Armenians at Beslan

Novaya Gazeta ^ | 21.10.2004 | Yuriy Safronov

[struwwelpeter]

Original title:

Manouk

Since September, he doesn't know how to live anymore
       

        
       An apartment on the outskirts of Beslan. A poor room. In the corner is a table, at which sits Manouk Grigoryan. A photograph is lying on the table, from a holiday. Manouk's daughter-in-law, Naira, and grandchildren, Meline and Miranush, stand among guests. The girls are waving. Now it seems as if in farewell. Gagik, their son, is not in the photograph. Manouk looks down at the table. He asks himsefl: "The men were probably making shish-kebabs in the kitchen, maybe that's why he's not here?"
       Manouk does not know what else say.
       On Monday evening Manouk is to fly home from Beslan. He will bring three coffins to the village of Gegashen, in Armenia. His daughter-in-law and the girls were identified on October 12th. A month ago, Manouk buried his son, Gagik.
       
       When the terrorists executed the first men on September 1st, Gagik was shot. There were eight murdered alongside him.
       Gagik came to Beslan in 1999, and worked as a house painter and plasterer. His cousin Alik had already been living in Beslan for several years. (Manouk is now staying in Alik's apartment.) Gagik asked his cousin to take him to Russia, 'to teach him to work', and learned fast. The summer before last, Gagik brought his family over from his home village in Armenia. One could not find work there, and the conditions were harsh: heating had been shut off in the region and bottled gas was expensive. Working in Beslan, one could rent an apartment and save up for a house back home.
       This summer, the Grigoryans rented an apartment on Markova street. It was too far to the school the girls had been attending for a year, and school no. 6 was only a minute away. Gagik and Naira Grigoryan, however, wanted their children to attend school no. 1, since it was the best in the city.
       "This year there were so many children in school no. 1," said Arevik, a distant relative. Arevik is little past 40, and sits to Manouk's right. Without her help, Manouk would have never made it.
       "He's always having to go somewhere for some paperwork, but is a person really up to this?" Arevik asks.
       Manouk raises his eyes. "Yesterday, about twenty to four, the morgue phoned here. It'll be soon be a whole month that I've been here. I'm always going somewhere for paperwork, without them, my relatives here," he nods to Arevik. "I never would have been able to get the bodies by myself."
       All of the Grigoryan family documents were burned up in the school. In order to receive a death certificate, one has to prove that the people actually exisited.
       "They found Gagik there, killed on the very first day. I asked, did he go to work at the school or something? Why was he there? But the reason was that he just wanted to accompany the kids on their first day," says Arevik in a sob.
       "They'd made a death certificate for my son," says Manouk. "But it got lost somewhere. Maybe at the airport, when I sent his body off. I've got a copy, but they won't accept it. They ask me down at the ZAGS (civil registration department): 'Why did you lose it?' and I tell them: 'Listen, lady, I lost my whole family'. We called Armenia, but they don't have the document either."
       Manouk says that his son was alive when the terrorists brought a new group of hostages into the school's Russian language and literature office, and forced them to throw the dead out the window. Aslan Kudzayev was supposed to throw Gagik Grigoryan's body out as well, but instead he jumped out the window and saved himself. Aslan told Manouk that his son was still alive at the time, having only been shot in the legs.
       "Gagik thought, maybe the kids would make it. He said to Aslan: 'Aslan-Dzhan, help my children!'. Later it turned out that he had a bullet here." Manouk puts a finger to his left side, a bit to the left of his heart. "Aslan jumped. He knew that he'd be killed otherwise."
       Manouk says that he ran into Aslan on the street not too long ago.
       "His words were full of tears," recalls Manouk. "There's no one who can say that my son did any harm to anyone. Everyone says that he was a good worker. He had marvelous hands... he never said anything stupid."
       Arevik brings coffee, in tiny cups. "Armenians love to brew coffee," says Arevik, mixing sugar into Manouk's cup. In almost a whisper: "Drink a little, Manouk."
       Manouk gulps the coffee, not tasting it, and draws a breath. "What can I say? He loved his family very much, and his children. Gagik couldn't live without the children. It's very difficult."
       "Somehow he was getting ready to come home on New Years, and so we went to buy the kids some jackets," Arevik remembers. "He took the jackets and said: 'Oy, my little khryusha (the younger one) will look so pretty in this! She'll love to wear it!' You simply had to know him."
       "They came home for New Years last winter. We celebrated together, like modern people. They stayed with us until February, and left afterwards. To go make money so that they could build a house in Armenia."
       A few weeks before September, Gagik called up his father in Gegashen, and asked him to find out if there were any houses for sale in the village. He said that he was going to save up some more money until the end of the year, and then come home.
       "The older granddaughter talked with her grandma, Miranush. The younger one is named after her. Grandma asked: 'Meline, how are you all doing there?' and she answered: 'Very well, but if you were here too, it would be even better'. Our family has always been a strong one."
       "His daughter-in-law was very nice," says Arevik. "Considerate, clean, assiduous. She was always smiling and hospitable."
       "It was a normal family. They were all alike, from the same village," says Manouk. "The girls were very bright, they got good grades."
       Arevik remembers: "The neighbors said that when they moved to that apartment on Markova, the girls asked their mother for permission to go visit a girlfriend from their old school. They said: 'Let's go tell them that we're going to a new school'. Was it on the 29th or 30th?" shek asks.
       "There's no bringing them back again," sighs Manouk. "I just can't even think, after all of this. How am I supposed to act? My son was 30 on May 9th, and in a single minute they're all gone. If only one could have made it! My life has never been easy, but this is impossible. I've lost so many loved ones. I'm more or less getting over it. I told myself: 'Life goes on'. But this... they were everything in the world to me. Who do you live for? For your family. For your grandchildren. It was such a joy when they were scampering by my side. When you think that you'll never see them again... it's almost easier to say that they never even existed. Night and day I think about it, but there is no way out."
       "In the evening," says Arevik, "when I come over to Manouk's, he is just sitting there, like he is now. At the table. With red eyes. But he never cries in front of us. He has such willpower."
       Until the night of September 3rd, Manouk knew nothing of the tragedy in Beslan. He was working late, and his wife had not watched television. Relatives in Beslan did not want to alarm elderly Manouk and Miranush. They thought that they would tell them later, after the girls and their mother had been saved.
       "We found out on the night of the 3rd. About twelve, perhaps... everyone came to our house and started crying, saying what had happened. But I still didn't believe it."
       "Until he came and saw the school with his own eyes, he didn't believe that this could happen."

