They arrived on January 15, 1990 

On the evening of January 15, a woman in slippers and odd-looking clothes stood crying in front of our building in Yerevan. 

My mother was taken aback, since she recognized the woman as her aunt, who used to live in Baku.  She went down and brought the old woman home. Somehow, they caught a boat in Baku and reached the Turkmen city Krasnovodsk. Then, they came to Yerevan by plane. 

Her stories took us to another reality, and our ability to perceive normal life was distorted the third time after February 1988, when the Karabakh movement began. 

The next day, she called her Baku apartment from our house. She couldn’t explain the reasoning. "I want to dial my number,” she said. Some Azeri woman answered the phone. My mother's aunt was speaking Russian, mixing some Azerbaijani words she knew, and at the end of each sentence she still hoped for something, addressing the woman as "baji" (sister in Azerbaijani).  

The woman told her that the apartment was empty when she arrived. My mom’s aunt didn’t even cry after hanging up. "All my life, I woke up at six in the morning, and I came home from work at eight in the evening. I wanted to live well and work well, and now they tell me my apartment is empty and I do not have a home." 

The other members of her family then joined her in Yerevan. They arrived on different flights. Everyone living in our apartment blamed us for not thinking about them when starting the Karabakh Movement here.

My family members were silent, due to their understanding and the obligatory status of the landlord. I was offended. I defended our movement from the encroachments of "ignorant" refugees with all my strength and power. Now, as a grown-up, I know that no ideal should force someone to give up their house and become a refugee in another city. 

Yerevan did not accept foreigners

Formally, they were accepted. But they forever remained "refugees", "those from Baku", whose accent is different, and some of their habits are different, too. Yerevan was homogeneous, and its residents loved when others ate meals like theirs, had same habits and accents.

We were not expecting their arrival. We could not imagine the possible results of the movement. Baku was a huge city, a multiethnic one, although many people had moved out in the previous twenty years. We did not predict the slaughter. We had the Sumgait pogrom, but we thought that the Soviet Army would not allow it to happen in one of the giant cities of the Soviet state. But it happened.

Baku's intelligentsia, basically, did not come to Yerevan. They went straight to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, then to the US, France. Those expelled from their houses in slippers came to Armenia, following their instincts.

Among those who came, there were great tailors, shoemakers, cooks, musicians, engineers. They knew the rules of behavior for a big and multicultural city. They were conscientious and cautious, since they had lived amongst foreigners. They learnt to defend their interests in the Russian environment, which we, the locals, did with hesitation or through "acquaintances".

And now, losing all the opportunities to prosper, they came to Armenia to start living. Former urban residents demanded to be housed in the city, which was normal, but in Yerevan they were told -  "Be glad that we find a place for you." We did not really care about their psychological needs. Plus, their willingness to defend their own rights seemed to be an obscenity. In fact, they only demanded not to be robbed for a second time. But they were labeled as "shrewish". And this made them complain even more.

Many of them left, starting with the ones who had been better settled, lived in normal conditions and had a job. This was difficult to understand. Then, it was the turn of those who lived for years in the dormitories of Yerevan, where conditions were inhuman. But even in those conditions they were trying to live pleasingly - to celebrate the holidays, to cook, dress, polish their nails, to shine their hair with henna, and to try and speak Armenian, and integrate. Many people were forced to leave because of social conditions. Step by step, dormitories, hotels, and holiday houses were abandoned.

Those who stayed, lived in various states - from horrible to tolerable. Young and beautiful women from Baku, staying at the Prague Hotel, could infect anyone with their vitality.

Those who stayed, had children in Yerevan. Their children’s accent has disappeared, they have accepted the local traditions, and only occasionally, when they speak Russian, can you guess that their parents are among those who came. The label of refugee is difficult to erase. Yerevan residents love to separate and label the newcomers as "immigrants", "aghbars", "refugees".

Stella Ghukasova 

A few days ago, on the 30th anniversary of the Karabakh Movement, I found Stella Ghukasova at the Shengavit dormitory, sick in bed. 

We first met at the end of the 1990s. She was a representative of Baku's intelligentsia. Her father was an orientalist by profession, and her mother - a teacher. Her father died in 1944. Stella came to Armenia with her mother, who died here, leaving her on her own. 

