"If you grew up in the shade of the mulberry-tree, you are a citizen of that country," said 73-year-old Slava Mosunts, who after long years of research has created a genealogical tree of Martakert.

Mosunts, a descendant of Martakert residents, held senior positions in the region for years. For more than a decade he edited the regional newspaper and radio programs. With his rich work experience, Slava Mosunts says that he got to know himself, his people, his region best during the [Karabakh] war. And when in 1992, after the deportations, Martakert residents took the path of exodus, he was keenly aware that they were in danger of losing their national identity. "Our fellow Martakertsis, the next generation, have no future outside, because there is no school, no language, no newspaper, no theatre. There is only work and food outside. Apart from this there is nothing else outside."

His wife, Sveta, who has helped her husband in drawing up the Martakert family tree, says that Slava made the decision to work on it in Moscow, where they lived temporarily after the deportation. "Slava ran into an acquaintance from Martakert in a metro station in Moscow. 'Where are you heading?' he asked. 'Irkutsk.' Later that same day, we met another Martakertsi. He said: 'I'm going to Barnaul'. We went home; Slava was awfully upset: Leaving, leaving, where are they going? That's how he decided to create the family trees of our famous clans."

Mosunts was not unfamiliar with creating family trees. In 1962 he drew up his own, the Mosunts family tree. "I knew the subject. It's the records from resting-places, epitaphs, the traditions bequeathed to us by our ancestors, our memories. There you are. I integrated it and created ours."

Mosunts was still living in Moscow when he began researching and exploring. He acquired 460 addresses of former residents of Martakert and wrote them letters. "One suggested the address of another, and so on. One lives in Tiumen, another in Stavropole, in Krasnodar, in Perm. sitting still. I wrote 460 letters to the addresses they had given to me and I got 560 responses. Every one laid his own filiations, his own branch and this way, filling in I came up with 62 families of Martakert." There were, of course, difficulties in the beginning, the biggest of which Slava Mosunts sees as skepticism and the sense of inferiority. "They would say, 'Who are we to have a history?' This is the kind of skepticism that has to be shattered. I would say, 'You know who you are? You are one who has lived on this soil for centuries, who has defended the Armenian way of life. You are obliged to have this history. Be the master of this history.'"

Each family represented in the book has its history - where they come from, why they came. Cursory statistics show that many of them settled in Martakert as a result of wars or deportation. "The Ghazaryans, for example, came from Kars. The Ohandjanyans, the Chilingaryans - it's a huge family tree, they are branches of the same tree - they came from the village of Gldan in the province of Mush. They have a 400-year-long history; they came in the times of Shah Abbas. The Hiusnunts came from Nukhi, they are old Karabakhtsis. The Mamunks are a big, branching family, they came from Persian Gharadagh."

The forefathers of the clans Slava Mosunts has studied were drawn to the region from different directions by its safety and fertile lands. Of equal significance is surely the fact that the Karabakh princedoms were semi-independent states under Persian domination. "They all gathered here as a safe locality, as a semi-independent state. It was a state with semi-independent rule - the Melik (prince) administered justice, the judge was the Melik, conscription was executed by the Melik, everything had its beginning and its end in the Melik."

Leafing through the Martakert Genealogic Tree one notices that an appreciable number of the family names are formed out of women's names - Nanagulyan, Satunts, Mamunts, Khorishahants, etc. This manifestation of gender equality is surprising. Slava Mosunts has an explanation for this as well: "We have never had a problem with the legal equality of women in Martakert, in Karabakh." He explains that daughters-in-law were expected to be silent, but this was stipulated not by the inequality of sexes but by the acoustics of where they lived. "It was at a time when we lived in houses dug out of the earth. There were some three mothers-in-law, some four grandmothers, some five daughters-in-law. It was a normal, well thought-out tradition; one should not ascribe it to backwardness. If these five daughters-in-law got verbose under the same roof with three mothers-in-law no fire-brigade could put out the fire."

Family names from women's names might give the impression that women were more powerful. Slava Mosunts refute this interpretation as well. "It wasn't that they were more powerful than their husbands, no. The men were in the fields during the daytime. One could not see men in Martakert in the daytime. And it wasn't, say, Mosi's or Hakob's house that was on the tip of the kids' tongue but the grandmother's who was at home - it was Granny's Nanagul house, or Granny Sati's house. They would say, We are going to Satunts' (Sato's) house, to Takunts' house, to Mamunts' house."

The author of the genealogy adds that no man ever felt offended by this practice; on the contrary, they were proud of it. "We accepted it as a decoration. The names of our mothers, our grandmothers were our orders."

"So, which number is bigger, the number of people in this book or the number of people living in Martakert?" I ask Slava Mosunts. After a long pause the author says quietly: "In this book. Unfortunately, there are more people in this book, there are up to three thousand photographs here, and there are no photographs of many, many others, only the names."

I went to the old cemetery of Martakert accompanied by Slava Mosunts, who knows all the gravestones by heart. "It is not a cemetery, it is the biography of our deceased, it is the history of the life of our grandfathers. They left epitaphs here, they left their legacy here," he explains, adding that verified his data one by one against the inscriptions.

Now he is getting ready to make copies of his voluminous collection so that every resident of Martakert has this book at home, and if someone has strayed from his roots he can at least see the leaves.