A hopelessness stretching over 300 kilometers.

At the moment of writing this, my colleague is crying in the next room, and I can’t do anything to help her—it’s an unbearable feeling.

On the way to work, she noticed a familiar face—a man of about 70 years old—and asked, “Are you from Artsakh?” The man nodded, and they both started crying. Just as I can’t help her in any way, she couldn’t help that man. 

How can one help someone whose life has been taken away from them? I don’t know. All I can do is cry with them. At least I won’t repeat the same advice that people usually give me: “Crying won’t bring anything back,” “Life goes on,” “Accept it and move forward,” and so on.

And so we cry. And we keep going, living someone else’s life. Our life is now about 300 kilometers away from us—for some a little more, for others, a little less.

300 kilometers away, I was walking through my small town, where at every step, people asked about each other’s well-being. Half the town would greet the other half on their way to and from work. But here, in the big city, everything feels faceless—everyone walks in silence, lost in their thoughts. And if, by chance, you see a familiar face, the world suddenly becomes yours, especially if that face speaks in a familiar dialect.

When I call Yerevan a big city, my Yerevan friends laugh. To them, it’s a compact city. But Yerevan is almost eight times larger than Stepanakert, and even after living here for over a year, I still get lost in its streets, mix up bus numbers, and argue with Tamanyan [Yerevan’s architect] in my head: “For heaven’s sake, what did you do?”

Unlike Yerevan, Stepanakert didn’t have three-digit bus numbers—or even single-digit ones. Everything was clear:
10 went to the Republican Hospital,
13 to Engels,
14 to Krkzhan,

15 to Nor Aresh,
16 to Obuvni,
 and 17 to Armenavan.

No need for Google Maps.

In Stepanakert, people’s facial expressions changed instantly. If there was bad news from the border, faces would turn pale, and people would ask each other, “What will be the end of this?” They would shrug their shoulders, and the anxiety of war would continue to swirl in the air, synchronized.

And whenever there was any celebration in the city, and there was conditional peace on the border, then the fountains of "Pitachok" (the unofficial name of the city's central park) would sing:  "Stepanakert, a small corner of a vast world, you always make us feel sensitive in your embrace."

We are still sensitive now, but it’s a different kind of sensitivity—more like vulnerability. The vulnerability of someone living in another person’s home, leading another person’s life, with the looming threat of losing that home hanging over their head.

About 300 kilometers away, there are lifeless buildings—places where life existed until recently. A life that was difficult, contradictory, war-torn, under blockade, cold, helpless—but ours.

Yerevan has no shortage of lifeless buildings either. I walk through this big city and see endless construction everywhere—hundreds of high-rise buildings, empty or, at best, half-empty. But they are not for those of us carrying a 300-kilometer longing in our hearts.

For us, owning an apartment or a house remains in the realm of fantasy, even though Armenia has, on paper, a program to provide housing for those forcibly displaced from Nagorno Karabakh. Some families have even received certificates—but so far, they haven’t been able to use them.

Escaping the memory

Since 2023, Artsakh has become synonymous with defeat—something many would rather not think about. The human psyche resists and does everything it can to forget the embodiment of loss.

But one thing remains impossible to ignore: the people. Those who came from that place of defeat, who speak its dialect, who carry its memories—and who become triggers for those trying to escape the pain of remembering.

It turns out I am one of them: someone who, simply by existing, reminds others of what they’re trying to forget: loss, grief, defeat. But for us, the “walking triggers,” our home is not only about loss. It is an inseparable part of who we are.

When I walk through the city with my six-year-old son, and he suddenly hears our dialect, he gets so excited and says, “Look, Mom, they’re Karabakhtsis like us!” But he gets sad every time he asks when we’ll go home. With a heavy heart, I have to admit—I don’t know.

My son also misses his friends—just like I do, just like all of us scattered across different regions of Armenia.

He says, “Mom, when it’s my birthday, I want to celebrate it with my friends from Karabakh.” I tell him, “That’s a great idea, we’ll do that,” but I know I’m lying to him. 

His closest friend now lives in Russia, and they have been “friends online” ever since. In just a few months, their conversations shifted from Armenian to Russian—fast for his friend, slower for my son, who still struggles with the language. But even with his limited vocabulary, he manages to bridge the distance, to hold onto the friendship.

His other close friend now lives in Abovyan (a city located 16 kilometers northeast of Yerevan), but since our displacement, we’ve only been able to arrange their meeting twice—both of which felt incredibly heavy to me. 

Before, when we were in Stepanakert, I used to call his mother and say, “Send him over, let them play”. In our previous life, we were neighbors. But now, his mother is gone—she perished in the 2023 Stepanakert fuel depot explosion. Now, my son’s friend holds the hand of his “new mother” as he visits his mother’s grave to lay flowers from time to time.

  • Armenians reffer to Nagorno Karabakh as Artsakh
  • Stepanakert is Khankendi for Azerbaijanis