Ararat Davtyan
Vahe Sarukhanyan

On December 26, 2006 Tony and Myasnik, two homeless men we were acquainted with, once again made a fire next to the garbage dump near the Yerevan Chamber Music Hall.

We had agreed beforehand that they would gather the homeless people they knew to meet with us. But only the two of them were there.

“Help us. Igor is dying,” Tony said with tears in his eyes. “We all are going to die soon. Eight people have already died this winter. Gayane, Ashot from Shamshadin, Mamikon… David died lying next to the garbage dump – I called emergency.”

In a half-built structure onBaghramyan Avenue, across the street from the Chinese Embassy, four homeless men had taken shelter. Igor was lying in a corner, wrapped in a shabby coat.

“After the new year, I'll get myself together and go to the hospital. I'll stay there for some ten days to get back to normal and I'll take care of my housing,” fifty-two-year-old Igor said, uttering the words with difficulty. “I have a spasm in my throat. I'm cold. I sleep on the concrete floor. Even now when the fire is lit I don't feel it; I can't get warm.”

Igor Brutkaroyan said he had a two-room apartment in the Aresh neighborhood inYerevan's Erebuni district, and that his wife was living there now. And it was because of her, Igor insisted, that his two grown sons who are inRussianow don't help him. On February 2006 Igor's mother died, and after that his wife started fighting about having the deed of ownership of the apartment in her name. “She was nagging me to give her the papers. She wanted to have deed rewritten in her name and throw me out, ”Igor said, adding that he grew tired of the constant fights and moved out nine months ago. At first he was a watchman at a construction site and slept in the cabin there, but the construction work was completed three months ago and he found himself on the street.

“It was just my luck to lose my house keys, but I have all the papers with me,” he said, adding that a public notary has asked for $100 to rewrite the ownership papers in his name. “After the new year I will somehow find the money and transfer the house from my mother's name to mine. It has to be done at some point, doesn't it?”

Igor was shivering from the cold, but kept asking for water. His friends told us that he had refused to take food for two days and complained about the cold. “We call the ambulance but when they find out that it's a homeless guy don't come.”

We called emergency and told them that we were journalists, and some 20 minutes later an ambulance took Igor to theRepublicanHospital. But three days later, on December 29 th , Igor was once again sleeping on the same concrete floor. His friends told us that Igor had come back the next day, saying that a hospital doctor told him that he was as healthy as an ox and made him leave the hospital that morning.

The doctor on duty at theRepublicanHospitalon December 26 th who admitted Igor was Larisa Babayan. She maintained that she immediately sent for a neurologist, cardiologist, and a doctor from the acute poisoning division. As she tells it, the patient refused to have an electrocardiogram and said he had no complaints about his heart.

“Based on expert opinion that man had no need to stay at the hospital,” Larisa Babayan said, assuring us that the patient had only complained of dizziness, nausea and hunger. “We gave him tea, and cheese sandwiches. He lay down in the corridor next to the heater and in the morning he left of his own free will.”

Igor Brutkaroyan died on the night of December 30th. Dr. Babayan also mentioned that he had a skin disease, but since the hospital had no dermatologist and the patient was able to walk on his own, they had advised him to go to see a dermatologist on his own. The doctor never mentioned the cause of the patient's death three days after he was “admitted to” and “discharged from” the hospital. “I can't say why the patient died but I can't rule out anything, either. Perhaps he fell somewhere and hit his head. I don't know,” Babayan said.

We called the police and informed them of Igor's death. They arrived an hour later, and shortly thereafter an ambulance came and took the body to the morgue. Igor Brutkaroyan's body will be laid to rest in an area of the Nubarashen cemetery allotted to the homeless.

Four days after Igor's death another homeless man, Alik, 57-year-old Alexander Buchakhcyan, died in the partially built structure at7 Baghramyan Ave.