Azernews.Az

By Imamverdi Ismayilov

Member of Parliament, Milli Majlis

...Accept my sincere confession. I confess that it is very difficult to write something of such a sorrowful-mournful style. It is painful... May be the reason is that it talks about not only the fates of thousands of people who guided my writing, but my own fate as well?!

The words "refugee" and "IDP" that defines their legal status are in fact the beginning of my political fortune.

Years that I have spent together with these people who have been driven out of their nests in these cruel times, scenes of their lives, sufferings, sorrows and sadness that have soaked to my memory can become topics for volumes upon volumes of novels.

For now, I am in search of an effective opening for chronicling those fates - despite my years-long intention of what I'd write about, how I'd write is daunting like darkness onto the white papers in front of me.

...For a moment, the light of a village lamp, flickering in my thoughts, draws my memories to itself. That light does not diminish the radiance of an unforgettable night we spent in Nakhchivan once...

The lamp, with its burning wick, which brightened the legendary personality of the great mentor of statehood Heydar Aliyev in front of our eyes in full magnificence that night, continues to shed light to an entire history since then.

That Lamp now brightens all of our lives, of our Azerbaijan...

The grand works and kind deeds that were made within this not-so-long time period by Great Leader Heydar Aliyev and the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, come to my eyes one by one like cinematic episodes...

...And involuntarily I think that this ESSAY must consist of two pieces, two leaves, just like the light of that lamp flickering in my memory...

***

...In one of hot summer days of 1993, someone suddenly spoke of one horrible happening, and while listening to that story, I felt like no-one in the whole world could be any sadder than me at that moment...

Those were the tense times when Azerbaijan was facing threats of civil war. Our compatriots, who managed to fetch only light-weight but valuable belongings from their homes and fled to relatively safe places, thus sentenced to the fate of refugeedom, were scattered across the Motherland like ripped apart beads...

The happenings perplexed everyone; the unexpected pace of events was making it increasingly difficult for people to expect the ways they would be treated...

Even the millennia-old traditions, that were always helpful in such moments, were not in accordance with the desperate situation that was so completely new for everyone.

The traditions taught us to greet the "guests" respectfully and accommodate them properly, and people thus warmly greeted the refugee families whose numbers were increasing day by day, yet every one had the want, the need to return to home lands as soon as possible... This wish sat firmly inside everyone - from Qala Gates to Qala Valley of Shusha, from Gulabirt to Lolabaghirly of Lachin, from Asgaran to Shusha of Khojaly, from Muganly to Tugh of Khojavand, from Cherekdar to Zaylik of Kalbajar, from Garvand to Ahmadavar of Aghdam, from Zilanly to Basarat of Gubadly, from Zarnaly to Bash Aghaly of Zangilan, from Jojug Marjanly to Gumlagh of Jabrail, from Mirzanaghily to Zargar Dilaghardasi of Fizuli...

What to do, the life dictated so...

We learned through traditions to be tolerant to each other, to be patient, to share the only piece of our meal with the close ones in need, but now the heads of households, who managed to gather some of their family members one by one after months of searching around different parts of country, did no longer have any patience or tolerance, they had to protect their own lives.

700 thousand internally displaced persons...

At first, having no other options, they would find dwelling in any place imaginable, possible or accessible... In 12 tent camps, 16 "Finnish" style settlements constructed with prefabricated apartments, farms, dugouts and in shelters by highways, cargo carriages on railways, public buildings and half-finished construction sites, dormitories, education facilities and kindergartens, sanatoriums, boarding houses, recreational and tourism facilities, with their relatives and other facilities that lacked basic conditions and sanitary requirements for living... In more than 1600 settlements in 62 cities and regions of the republic...

Just wherever possible - they had to settle and weather the night...

...And when in one of such difficult days I heard from someone that after arriving at Mughan plains, which had as productive lands as hot summers, internally displaced families quarrelled with each other over shadow of a tree to rest their mats and blankets, I felt as if the world collapsed, as if the Sun stopped in the sky, as if I left the Earth together with the light...

Because I had seen different days of those people, I had witnessed feasts in abundant houses and mansions built with river stones that hosted guests everyday; I had cut bread in picnics set amidst cool pastures in summer time, on springs with water that was as clear as tears but cold enough to freeze your teeth, and near mountain rivers where the fish almost jumped from water onto the table; I had seen meals with one thousand culinary treats: colostrum milk, beestings-bread, cheese, churned butter and buttermilk, biteable sour clotted cream; I had mingled with people with hearts as open and wide as the chests of those mountains; and now hearing that people of those days had to quarrel over a tree shadow, was equivalent to hearing about the end of the world.

Yet the Lamp of Hope, glimmering inside me, strengthened my heart then, did not let my world come to stop...

The light that kept my world from ruining and stopped me from dying with the last of my hopes in hot summer days of 1993, was the return of the great mentor of statehood Heydar Aliyev to the power...

...Amidst these memories I am thinking about a martyr's father, Isgandar kishi. A community elder from Gubadly. Isgandar kishi whose guest I was in his comfortable home. And his emotional talks, his warm, friendly words clinging to my memory...

