Article

Change

War & peace

14 March 2023

7 min read

Diary of an invisible war

As her journalism career started, Lika Zarkaryan’s home town was invaded. She kept a diary as she reported and recalls the experience of an invisible war.

Lika Zakaryan

Lika Zakaryan is a writer and photographer based in the Republic of Artsakh (Karabakh).

The We Are Our Mountains monument, a war memorial in Stepanakert, the capital of the Republic of Artsakh,

Photo: Marcin Konsek, Wikimedia Commons.

Once upon a time in a faraway corner of the world, there was a little republic. It was mountainous and beautiful, located in the South Caucasus. Here was the ancient Amaras monastery, where the creator of the Armenian Alphabet Mesrop Mashtots founded the first-ever school that used his script - the Armenian Letters, in the 4th century. Many other Armenian Christian monasteries and churches from the 4th, 8th, 13th and different centuries are located in this area.

This is a magical place - the Republic of Artsakh, although you may have heard it called Karabakh. Depending on who you ask that means Black Garden or a Beautiful Garden.

Stalin’s legacy

Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but for me, it is HOME. The conflict over Karabakh dates back to the early days of the Soviet Union when the boundaries of a new empire were being drawn. It was Joseph Stalin’s idea to award the territory of Karabakh, inhabited by Armenians for centuries, to Soviet Azerbaijan, which produced 60% of the oil of the USSR. But Karabakh would remain semi-autonomous and Armenians actually remained a firm majority there even though ethnic crimes increased over the next decades.

In February 1988 mobs of Azerbaijanis in the seaside town of Sumgait began to attack and kill Armenians in the town. That is when Armenians in Karabakh and in Armenia rose after protests

and in 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the people of Karabakh voted to regain independence, just like Armenia, Azerbaijan and other Soviet countries. Of course, Azerbaijan didn’t like that. That is how the first war started. In the early 1990s, Armenians from all over the world came to Artsakh to fight in an intense ground war. When a ceasefire was brokered in 1994 Armenians were in control of Artsakh and several surrounding regions. So the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group, co-chaired by Russia, France, and the United States, was charged with organizing the peace process. But negotiations failed and Artsakh was never recognized. Azerbaijan continued to dream of revenge.

A peaceful capital

This area is not so rich in natural resources, but it seems like heaven on earth. Clean mountain air, green and dense forests, pristine water from the mountains, and kind, smiling people. Here, for example, in public transport, you will never be afraid that someone might steal something from your bag. Such things do not happen in Artsakh. Children can play quietly for hours in the yard, and parents don't even think that someone can harm them. While walking in the capital city - Stepanakert, it is impossible to see any garbage on the street, people keep the environment very clean. People do not usually take their parents to the care home, but take care of them themselves and enjoy the presence of their parents until the last day. Everyone cares about each other and just wants to live peacefully in their homes. I was born in Stepanakert and grew up in just such an environment.

The first day

On September 27, 2020, we woke up in the morning to the sounds of an explosion. At first, I thought it was just a nightmare. But then, when I saw my little sister trembling with fear, I realized that it was real, and the war had begun. Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh and used various prohibited weapons, targeting ordinary people like me. My family and everyone went down to the basements, the first floors of our houses, or wherever we could hide. However, we were aware that we would not be saved in case of a direct hit, of course.

I was working as a journalist in an Armenian media outlet Civilnet at that time and could not sit idly by. My cameraman and I went out into the streets together to see what evidence we could film. I started my work as a journalist only two months before the war and it would be a lie to say that I was the most experienced one. However, at that moment there was no more time, it was necessary to get together and do what you can. Our colleagues from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, joined us and together we began to tell stories about the war. I turned from a novice journalist into a war correspondent.

The diary of war

All my family was in this war: my mother worked in the hospital and I saw her only several times during those 44 days of the war; my brother was called to the frontline on the first day and was in the war till the end; my father, a veteran and a disabled person from the First Artsakh War, helped transport military equipment. For us it wasn’t like ‘going to war’, for us it was ‘protecting our home’.

I started to write posts - diaries every day and post them online. Here is a paragraph from the first day:

‘I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. No matter how much my parents insisted, I decided to go out into the city and work. I am not a war journalist, of course, but this is not simply a job. These events are happening in my Artsakh. Today, for the first time, I witnessed the traces of explosions, scattered pieces of rockets, wounded people and a drone flying and exploding in the air… I think that’s enough for a day.’

The diaries became quite popular by that time, especially after some days, when my cameraman was also called to the frontline. I couldn’t make video reports myself, and then I started to write and photograph more. I understood that I don’t want to write about politics, but rather about human beings, who suffer, hope, smile, cry, lose, and love.

‘Today my friend Mike from the USA, also a reporter, asked the five-year-old boy Marat what he would do if he had a lot of money. We met the family of Marat in a basement of an old school. He replied, “I would buy a watch and sunglasses.” Mike took his Lacoste glasses out of his bag and gave them to Marat as a gift. “Try them on!” And Marat, not knowing how to put them on, wore them backwards. We all laughed and helped him to do it properly. They were too big for him but he was incredibly happy. We looked at the boy and said, “Marat, you have to be careful, they cost a fortune!” We all had a good laugh…’

Sometimes it was very difficult to stay resilient…

‘Day 15: October 11, 2020

It already feels like Groundhog Day. Stepanakert isn’t being bombed, at least that is how it seems so far since I’m still in the basement. The drones flew and fell, but I did not hear talk of victims. The weather was great today, but it was scary to go outside. Sometimes, it feels like I will never be able to go out into the street. I woke up at midnight and I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night from yesterday’s heavy bombing. We already can distinguish the sounds—when it’s a Smerch, when it’s a drone, when it’s cluster bombs, and when it’s us hitting their drone. It is sad that we can distinguish these sounds. But what can we do? This is our reality for today.’