       Gagik Grigoryan, 9.05.1974 — 1.09.2004
       Naira Grigoryan, 12.03.1976 — 3.09.2004
       Meline Grigoryan, 8.10.1994 — 3.09.2004
       Miranush Grigoryan, 26.06.1996 — 3.09.2004

       On Tuesday they were buried.
       
       
To help Manouk Grigoryan:

       AKB Bank of Regional Development, Vladikavkaz,
       BIK 049033764,
       corr. account no. 30101810500000000764
       INN 1500000240 /bank/
       KPP 151101001
       personal account no. 42601810700080000080
       Grigoryan Manouk Abramaisovich
       
       Letters: Republic of Armenia, Kotaiskiy region, Gegashen village. To: Grigoryan Manouk Aramaisovich.
       
       Yuriy Safronov, Beslan
       21.10.2004
       

[struwwelpeter]

Ping!

[Chapita]

BTTT

[struwwelpeter]

Beslan Ping

[eleni121]

Satan unleashing horror on good people by using the Mohameddans.

Armenians among the earliest to embrace Christianity, have suffered immensely at the hands of Mohameddans...and the evil continues.

[eleni121]

Did you translate this?

[nw_arizona_granny]

The world has gone mad.

Today there is a Freeper thread for small boy, who has been kidnapped in Iraq.

I did not want to live to see the world in this shape.

The military should be the ones to fight the wars, not the children, who are guilty of nothing.

Unless one has worn this fathers shoes, there is no way to know the depth of his pain.

[struwwelpeter]

Did you translate this?

Did I mess up another one? It's these darn fat fingers, I tell you. I washed them after dinner and can't do a thing with them!

I tried to preserve the emotion found in the orginal, but they like parentheses too much for my taste. Sort of 'Manout said: "I don't want to think about it anymore (sigh)." For English readers, a slightly different form is necessary.

[eleni121]

"Did I mess up another one?"

Heaven's no! I am simply sooo impressed at your skills at translation. Words cannot expres my thanks to you for translating this article. Efharisto!

[struwwelpeter]

Efharisto? You Greeks probably would get along with Armenians: nobody hates the Turks more than they do!

Actually, the translation is easy. It's the html that kicks my butt.

[Jackie222]

Such grief and sadness! Thanks for posting this.

May our Lord bless them with the knowledge of His love.

[eleni121]

So you just used Tools----tranlation and then fixed it up? Nice....

[struwwelpeter]

This document lists Gagik as Gachik:

GRIGORYAN GACHIK MANUKOVICH	1974	UL.MARKOVA 20/18	father	dead
GRIGORYAN NAIRA YURIKOVNA	1976		mother	missing
GRIGORYAN MELINE GACHIKOVNA	1994		daughter	missing
GRIGORYAN MIRANUSH GACHIKOVNA	1996		daughter	missing

[eleni121]

So what you are saying is that some of the missing are just dead???

I noticed at the link you provide (thanks again) lots of missing...mostly women and girls...what's up with that apart from the horror?

[struwwelpeter]

I see from the list index that it hasn't been updated since October 4th. From the article, I would guess that since it was dated Thursday, October 21st, and they referenced a funeral on that Tuesday (10/19), the mother and her girls were probably identified a week or so after the list was updated.

[struwwelpeter]

Bump