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From: dbd@urartu.sdpa.org (David Davidian)
Subject: Accounts of Anti-Armenian Human Right Violations in Azerbaijan #008 A
Message-ID: <1993Apr18.064036.6510@urartu.sdpa.org>
Summary: Part A 
Organization: S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1993 06:40:36 GMT
Lines: 501

     Accounts of Anti-Armenian Human Right Violations in Azerbaijan #008 Part A
                 Prelude to Current Events in Nagorno-Karabakh
	
				(Part A of #008)

      +------------------------------------------------------------------+
      |                                                                  |
      | "Oh, yes, I just remembered. While they were raping me they      |
      |  repeated quite frequently, "Let the Armenian women have babies  |
      |  for us, Muslim babies, let them bear Azerbaijanis for the       |
      |  struggle against the Armenians." Then they said, "Those         |
      |  Muslims can carry on our holy cause. Heroes!" They repeated     |
      |  it very often."                                                 |
      |                                                                  |
      +------------------------------------------------------------------+

DEPOSITION OF LYUDMILA GRIGOREVNA M.

   Born 1959
   Teacher
   Sumgait Secondary School No. 10
   Secretary of the Komsomol Organization at School No. 10
   Member of the Sumgait City Komsomol Committee Office

   Resident at Building 17/33B, Apartment 15
   Microdistrict No. 3
   Sumgait [Azerbaijan]

[Note: The events in Kafan, used as a pretext to attack Armenians in 
 Azerbaijan are false, as verified by independent International Human Rights
 organizations - DD]

I'm thinking about the price the Sumgait Armenians paid to be living in
Armenia now. We paid for it in human casualties and crippled fates--the
price was too great! Now, after the Sumgait tragedy, we, the victims, divide
our lives into "before" and ''after." We talk like that: that was before the
war. Like the people who went through World War II and considered it a whole
epoch, a fate. No matter how many years go by, no matter how long we live,
it will never be forgotten. On the contrary, some of the moments become even 
sharper: in our rage, in our sorrow, we saw everything differently, but now
. . . They say that you can see more with distance, and we can see those
inhuman events with more clarity now . . . we more acutely perceive our
losses and everything that happened.

Nineteen eighty-eight was a leap year. Everyone fears a leap year and wants it
to pass as quickly as possible. Yet we never thought that that leap year would
be such a black one for every Sumgait Armenian: those who lost someone and 
those who didn't.

That second to last day of winter was ordinary for our family, although you 
could already smell danger in the air. But we didn't think that the danger was
near and possible, so we didn't take any steps to save ourselves. At least, as
my parents say, at least we should have done something to save the children. 
My parents themselves are not that old, 52 and 53 years. But then they thought
that they had already lived enough, and did everything they could to save us.

In our apartment the tragedy started on February 28, around five in the
afternoon. I call it a tragedy, and I repeat: it was a tragedy even though all
our family survived. When I recall how they broke down our door my skin
crawls; even now, among Armenians, among people who wish me only well, I feel
like it's all starting over again. I remember how that mob broke into our 
apartment . . . My parents were standing in the hall. My father had an axe in 
his hands and had immediately locked both of the doors. Our door was rarely 
locked since friends and neighbors often dropped by. We're known as a 
hospitable family, and we just never really thought about whether the people 
who were coming to see us were Azerbaijanis, Jews, or Russians. We had friends
of many nationalities, even a Turkmen woman.

My parents were in the hall, my father with an axe. I remember him telling my 
mother, "Run to the kitchen for a knife." But Mother was detached, pale, as 
though she had decided to sell her life a bit dearer. To be honest I never 
expected it of her, she's afraid of getting shot and afraid of the dark. A 
girlfriend was at the house that day, a Russian girl, Lyuda, and Mamma said, 
"No matter what happens, no matter what they do to us, you're not to come out 
of the bedroom. We're going to tell them that we're alone in the apartment."

