It’s already a few years now that Silva Gmbikyan’s daughter, who attends the ninth grade, lives far from the family. The girl is being cared for by her grandparents. The family of five lives in the village of Margara, in the Armavir Marz, close to the Armenian-Turkish border. “My husband, Levon Gabrielyan, fought in the Artsakh war of liberation, in General Manvel Grigoryan’s unit. He was wounded in the war. We’ve received neither assistance nor attention from the Ministry of Defense. The government has totally forgotten about us. Because we have no money, we can’t get my husband’s disability papers in order so that he might receive a pension of a few kopeks. I have three adolescent children and our situation is quite dire. Nobody lends us a helping hand so that we can get back on our feet. My girl will finish school this year. I really don’t know what we’ll do. We’re really in a mess,” Silva said.

The woman says that they receive no state assistance since, “the government requires a passport to apply for aid. My passport has expired and we don’t have the money needed to get the passport renewed. My husband’s documents aren’t complete and it keeps getting put off. We asked village mayor Khachik Asatryan if his office couldn’t help this family get their paperwork in order. “I’ve always told them to bring what documents they have to the office so that we can see what we can do. It’s no big deal. I can arrange their papers in two days. Levon was a freedom-fighter. He’s eligible for a tidy sum if he has the proper documentation. You should at least tell them to bring their papers to my office,” was Mr. Asatryan’s response to “Hetq”.

Silva Gmbikyan said that the appropriate papers must be prepared at the regional center but that they don’t have the money to travel there. We need to underline the fact that the Gabrielyan family lives in extremely poor conditions. The earthen house in which they live is structurally weak and can collapse at any moment. The walls of the house are separated from each other and the plaster on the walls of the only room that is livable is flaking off. In this one room there’s a TV made back in the Soviet-era and two iron bed frames. Pushed together, the brother and sister sleep together on one side, and the parents on the other. There are no chairs in the house. They sit on makeshift chairs made of iron scraps collected from the street which are placed on flat stones.

“My brother-in-law has passed away and we now live together with his wife in the one courtyard. We have no papers for the house and don’t know if it belongs to us or my brother-in-law’s family. We live in this state of limbo and in constant fear because the roof can fall down on us at any moment,” says Mrs. Silva.

During our visit her husband was out strolling through the village looking for work. He does manual labor but this type of work isn’t found every day; at best once or twice per week. “Sometimes we go without anything to eat for weeks on end. We have flour to last for two days. When it’s finished, we’ll go hungry again. I work other people’s land for two days a week so that my daughter can pay for her graduating class photo. If there was work, any work, I’d gladly take it to feed my kids. If not, we’ll have to sit here and go hungry. I can’t always be asking this or that person for a piece of bread to feed my kids with. No one is obliged to give me bread every day. Think what you’d do if you had no money. Would you go around begging for scraps every day? You’d feel ashamed, no? Whomever I go to ask for food they’ll say the same thing – you’re a young woman, go and work. But what can I do? The hardest problem is that there is no work. Otherwise I’d be working and not sitting home hungry. I’d work at anything to take care of my children in a normal fashion,” Silva argues. “We have a 1,500 meter parcel of land on the other side of the barbed wire (where the Armenian-Turkish border is – GB). But it’s almost 10 kilometers away and I can’t travel there every day. We also have another 1,500 meter plot a bit closer but the court has placed it under lock and key. They want to take it from us. I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ve racked up an electricity debt and they want to take the land as payment,” Silva continues.

“The government should understand that our situation is so bad that we can’t make the electricity payments. They decided amongst themselves that our lands must be auctioned off. We have no work. My husband is physically disabled. We can’t pay of our debts in order to keep the land we have,” recounts Silva. It turns out that the Armenian Electricity Network (AEN)applied to the Armavir Regional Court requesting that it enforce payment and seize the 1,500 plot owned by Levon Gabrielyan.

Judge A. Aghamyan recognized the AEN’s claim as valid on March 3. The Gabrielyans’ unpaid electricity bill amounts to 229,725 drams. While the plot has yet to be auctioned off it is clear that the family has little chance of getting the land back. “Last year I got some land from someone to work myself. I figured at least it would help us get back on our feet. But they didn’t give us any water for irrigation. My entire crop dried-up and I didn’t see a kopek’s worth of profit. This year it’s the same question facing us – will they give us water or not? We are living on hope alone. Bu we haven’t seen any positive movement for years. Now, everything has gotten expensive and I’m afraid we’ll die from starvation,” laments Silva Gmbikyan.