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Ararat Davtyan

“We’re Human, Aren’t We? So What If We Live on the Streets?

Ararat Davtyan
Vahe Sarukhanyan

“Every day I think about not getting frostbite at night. Vodka helps – you drink and don't feel anything; you're knocked out.

You get up in the middle of the night trembling with cold, you drink one or two of glasses of vodka, and fall asleep again,” Artsakh war veteran Rafo said. Rafik Martirosyan is from Etchmiadzin. He was born in 1961 and has three children who live with his mother-in-law.

“It's a bitter life, man. I divorced my wife, served a prison term. When I got out of jail I found out that my father had given the house to his second wife. I've been on the streets for two years now,” Rafo said.

Rafo moved into the makeshift dwelling at7 Baghramyan Avenuefive days ago.

“I don't want to live like a bum. I'm a craftsman. I do plastering, painting. I buy clothes from the European second-hand clothes store, go to a bathhouse to wash up, get shaved. What can I do in the winter? There's no work, so I collect empty bottles. It happens that I gather leftover food from the garbage. What am I supposed to do?” Rafo said.

“I fought for nine months in Kelbajar, got wounded… And now I'm homeless. I walk around the entire city. Women and kids ride in transport; I can't get on and say I don't have 100 Drams. When I ask a minibus driver to take me some place he says, ‘You know how many people like you there are?'” The former freedom fighter went on, “ No one considers us human beings. No one talk to us. Even when we want to ask the time we start to say, ‘Excuse me, would you…' but they don't let us finish the sentence. We're human aren't we? So what if we live on the streets?”

Alik – fifty-seven-year-old Alexander Buchakhyan – also lives in the half-built structure at7 Baghramyan Avenue.

“I had a two-room apartment near the statue of Vardan Mamikonyan. It happened that I sold the apartment and entrusted someone with the money but they took it and disappeared. So I've been on the streets for three years,” he said.

Alik's right foot was swollen. He said it was badly infected his toenails had fallen off.

He declined our offer to go to a hospital. “No, there is no need. If you could take Igor we would appreciate it very much. If he dies the authorities will come and drive us out. After all it's a roof and snow doesn't fall on our heads.”

Alik says that he is divorced and has a 20-year-old son who studies at the Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University. “They don't help me. The have an apartment in the Cheremushki district and live for themselves.”

“In the summer it's at least easier. I lived in the Zangou Gorge, in the backyard of the Conservatory. But in wintertime it's very hard; we freeze sitting next to the fire,” Alik said.

Alik was aware of the shelter inYerevan's Fourth Village of Yerevan but has no intention of going there. “Why should I go there? Our guys were kicked out of there.”

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