We went into the bedroom. There were four of us. Marina and the Russian girl 
crawled under the bed, and we covered them up with a rug, boxes of dishes, and
Karina and I are standing there and looking at one another. The idea that 
perhaps we were seeing each other for the last time flashed somewhere inside 
me. I'm an emotional person and I express my emotions immediately. I wanted to
embrace her and kiss her, as though it were the last second. And maybe Karina 
was thinking the same thing, but she's quite reserved. We didn't have time to 
say anything to each other because we immediately heard Mamma raise a shout. 
There was so much noise from the tramping of feet, from the shouting, and from
excited voices. I couldn't figure what was going on out there because the door
to the bedroom was only open a crack. But when Mamma shouted the second time
Karina ran out of the bedroom. I ran after her, I had wanted to hold her back,
but when she opened the door and ran out into the hall they saw us 
immediately. The only thing I managed to do was close the door behind me, at 
least so as to save Marina and her friend. The mob was shouting, all of their 
eyes were shining, all red, like from insomnia. At first about 40 people burst
in, but later I was standing with my back to the door and couldn't see. They 
came into the hall, into the kitchen, and dragged my father into the other 
room. He didn't utter a word, he just raised the axe to hit them, but Mamma 
snatched the axe from behind and said, "Tell them not to touch the children. 
Tell them they can do as they want with us, but not to harm the children." She
said this to Father in Armenian.

There were Azerbaijanis from Armenia among the mob who broke in. They 
understood Armenian perfectly. The local Azerbaijanis don't know Armenian, 
they don't need to speak it. And one of them responded in Armenian: "You and 
your children both . . . we're going to do the same thing to you and your 
children that you Armenians did in Kafan. They killed our women, our girls, 
our mothers, they cut their breasts off, and burned our houses . . . ," and 
so on and so forth, "and we came to do the same thing to you." This whole time
some of them are destroying the house and the others are shouting at us. They 
were mostly young people, under 30. At first there weren't any older people 
among them. And all of their faces were unfamiliar. Sumgait is a small town, 
all the same, and we know a lot of people by their faces, especially me, I'm 
a teacher.

So they dragged my father into the other room. They twisted his arms and took 
him in there, no they didn't take him in there, they dragged him in there,
because he was already unable to walk. They closed the door to that room all 
but a crack. We couldn't see what was happening to Father, what they were 
doing to him. Then a young man, about 26 years old, started to tear off 
Mamma's sarafan, and Mamma shouted at him in Azerbaijani: "I'm old enough to 
be your mother! What are you doing?!" He struck her. Now he's being held, 
Mamma identified him. I hope he's convicted. Then they went after Karina, 
who's been talking to them like a Komsomol leader, as though she were trying 
to lead them down a different path, as they say, to influence their 
consciousness. She told them that what they were doing was wrong, that they 
mustn't do it. She said, "Come on, let's straighten this out, without 
emotions. What do you want? Who are you? Why did you come here? What did we 
ever do to you?" Someone tried to explain who they were and why they had come 
into our home, but then the ones in the back--more of them kept coming and 
coming--said, "What are you talking to, them for. You should kill them. We 
came here to kill them."

They pushed Karina, struck her, and she fell down. They beat her, but she 
didn't cry out. Even when they tore her clothes off, she kept repeating, "What
did we do to you? What did we do to you?" And even later, when she came to, 
she said, "Mamma, what did we do to them? Why did they do that to us?"

That group was prepared, I know this because I noticed that some of them only 
broke up furniture, and others only dealt with us. I remember that when they 
were beating me, when they were tearing my clothes off, I felt neither pain 
nor shame because my entire attention was riveted to Karina. All I could do 
was watch how much they beat her and how painful it was for her, and what they
did to her. That's why I felt no pain. Later, when they carried Karina off, 
they beat her savagely . . . It's really amazing that she not only lived, but 
didn't lose her mind . She is very beautiful and they did everything they 
could to destroy her beauty. Mostly they beat her face, with their fists, 
kicking her, using anything they could find.

