Eight-year-old Gevorg and ten-year-old Erik are brothers. The care of their mother and grandmother would probably be enough for them if they weren't both ill. Gevorg has a heart disease that according to doctors is the result of going hungry for extended periods. The child survived at the expense of his health.  He was too strong to die, but his heart was damaged.

"In the best case, I only fed the child rice soup. His mother didn't have milk, and we couldn't buy baby formula. If we had any money, we bought spaghetti, so everyone could eat, " recounted Anahit Tazayan, Gevorg's grandmother. Today the boy suffers from high blood pressure and headaches.

Doctors have found cancerous growths his older brother Erik's stomach, which are growing as the child grows. Tests are necessary for a final diagnosis, but the family cannot afford them. The tumors cause Erik pain; when it gets too bad they give him sedatives. 

The family lives in one room in a three-room apartment, paying 15,000 drams (about fifty dollars) a month. There are tenants in the other two rooms. The apartment has been adapted to dormitory living conditions, where everyone lives in a separate room, but shares the kitchen and toilet.  Now the landlord wants to sell the apartment and has told the tenants to leave. "We have been renting for thirteen years. We have constantly had to leave apartments for different reasons. We asked the landlord to let us live here till February 25, but I don't know what we'll do after that. Evicting us is easy. We don’t have a lot of stuff-we sold it all to feed the children," said the boy’s grandmother, pointing to the remnants of furniture stacked in the corners of the room. They have lived in this room for a year.  Before they found it, the children and their mother and grandmother had been living in the hallway of a building after their landlords had evicted them from an apartment there. 

The family’s troubles started thirteen years ago when they sold their apartment. At the time, Anahit needed urgent surgery

The children’s mother, Varvara Harutyunyan, and grandmother Anahit both work. They clean apartments, wash windows, iron clothes, and earn on average 800-2,000 drams per day. The children's father left them nine years ago, abandoning his wife and newborn baby in the hospital.

"I have no information about my husband or his family. My husband's mother and father were from Krasnodar and after their son's marriage didn't maintain any relations with us. I rented a place with my husband, but he left us within two days after the second child was born, “ Varvara said. She now receives 15,000 drams a month as a single mother. It's enough to pay the rent.

The most important issue for the family now is the health of the children, but that is connected with money, which the mother and the grandmother do not have.

"We were told that Gevorg would be examined again in a year. They explained that Gevorg is still too young for them to decide whether he should undergo surgery. Now the doctor has prescribed a special feeding regimen- juices, dairy products, fruits. But if we pay for all of that for him with the money we earn, we won’t be able to survive ourselves. Getting Erik’s disease diagnosed also requires money. Several tests were done for free, through referrals from the head of the hospital, but the others have to be paid for. We can't afford medical care for our children. The way we are going about it now-somewhere for free, somewhere with money, by begging someone, and not doing things-we are failing to fully test and treat them, " said the children's mother.

The family is not a member of the Paros program, because they have no residency registration; since they have no registration, no one can care for them. Gevorg's disability papers, his mother told us, are still being processed and it's not known when they'll be ready.

"Fruit, sour cream, sausage - those are a dream for our children. The stores are full of such things, but our children sometimes go to school hungry, go to bed hungry. In the winter we often went hungry, and didn't understand the situation and often screamed at night "I want to eat!" Neighbors would come after these screams and help with whatever they could. People do care; they give us old clothes, sometimes food. I have had to ask several charity organizations, social aid services, tell them that there are two hungry children here, so they will help, until we can find something ourselves, " Anahit said with tears in her eyes. 

Last winter, when the children’s' mother and grandmother were sick and couldn't work, neighbors called Ministry of Employment and Social Services, which then sent 10,000 drams and some old clothes. After that, the Ministry forgot about them.