When keeping to the raw facts of life, Abulfaz Gadirgulu ogly was just one more Aliev, but if you are a dissident then your vocation obliges to somehow be different, which is a hard nut to crack where any other (okay, fine, every third) guy around is also Aliev (even at my hitch in a construction battalion of the Soviet Army our detail's commander was Corporal Alik Aliev).

Or again that same Deputy Chairman of the KGB of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan and, simultaneously, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, Geidar Aliev, and all his relatives at each and every post of prominence – Alievs as well.

In 70’s Abulfaz all of a sudden spoke up (and rather hotly) on Lenin and the USSR, allowing himself discernibly denigrating tinges in the spectrum of intonations, for which rebellion he got 1 (one!) year of imprisonment.

In the USSR for the like oratory no one got off hook without doing 10-year stretch, but the rebel bore the same surname as Geidar.

So, 12 months later Abulfaz got freed, reinstated in the position of a junior researcher at a linguistic institute, and became the one and only dissident in all of Azerbaijan.

After the collapse of the USSR, he hurriedly discarded his family name, dubbed the Turkish-sounding 'Elchibey' next to the 'Abulfaz', and headed the forces of opposition styled as The Popular Front.

The Shushi capture on May 8, 1992 was deeply resented by The Popular Front.

In the morning on May 15, they presented their ultimatum to President Mutalibov – by 3 pm to get effing off his effing position.

With no response got by the appointed time, they shoot their unopposed rounds around the Supreme Council and then entered the Presidential Palace as well but found no Mutalibov there, who had already fled the country of his own accord, for which deed he is praised up till now as the president who had resigned staging no bloodshed.

And that, by the bye, presents a good example to follow, but will they ever learn anything? Ugh!

On June 7, Elchibey was elected to the presidency and the Karabakh conflict developed into a large-scale war. Hither-thither. They surrender a village then capture back its ruins, surrender the ruins then recapture them back in even worse conditions.

“The Ministry of Defense carried out round-ups in cities taking away youths from their homes, stopped city route buses to arrest young men and send them to the front line.

Different organizations, including Helsinki Civil Assembly, were turned to by complaining parents: in the morning their son left home for work (college, visit, date), never came back, they reported to the police, two days later got a notice:

'...your son bravely perished fighting for his Fatherland.'

Azerbaijani political scientist Zardusht Alizade"

(source:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%87%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%B9,
_%D0%90%D0%B1%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%B7_
%D0%93%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B3%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%83_
%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BB%D1%8B)

The PC by the SC of the RMK was relocated to the former Regional Committee of the CPSU building, floor 3. The job of analytic did piss me off at the BBC World Service who obviously had no intentions to help me in the short waves range. Stranded, seeing no assistance from them, was I doing my professional duties. If the Karabakh conflict at least once a month was mentioned by those snobs – Hallelujah! While my position called for turning in a solid-looking report to the Supreme Council every month, Hallelujah or no Hallelujah—each month, be you dead or reanimated—while those darn BBC chatters kept speaking of nothing except for the cricket matches at the New Zealand Championship. How that for mass-media employees’ solidarity, eh?

And only dear Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, helped me kindly out when she came to Baku for signing a treaty between the Azerbaijani government and 2 companies, the British BP and the Norwegian Statoil, on development of two oil fields in the Azerbaijani zone in the Caspian sea.

Because of that her visit, they were mentioning our conflict for three days but then again drifted back to cricket and soccer matches.

Thus, I became a rear office-rat and at the moment of exploding GRAD rounds I ran into the corner, sat on my haunches and watched the glass in the window panes arching out into the room like a skiff sail and backward, without breaking though, obviously firmer than in the paper’s editorial office or maybe because of the height – it was the third floor after all.

The shelter in the basement (the hospital got removed someplace else already), I never used because of pride and being too lazy – three floors down then three floors back. For which reason, during bombardments, although scared, I kept to the PC Backroom…

But then I learned a way to determine time and direction of forthcoming offensives. It’s just a cinch, whenever in the Russian mass-media one of the conflicting sides stated their complains about the enemy’s attack to one or another village, that served a clear-cut indication that in a couple of days they’d start an offensive from that very village and now it would be the counterpart's turn to complain…

To the front line I went only once. It was the village of Drmbon which hadn’t been surrendered and re-captured yet, so the houses were still in place, abandoned for the most part.

The commander talks over his walkie-talkie (the Diaspora's present to the field commanders) in a reluctant manner, a score of fighters, also tired. One soldier obviously from Armenia, you always could make them out by the black cotton uniform, some posh rags until got dusted thoroughly. GRAD's rare booms at the horizon.

Video camera operator Benic shot an interview and off we went back to Stepanakert.

Two-hour ride along the junk scattered on the roadside – discarded baby perambulators, trunks, kits and the like jetsam. Especially at the uphill stretches. It was the moment of Mardakert City surrender, one day after the fleeing refugees walked from there about sixty kilometers.

The long column it was, on reaching Stepanakert they walked thru the city for about an hour, no less. Walking and walking.

They spent the night in the Region Executive Committee building lying on the carpet runners of all the four floors. Babies squealing, folks panicking. And in the morning the wave moved on. The Lachin corridor to Armenia had been secured already, which meant another fifty kilometers to the border.

On the bridge over the border-line river they were met by the Armenian cordon under the command of a dissident who had just returned from exile to fight for the presidency. He started yelling at the mujiks that they were cowards and did not defend their native town but fled. Then they collected the gold earrings from the refugee womenfolk and let the column pass to Armenia.