Mamma, Karina, and I were all in one room. And again I didn't feel any pain, 
just didn't feel any, no matter how much they beat me, no matter what they 
did. Then one of those creeps said that there wasn't enough room in the
apartment. They broke up the beds and the desk and moved everything into the 
corners so there would be more room. Then someone suggested, "Let's take her 
outside."

Those beasts were in Heaven. They did what they would do every day if they 
weren't afraid of the authorities. Those were their true colors. At the time 
I thought that in fact they would always behave that way if they weren't 
afraid of what would happen to them.

When they carried Karina out and beat Mamma-her face was completely covered 
with blood--that's when I started to feel the pain. I blacked out several 
times from the pain, but each moment that I had my eyes open it was as though 
I were recording it all on film. I think I'm a kind person by nature, but I'm 
vengeful, especially if someone is mean to me, and I don't deserve it. I hold 
a grudge a long time if someone intentionally causes me pain. And every time 
I would come to and see one of those animals on top of me, I'd remember them, 
and I'll remember them for the rest of my life, even though people tell me 
"forget," you have to forget, you have to go on living.

At some point I remember that they stood me up and told me something, and 
despite the fact that I hurt all over--I had been beaten terribly--I found
the strength in myself to interfere with their tortures. I realized that I had
to do something: resist them or just let them kill me to bring my suffering 
to an end. I pushed one of them away, he was a real horse. I remember now that
he's being held, too. As though they were all waiting for it, they seized me
and took me out onto the balcony. I had long hair, and it was stuck all over
me. One of the veranda shutters to the balcony was open, and I realized that
they planned to throw me out the window, because they had already picked me up
with their hands, I was up in the air. As though for the last time I took a 
really deep breath and closed my eyes, and somehow braced myself inside, I 
suddenly became cold, as though my heart had sunk into my feet. And suddenly 
I felt myself flying. I couldn't figure out if I was really flying or if I 
just imagined it. When I came to I thought now I'm going to smash on the 
ground. And when it didn't happen I opened my eyes and realized that I was 
still lying on the floor. And since I didn't scream, didn't beg them at all,
they became all the more wild, like wolves. They started to trample me with
their feet. Shoes with heels on them, and iron horseshoes, like they had spe-
cially put them on. Then I lost consciousness.

I came to a couple of times and waited for death, summoned it, beseeched it. 
Some people ask for good health, life, happiness, but at that moment I didn't 
need any of those things. I was sure that none of us would survive, and I had 
even forgotten about Marina; and if none of us was alive, it wasn't worth 
living.

There was a moment when the pain was especially great. I withstood inhuman 
pain, and realized that they were going to torment me for a long time to come 
because I had showed myself to be so tenacious. I started to strangle myself, 
and when I started to wheeze they realized that with my death I was going to
put an end to their pleasures, and they pulled my hands from my throat. The 
person who injured and insulted me most painfully I remember him very well, 
because he was the oldest in the group. He looked around 48. I know that he 
has four children and that he considers himself an ideal father and person, 
one who would never do such a thing. Something came over him then, you see, 
even during the investigation he almost called me "daughter," he apologized, 
although, of course, he knew that I'd never forgive him. Something like that 
I can never forgive. I have never injured anyone with my behavior, with my 
words, or with my deeds, I have always put myself in the other person's shoes,
but then, in a matter of hours, they trampled me entirely. I shall never 
forget it.

I wanted to do myself in then, because I had nothing to lose, because no one 
could protect me. My father, who tried to do something against that hoard of 
beasts by himself, could do nothing and wouldn't be able to do anything.
I knew that I was even sure that he was no longer alive.

And Ira Melkumian, my acquaintance I knew her and had been to see her family a
couple of times--her brother tried to save her and couldn't, so he tried to 
kill her, his very own sister. He threw an axe at her to kill her and put an 
end to her suffering. When they stripped her clothes off and carried her into 
the other room, her brother knew what awaited her. I don't know which one it 
was, Edik or Igor. Both of them were in the room from which the axe was 
thrown. But the axe hit one of the people carrying her and so they killed her 
and made her death even more excruciating, maybe the most excruciating of all 
the deaths of those days in Sumgait. I heard about it all from the neighbor 
from the Melkumians' landing. His name is Makhaddin, he knows my family a 
little. He came to see how we had gotten settled in the new apartment in Baku,
how we were feeling, and if we needed anything. He's a good person. He said, 
"You should praise God that you all survived. But what I saw with my own eyes,
I, a man, who has seen so many people die, who has lived a whole life, I," he
says, "nearly lost my mind that day. I had never seen the likes of it and 
think I never shall again." The door to his apartment was open and he saw 
everything. One of the brothers threw the axe, because they had already taken 
the father and mother out of the apartment. Igor, Edik, and Ira remained. He 
saw Ira, naked, being carried into the other room in the hands of six or seven
people. He told us about it and said he would never forget it. He heard the 
brothers shouting something, inarticulate from pain, rage, and the fact that 
they were powerless to do anything. But all the same they tried to 
do something. The guy who got hit with the axe lived.                                                                           I     I

After I had been unsuccessful at killing myself I saw them taking Marina and 
Lyuda out of the bedroom. I was in such a state that I couldn't even 
remember my sister's name. I wanted to cry "Marina!" out to her, but could
not. I looked at her and knew that it was a familiar, dear face, but couldn't
for the life of me remember what her name was and who she was. And thus
I saved her, because when they were taking her out, she, as it turns out, had
told them that she had just been visiting and that she and Lyuda were both
there by chance, that they weren't Armenians. Lyuda's a Russian, you can tell 
right away, and Marina speaks Azerbaijani wonderfully and she told them that
she was an Azerbaijani. And I almost gave her away and doomed her. I'm glad 
that at least Marina came out of this all in good physical health . . . 
although her spirit was murdered . . .

At some point I came to and saw Igor, Igor Agayev, my acquaintance, in that 
mob. He lives in the neighboring building. For some reason I remembered his 
name, maybe I sensed my defense in him. I called out to him in Russian, "Igor,
help!" But he turned away and went into the bedroom. Just then they were 
taking Marina and Lyuda out of the bedroom. Igor said he knew Marina and 
Lyuda, that Marina in fact was Azerbaijani, and he took both of them to the 
neighbors.

And the idea stole through me that maybe Igor had led them to our apartment, 
something like that, but if he was my friend, he was supposed to save me.
 
Then they were striking me very hard--we have an Indian vase, a metal one, 
they were hitting me on the back with it and I blacked out--they took me out 
onto the balcony a second time to throw me out the window. They were already 
sure that I was dead because I didn't react at all to the new blows. Someone 
said, "She's already dead, let's throw her out." When they carried me out onto
the balcony for the second time, when I was about to die the second time, I 
heard someone say in Azerbaijani: "Don't kill her, I know her, she's a 
teacher." I can still hear that voice ringing in my ears, but I can't remember
whose voice it was. It wasn't Igor, because he speaks Azerbaijani with an 
accent: his mother is Russian and they speak Russian at home. He speaks
Azerbaijani worse than our Marina does. I remember when they carried me in and
threw me on the bed he came up to me, that person, and 	I having opened my 
eyes, saw and recognized that person, but immediately passed out cold. I had 
been beaten so much that I didn't have the strength to remember him. I only 
remember that this person was older and he had a high position. Unfortunately 
I can't remember anything more.

What should I say about Igor? He didn't treat me badly. I had heard a lot 
about him, that he wasn't that good a person, that he sometimes drank too
much. Once he boasted to me that he had served in Afghanistan. He knew that 
women usually like bravery in a man. Especially if a man was in Afghanistan,
if he was wounded, then it's about eighty percent sure that he will be treated
very sympathetically, with respect. Later I found out that he had served in 
Ufa, and was injured, but that's not in Afghanistan, of course. I found that 
all out later.

