Liana Vardanyan still hopeful missing husband will return Meri Soghomonyan Liana Vardanyan last saw her husband Aramayis in 1994, before he left for the Artsakh frontlines. Since then, she hasn’t heard any word from him or as to his whereabouts. Aramayis aged 34 at the time, never returned from the war. Officials informed the family that Aramayis and others in his platoon went missing. This is the only news Liana ever was given about her husband. Not satisfied, she began her own investigation, reaching out to a number of organizations, including the Red Cross. It has been to no avail. Aramayis, a plasterer by trade, left behind a wife and three children. Liana raised the kids on her own. Her two girls have already married. Her son, now 28, remains unmarried. The family has agreed that if the son gets married and has a boy, he will be named Aramayis. Mrs. Liana lives alone. For the past ten years her son has been living with his grandmother in Artsakh. He was forced to leave Kapan due to lack of work. Luckily he found employment there. Liana Vardanyan only has photos and youthful memories of Aramayis after all these years. She is originally from the town of Martuni in Artsakh. Aramayis hailed from the Svarants village outside Goris. They met while attending the Kapan school and married at the age of seventeen. “In 19993, he went off to defend the border. Every six days or so he would return, muddied, with torn clothes. He’d seen the kids, change, and then head back. Once, he went and never returned. It was on January 7, 1994 in Horadiz. An artillery shell exploded in the trench. No bodies were to be found; nothing. Aramayis was awarded the rank of lieutenant posthumously. I get a pension as the wife of a fallen officer. But we’ve never lost hop that one day he will miraculously return. I feel it in my bones. We don’t believe that he died. Maybe we just can’t accept the possibility,” Liana says. Seventeen long years have since passed. Aramayis would be fifty today. Liana hasn’t had an easy go of it. Over the years, when the kids were growing up, Liana received assistance for them in the form of money and food allotments. Liana says that they have no complaints when it comes to their standard of living and that it’s the longing for Aramayis, as husband and father that really gnaws away at their spiritual peace of mind. When speaking of their current difficulties, Liana imagines how different things would be today with her husband at her side. The woman has never lost hope that one day, out of the blue, Aramayis will return home. She tells me that all things are possible in this life.