24 year-old perseveres despite losing both hands in 1993 Azeri bombardment

“Now I can prepare meals on my own, but I won’t be able to prepare pastries for you at the moment. Instead, let me offer you some coffee,” says 24 year-old Mari Mezhlumyan, evidently pleased with her latest accomplishment. She then lines the cups on the table and turns on the water tap with her feet.

Grasping the coffee pot in her mouth, she goes to the facet and fills it with water. Opening the match box with her feet, she lights the stove and proceeds to make us some Armenian coffee. “They say the war is over. But my battle started after the war,” says Mari, who is missing both her hands.

The accident occurred sixteen years ago, July 23, 1993. They had visited a garden belonging to her uncle. All the cousins were playing when they spied a dog running around. They had seen the dog before and wanted to take it home as a pet. But, her father thought otherwise.

That day, the kids had somehow convinced their father to let them bring the dog back with them. Mari went to wash up. It was then that an Azeri plane started to bomb the town of Kapan, in southern Armenia.

“The bomb blew up and I was thrown into the water. I remember awakening from the blast. The bomb had burned away my hands, literally melting them. I paid a heavy price,” she recounts. The eight year-old girl’s legs had also been injured. I didn’t go to school for sixteen months afterwards.

“After the accident I didn’t want to see anyone. I was scared to see my old classmates from the second grade. I thought they would shun me, but I was wrong,” says Mari, adding that she’s broken out of her self-imposed shell during the past four years.

“Now, I no longer feel embarrassed. If someone stops to stare at me on the street, I turn around and ask them, ‘Is there a problem? Maybe I owe you some money or something.’ I make these gawkers feel ashamed,” she continues. Then Mari stops telling me her story and stirs the coffee.

“I was born three months premature. They had to monitor me in one of those protective incubators so I wouldn’t die. I also wasn’t killed when the bomb hit. I must have a hard head; no?” Mari says smiling. She then pours some coffee into the cups. While we sip our coffee the topic of conversation strays to another subject. Mari receives an 11,000 AMD disability pension.

She laughs when I ask if the money is enough to get by on. “Would you call that money? My father used to work but hasn’t for the past few months. My older brother is lucky enough to have a job. He recently got married. My other brother is in the army. My grandma also gets a pension so we get by somehow,” she says matter of factly.

Mari graduated from the Kapan branch of the Engineering Institute, majoring as an economist. She tells me that they promised her a job. “After finishing high school, all I wanted to do was stay home. It then occurred to me that I needed to take some personal responsibility; that my family shouldn’t have to carry my burden alone. So I got accepted at college,” Mari says.

She believes that once she starts working she can assist, even in a small way, with the family’s upkeep. “Ara Dolounts, the Deputy regional Governor, has promised to get me a job. I’m always beating a path to his office door to remind him. Come January, I’ll be working.”

Mari’s mother passed away eight years ago and her father married the widowed wife of her mother’s brother. “My uncle was killed in the Artsakh War. After my mom died, my father married his wife. It seems to me that our family was the only one that suffered from that war,” Mari laments.

Then, she abruptly changes the topic of conversation once again and points out her accomplishments despite her disability. “Once I make up my mind to do something, it gets done. I don’t wait around for someone to show me how. I plunge right in and try myself. I’ve learnt to get around and fend for myself on my own accord. No one showed me what to do. It wasn’t easy, but through a long process of trial and error I’ve managed to overcome the challenges I face and will continue to do so,”Mari states. I also broached the subject of her personal life and if she had a sweetheart, someone to help her over the rough spots.

  “Ah…That’s my little secret. But you’re right, of course. A companion would be a big help. Let’s just say I’ve had some suitors,” she hinted. It turns out that she’s fallen in love with a young man from Yerevan who works in Kapan. It’s been a month and a half since she’s been smitten.

“I love him, yes. But you’ll have to ask him what it is that he sees in me. I mean does he love me as well or…” she jokes, keeping his name as secret for now. “I’ll introduce you at our next encounter. You know, he’s the first love of my life and if everything goes well I’ll get married, even at thirty,” she says with a huge grin, sipping the last of the coffee. It was then time to feed the cat.