Among the people who were in our apartment, my Karina also saw the Secretary 
of the Party organization. I don't know his last name, his first name is 
Najaf, he is an Armenian-born Azerbaijani. But later Karina wasn't so sure,
she was no longer a hundred percent sure that it was he she saw, and she 
didn't want to endanger him. She said, "He was there," and a little while 
later, "Maybe they beat me so much that I am confusing him with someone else. 
No, it seems like it was he." I am sure it was he because when he came to see 
us the first time he said one thing, and the next time he said something 
entirely different. The investigators haven't summoned him yet. He came to see
us in the Khimik boarding house where we were living at the time. He brought 
groceries and flowers, this was right before March 8th; he almost started 
crying, he was so upset to see our condition. I don't know if he was putting 
us on or not, but later, after we had told the investigator and they summoned 
him to the Procuracy, he said that he had been in Baku, he wasn't in Sumgait. 
The fact that he changed his testimony leads me to believe that Karina is 
right, that in fact it was he who was in our apartment. I don't know how the 
investigators are now treating him. At one point I wondered and asked, and was
told that he had an alibi and was not in our apartment. Couldn't he have gone 
to Baku and arranged an alibi? I'm not ruling out that possibility.

Ill now return to our apartment. Mamma had come to. You could say that she 
bought them off with the gold Father gave her when they were married: her 
wedding band and her watch were gold. She bought her own and her husband's 
lives with them. She gave the gold to a 14-year old boy. Vadim Vorobyev. A 
Russian boy, he speaks Azerbaijani perfectly. He's an orphan who was raised by
his grandfather and who lives in Sumgait on Nizami Street. He goes to a 
special school, one for mentally handicapped children. But I'll say this--I'm 
a teacher all the same and in a matter of minutes I can form an opinion--that
boy is not at all mentally handicapped. He's healthy, he can think just fine, 
and analyze, too . . . policemen should be so lucky. And he's cunning, too. 
After that he went home and tore all of the pictures out of his photo album.

He beat Mamma and demanded gold, saying, "Lady, if you give us all the gold 
and money in your apartment we'll let you live." And Mamma told them where 
the gold was. He brought in the bag and opened it, shook out the contents, and 
everyone who was in the apartment jumped on it, started knocking each other 
over and taking the gold from one another. I'm surprised they didn't kill one 
another right then.

Mamma was still in control of herself. She had been beaten up, her face was
black and blue from the blows, and her eyes were filled with blood, and she 
ran into the other room. Father was lying there, tied up, with a gag in his
mouth and a pillow over his face. There was a broken table on top of the pil-
low. Mamma grabbed Father and he couldn't walk; like me, he was half dead, 
halfway into the other world. He couldn't comprehend anything, couldn't see, 
and was covered with black and blue. Mamma pulled the gag out of his mouth, 
it was some sort of cloth, I think it was a slipcover from an armchair.

The bandits were still in our apartment, even in the room Mamma pulled Father 
out of, led him out of, carried him out of. We had two armchairs in that room,
a small magazine table, a couch, a television, and a screen. Three people 
were standing next to that screen, and into their shirts, their pants, 
everywhere imaginable, they were shoving shot glasses and cups from the coffee
service--Mamma saw them out of the corner of her eye. She said, "I was afraid 
to turn around, I just seized Father and started pulling him, but at the 
threshold I couldn't hold him up, he fell down, and I picked him up again and 
dragged him down the stairs to the neighbors'." Mamma remembered one of the 
criminals, the one who had watched her with his face half-turned toward her, 
out of one eye. She says, "I realized that my death would come from that 
person. I looked him in the eyes and he recoiled from fear and went stealing."
Later they caught that scoundrel. Meanwhile, Mamma grabbed Father and left.

I was alone. Igor had taken Marina away, Mamma and Father were gone, Karina 
was already outside, I didn't know what they were doing to her. I was left all
alone, and at that moment . . . I became someone else, do you understand? Even
though I knew that neither Mother and Father in the other room, nor Marina and
Lyuda under the bed could save me, all the same I somehow managed to hold out.
I went on fighting them, I bit someone, I remember, and I scratched another. 
But when I was left alone I realized what kind of people they were, the ones 
I had observed, the ones who beat Karina, what kind of people they were, the 
ones who beat me, that it was all unnecessary, that I was about to die and 
that all of that would die with me.

At some point I took heart when I saw the young man from the next building. I 
didn't know his name, but we would greet one another when we met, we knew that
we were from the same microdistrict. When I saw him I said, "Neighbor, is that
you?" In so doing I placed myself in great danger. He realized that if I lived
I would remember him. That's when he grabbed the axe. The axe that had been 
taken from my father. I automatically fell to my knees and raised my hands to 
take the blow of the axe, although at the time it would have been better if he
had struck me in the head with the axe and put me out of my misery. When he 
started getting ready to wind back for the blow, someone came into the room. 
The newcomer had such an impact on everyone that my neighbor's axe froze in 
the air. Everyone stood at attention for this guy, like soldiers in the 
presence of a general. Everyone waited for his word: continue the atrocities 
or not. He said, "Enough, let's go to the third entryway." In the third 
entryway they killed Uncle Shurik, Aleksandr Gambarian. This confirms once 
again that they had prepared in advance. Almost all of them left with him, as 
they went picking up pillows, blankets, whatever they needed, whatever they 
found, all the way up to worn out slippers and one boot, someone else had 
already taken the other.

Four people remained in the room, soldiers who didn't obey their general. They
had to have come recently, because other faces had flashed in front of me over
those 2 to 3 hours, but I had never seen those three. One of them, Kuliyev (I 
identified him later), a native of the Sisian District of Armenia, an 
Azerbaijani, had moved to Azerbaijan a year before. He told me in Armenian:
"Sister, don't be afraid, I'll drive those three Azerbaijanis out of here."
That's just what he said, "those Azerbaijanis," as though he himself were not 
Azerbaijani, but some other nationality, he said with such hatred, "I'll drive
them out of here now, and you put your clothes on, and find a hammer and nails
and nail the door shut, because they'll be coming back from Apartment 41." 
That's when I found out that they had gone to Apartment 41. Before that, the 
person in the Eskimo dogskin coat, the one who came in and whom they listened 
to, the "general," said that they were going to the third entryway.

Kuliyev helped me get some clothes on, because l couldn't do it by myself. 
Marina's old fur coat was lying on the floor. He threw it over my shoulders, I
was racked with shivers, and he asked where he could find nails and a hammer. 
He wanted to give them to me so that when he left I could nail the door shut. 
But the door was lying on the floor in the hall.

I went out onto the balcony. There were broken windows, and flowers and dirt 
from flowerpots were scattered on the floor. It was impossible to find 
anything. He told me, "Well, fine, I won't leave you here. Would any of the 
neighbors let you in? They'll be back, they won't calm down, they know you're 
alive." He told me all this in Armenian.

Then he returned to the others and said, "What are you waiting for? Leave!" 
They said, "Ah, you just want to chase us out of here and do it with her 
yourself. No, we want to do it to." He urged them on, but gently, not 
coarsely, because he was alone against them, although they were still just
boys, not old enough to be drafted. He led them out of the room, and went
down to the third floor with them himself, and said, "Leave. What's the mat-
ter, aren't you men? Go fight with the men. What do you want of her?" And
he came back upstairs. They wanted to come up after him and he realized that 
he couldn't hold them off forever. Then he asked me where he could hide me. I 
told him at the neighbors' on the fourth floor, Apartment 10, we were on really
good terms with them.

We knocked on the door, and he explained in Azerbaijani. The neighbor woman 
opened the door and immediately said, "I'm an Azerbaijani." He said, "I know. 
Let her sit at your place a while. Don't open the door to anyone, no one knows
about this, I won't tell anyone. Let her stay at your place." She says, "Fine,
have her come in." I went in. She cried a bit and gave me some stockings, I 
had gone entirely numb and was racked with nervous shudders. I burst into 
tears. Even though I was wearing Marina's old fur coat, it's a short one, a 
half-length, I was cold all the same. I asked, "Do you know where my family 
is, what happened to them?" She says, "No, I don't know anything. I'm afraid 
to go out of the apartment, now they're so wild that they don't look to see 
who's Azerbaijani and who's Armenian." Kuliyev left. Ten minutes later my 
neighbor says, "You know, Lyuda, I don't want to lose my life because of you, 
or my son and his wife. Go stay with someone else." During the butchery in our
apartment one of the scum, a sadist, took my earring in his mouth--I had pearl
earrings on--and ripped it out, tearing the earlobe. The other earring was 
still there. When I'm nervous I fix my hair constantly, and then, when I 
touched my ear, I noticed that I had one earring on. I took it out and gave it
to her. She took the earring, but she led me out of the apartment.

I went out and didn't know where to go. I heard someone going upstairs. I 
don't know who it was but assumed it was them. With tremendous difficulty I 
end up to our apartment, I wanted to die in my own home. I go into the 
apartment and hear that they are coming up to our place, to the fifth floor. 
I had to do something. I went into the bedroom where Marina and Lyuda had 
hidden and saw that the bed was overturned. Instead of hiding I squatted near 
some broken Christmas ornaments, found an unbroken one, and started sobbing. 
Then they came in. Someone said that there were still some things to take. I 
think that someone pushed me under the bed. I lay on the floor, and there were
broken ornaments on it, under my head and legs. I got all cut up, but I lay 
there without moving. My heart was beating so hard it seemed the whole town 
could hear it. There were no lights on. Maybe that's what saved me. They were 
burning matches, and toward the end they brought in a candle. They started
picking out the clothes that could still be worn. They took Father's sport 
jacket and a bedspread, the end of which was under my head. They pulled on the
one end, and it felt like they were pulling my hair out. I almost cried out. 
And again I realized I wasn't getting out of there alive, and I started to 
strangle myself again. I took my throat in one hand, and pressed the other on 
my mouth, so as not to wheeze, so that I would die and they would only find me
afterward. They were throwing the burned matches under the bed, and I got 
burned, but I withstood it. Something inside of me held on, someone's hand was
protecting me to the end. I knew that I was going to die, but I didn't know 
how. I knew that if I survived I would walk out of that apartment, but if 
I found out that one of my family had died, I would die for sure, because I 
had never been so close to death and couldn't imagine how you could go on 
living without your mother or father, or without your sister. Marina, I 
thought, was still alive: she went to Lyuda's place or someone is hiding her. 
I tried to think that Igor wouldn't let them be killed. He served in 
Afghanistan, he should protect her.

While I was strangling myself I said my good-byes to everyone. And then I
thought, how could Marina survive alone. If they killed all of us, how would 
she live all by herself? There were six people in the room. They talked among 
themselves and smoked. One talked about his daughter, saying that there was no
children's footwear in our apartment that he could take for his daughter. 
Another said that he liked the apartment--recently we had done a really good 
job fixing everything up--and that he would live there after everything was 
all over. They started to argue. A third one says, "How come you get it? I 
have four children, and there are three rooms here, that's just what I need. 
All these years I've been living in God-awful places." Another one says, 
"Neither of you gets it. We'll set fire to it and leave." Then someone said 
that Azerbaijanis live right next door, the fire could move over to their
place. And they, to my good fortune, didn't set fire to the apartment, and
left.

Oh, yes, I just remembered. While they were raping me they repeated quite 
frequently, "Let the Armenian women have babies for us, Muslim babies, let 
them bear Azerbaijanis for the struggle against the Armenians." Then they 
said, "Those Muslims can carry on our holy cause. Heroes!" They repeated it 
very often.

		     - - - reference for #008 - - -

[1] _The Sumgait Tragedy; Pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan,
    Volume I, Eyewitness Accounts_, edited by Samuel Shahmuradian, forward by
    Yelena Bonner, 1990, published by Aristide D. Caratzas, NY, pages 118-145


-- 
David Davidian dbd@urartu.sdpa.org   | "How do we explain Turkish troops on
S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies |  the Armenian border, when we can't 
P.O. Box 382761                      |  even explain 1915?" 
Cambridge, MA 02238                  |              Turkish MP, March 1992 