"Do you remember, nephew, - he tells me and, after sipping his tea, continues with his loud voice, - when it was chaos all around, I sent a telegramme to Nakhchivan, to Mr Heydar Aliyev, to say that 'please, come and be the head of this state, save the people from this calamity, no one else can do it..."

As the tall man rekindled the most notorious moment of his life, his chest was pumping with the heat of his words, and his big, bright eyes were burning.

...I think that at that time Heydar Aliyev's name did not let the world collapse not only for me but for millions of Azerbaijani people like myself...

***

Sometimes numbers can be so indifferent to human fates...

I think about it more often when I read the eight-figured dates on tombstones of people whose lives created almost entire worlds, when I listen to two- or three-sentenced news about their passing away, when I peruse over statistic data on wars, natural disasters and accidents in the world that cost hundreds of thousands lives...

The numbers are again on my table... The figures of new history...

I have been staring at them for long time, my thoughts traveling restlessly...

These figures remind the most tragic pages of Azerbaijan's history in 20^th century. These figures bear the suffering of millions of Azerbaijanis who lost their homelands in 1905, 1918-1920, 1948-1953 and 1988-1993 due to countless Armenian atrocities...

Broken fates raise their eyes from behind the lines of numbers; these lines come to my eyes as lives of those people who embraced their pains and torments. I am reading about the forced displacement of 250 thousands of Azerbaijanis from their historical homelands in the aftermath of the latest planned ethnic cleansing policy carried out by Armenia during 1988-1992.

I am rereading the heart-breaking statistics on overall area of the most productive lands of Azerbaijan which is occupied as the resut of military aggression by Armenian armed forces since 1988, on destroyed 900 residence areas, 130939 houses, 2389 industrial and agricultural enterprises, educational, health and cultural facilities, roads, bridges, communication lines, museums, art galleries, libraries, burnt books, invaluable manuscripts. I am trying to paint the conflict with these figures...

Simple and dry figures, spread on a little piece of paper on a small writing table... No, not really, these numbers are mournful and disturbing...

The mournful face and bent stature of black-kerchiefed Nazila Taghiyeva lurk behind these figures; the scars of the events left in the people's lives can be more clearly seen in the wrinkles on the face of a mother of four children from Gulably village of Aghdam, than through the numbers: "On the day when our village fell in 1992, Armenians killed my husband, and I fled with my four kids. The eldest was only 11 years old then. My daughter's lamenting over the dead body of her father still rings in my ears. I hear it everyday... Everyday..." Mother Nazila's voice breaks down, she dries her wet eyes with the tip of her head-scarf: "That year my little daughter was going to the first grade, I was attending the school together with her to sit in the classroom and save her from anguish. Oh the woes I have seen, brother, the woes I have seen!.."

If not read on the mournful faces of thousands mothers, if not lived through and felt on skin, who can say these numbers, spread on papers on the table, are not simply graphic symbols stuck to each other, are not as many ruined homes, are not tragedies of as many families, are not the sufferings of as many people?..

But we did suffer through the ill-fated lives reflected on those plain figures... With our tearful eyes, with sorrow-ridden hearts...

We have felt each ache in our souls, with our sleep either deprived or turned into nightmares till the dawn...

***

...It is two of us. We are not touching the tea on table. Rafail Mammadov, the Director of Shusha City School No 19 and an honored teacher, now lives in Barda. Old memories unravel...

"...Our home was towards the Meydan Spring in Shusha, near Upper Govharagha Mosque... The streets were laid in white stones. In every rain they'd become whiter than white. I remember every single one of them. You know how one feels his heartbeat? That's how I feel those stones... I had stepped so many times on them... Sometimes I'd measure the distance or time with them. Even now, when I walk, I feel like I am walking on those stones... They come to my dreams often..."

This elderly educated man speaks about the white stones laid in the streets of Shusha as if he talks about his own children; the sadness flowing from his bright eyes into my heart burns me inside out; the stones glowing through his sad memories are now appearing on the bloody lanes leading to my heart. And it looks like the stones are laid in exact rhythm of my soul, of my feet, of my words to come...

I wonder who says that you can't take one's memories from him?! If the roads going to addresses where those memories once lived are now closed down, if trails to those memories are overgrown with grass, then doesn't it mean that those memories are occupied too?!

At this time of dawn, in my thoughts, I want to walk in my village from house to house, from street to street, from fence to fence, I want to disappear in my memories, I want to search for the forgotten voice in my memory. Alas, that voice is no longer in my memory, it has disappeared amidst the noises of capital city where I have been living most of my life now, as if that voice had never ever existed even...

Maybe, the loss of memories starts with the forgetting of voices?!

The snatching of one's memories is the most horrible crime in the world!..

The Armenian aggressors carry the guilt for occupation of our lands, for genocide against us, for murder of 20 thousand Azerbaijanis, for wounding of 100 thousand of our compatriots, for crippling 50 thousand persons, for taking thousands of our citizens as prisoners and subjecting them to countless tortures, for many more crimes against humanity, and moreover, for the loss of our memories...

God help us, we will make the guilty ones pay for their deeds!..

To be continued...

This article is dedicated to over one million Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs who became homeless as a result of Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan.