Every day I will wish Shushi good morning…

Seda gets up every morning and leaves the house in the direction of the street, where the row of houses ends and the view opens to Shushi. The ruined dome of Ghazanchetsots Church is clearly visible. She does not notice all the buildings well with her weak eyesight, but restores every detail with her memory…

When she returned to Stepanakert after the war, she had nowhere to live; Shushi did not belong to her anymore. She found a shelter with great difficulty. It is a basement, unsuitable for living; she does not even imagine what it was used for before she moved in. However, she could not find anything else and rented it not to sleep on the street…

Seda was one of the last to leave Shushi. When the bombing became unbearable, people like her were ordered to take the most necessary things and go down to Stepanakert, then, they were taken to Yerevan. In that nightmare, she remembers only the cold, and the fact that she could not warm up her knees with the few warm clothes she had taken, as they had become sensitive over the years. She remembers shivering all the way from the cold and the muttering pain in her knees. Now she feels that muttering pain under her chest, she is afraid to take deep breath so that her heart does not suddenly explode with unbearable pain.

Immediately after returning to Stepanakert, she started visiting Hanganak. The girls were very happy to see Seda. They started asking questions and trying to find out about her needs. Seda could not keep herself and continued through tears. She became so emotional, so fragile after the war. Though, her heart seems to be frozen, the tears dry up and she finds herself lost from reality, full of longing and unwavering faith when she walks to the end of the street to greet  Shushi.

She started visiting Hanganak frequently, where she rests, no longer feeling alone and abandoned. She has noticed that other people from Shushi come to talk to the girls, too. Hanganak became a lifeboat for her.

When the girls saw Seda’s mental state, they told her about AWWA partners, and they expressed a desire to talk to Seda. Seda introduced herself at the online meeting. She was pleasantly surprised by the attention paid to her. She spoke with pleasure, told about her illnesses. She thanked the girls for their care.

She told about her living conditions: a damp and uninhabitable basement room. She said that she often visits the office of the organization, where she meets other people from Shushi who have lost their home like her. “The tombs of relatives… I miss them very much”, she said, “I was happy there”. She remembered Ghazanchetsots Church and the Green Chapel; she remembered Isaac’s fountain and Jdrduz, her yard, where neighbors gathered for long and sweet conversations on summer evenings… Then, she became silent and immersed in her memories…

Seda returned home late in the evening. After the meeting, she was still walking the streets for a long time, obsessed with her sweet memories. She was not in a hurry; the shelter would bring her back to a bitter reality. She returned home and immediately went to bed. She had already decided for herself that she would go to greet Shushi every morning, to pray for the town, winter or summer, cold or heat, day by day, and she would not die, she would live until Shushi becomes hers again and she would go to light a candle with her own hands in her Ghazanchetsots Holy Savior Church…