March 17

At seven in the morning, a GRAD attack.

I was out in the yard squatting in the privy and couldn't see, but visualized vividly enough, how Sahtik was grabbing Ahshaut into her arms and running over to the Underground. The mother-in-law didn't run away; she was making dough.

Nearing the Club, I saw that the most of its windows were broken. The next-door building, former-CPSU-DC-now-Hospital, had been hit by a missile. As it exploded on the uppermost floor, there were no casualties, I guess.

Lenic came with a story about a hideous shell splinter flashing a hair's-breadth off over his head this morning when he went to a water-spring and was caught by a bombardment on his way. Then he asked if it's true they were giving some money here. I explained their scheme. And when the woman-in-gray came, he was given his share.

Rita came with her complaints about untrustworthiness of Arcadic's pal in the government; I told her to go to the airport at Hojalu where planes from Armenia were flying to-and-fro daily, and where one needed neither pass nor other papers – just 150-monets, the fare-fee to Yerevan.

About twelve am, I took a broom from the corridor and started to sweep windowsills and the floor in the room gathering glass splinters of the shattered panes onto a piece of a cardboard. Rita found another broom and started to help me.

Shamir, the porter, with wine on his breath, was cursing the janitor-woman, who never comes to do her job these days, his invective was accompanied with his fierce hammering at the corridor window to cross-bar it with the boards he had stolen from the ground floor windows in the former-CPSU-DC-now-Hospital Block.

There was no streaming nor trickling nor dripping from the roofs, no streams ran down the roads. The snow's over.

Leaving for the Club in the morning I wore no hat and instead of my coat, I put on the sturdy jacket Sahtik made for me 2 years ago On my way back, I decided to visit the Underground first.

Sahtik and Ahshaut were in the block's yard. We, Ahshaut and I, smiled to each other, and at that very moment the day's second volley of missiles started to blast. Sahtik snatched him up and ran down to the Underground. I followed them. The explosions sounded fairly close.

Panic-stricken voices sounded in the darkness of the corridor. In the compartment there stood a woman upright and still as if petrified by fear for both her husband and grown-up daughter, who were somewhere in the town and not by her side.

Sahtik tried to calm her down by assuring that the missiles hit an absolutely other place, some place where they could never possibly be.

When the bombardment subsided the mother-in-law sent me to see if Aram was all right. Yes, he was.

After lunch, one page from Joyce. Guitar. Duma-peré.

Sahtik has finished the pullover she was knitting for me all this winter. She's just a