(An excerpt of my impressions from a trip I took to the village of Kajarants with a group of fellow environmentalists)

By Ruzanna Grigoryan

“Dear child, there is no Armenia, no Armenia...”

These are the prophetic words uttered by a woman in the sunset of her life. A woman bent over with age and who could barely hold on to her cane in her wrinkled hands.

I looked into her eyes. They were kind eyes, eyes that had seen the hardships of a long life. They were eyes of a woman who knew the cost of victory but could no longer carry on the struggle.

Alas, dear grandma, how old you have become. How much different from that young and graceful Armenian woman who would one day marry and raise a family in the mountains of Syunik. A woman destined to leave behind two sons as her modest inheritance.

Could you ever imagine that the day would come when you would bury those two sons with your own hands? Could you even foresee that black day when you would bury your 18 year-old grandson, hung in the army, in that same cemetery?

You have been left alone in this unjust world.

You were destined to live on and daily bear this cross. You would have to turn stone into bread every day to live on.

Now, in the twilight of your life, you have fallen into the clutches of some government bureaucrats and their ominous Decision N627. Your land has been designated as “eminent domain”, to be snatched away from you at their whim and for their personal aggrandizement.

You have become expendable. They want to replace you with a mine.

“Eminent Domain”...What do these words mean for you? It means the little plot of land that has sustained you is to be taken from you. It’s the only thing that this topsy-turvy world had left you – a bit of land under your feet, a roof over your head, the village church, faith, and the cemetery where your children now rest under their native soil.

In a few days some self-proclaimed intellectuals will arrive in the village who will sanctimoniously proclaim that its residents must be resettled and that it is the right thing to do. They will justify this move by offering false testimony before your fellow countrymen and by conveniently ignoring you and your village.

-Dear child, please tell me how I will live once they turn me out? Who will bury me? Had I known before, I would have died. The villagers would have buried me. There is no more Armenia, no more Armenia.

-Grandma, today we are here at your side. We want to build an Armenia that we dream of having. Believe me that we will build it.

-Build it dear one. Build it!

I looked into the old woman’s eyes. They were kind, moist and this time full of hope.

Dear grandma, even if you are the last villager to remain, the only one who doesn’t want to leave, we will be at your side. We will struggle till the end.

You are the backbone of Armenia. Your village nestled in the mountains of Syunik is the real Armenia. It’s the little piece of land under your feet that is Armenia. It’s the residents of this village and countless others like it, families who share both the joys and sorrows of life, which constitute Armenia.

Armenia is the nearby mountainside where your ancestors now repose and where the memory of your sons still lives.  

No one has the right to take this from you – the right to leave this world under your own roof and to be buried in your village cemetery.

We will not let them.

They will not remove one stone, one fistful of dirt, one cherished memory.

We will preserve Armenia and we will build Armenia.