“We all are disabled children in this center,” said Olya as she saw me.

“Who told you that?”

“People on the street always laugh at us, because we're different.”

“In what way?”

“I don't know. That's what people say.” She shrugged her. “They always tell us we're not like them. But I don't like that.”

Then she thought a little and added, “I dream about all the people understanding one another, not putting differences between them, and not hurting each other.”

Olya is twenty-eight years old. But she is as sincere and emotional as a ten-year-old child. She is one of thirty young people that attend the Day Center run by the Prkutyun (Salvation) Center for Disabled Children. At the center Olya takes part in arts and crafts groups, making things out of rice and straw. Now she is waiting for her mother Tamara, who works at the center, to finish work so they can go home together.

“We don't live far from here, but I'm afraid to go home alone,” she said.

“Afraid of what?”

“Of everything. There are so many terrible things that happen on the streets now. There are so many hooligans and thieves. Other things happen, too. I like to stay at home and do my work.”

Olya was born a healthy and rosy girl like her sister and brother. She was vaccinated against diphtheria when she was six months old. Tamara can't keep from crying when she remembers that day.

“I told the doctor that the baby was sick with the flu. I felt it from her breathing. But the doctor said the baby's lungs were clear, and took her for the injection.”

“The baby was absolutely motionless the next morning. I tried to feed her with milk from a spoon, but she didn't respond at all. I took her to the hospital that evening.”

Tamara went to three different hospitals in twenty days. No one could say what was happening with the girl. Finally they did a puncture and diagnosed a terrible disorder—encephalopathy, or insufficient blood flow to the brain.

“I don't know what caused it- the flu, or the vaccine was old. Many of the diphtheria vaccinations that year (1978) ended in death.”

Olya was absolutely motionless when she left the hospital, unable to sit up or even hold up her head. Then when she was nine months old a flu epidemic broke out in Yerevan. Tamara caught the flu in spite of all precautions and passed it on to Olya. The baby was admitted to the hospital again.

“They really never took the needle out of the baby's motionless body. They injected her everywhere. [The doctors] were expecting her to die at any time. She was connected to the IV twenty-four hours a day. I spent terrible days and months in the hospital. I wouldn't wish it on my enemy to go through all those feelings. Finally I took the baby from the hospital on my own responsibility and started to treat her with various drugs and cures. I didn't turn to doctors anymore and I'm afraid of them to this day.”

Olya finally learned to sit up when she was two. At four she could walk. Because she had to work, Tamara took Olya to a kindergarten when she was four years old. After that, she went to public school. She managed to study along with the others and even got good grades, thanks to Tamara's superhuman efforts.

“Sometimes I stayed with her until one o'clock in the morning. We sat together and I taught her the lessons. Olya was able to memorize the entire lesson, but she would forget everything when she went up to the blackboard. Sometimes it seemed like her mind disconnected.

Sometimes I got so frustrated I wanted to hit her, but I never did. I dug my nails into my palms till it hurt to stop myself from hurting my daughter.”

Tamara underwent serious gall-bladder surgery when Olya was going into third grade. The doctors held out little hope that she would survive. Although their prediction proved incorrect, Tamara was in treatment long after the operation. Tamara had neither mother nor mother-in-law to help, so Olya's teacher advised her father and grandfather to send her to a special school for mentally disabled children.

“You are men. You won't be able to manage alone,” she said.

“I was taken to a special school since I couldn't learn the multiplication table,” said Olya. “My mother was in the hospital, and I didn't want to learn. I didn't want to do anything”.

“I liked the special school. I had friends there. I came home on Saturdays and Sundays. But my mother cried all the time, and said if we had a car I would be able to come home every day.”

There is one thing that Olya felt sorry about. She liked physics, but they didn't teach the subject at the special school. Olya began to attend the Day Center after the special school.

“I taught Olya fine needlework and how to make crafts from straw,” said Tamara. “I prepared her to live more or less independently in order not to make her a burden on her brother and his wife when we pass away. I let her do any kind of house work. She goes shopping alone.”

Tamara has never allowed her daughter to play in the courtyard. She was allowed to play with other children, but only at home under Tamara's supervision.

“Many people say I have isolated her. But I think it's better for her. There are so many terrible things happening on streets now that it would be better for her to stay away from all of that. I take her everywhere with me - to relatives, friends. All they love her very much, and she communicates warmly with all of them. She is very happy to see them.”

Olya spends all her energy on needlework, housework, and television.

“I wouldn't say I like housework, but I was born a girl and I have to do it,” said Olya.

“And do you go out in the yard?”

“No, all the people in our building are younger or older than me. I don't like to play with children, but I feel shy around older people. They make me feel that I'm different from them. All my friends are here. I love and respect all of them. I like to be friends with girls rather than boys. My friends know me even better than my mother. I share my secrets with them, and they do the same. I always keep their secrets. I think if someone trusts you, you should keep the secret until the end of your life.”

Olya likes to go to the theater. Recently the teachers took them to the play All Rise, the Court Is Now in Session.

“I cried a lot. I though that all the actors were very good. That actor [Tigran Nersisyan, who played the lead role] is in other plays as well, but his performance in this particular play was so good it was as if he was acting his own life, and had felt all that himself.”

Olya is also crazy about happy ending Indian films and action movies with Jacky Chan. If she was born a boy, she definitely would go in for karate. However she doesn't like girls going in for martial arts.

“Have you ever fallen in love?”

“Never, but if I did fall in love, no one would know. It would be my own secret. If I had a friend, he would have to be kind and respectful to me and not laugh at me.”

Tamara's parents suggested marrying Olya off to a mentally disabled boy when she was twenty.

“But my husband and I discussed it and decided against it,” Tamara said. No one can say how their life would be. One rude word or one wrong act could make her worse, whereas now I am by her side and can take care of her.”