A Country No More: Artsakh
In 1997 I visited Artsakh, the self-proclaimed republic of ethnic Armenians within the internaitionally recognized borders of Azerbaijan. And as I published my experience twenty-six years later, Azeri forces began their final offensive. Its inhabitants were forced to flee, and the republic collapsed. As had happened before in other places, Armenians were erased from land they'd lived on for so many centuries.
Below is an excerpt from Somewhere Found.
Nagorno-Karabakh — the name an amalgam of Russian, Turkish, and Persian roots — or Artsakh, as the Armenians call it, can only be reached via a thin connective corridor from the south of Armenia, a drive that brings us first to Tatev, a ninth-century monastery situated on a plateau overlooking the valley below. Or so we’re told; a thick fog has rolled in, such that from the sudden drop-offs at the churchyard’s edges we peer out only into a thick mass of cloud.
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Seduced by the fogbank, I climb down a hidden trail near the perimeter, going deeper into the gray, until I come to a grassy landing. Among the wild greenery I find two chicken feet, a coxcomb, and a mess of innards precisely arranged in a shockingly red pile, either the leftovers of some neat-freak predator or something of a significance I don’t understand: an offering, a token, a tradition? Ascending to the churchyard, my classmates reappear through the fog, and we gather again into the van. I make no mention of my bloody find.
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Within a few hours we arrive at Stepanakert, the republic’s capital, and are introduced to our lodging. It was maybe once a gymnasium, or a school, or a barracks. In Yerevan, we had only intermittent water, but we at least had our heart’s content of electricity. By what I can gather from the few dim lights in the hallway, our accommodation’s furnishings are stripped to a dozen rusty cots spread between two rooms, men and women. The walls are painted green, I think; the restrooms are more chipped than tiled. We hadn’t expected comfort and luxury but our shock, the sudden understanding of depredation, is enormous. Too big to carry home even: I’ll leave with no memory of either going to bed or waking up here.
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Setting aside the war, its recent headlines and obituaries, the actual land of Artsakh is stunning, a ravel of mountains filled with green valleys and sun-yellowed grass, sprinkled with the familiar cone-topped towers of Armenian churches. At one of its monasteries we pack into a barrel-vaulted stone chamber to feast on barbecued goat, the customary sharing of meat with visitors, to hell with poverty and hardship. Our hosts’ laughter and boisterousness spill out into the surrounding hillside, reminding its trees and grazing sheep that we humans can do more than kill and suffer.
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But the ravages of war are brought home to us on the second day with a visit to the ghost town of AÄŸdam, formerly an Azeri village. Armenian forces captured the town not out of principle — there were no Armenians here to defend — but out of strategy: to neutralize an Azeri attack base and build a buffer zone. The place is decimated, the windows shattered and walls crumbled, the houses uninhabitable. To keep clear of unexploded ordnance we stick to the roads and rubbled sidewalks. Unripened pomegranates cling to the war-torched branches of roadside bushes. Their would-be wombs of rich red seeds are now little black satchels of ashes, with crownlike calyxes still distinct and sharp as barbed wire.
To read the entire chapter and many others, you can purchase the book here.