Where did the phedais take weaponry from?

Light arms arrived, for all I can guess, by night choppers from Yerevan together with the flower for the city bakery plant. Besides, when the Army regiment garrisoned in the city left it (also in the dead of night) the servicemen bypassed fighting the phedais who had seized the regiment’s arsenal an hour before the troops departure. Nothing to be surprised at, by the way, since the detachment commanders had to follow clear orders on withdrawal to a specified location from the zone of ethnic conflict by the appointed time, so the military personnel were busy doing what they were told to do. Recapturing of their ammunition would certainly defer the discharge of the orders they had. ..

Besides, the adversary forces generously shared their arms too. Thus, fighting back the advance to the Askeran City (17 km east from Stepanakert) phedais grabbed two GRAD installations.

Once coming down (and again after midnight) to the Suicide's Spring (the handle invented by me for my personal use because the rout there included 65 steep, half-demolished steps ofttimes under a snow layer over constantly present ice) I got fucking flabbergasted by the sight of an Azerbaijani tank (the affiliation attested by the crescent and star doodled on the turret) rolling with a goddamn clang-and-clink through the city hushed in its night repose.

And sure enough my asshole’s sphincter reacted the usual way (I mean the sudden adrenaline surge shot through my system) yet, by and by, I managed to persuade myself that the iron monster hardly could be anything but a captured equipment whose driver decided to make a flying visit home and see his wife, you know… She must’ve been missing him too… press on, man, don’t make her wait too long… the asphalt has been fucked up before you and the traffic police… well, cut it out…

Phedai groups were collected through the knowledge by acquaintance and dissimilar in their quantity and denomination for which purpose might be used the names of the heroes of yore (Chaush group for instance), the handles or names of their commanders: the Fragment’s Group, the Group of Vacho, etc.

The General Command Headquarters deployed in the former city Military Registration and Enlistment Office also used for keeping a stock of Kalashnikov rifles there. The groups stationed in the abandoned kindergartens.

The city obviously had a spy within and the artillery from Shushi persistently worked on the kindergartens yet the nearby houses suffered more. However GRAD missiles did manage to level half of the city MREO building.

And not only phedais were pulling on their activities, unconquerably flowed routine political life in the city despite the underground actuality. The basement shelters became the arena for the election campaign of candidates for the Supreme Council of the self-proclaimed Republic of Mountainous Karabakh, upholding the internationaly accepted norms and practices.

My direct boss at the deceased paper, Arcadic, Head of the Section of Russian Translations, joined the run for the Supreme Councilmanship too. He was in obvious jitters induced by his opponent’s unrivaled popularity among the thieves-segment in their mutual electorate. He even gave up shaving because of so mighty trepidation. Especially before the underground debate with his contender before the audience in the basement.

So Arcadic, advised and coached by more experienced cadres, comes to the open debate together with his confident, a member of the upper nomenclature layer famous for his tongue of silver, according to the shared estimation in the managerial elite, but that yokel, his opponent, does not have the slightest idea that so is the custom for election campaigns. That goofy goon.

Now, the Arcadic’s second gets up and paints before the present population the picture of the bright future awaiting them all after they vote for this here Arcadic to be seated in the Supreme Counsel (a couple of GRAD missiles burst outside someplace in the city to accentuate the point) and how exceptionally moral is he, Arcadic, the family man of unheard of integrity and faithfulness, marital.

The masterpiece of oratory art delivered, the confident sits down by his candidate to get his fully-deserved laurels shaped as Arcadic's handshake, while that dumb rustic takes the floor in his turn:

"OK, folks you’ve just heard what sez the guy, huh? So, mark you well each and every word in all that is the very portrait of me in the natural size." And he takes seat as well. No sweat whatsoever…

Over the road by the main square they pulled a cloth strip with the inscription running:

'All To Vote!'

Yes, in the usual commanding style. All by the canons of the Soviet times. However, the hard-dying habit turned a mistake, strategically, for the artillery men from Shushi read the line thru their binoculars and kicked up some hell of barrage on the election day, precisely in the working hours, from opening to closure of the polling stations.

I entered the theater to participate, looked in the ballot – not a single familiar name. I should have stayed away from all that, and I would, were they not so obstinate in discouraging my participation. Nothing doing, I had to cross out all of them so as not to leave hard feelings by random favoritism.

OK, but how to get back home now, under this missile storm? Sure as hell, some frigging mole sits someplace with his radio transmitter…

And what about Arcadic? Of course, fell through what else could achieve that green-horn in the jungle of the mean world of political realities?.

The chocking blockade gradually loosened its grip.

First off was captured Krkjan, the uppermost part of Stepanakert. Not at once though. It was captured then given up. Captured and given with the fresh reinforcement coming there from Shushi. But at last the night came when the shooting died out up there and the fires blazed here and there, up the slope – the eternal law of war: destroy what can’t be grabbed and taken away.

