Lilit Baghoyan, an Armenian by nationality, and Ramilya Khudayarova, an Azeri, were both born in Nagorno Karabakh, in towns just fifteen kilometers away from each other. At one time, their families lived that close by. But that was in the past.

Ramilya Khudayarova hasn't seen her native Khodjalu for eleven years. She spent her childhood and adolescence there, but was then forced to leave her home and emigrate to Baku . "On the night of February 26, 1992 , tanks surrounded our town. Over night, 600 people were killed in Khodjalu; it was a miracle that we escaped. We passed through the forest over hundreds of bodies, and we reached Aghdam," she recalls.

Ramilya lost ten of her relatives to the war. Her cousins (six of them) went missing in action. Images of their native town and the horrors of the war are still alive in the memories of this young woman's two sons. "In the beginning they hated the Armenians. But I have always told them that the Armenian women and children are innocent. There is no need to fight and kill each other." This is how this woman, a native of Karabakh, raises her sons. Her father and mother had moved to Khodjalu from Jermuk years before. Until the day he died, her father spoke constantly of Khodjalu. The daughter has decided to visit her birthplace, and take a handful of earth back to her father's grave. "I just don't know what will I feel when I see my home town, my house. It's hard to live away from the place where you grew up," Ramilya Khudayarova explains.

Although Lilit Baghoyan still lives in her native city, Stepanakert, she cannot forget her missing father; she still suffers from the pain of his loss. At the beginning of the Karabakh movement, Azerbaijanis kidnapped her 68-year-old father. There has been no news from him for more then ten years. "The uncertainty is awful, you have to wait and wait, forever," Lilit says. On the night of May 18, 1991 , eight soldiers from an Azerbaijani special assignments detachment burst into the Stepanakert post office where Lilit's father was working as a watchman, and set the office on fire. They forced her father out, hit him several times in the head, put him into a car, and drove away.

The police came to put out the fire, but they couldn't bring the 68-year-old man back. No one had any information as to his whereabouts. A search was announced all over what was then the Soviet Union , but in vain. A criminal case was instituted, but subsequently closed. The Baghoyan family has only ever gotten scanty information from various sources. Sometimes, the traces led to the Shushi prison, then to the Baku prison. But they never got any reliable information about their father. Lilit doesn't believe his kidnapping was an accident. She says the authorities at the time thought he was an active participant in the movement, though he was not at all interested in politics. "In all probability my father isn't alive anymore. Even if they hadn't killed him, he would hardly have withstood the suffering at his age," Lilit admits sadly.

Svetlana Martirosyan hasn't locked her door in twelve years now, since the Karabakh war. "I'm waiting for my son. I'm waiting for any news; whatever it is, it's better than not knowing." Her son, Vardan Martirosyan, went missing in action in September 1993, during the battle for Kubatly. His fellow soldiers say that Vardan drew the fire on himself and told his friends to retreat. They haven't seen him since. His mother hopes that if her son is a prisoner, then one day he will come home. "I just keep waiting. Maybe my son will come home in fifteen or twenty years," she says. Her only consolation is her ten-year-old grandson, who often asks when his father will come back.

For mother of Levon Hovhannisyan, missing in action in the Karabakh war, the suspense has become a form of torture. "Sometimes I hear my son's voice from very close by, and sometimes it moves farther and farther away, until it's inaudible," Rima Antanesyan says. Levon has been missing since 1994. On February 7, 1994 , his parents got a telegram informing them that the 19-year-old was missing in action. Since then, Rima Antanesyan has been searching for her son. "One of the commanders in Hadrut wanted to tell me something, but they interrupted him, saying that it was better that my son's commander talk to me. I think they didn't want to tell me the truth; they didn't want to take the responsibility. A man from Hadrut called Slavik told us, when we showed him Levon's picture, that he had found Levon on the ground, helped to put him in the ambulance and take to the Hadrut hospital," Rima says. She couldn't find him there. Another man told her that Levon had been found in Azerbaijan and offered to turn him over to his parents. But when the day came, no one ever showed up, and there was no trace of their son.

The search for soldiers missing in action (MIA's) is rarely successful. Though their parents continue to wait for them, even they know that the probability of finding their sons is not high. "I trust in God. We don't want war. It's a loss of human life. I wouldn't wish it on my enemy," says Vardan Martirosyan's mother, still waiting for her son.

The parents of Armenian and Azerbaijani MIA's met for the first time in Tbilisi , Georgia in 2002. At this meeting, the image of the enemy was gradually replaced by the image of shared suffering.

"We share a common pain. We have to work together to find our sons," says Vardan Martirosyan's mother. Ramilya Khudayarova, forced to move to Baku , believes, "One day we will live together in peace and solidarity. Baku is my homeland, too, but Khodjalu is Khodjalu. We live in the homeland, without a homeland."

The families met a second time in Karabakh in the summer of 2003. They exchanged information and photographs, and, for a few days they had an opportunity to share their pain. The meetings were organized by the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly, with the support of the Inter-Religious Peace Council.

A third meeting took place last march in Tbilisi . For three days, they talked about the problems they facing in their search for their missing relatives, about cooperation with state agencies, and international and local NGOs. None of the three South Caucasian countries has a law dealing with MIA's, and therefore their status is not defined. In order for the families be eligible for state privileges, the missing soldiers must be declared dead. "I don't want my son to be declared dead," Vardan Martirosyan's mother says. The other parents feel the same way. They want the states to define the status of MIA's and deal with all the problems in a legal way. At the meeting, a group of lawyers from Armenia , Azerbaijan and Georgia was set up to deal with all the legal issues. The Caucasian Federation of Parents of MIA's in the Karabakh War, or Suspense, was also established, and was joined by representatives of organizations dealing with MIA's in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. The first task of the parents will be to search in their countries for missing soldiers from the other side.