I know his family name, the cordon commander's, yet won’t let it out, being too disgusted to even pronounce it. Besides, it’s possible there happened decent people among his ancestors. The bastard had shitted all over his family name. But later he still was popping up in the Yerevan political life with his goatee, for a long period...

Another ripping surprise was served by the cable from Satenic, “Departing from Moscow to Yerevan, flight…” (the number I cannot recollect).

At the cash desk of the SC I got my salary for three months in advance, with Guegham’s assistance for the occasion, 600 Soviet rubles.

By that time all the former Soviet republics had introduced currencies of their own already and only here remained a noticeable lag in the form of Lenin’s bust profile in the banknotes...

By a touching chopper I reached Yerevan and went to the wife’s relatives in Arabkir neighborhood because the flight of forgotten number from Moscow arrived late at night.

When at Zvartnots Airport they announced the arrival, I still got time to buy flowers in the underground level to observe the canons of a happy meeting.

However, on the escalator bringing the passengers from the second floor, neither Satenic nor kids were present.

I rushed to the Help Desk and they clarified about some hitch at the airport in Moscow so the passengers to that flight were taken by two aircraft and the second one was still on the way.

After another couple of hours of waiting, the escalator brought down all kinds of sorts but mine. Yet by that time the Help Desk was already locked for the night and there remained no one to get a consolation from.

Full of despair, I went out to the airfield, although they yelled after me that it was a service exit.

The field was getting ready for the night repose, almost no lights around and by the glass wall of the airport building the airplane stairs dozing in the dark, but that small tractor who rolls the stairs to the planes was nowhere to see, they probably spent nights apart.

That moment a local employee was passing to that forbidden door. A janitor, judging by her venerable age. And she saw that heart-rending figure of me, immovable like a pillar of salt, with a blank stare glued to the airfield darkness, and the odd bunch of flowers in my sad hand hanging alongside my thigh in the posture of an idle broom, to which whole composition the passer-by remarked in Russian but with a beautiful Armenian accent:

"Ah, what a tragedy!" and only after that she entered that service exit.

At first, I felt hurt by the dig in the voice of that Komissarzhevsky actress on the role of a janitor at the Zvartnots airport, but then it tickled me as something funny, I don’t know why. No kidding, I meant to laugh, faith. So I lay that tragic bouquet upon the sleeping stairs and off I started because the leg from Zvartnots to Arabkir is a pretty long haul…

The relatives comforted me with the news that Satenic made a call on their home phone (in absence of mobile communication at those times) to say that there still were no seats for a number of passengers, however, the next day those having tickets for the flight would be transported to Yerevan at an approximately same time.

And so it happened! The next night about the same time after the arrival of the third airplane (they came at half-hour interval flying seemingly in a flock) atop the escalator turned up Satenic, Ashot in shorts (wow! behold how surely he stands all by his own!), Ruzanna waving and calling to all, ‘Look! There’s dad! Look!’

But I was without flowers already, just in case of any tragic delay, so as not to start up some form of bouquet addiction by those stairs, you know.

On the way to relatives (by a taxi) I began to carp, kinda you were sent to evacuation and not to just spend the summertime.

Now, what was her response?

"I got it there that to live just for the sake of living is not worth the while."

And I had to shut up because philosophy in a woman’s hands is an all-conquering weapon. Moreover, when you were parted for a 3-month stretch…

Later on, she told about that hitch at the Moscow airport. As it turned out, the flight they had the tickets for was outbid by some entrepreneur to send a consignment of consumer goods to Yerevan (it was 90’s, the business starting to raise their heads). And even the following day arrival happened by pure chance, when in the crowd at that Moscow airport Ruzanna sneaked away and some man asked her, ‘Why are you roaming alone? Where is your Dad?’ And she answered, ‘In Stepanakert’.

Then he asked who was her Dad and, when Ruzanna named me, he cried to his friends, 'Hey! I do know the guy!’, because he was not alone but in a company of men.

In a nutshell, Ruzanna took them to where in the crowd she left Satenic, and Ashot, and the trunk. From there the new acquaintances, bypassing the pilot and the stewardesses, who at the foot of the stairs were letting pass another batch of goods, put my family, over the handrail, a couple of steps up the stairs, above that cordon of overseers, so that they could ascend the airliner. And the crew members down there never peeped at such a breach of order because they marked that the seers-off were men only (I do love the 90’s).

For a long time it stayed a sassy mystery to me – who was the unknown do-gooder capable of identifying me by only my family name? And he sent his ‘hello’ too. ‘Hello him from a photo correspondent’.

And only in a month or so the memory snapped out the picture of our meeting in Mamikonian Street by School 8 shattered by large caliber shells.

The day was calm and sunny, we greeted each other and he said he had seen me at the Press Center where he dropped to, being a photo correspondent. Then he asked if Maria had flashed there, from Moscow, a correspondent like him.

I could not recollect anyone matching his description and we parted…

People! Humans! Ahoy!

Wherever you are: on a bus, train, airliner or just sitting on a bench in a park, or seated in a cinema, any place.

I pray – yank your noses out of your mobile applications, break away, look around, have an eye-contact with your neighbor, exchange at least a few words – sometime, somewhere this fleeting action will become your savior.

And in conclusion, following the well-known declaration by Julius Fuchik, a Czech by his nationality:

‘People, I loved you! Be vigilant!.’

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