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He Hadn’t Been Sworn in When He Died; That’s Why We Don’t Pay His Pension [November 20, 2006] “I will die in this house this winter, and no one will know it,” said Zabela Hasanyan, a 66-year-old resident of the village of Hartashen village in the Hadrut region. Mrs. Zabela had at last encountered a reporter in her village and she wanted to talk about the injustice she had faced since the death of her husband. Her husband was a WWII veteran who died during the war for the liberation of Artsakh – he was blown up by a land mine during a reconnaissance mission to Azerbaijani positions. He was still alive when they brought him home. His wife saw that her husband had no legs and one arm, and his entrails were coming out, but he was still breathing. Her husband was one of the ten people that Hartashen gave to the Artsakh war. “Now they don't pay me a pension, nor do they know where I am,” Mrs. Zabela said. She has been in Hadrut three times and met various heads of the regional administration but still has not discovered why she has never received a pension for the dead freedom fighter. “I haven't been paid as much as twelve kopeks in these twelve years. I haven't received any assistance at all,” Mrs. Zabela went on. She heard that sugar was distributed once to those who fought in the war. She says the only thing she wants to know in this life is “the reason she never received her husband's money.” She receives a 16,000-dram (about $40) pension and that what she lives on. Her house was bombed in 1993. “A grad (hail) artillery cannon hit my house and the blast threw me against the gate,” she said. She approached the regional administration with that issue as well. The only answer she could remember was, “What can we do?”
Her house looks like it has been cobbled together; the roof is made of rusty plates and pieces of wet board. Mrs. Zabel a lives there alone. Her only daughter and the rest of her family left for Uzbekistan during the Artsakh war. As we walked around her house together she held my hand and spoke rapidly, gasping for breath. She would not look into my eyes. She showed one of her rooms, which has turned into a shed. She keeps onions and potatoes there now, but they are already musty. There are two beds in the living room. Mrs. Zabela chooses which bed to sleep on when it rains depending on which side of the roof the raindrops are falling from. She can't fix the roof, but she doesn't want to move the beds, either. They are next to the window, and Mrs. Zabela likes that. She likes lying in bed during the daytime. She doesn't turn on the light at night. No doubt this house will be closed up forever once she is gone. For now she complains very often about her health; she lost the use of four of her fingers in the grad attack. “What can I do to make things better?” she asked, and then fell silent. I asked her about children and whether they visited her. She just shook her head in silence. “Then what will happen? Who will you leave your house to?” I asked her. “Eh, my child, who have I got to leave it to?” she said staring at the ground. She has no family left in the village. Mrs. Zabela doesn't keep in contact with anyone anymore. The nearness of the only spring in the village to her house is her only consolation. But she says that it is more like a swamp than a freshwater spring. Her garden is also in a poor state. There are several fruit trees; the fruit falls to the ground and remains there. All she grows now is some potatoes, onions and herbs in a tiny corner of her huge garden. “What a house once it was!” she remembered and then fell silent. I left her house and only later, in the neighboring village of Kyuratagh did I meet Valerik Sargissyan, the Mayor of Hartashen. I asked him why they didn't pay Zabela Hasanyan the pension she was due because her husband died during the Artsakh war of liberation. The mayor's answer was terrible, so I'm quoting it word for word: “He hadn't been sworn in when he died, so that's why we don't pay his pension.” Mher Arshakyan |
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