Arakyul is one of the ancient villages of Karabagh. After the liberation movement, in the result of joint efforts of soviet soldiers and Azerbaijani all the Armenians living in the village were deported. Nothing has been left from the village. The only memory is the church built in the early 20 th century which Azerbaijani couldn't manage to destroy.

One of the older villagers Yervand Ghahramanian has described the process of violent resettlement in 5 handwritten volumes. A separate volume tells Arakyul's history. He wants to leave it to the school library for future comers to read.

According to the historian Yervand Ghahramanian, the village used to have 274 people. After the liberation 112 of them returned.

“Now 4 families of our co-villagers have reached to Canada and United States of America, but most of them are in Yerevan and Russian cities.”

The problem of Arakyul restoration is very much like the one of the hen and the egg: the village is restored slowly because the former villagers aren't in a hurry to come back and they aren't in a hurry because the village is being restored slowly. Yervand Ghahramanian returned here in 1996 with his daughter and the grandson. Four years they lived in a temporary house until the France-Armenia organization built houses with the donation of the Armenian community of Lyon and he received one of them.

“Probably people will not return any more,” says the historian. He thinks that the resettled people couldn't wait so long (12 years have passed after the cease-fire). Some of them have already built new houses or bought them, some –have found a suitable job and the children already go to school there. “It's difficult to move here and there each time. They won't come back.”

For Yervand Ghahramanian the history of Arakyul has come to an end. The last page is the khachkar made by him and dedicated to the renaissance of the native village. He has written about it on the khachkar though he sees no way for Arakyul to be restored. “I think our village has no future since there are no young people, no weddings. Only the people like me have remained. What can the village do with old dwellers?”

However, we were lucky to find a young man in Arakyul. 33-year-old Ruben Babayan didn't leave Karabagh after his village had fallen. He stayed there and served in army till 1995.

“I was on the positions and my house remained unfinished while others were completed,” says Ruben, who is going to become a father soon. Along with other common problems existing in the villages of Hadrut Region, Arakyul has a housing problem as well. In fact, the Azerbaijani had razed the village to the ground and after 1993 an entirely new village is being built.

The appearance of Ruben's house is not bad but on the windows there is polyethylene fixed instead of glasses. “This is a source of illnesses. We get ill all the time,” says Ruben. He doesn't know how he is going to grow his new-born child in such conditions.

We enter the house. The floor in one of the rooms is earthen, the other one is covered with wooden boards. “I have waited such long for my house to be reconstructed, but if not, I'll probably leave the village.” I ask – where? There is no answer. Perhaps he is estimating the sum necessary for resettlement but he hasn't got that money and will not have it in the nearest future either.

Ruben's father Arguenya Babayan has also stayed in Karabagh. “My son and me have been here all the time -from the first day of the war till the end and have struggled for our land,” says 70-year-old Arguenya. And despite their heroic past, he has no argument against his son's intention to leave the village. “Soon the child will be born. Where shall I keep him?” asks Ruben's father. “That's why the village doesn't live.”

Translated by Armine Ghazaryan, Karine Miletbashyan