, looting, inhuman, simply armed with modern and powerful weapons. The victory of the first Artsakh war inspired us with extra self-confidence, put us in a coma. Now the time has to learn lessons.

At the crucial moment we become the strongest, the smartest, the most patriotic, the most united. If we had won this war, our war with the Turks would not have ended. And we have unfinished dreams.

– And those dreams are incompatible.

– Those dreams are contradictory, the realization of one is the death of the other, we have lost only one battle.

– One battle, and Western Armenia, our bowed churches, our destroyed glorious culture, the Azerbaijani flag on Tigranakert fortress in the western homeland, the Azerbaijani barbarism on the walls of St. Amenaprkich Ghazanchetsots Church, do you consider all this a losing battle?

– If we consider this a final result, then, of course, it is a defeat. But we still have time to score the winning goal at the opponent’s gate, in football language. By the way, I used to play football. I am the champion of the USSR youth championship. Until the referee’s whistle sounds, you have a chance to win.

– Let’s end the conversation with this optimism.

– My son’s name is Miro, my nephew’s name is Marut, they have something to say to the Turks …

By GAYANE POGHOSYAN