They knocked on the door at 10pm and said, "Get out of the house, this is our land" (video)
Nazar Tsaturyan was 14 when his family were living in Mingechaur, Azerbaijan, could survive the massacre committed by Azeris. The younger sister, Narine, was studying in the seventh grade, the youngest of his family, Arkadi, was not yet attending school. He remembers his home till today. "Now, if I was in our yard with the closed eyes, I'll be right in our house." Rumors about the massacres have already been spread among Armenians living in Azerbaijan. Raya Tsaturyan's family decided to come Yerevan and exchange their three-room apartment in Mingachevir with the apartment in Yerevan, which was owned by Azerbaijanis, but this plan was failed. Leaving the children in Armenia, the spouses returned back to Azerbaijan. It was November 28, 1988, 10:00 pm, when the door was knocked and the spouses were demanded to release of the apartment. They left the house and came by random cars to the ancestors' house in Shirvanzade village of Shamakhui region. After staying there for a few days, they moved to Armenia. Mrs. Raya wrote a letter to her Russian neighbor and knew that her property was no longer there; the Azerbaijanis robbed her. Nazar tells that he found his classmates through the Odnoklassniki social network. They do not live in Mingechaur, too; they voluntarily left the city, but promised: "If they go to our city to take a tour, they will shoot some pictures and send them to me." They have some archival pictures in the house that the mother has gathered from relatives in Armenia. Mrs. Raya says that before the Karabakh movement, Armenians and Azeris lived in harmony. "We worked with each other, we went to our neighbors' houses. However, if the Karabakh issue was appeared, they [Azeris] said us to go: Don't you want your Karabakh? Go live there. This is our land, this is our home. " It is already 30 years that Tsaturyan family live in Bazmaberd village in Aragatsotn province. The children are married; Narine lives in Moscow, Arkadi lives in USA. Raya Tsaturyan, who lives with her eldest son Nazar, does not even want to hear about going back. "What I should do there, if I go back? They ruined and took everything after the day I had come here. Should I go back, work and build a house for them? A few days ago, Mrs. Raya's grandson, Smbat, was drafted to the army. When Nazar was 18 years old, he served in the Armenian army voluntarily as he did not have an Armenian passport.