Stella Ghukasova was born and raised in Baku, studying psychology in Moscow. Coming to Yerevan, Stella always struggled in defense of other refugees, getting upset with injustice in the 1990s. She could go to all officials and demand justice, fight, raise her voice, and disagree. But she always struggled for other refugees, not for herself. 

Stella was different from the others. She demanded a dignified attitude, not material things. 

I know Stella’s story, and I’ve told it to many. When I tell it, my breathing quickens. Stella has been living with that story for 28 years. 

She left Baku together with her mother before the events of January 1990, going to Tbilisi. On January 13, 1990, one of her friends asked Stella to buy her a ticket to Baku. Stella thought of buying a ticket to Baku for herself. She went to Baku to see her house. After entering her apartment, she got a call. One of her Azeri acquaintances warned her to leave her apartment and go to theirs right away. Stella stayed with them overnight. 

In the morning, her Azeri acquaintances drove her to the train station. The massacres had already started. Stella was dressed like an Azerbaijani woman. Azerbaijani Popular Front representatives were removing Armenians from the train, separating women from the men. Stella tried to enter the train from the back, crawling underneath parked trains. 

She says, "When I was under the train, it moved a little, and I bid farewell to the world." The train stopped and moved three times. Finally, Stella entered the train and found her compartment. She left the door of the compartment open and lay on the bench, with her head to the door and feet on the table, in the manner of Azerbaijani women when asleep. She said a silent prayer not to be found out by the Azerbaijani Popular Front, whose representatives were periodically checking the compartments. Stella always says these few moments were hellish, and the days since, are considered happy ones. Even now, lying in bed and being very desperate, Stella says something that many of us never say. "It’s such a good thing that I am alive". She repeats it several times.

Her father wrote on the reverse side of this photo: "Dear Stella, it’s me, your father, photographed in May 1944 in Moscow. My joy, I will be back soon."

Stella refuses to take any financial assistance 

Stella says: "People accepted us – it’s just that we meant nothing for the state. The state had no plan to make us citizens. It didn’t want to stop the robbery of financial assistance intended for us; there was no goal of justice, there was no aim of human dignity and well-being at all.”

Stella really does not care about material things, even though the conditions she lives in are disastrous. But the fact that the state aid program Paros gave only chicken and rice for New Year’s offended her dignity. "Couldn’t they give us something small but beautiful? It's New Year’s, I do not want accept such humiliation, though some people beat each other for that chicken."

Young Stella

Stella adds that nothing has changed in 28 years, only our mental and physical state within these 28 years. "Do you remember Rafik? A smart guy, Candidate of Philosophy. He lost his mind and passed away.”

 My first visit was a surprise for Stella. Not recognizing me at first, she then rejoiced greatly.

Stella prepared for my second visit

When I called her for my next visit, she asked me to come the next day. She agreed to be photographed.

When I visited the second time, her apartment had undergone quite a change. Such metamorphoses occur only in films. The room was clean, everything was arranged, the round table was covered with her mother’s white embroidered tablecloth.

Stella was a bit more cheerful

The other table, covered with another lovely tablecloth, was laden with fruits, candies, jam, and cake. The bed was arranged and tastefully covered. Stella had combed her hair and was neatly dressed. She had been remembered, and this made her feel alive again.

Stella managed to flee Baku with her family photos

We were talking about something and I said, "Next time". She said, "There might be no next ..."  She couldn’t guarantee the next meeting, but this one was enough to raise her spirits.

Stella, and people like her, are still in dormitories after twenty-eight years. Armenia did not want to make them its own, turning them into a horde fighting for state aid instead. Stella is an honest woman. She says, "You know, refugees working in the Department of Refugees were the most inhumane of employees."

"My biggest loss was that of our library, and then the faith in people. I lost my faith in people, after having had a long struggle for their interests,” Stella says.

The lamp that saw three genocides 

Escaping Baku, Stella managed to take two things from her apartment – family photos and an oil lamp. "This lamp has seen three genocides," says Stella, and I’m embarrassed to ask which was the first one. 

I’m even ashamed to shake with the chills in that room, since Stella doesn’t feel the cold. 

Sitting in her dormitory room on February 20, 2018, I could not recall any other person who was so sincerely indifferent towards material things, and for whom spirituality was so important, as Stella, who is unknown to all of us.   

Such people are the "living victims" of our movement.

Official notice of Stella’s father’s death in 1944