This man is Samvel Movsisyan. He is going to turn fifty soon, but he may never have his own home where he can live in dignity with his wife and three children.

Samvel is a refugee. In 1992 he narrowly escaped with his wife and daughter leaving behind a two-story house and garden, unable to take even the barest necessities, and after a long journey arrived in the Vardenis region.

“You know how we left Shahumyan? The fourth (Russian) army had already entered Shahumyan and we were told that we couldn't resist, that resistance wouldn't do any good,” recalls Samvel Movsisyan, who has lived in a small cabin in the village of Karchaghbyur in the Gegharkunik Marz for fourteen years now.

Anyone who has ever visited Vardenis can imagine just how suicidal living in this wooden cabin one meter off the ground is. Vardenis is a mountainous region where cool winds blow all year round, becoming especially strong in wintertime. The cabin Samvel lives in used to be part of a summer pioneer camp.

Samvel's cabin has one room which he, his wife, their high-school graduate daughter, and nearly grown-up sons sleep in. There are two single beds in the room. The others sleep on the floor, where the ground can be seen through holes in the floorboards.

Whatever furniture and clothes they have is also in this room, though it doesn't occupy much space. Samvel, who graduated from the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute's Department of Mechanics, is unemployed. He worked for several years in Shahumyan, but has been unable to find a job in his field since his family fled. “I receive an allowance, 20,000 drams, and this is enough for, say, one sack of flour. In addition, we live on the lakeshore and we dry fish and sell it.”

Since the monopoly on catching fish belongs to the locals, Samvel buys the fish they haven't sold from them in the evening and dries it in front of his cabin. The fish drying in the sun somehow symbolize his life. These fish once swam in their natural environment – in the lake, the same way Samvel lived in his native Shahumyan fifteen or sixteen years ago.

“This seems like a second life,” Samvel says, recalling once again how he left Shahumyan. “We couldn't take anything with us, nothing. We left naked. There were people who had been working in the garden and just ran from there. What could we take with us, walking through the forests to Haterk?”

Samvel says that the process of receiving and accommodating them was well organized but “later they just forgot about us.” During the war he thought that they had been forgotten because of the war, and considered it to be beyond anyone's control. After the war he thought that the country was just getting on its feet. And he understood that as well. And only now has he realized that “you can be a refugee for two years, for three years at the most, but how can you be a refugee for fourteen years?”

Two years ago the state seemed to show signs of remembering the refugees, distributing certificates to buy apartments among them, but this was of no use to this family.

When he received the certificate Samvel was happy, thinking that his problems would be solved at last, but everyone with an apartment to sell turned him down when they saw the amount of the government assistance. “The certificate was for 780,000 dram, about $1,500-1,600 and it was written there that we should buy a two-bedroom apartment with all amenities”.

The refugees' unsuccessful attempts to buy apartments lasted for two years, until the state took the certificates it had distributed back and left the people in a state of uncertainty. “We went to the government agencies and were told that they had to discuss the issue of certificates in some state commissions. But I'm not sure whether they are going to give them back or not,” Samvel says. (Incidentally, this is not a unique case. We will publish the story of the refugees living in a Sevan dormitory soon).

Houses with bearable living conditions in Karchaghbyur or in the neighboring villages cost $8,000-10,000 – four to five times as much as the amount of the certificate. Samvel has no hope that even if he gets another certificate the state will allocate a sum that corresponds to market prices. He has no idea what is he going to do. He will hardly be able to buy a house selling dried fish along the Yerevan-Vardenis highway. “If we succeed in selling the fish it helps to solve the problems of the day or pay off our debt to the grocery store,” he says.

He didn't pin his hopes on our visit either, though he was touched by the attention. When we said goodbye to him he extended three dried fish wrapped in newspaper saying, “Take it. You can eat it on the way home.” When we declined the offer, cautiously, in order not to offend his dignity, I saw regret in Samvel's eyes and imagined how he would have treated his guests from the city had he been living in his house in Shahumyan, or even here in Karchaghbyur, but in a house of his own, in dignity.

A note from Hetq: Some m onths ago the Shoghakat TV Company made a film on refugees commissioned by the Sakharov Human Rights Fund. One of the subjects of the film “Ruined Souls: Refugees in the Gegharkunik Marz Fifteen Years Later” was Samvel Movsisyan. Since learning the story of this man's life, the World Council of Churches' Armenia Round Table Foundation ( set up at the suggestion of the Armenian Apostolic Church in cooperation with the Armenian Evangelical Church) has sought funds to provide his family with housing. A Swiss Charity organization has expressed its readiness to provide half of the required sum ($8,000) if the Round Table succeeds in raising the other half. It is our hope that there are people of good will who will render Samvel Movsisyan an opportunity to begin a new life. If you wish to help, please contact [email protected]