WHY?: THE DEAD LEFT NO ANSWERS

The first day of spring became the last for Zakar Hovhannisyan, 31, who went to the center of the city in the evening of that day to bring his neighbor home from the rally and did not come home; neither did his neighbor Davit Petrosyan. Zakar’s bed ridden father learnt about the death of his son and the neighbor a day later as the news on TV named the dead, learning his son was taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds, where the doctors hopelessly operated on him, although he never came to conscience again.
Why?
“This question never bothered me when my 19 year old elder son died in Kelbajar (Karabakh). I knew why he went there, why he died. But Zakar … I don’t know whom to ask, whom to demand from,” says Saribek Hovhannisyan with a trembling voice and hides his head in the pillow concealing tears.
Zakar used to take care of his father for the last 4 months after Saribek was disabled by a stroke. He would stay at home not to leave the father alone and knew the political situation in the country from the media and the neighbors’ words.
The father says Zakar always criticized the latest events, opposed tensions, “because he knew well what war and losing loved ones means, but wouldn’t think that war could take him.”
Zakar had lost his mother at 2, and the father and his aunt raised him, his brother and sister. Zakar who had passed through hardships, had been taking care of his sick grandmother for five years.
He had decided to get married after her death.
“My poor boy had just took a breath, but I fell ill. He was by my side all day round. He wanted to repair the home, to get married, to live at last. But the stray bullet does not know whom it hits and why,” bitterly cries the father who has lost two sons and whose only consolation is his daughter, his grandchild and the flowers Zakar left.
Half of the old faded room is occupied with the elder son’s Benjamin’s wartime photos in military uniform, and the second half is occupied with Zakar’s potted plants and flowers – his most favorite hobby. His sister has now set the pots of plants around his photo.
“You won’t believe but these plants were frozen. He revived them. He learnt of taking care of plants from various books and magazines and used to clean them every day,” says Zakar’s sister Marine Hovhannisyan, watering her beloved brother’s flowers. “He loved people and his friends the same way. I don’t know why fate is so cruel to us.”
Marine says Zakar was supposed to go his nephew’s birthday party, but said he didn’t want to leave his father alone.
“I tried to convince him to go, saying I would stay with father before you come, but he refused. I did some laundry, but he did not let me hang it, told me to go home because it was late and said he would hang it himself,” the sister tells. “He had gone out to the yard to hang the laundry and had seen the next door neighbor’s Davit’s wife and his 11 year old son there going to bring Davit home from the rally, but Zakar had not let them go in the dark, saying he would do it himself telling them to go home.”
“And neither Davit, nor he returned. Both fell victims to the barbarism, for what I don’t know.”
Gayane Abrahamyan

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