Then came the Malubalu's turn with their nagging howitzer battery...

For so large-scale operations phedai groups united under the command of a major from Yerevan sporting the brave handle of “Commandos”, who had behind him the school of Afghanistan war. Although even without his educated opinion it was clear to everyone that the next step should be taking of Khojalu which cut Stepanakert from Askeran town and controlled the Stepanakert airport.

However, capture of Khojalu changed the nature of Karabakh conflict drastically, making of it a multinational fight in place of just two neighbors confrontation…

People are all different, this one likes playing with dirt in his kitchen garden another prefers fishing, still other is fond of gambling at stock exchange or black jack. Were you to ask me, there is nothing better than roaming and watching round with the eyes in your head, preferably, in some unpopulated area. But then you can’t go on without traders too who also are people of their specific, mercantile predilection

And there is some special breed among us, people, which by different peoples is named differently though in essence they are of the same strain – stardust lovers.

Viking, conquistador, cossack, mujaheddin sighs up a condotta on paper or verbally, puts an intact pack of condoms into his pocket or under his belt and joins a pack of freelance mercenaries, his likes. And then, led by an experienced condottiere, starts the poor devil off to conquer the wide world and become a new king/czar/sultan of all his subjects not killed in the process of subjugation.

There are also chances that it’ll never happen, oops, and he might very well turn a heap of white bones under a sorrowful bush or a skeleton half-buried in the sand of impassive dunes6 yet living otherwise is not for him ‘cause he is an active stardust lover, cannon fodder of his own accord…

Before the storm of Khojalu such volunteers popped up on both sides of the confrontation: Afghani mujaheddins, Chechen militants (could you figure out on which particular side?).

An acquaintance swore to me on most holy things seeing Negroes (?) in the hills, my response was – he wrongly interpreted visitors from Tunis made up in the Arnold Schwarzenegger's style.

Later on when aviation was put to operation, a group of pilots from Belorussia took leave at their respective places of service and came to scrape together some petrodollars from Baku oilfields or was that euros after all? (No, monetarism has never been my strong point.)

In short, when one of them got shot down over Karabakh, he rapped on his buddies and got sentenced to the capital punishment but the request of the Belorussian “Daddy” Lukashenko and other elitist appeals set him free.

The group of Kuban cossacks with their lively tricolor and one KAMAZ truck to transport all of them (“I was marching to attack with just a cossack saber in my hands, the Azeries got stunned and stopped the fire”) and one military field nurse.

A score of Dashnak Party members from the Diaspora.

Two groups of stardust lovers from Yerevan.

A couple of Ukrainians worked at a rapid-fire anti-aircraft gun "Shilka" in the air defense of the RMK.

Much later, the cossack leader-ataman, a handsome albinos guy sporting thread-thick mustachio along his upper lip was driving home his personal trophy from Aghdam (white car of the Zhiguli-kopeck brand) but at the crossroads of Lenin Street and Chkalov Street the traffic lights were not working and he rammed a “goat”-Willis of phedais’. Both sides to the accident exclaimed “fuck!” (each one in their mother-tongue) the ataman jumped out of the “zhigul”, spat from the disappointment.

They did not mean to wait for the traffic police to come and conduct expert examination whose fault was that because they both were without the license numbers and went on, each one his way.

Although failing to become a czar, he still grabbed a car. The hood dented a lil bit. And let him by himself keep the count of condoms in his pocket and the count of his buddies cut away by the mortar fire. That’s all a part of the condotta-stipulated fate…

During the collapse of the USSR, while up there was a complete oatmeal rigged out in a sciatica corset, not to spill a slippery puddle, you know, the make-believe President, who like was there yet, simalteniously, was not, some unpluggable thing, dangling askew—down there, at the former outskirts of the brotherly Soviet Union, went on internecine sorting out, trampling, ramming, and turf securing; Azerbaijan opened widely for refugees from other regions of the late Communist Empire.

Most welcome were Meskhitian Turks and other Shia Muslims from the Sunni republics in the Central Asia all of whom were directly sent to settle in Karabakh.

Their destination became Khojalu Village which saw a hectic boom of transforming into a town which would surround the Stepanakert airport and also cut the city from two district centers (as mentioned above).

And it’s high time to apologize for the incomplete list of the mercenaries where I’ve omitted to enter collections of low-rank officers from the Soviet Army (on both sides) which is excusable though – it’s hard to make out the mitts habitually stuck under your belt because they are always there.

Now, one final stroke. As both sides to the conflict wore the same fatigue (cotton wear uniform of the Soviet Army) phedai groups’ fighters were ordered to fasten white bandage strips on the left arm of their winter pea-jackets to see “ours” from “theirs” in the pending storm of Khojalu village.

The night from 25 to 26 of February 1992 was assigned for Khojalu Tragedy, 'the unseen in the XX-th century Genocide'.

And that’ll do for today, the bottle is not of rubber...

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