Anzhela Ayvazyan’s granddaughter was coming out of kindergarten when the shooting started. As soon as the five-year-old heard the gunfire, she put her head down and ran straight home. “She’s a clever girl,” says Ayvazyan, “she knew not to stop anywhere.”
This time nobody was hurt, but everyone knows that in Movses, a tiny village in the north-east Berd region of Armenia, the snipers will attack again. As Ayvazyan says, “it’s just a matter of time.”
For families in Movses, this attack in late July is part of daily life. The village sits just 300m from the Azerbaijani border and locals say that 90% of their village is under surveillance from an Azeri observation post to the east, with many homes in plain view of snipers.
Ararat Avalian, the mayor of Movses, has lived in the village for all his 55 years. “You can hardly find anyone whose house does not bear bullet marks,” he says. His house was shelled in September last year. “They just shoot randomly. They know people live in the area, so they are sure at least a little harm will come to someone.”
Armenia and Azerbaijan, two neighbouring formerly Soviet countries, have been at war for almost 30 years over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Right now, Karabakh is technically part of Azerbaijan but it has been run by ethnic Armenian government since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both sides have lost hundreds of soldiers, and this April saw the worst clashes between the two countries since the 1994 ceasefire.
For local people living in villages on the volatile border, life is getting harder with each outbreak of renewed fighting.
Anahit Badalian, who runs the Berd Women’s Resource Centre, an organisation employing women to produce traditional handicrafts, is researching the psychological impact of the conflict. She says more than 86% of women suffer from mental health issues such as depression, stress and neuropsychological conditions thought to be related to the hardships of life on the border.
Ayvazyan says her life is filled with constant stress. Her husband served on the frontline for 22 years before retiring, and now her son is in the military. When on duty, men can be away for two-and-a-half months at a time. Ayvazyan has trouble sleeping and worries for her son as the toll of fighting has affected the nerves in his face. He has problems controlling his mouth and his vision has been impaired.
Nearby, down the only road that snakes through Movses, past the school, the rows of shops outside of which children play with stones in the beating afternoon sun, lives Kima Alipyan. She wearily shows a bullet still lodged in her bedroom wall. “Last August it was crazy, every evening at 7pm they would start shooting. If one day they didn’t shoot at 7pm everyone wondered ‘why aren’t they shooting?’ We got so used to it.
“So many years have already gone by and here we are. I am so tired of this. Our children grew up with this and our grandchildren are growing up with this. It isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse.”
Before the war with Azerbaijan, and the subsequent economic blockade of the border, towns and villages in Berd were home to many thriving factories producing wine, canned goods, tobacco, carpets – and the majority of the employees were local women. After the 1994 ceasefire, the factories remained closed. Now, more than half of the local women are unemployed and the main hope of a steady income is for their husbands to join the military or to emigrate to Russia.
Today Movses has a population of 2,156, but Avalian estimates that between 300-400 will leave for Russia this year. “It is like that for every family, there are no jobs, so they leave,” says Ayvazyan.
Ayvazyan once tried to leave, too. “Years ago I went to Moscow, to find work, but I only stayed for four months, it was too difficult to be away from Armenia, Movses, my home. I lost eight kilos, I just couldn’t live there. This is my home, it is what I know.”
Along with fellow residents Taguhi Adamyan and Hasmik Zaqinyan , Ayvazyan is determined to stay, keep her village alive and provide for her family.
Working at the Berd womens’ centre, they use crochet skills they learnt as children to make and sell delicately woven toys and Christmas decorations. “Since I was five years old I have been doing crochet, my grandmother taught me, soon I was making things for friends, family, neighbours,” says Ayvazyan.
Badalyan, working in partnership with Timothy Straight who runs the Yerevan-based Homeland Development Initiative Foundation, saw the potential in craft skills and knew they could find a export market for them. Right now, Ayvazyan is making dozens of snowman decorations to send to the United States.
“When I am making the snowmen I always think that I was never able to go to America or go travelling or anything, but now, with my snowmen, in a way I can go to all the places that I wasn’t able see,” she says.
The women now have more orders than they can fulfil. “But we want more, and we keep getting more, we make things so fast, our work is flying away!” says Alipyan.
For Ayvazyan, her daily batch of crochet takes her mind off her troubles and the stresses of village life and gives her enough money to survive. “My crochet is more than a hobby or a job, it is my life.”
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