It’s has been already over a year that 77-years-old Zabela Avanesian spends the greater part of her day sitting on a chair. She can move enduring difficulties and pain only when it’s very necessary. It isn’t the old age that doomed her to such a state. She fell down and broke her right leg a year ago and hasn’t received any complete treatment till now. She said in the interview to Hetq that when she went to the Echmiadzin hospital, she was told that she needed to pay 100 thousand drams for her treatment. “The whole city knows about my situation, but nobody supports me. The administration of the hospital knows that I am a single woman without a family and I don’t have such money. Instead of taking me to the hospital immediately, they suggested me to register myself to wait for my turn. They may treat me at the hospital only when it’s my turn. It’s already a year that I wait half-dead. Perhaps, I have to wait for another year for my turn. I’d rather die,” Z. Avanesian said. Z. Avanesian gets 23 thousand drams of monthly pension and 10 thousand drams of benefits, while she is still unable to buy even her medicine with such a poor income. “I can’t endure the pain already. I’d rather crawl. Sometimes the pain is so unbearable that I have to call the emergency. They come and prescribe me some medicine, then make me an injection and leave. In several hours I feel the same acute pain. My neighbours don’t know what to do. I feel such a shame. They do my purchases, settle my problems, I can’t go out of my apartment,” Mrs. Zabela said. Z. Avanesian, her husband and brother emigrated from Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku in the years of the Nagorno Karabakh liberating war. “We used to be one of the richest families of Baku. We had a luxurious house and a rich fortune. We left all that to the Turks and had to escape to Armenia. My husband treated me as if I were a queen. We managed to go to all of best restaurant in Azerbaijan. We used to eat only meat and fresh salads at home, that’s why I just can’t eat macaroni every day,” Z. Avanesian complained. Her husband died two years ago and she remained alone, as they had no children. “Me and my husband raised the three children of my brother, when he died. The live in Karabagh now.  My Seryozhik calls me and asks me to go to live at his place, but I can’t leave my house. I have too many memories about my husband in this house,” Mrs. Zabela emphasized. In the course of our conversation, clinging to the walls,  she approached the picture of her husband and began talking to him, urging him not to leave her alone and take her to him as soon as possible. “We were a very loving couple and I can’t live without him now. I am not used to loneliness. I come up to his picture and start talking to him several times a day not to feel my loneliness,” she added. The habit of talking to the pictures has also a subjective meaning. Though there were two Soviet made TV sets in Mrs. Zabel’s house, none of the TVs worked. Mrs. Zabel has to talk to the pictures of her husband or her nephews to get rid of her gloomy thoughts and bad memories. The house of the old woman was clean and tidy, every piece of the poor furniture was on its place and the floor was shiny clean, though Zabel moves with difficulties and pain. “I don’t get any support from the state. I can hardly make both ends meet with my pension and the benefits. In winter I have to pay 15-20 drams a month for only electricity. Of course, I live a hard life but none of my neighbours ever knew that I had nothing to eat for several days.  At my age I feel shame to go and beg some 5000 drams from somebody for food. If I beg money from others, God will turn to me and say “You used to live a rich life. What kind of a life are you living now?” Mrs. Zabela couldn’t help her excitement. According to her, she had accumulated huge sum of money in the bank during the Soviet times, but she can’t get back her money now. She had to sell some of her household items out of her extreme poverty, her fridge, some pieces of furniture, etc. In the end Mrs. Zabela blessed me, saying that I resembled her beloved nephew Serozhik, and, holding the walls,  accompanied me to the gates. Grisha Balasanian Translated by Anoush Mkrtchyan