<\/p>\n
By Ruzanna Amiraghyan <\/p>\n Every time talking about her husband her eyes fill with bitter tears.<\/p>\n Yeghsik’s only goal is to take care of her family.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two years ago the Asatryans \u2013 a family of four \u2013 moved to Metsamor from the village of Lernagog. Yeghsik Hakobyan, 30 and her three children aged 13, 12 and 9, rented an apartment in a building where the stench of the damaged sewage is a visit card.<\/p>\n \u201cMy husband passed away in 1998. My youngest was born just twenty days before the accident \u2013 an accident with my husband in the car,\u201d Yeghsik begins to tell the hard story of her family.<\/p>\n Arkadi, the youngest, is in second grade. He is thin, shortish and pale. The boy lags behind his peers in physical growth because of malnutrition.<\/p>\n Yeghsik\u2019s eyes fill with tears when she tells of her husband, but she, as if with a long drilled will, constrains them and continues. Her husband, who died in an accident at 27, had gained skills for a barber, but had been doing various types of construction work to provide for the family.<\/p>\n Yeghsik\u2019s monthly income is just 54,000 drams ($180). This includes both the 23,000 ($73) of \u2018Paros\u2019 social program and the 12,000 drams ($40) of her children\u2019s partial orphanage allowance (for all three), as well as Yeghsik\u2019s salary of 19,400 drams ($64).<\/p>\n Yeghsik has recently been hired as a kitchen worker at kindergarten Number 3 in Metsamor.<\/p>\n Having no means to buy clothes, Yeghsik has put her grandma\u2019s spindle into use.<\/p>\n \u201cI buy wool in the village, twist it, card it, turn it into thread and knit. I have happened to knit a suit and sell it. But I knit mostly for my kids \u2013sweaters, tights, socks and don\u2019t spend money to these kind of things, because I make them at home,\u201d Yeghsik continues and takes the spindle out of the broken dresser.<\/p>\n She takes orders time to time \u2013 knits, cleans homes, and does not avoid any kind of job. In summer months, Yeghsik, like many of the residents of Metsamor, takes work in produce fields. \u201cWell, its weeding, seedling, gathering, bringing, various kind of things, whatever is done in the field,\u201d she says about the work that she used to get 3,000 drams ($10) per day for.<\/p>\n The apartment is neat, but misery has done its work. The sombre brown of the walls says more than the residents would. Shabby clothes here and there, a pile of shoes \u2013 small and big, doors crunch \u2013 as if saying they can\u2019t stand the hardships of life.<\/p>\n Both before and seven years after her husband\u2019s death Yeghsik\u2019s family lived with her parents in Lernagog. After the husbands\u2019 parents divorced, his father got married again and occupied the home with his new family in Bambakashat, where Yeghsik\u2019s husband was born and grew up, but where there was no place for his own family.<\/p>\n Due to family circumstances there appeared to be no place for them in Yeghsik\u2019s parential home either.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was simply hard to live there: there was little job there [in Bambakashat]. And my parents\u2019 home, well, it was their home and we had to leave. My brother had to live there with his family, it was his home\u2026 so I was forced to go. The house was not small, but, well, it was my parents\u2019 home, my brother\u2019s, and I had to leave it sooner or later. My brother was going to marry. He had stayed unmarried until he turned 40. It was because of me, so I said, well, it\u2019s better we separate \u2013 my family and yours, live for yourself. How long could we stay that way? It was not mine in any case,\u201d says Yeghsik.<\/p>\n Yeghsik\u2019s family got a certificate of permanent residence this spring since moving from the village. Owing to the certificate they managed to get the documents for poverty and children allowances.<\/p>\n But the only big dream Yeghsik has ever had is to have a home of her own.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to have a lot of money to buy house, right? I can\u2019t imagine, I can have so much to get a palace. I don\u2019t even want it. But I need a corner of my own not to pay for the rent so that kids are sure it\u2019s theirs, so that I know it\u2019s mine when I hammer a nail.\u201d<\/p>\n Yeghsik sees the future of her family in Metsamor \u2013 she does not want to move anywhere else.<\/p>\n \u201cWell it still goes this way, [but] I don\u2019t know [what happens next]. It seems to me I won\u2019t go anywhere from Metsamor. I don\u2019t even want to. It\u2019s quiet here, Metsamor is a good place. I want to always stay here. Although, if there was work sonewhere else I could go there and come back. I don\u2019t want to move from here. I don\u2019t know, there may be work in Hoktemberyan [now, Armavir] or Yerevan. If I could find a job I would go there and be back, but I wouldn\u2019t stay there. I wish I could get proper money so that I manage to achieve my aims,\u201d says Yeghsik. \u201cI don\u2019t need anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n