TEGH, Armenia — The village of Tegh, in the municipality of the same name, in Syunik Province, feels cut off not only from Armenia but from the entire world. Public transportation is nonexistent. Villagers negotiate with the local taxi driver, share the cost, and get to Goris when they need to go shopping or to the hospital. There’s not much talk about the church-government relationship that has so poisoned Armenia’s domestic political life, and when talking to locals, one doesn’t feel like Syunik itself, where they live, has long been a geopolitical issue, or that the issue is primarily about them. Villagers are not aware of the arrival of Azerbaijani fuel in Armenia, nor of the 15 million euros allocated by the EU. A group of women sits in front of a little grocery store discussing household matters, men plow their gardens, burn dry leaves left over from autumn, or do housework. It’s unclear what kind of atmosphere prevails here: is it peace or indifference? Life is different here.
Imagine you are standing in front of your house, but for some reason you can’t get in; you haven’t lost the key. It is in your pocket, but you can’t get it. This is exactly the feeling that arises for any Artsakh Armenian who is in Tegh. They can be home in two hours, but they can’t. The once-busy highway is now empty; only rare military vehicles pass by. All the businesses along the highway have gone bankrupt. Just a little further from the Artsakh and Stepanakert signs, barbed wire and cement blocks cut off contact with Artsakh.
Lusine
Lusine, a mother of seven (and expecting her eighth), says she asks her daughter to hang out the laundry so she does not have to see the mountains of Artsakh, which are clearly visible from the balcony of the village home she is renting in Tegh.
“I don’t want to get out of the house, I don’t talk to anyone. My children are my friends, neighbors and relatives. I don’t even use the Internet or TV. I ask my eldest daughter to hang the laundry so that I don’t see the Artsakh mountains, which are right in front of me. It’s better not to see them than to see them but not be able to go to my native Astghashen and Martakert. The children also miss Artsakh very much; even the little one remember it. One day, I noticed that one of my kids had started wearing school clothes and shoes. When I asked him where he was going, he replied that the Azerbaijanis were now driving his baby walker, and he was going to take it back. He saw it on the Internet, how Azerbaijanis were riding the abandoned children’s bicycles and baby walkers. My older children are full of hope, they say the day will come when the road will open and we will go home. They don’t adapt here, no matter how much Armenia is their homeland,” she says.
Lusine is from the village of Astghashen in Askeran region. Her husband, Mher, is from Martakert. As a large family, they got an apartment in Martakert, but lived there only for two years before fleeing like everyone else in 2023.
