December 7

At 3 am the whopping detonations in the lower parts of the town frightened Roozahna out of her bed and into a fit of uncontrollable tremor. Sahtik could hardly talk her into keeping calm. Before six in the morning two more AlazanALAZAN —
     a missile contrivance for destroying hailstorm clouds which was easily converted into artillery weapon in the initial stages of the Karabakh war 1991-1994. volleys ripped up the night. Ahshaut slept soundly through everything.

At dawn roaring monsters get back to their lairs replaced by screaming humans as those in the two noisy crowds scrambling at the Twin Bakeries just opposite the three inadmissibly large windows of our one-but-spacious-room flat. All day long the fluctuations in their squash-and-shout made kinda sea roll background to our domestic affairs.

Carina and Orliana, Valyo's wife, called in to leave their children at our place. Sahtik joined her two sisters and they went out to pay the last tribute to the demised first headmistress of them all (at the respective intervals, of course). The old lady lived next door to their mother's and died of natural causes.

I visited the Building Site of our future house to collect a bagful of apples and an armful of tree roots chopped off at digging foundation trenches before I started laying walls. Since August, they got dry enough for the tomorrow's barbecue.

On my way there I saw a pair of Soviet Army armor-vehicles bowling busily along, each one decked with a squad of 5 to 7 soldiers. The braves had black warpaint on their mugs, the combat smear applied in quantities reflecting their personal preferences—from a finger-thick mud masks over the whole visage up to a soft touch or two at the cheekbones. Tastes differ. Yet, no one escaped the pre-mission swarzenneggerization, not even their captain in a civilian knitted hat. On they rolled past the gazing sidewalks, obviously wallowing in the public attention.

If some complete stranger to here and now saw us dawdling along or going about our daily chores amid the ever-present din of assault rifles in Krkjan he'd take us for a town of deaf. Yet, don't be fooled by our out-of-place looks, Mr. Stranger, we do hear the enraged rounds and each of us has some kind of their inner funny feeling...

By 9 pm it turned completely quiet. Some creepy quietness.

May it be, I'm too strict to Roozahna?