The first black-and-white TV set in the village of Tumi in the Hadrut region appeared in 1965. Almost all the TV sets in the village are of the same type; there are also few Soviet-made color TV sets on which the villagers watch Azerbaijani and Russian programs. No newspapers or magazines reach this or any other village of the region.

With all its troubles, Tumi resembles the other villages in Hadrut, such as Hartashen, Kyuratagh, and Mets Tagher. Here too, there are problems with drinking and irrigation water and the roads are ruinous. Here too, taxes are high and the harvest is poor. There are cattle but there is nothing to feed them, because the gramma grass quickly becomes useless under the burning sun. Here too, people don't know what to complain about first.

Before the Karabakh war, 1,400 people lived in the village; now there are 820. Twenty-four people were killed in the war. The village was not inside the war zone; it was even inconvenient to bomb it, since the nearby mountain blocked the enemy's view, hindering shelling.

“They would shell us using maps, and a few shells hit the village,” the head of the village administration, Edik Mosiyan, recalled.

In the last three years, thirty-two children were born in Tumi and twenty people died. Physician Alvina Hakobyan says that people mainly complain of cardiac trouble. “You know, stress and things like that,” she explained. A first-aid station was built recently; there is also a maternity home, though the number of marriages and births is not high. Edik Amirdjanyan from the village administration has just returned from the Army. He wants to get married but doesn't know to whom. The young woman he liked is now studying in Stepanakert. “Those who get education stay wherever they can manage to; there is no reason for them to come back,” Edik said.

When you look at the houses here it is easy to say whether the village has a future or not. Most of the houses were built by their grandparents and the locals don't see any sense in renovating them. Most of the inhabitants are elderly. There is only one newly built house, that of Sergey Avagyan, a father of six.

Sergey is a war veteran; he fought on the frontlines for four years. He came home during the war just once to get married. He participated in the liberation of Khtsaberd and in the capture of Djebrail and Horadiz but was never wounded.

The age difference between his first and second children is six years. The birth of his third child followed a decision by the government of Nagorno Karabakh by which the state undertook to deposit $750 in the bank for every family who had a third child.

When we visited the family, five children were at home, the oldest son, fourteen-year-old Hrant having taken their pigs to the forest. Sergey has a big orchard. He irrigates it with drinking water. There is no irrigation water and drinking water is supplied every third day.

Sergey shows me his vegetable garden with beans, potatoes, and ripe tomatoes, but the orchard is barren. He had decided to buy new clothing for the children after selling the yield, but most likely it won't happen this year. Now he had decided to sell all of his ten piglets.

He takes care of pigs all the year round but his children don't get any pork. Not even heads and feet are left. “The market veterinarian takes them whole. If we cut the animals' heads or feet off he suspects that they had been bitten by wolves and the pork is not good,” Sergey explained.

There are berries and Cornelian trees in the nearby forest. Villagers collect them but are unable to sell them and turn them into bread.

The family gets 29,000 drams (about $72) a month in allowance for six children. “It is barely enough for food,” Sergey said. His wife Rita is more specific: “A cup of tea three times a day for each kid already requires a kilogram of sugar.”

They have three school-age children but don't know how they are going to meet all the school-related expenses. Nine-year-old Tevan says that he likes math and Armenian a lot and gets good grades. His mother confirms that, but all her thoughts about the future of her children remain at the threshold between desire and ability.

Mher Arshakyan