Yerevan resident Anahit Samvelyan once carried her shopping bags to the ninth-floor apartment her family rented. Now she shares her father's home with her two children, Zara and Davit, and a widowed sister.

Mrs. Samvelyan, 63, now uses a wheelchair when going outside and needs a walker while inside.

All suffer from a host of medical ailments.

Davit hasn’t left the apartment for years due to an undiagnosed allergy to certain odors.

The apartment seems not to have changed over the decades. The wood floor creaks as we move around.

Davit is Mrs. Samvelyan’s son from her second marriage. Her first husband died in a construction accident when a crane toppled, killing him. Her second husband has since died.

Zara, born prematurely, suffered from glaucoma. She was given a prosthetic eye at a Yerevan hospital. She changes it every two years but keeps the old one in a small bag just in case. A new prosthetic costs 75,000 AMD.

"I have two children, both are unhappy. In a word, I am doubly hit. You understand me" says Mrs. Samvelyan who has arthrosis in both hips.

The government has recognized Zara and her mother as officially disabled, but not Davit.

"Now, when I take two steps to go to the bathroom, it seems like my bones are going to break. It started when I was forty-nine. The pain started in my knees, then it spread to the hips. I must get hip replacements," Mrs. Samvelyan says.

Each prosthetic costs some 1.5 million AMD.

The apartment, even the bathroom, haven’t been modified to facilitate the woman’s safety.

She’s applied to the district administration to repair the bathroom floor and remove the bathtub for a shower stall but hasn’t received a response.

Zara dropped out of school in the eighth grade when Davit was born. She started working as an itinerant trader, selling a variety of small items, to help her mother with the family expenses. She bought a suit and shoes for her younger brother with her first salary.

"She used to sell matches," says the mother, looking at Zara caringly.

Zara is thinking of getting a job as a delivery person.

"What are you dreaming about?" I ask Zara. “The health of the family,” she responds.

“Zara tells me that she loves the New Year because we’re all together, happy. That's one more thing we miss," says Mrs. Samvelyan, referring to her sister who died of cancer in 2021.

"I'm waiting for the room to empty, to cry out loudly," says Mrs. Samvelyan. "I want to live for them at least a little. That is why I am asking for someone to come forward in this world to relieve me of these pains. To say that I might see something good, a grandson, is impossible.”

Photos by Narek Aleksanyan