The interview took place in April 2021.
Zhenya was born on June 1st, 1924 in Togh village of Hadrut region in the family of teacher. There were 4 children in the family: a boy and three girls. Zhenya was the fourth child. After graduating from high school, she worked for 15 years in the village collective farm, and in 1957 she moved to Sumgait to her sister place, where until 1988 she worked as a tailor in a sewing factory.
Barely escaping from the Sumgait massacres of February 27-28, 1988, she reached Stepanakert. In Stepanakert she was placed in a student dormitory belonging to the Artsakh University. During the first Artsakh war, in August 1992, when Stepanakert was being bombed with different types of weapons, a bomb fell on that dormitory, where many people were killed, and Zhenya was wounded in the leg, the pain of which is still felt.
Zhenya now lives in a one-room apartment, which was provided to her in 1998 by the Stepanakert municipality as a refugee. The apartment is heated with electricity. Her pension is 58 000 AMD, of which 9 400 AMD is provided by the Government as a single pensioner benefit, and 14 600 AMD from the ICRC.
Zhenya has been a beneficiary of Hanganak clinic since 2004 – from the very beginning of the Elderly Project. Her data were taken from the Ministry of Social affairs. She does not visit the polyclinic. If necessary she turns to Hanganak’s physician Dr. Lilya Seyranyan. However, in December, 2019, she had a hypertensive crisis and was hospitalized in the Republican Hospital. Zhenya has a stomach ulcer and hypertension. From Hanganak clinic she receives Captopril 50 mg N20, Omez 40 mg N30. She is very pleased with her nurse Rebecca Hakobyan, who delivers the prescribed medication to her, measures her blood pressure and talks to her. She is especially pleased and very grateful to social worker Esmira Gasparyan, who often visits her, makes utility payments and purchases necessary food, does any household chores, such as cleaning, cooking, and whatever she asks.
The food provision received from Hanganak is sufficient for the whole month.
During the days of the Third Artsakh War, Zhenya first moved with her acquaintances to the village of Khndzristan in the Askeran region, thinking that the war would last a few days and that she would soon return home. However, the war was intensifying and spreading throughout the whole territory of Artsakh. Zhenya was forced to move to Yerevan, an apartment rented by her nephew’s family, who in those days had to leave everything in Hadrut and move to Yerevan.
She says that this was the second time in her life, that she was forced to leave her home. For the first time in was Sumgait, and now Stepanakert. She did not want to imagine what would happen to her if she did not return home. After the signing of the ceasefire agreement, she was counting the days when she would be able to return to Stepanakert and in early December, when the electricity and gas supply in the city was already regulated, she returned home.
She expresses her deep gratitude to the Hanganak’s staff and especially to the sponsors, who continued their charity in these difficult days. She is very thankful for 34,000 AMD that she received while was in Yerevan. She paid it for renting.