During the war, I and my diaries experienced a lot. I heard that the hospital where my mother works was bombed. I headed there and found her, thanks to God, safe and sound. I saw a man repairing his garage as cluster bombs were falling; a woman making tea between an intermission of the bombs; the targeting against the civilian population; a human rights defender who could not see asking the world not to be blind; soldiers being baptised in the middle of the war; a man dying in a hospital; houses without faces; closets abandoned; toys left behind; mothers who lost the meaning of the lives - their sons…

The war was over with our loss… We didn’t win, although we thought we will… Azerbaijan conquered nearly 70% of Artsakh. Thousands of people lost their lives, and thousands lost their homes and became displaced persons. The war continued for 44 days and 150 000 Armenians of Artsakh and millions of Armenians in Armenia and Diaspora will never forget those bloody days.

Writing the diaries for me was a way to express myself, as sometimes it seemed that I could go insane. I also felt that by doing that I am useful to others. And that is a very important factor for me. I, like everyone else, wanted to be useful. Mostly the women and children left for Armenia, to a safer place, than Artsakh. They went there to wait until the war is over, and later they came back home. I felt that people who are outside couldn’t really know what happens there. That is why I wanted to give them information first-hand.

During the war, I met many wonderful people. I also met a director, Garin Hovannisian, who came to Artsakh from Armenia to film the war and my diaries. After the war, he supported me in publishing the diaries as a book: 44 days: Diary From an Invisible War. Together we made a documentary on the Artsakh war - Invisible Republic, which is now, after taking part in film festivals, available for watching.

Article

Change

Politics

20 January 2025

7 min read

Hope is a choice, insist on it

Amid loveless politics, remember hope cannot exist in isolation.

Elizabeth Wainwright

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

A crowd of people stand in the side steps of the Lincoln Memorial

Easter services, Lincoln Memorial.

The other day – a cold grey day, the kind of day that makes summer seem as distant as a star – I encountered a woman who stood out. She was cheerful despite everyone else’s winter gloom, and she was wearing a home-made tabard. The tabard was covered in a layer that seemed to be made of tape and clingfilm, and underneath it were little Ukrainian flags, images, facts, and small everyday items like soap. I have seen her before dressed the same way. She stood out, I think, because of her attire but also because of the defiance she radiated – a defiant joy, but also belief that it is worth hoping and acting in the ways we can, even when all the evidence seems to tell us those actions make no difference. The news of Russian’s invasion on Ukraine in 2022 has lost its initial shock power. We are creatures who like stories, and so we like news that has a clear beginning or end. The messy middle can be hard to stick with, precisely because we do not know what comes next or how long it lasts. And so our attention moves on. This, coupled with our felt powerlessness in something so big and distant, can mean it is easy to lose hope, to stop taking action.

But the woman who raises awareness most days in this creative way, with suggestions for what items to donate or how to send funds or how to host refugees, has been making me re-look at hope. Her posture – her insistence on hope as choice – feels life-affirming and countercultural. For a moment, she snaps me out of despair for the world. She faces looks of bemusement and seems to say, if not this, then what?

What keeps us moving forward when the world seems heavy? Where does hope spring from, even in the face of overwhelming odds? Hope, I have learned, has been tangled with humans for as long as we’ve walked the earth. It ensured the survival of our ancestors because it drew them towards a future that might be better than today. It kept them going.

In Greek mythology, Pandora opened a box out of curiosity despite being told not to. All kind of curses contained in the box spilled out into the earth. She wrestled the lid back on but not until it was almost too late. Almost, but not entirely. One thing remained in the box: hope. This myth always brings to my mind memories of visiting a slave fort that still stands on the coast in Ghana. The walls were oppressive, the words above the gate that led to the slave ships were haunting: ‘door of no return’. And yet I learned that there were songs. Spirituals and other songs that passed the time, helped members of different tribes feel connected when they were all shoved together, and conjured hope despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Optimism asks us to sit back and hope for the best; hope knows that we have work to do to bring forth a better future.

Ideas of hope have been with us always. And yet I find that hope can feel hard to conjure now, staring into the face of an increasingly unknowable and uncertain future: authoritarian leadership that seems to be on the ascendancy, impacts of the climate crisis that are coming into startling clarity, and loneliness that has been declared a global health concern by the World Health Organisation. It is easy to feel that things are falling apart. Faced with these things and more, hope can seem naive, wishful, hard to get hold of.

Perhaps one reason for this is that hope, in the age of the individual, is harder to come by because hope is relational, it cannot exist in isolation. It is transmitted through community, story, and care for others. Those old slave songs sang of hope because, I imagine, people had the reality or memory of each other. Hope said: people have been good, and they will be good again. Hope is insistently communal. It asks us not to bear the weight of the world on our own, but to face each other and distribute that weight via a web of relationship. Perhaps now, accessing a hope that can carry our burdens and our fears means first re-finding each other.

Hope and blind optimism are, of course, different things. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said that “Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better.” Optimism asks us to sit back and hope for the best; hope knows that we have work to do to bring forth a better future. And so perhaps that’s why lately, hope has felt exhausting. I’ve worked with communities internationally and locally for two decades on all kinds of projects, always asking, is this how things have to be? How might we imagine and build better? And yet still the climate worsens, inequality persists, bad leaders get into positions of terrifying power. It is easy to stand back and despair, to question, to wonder if all the hard work has been in vain.

Jesus knew this exhaustion. He knew what it was to work, encourage, and love hard, often to face rejection, mockery, and ultimately death. But still Jesus chose to enter into the persistent mess of the world. He chose the day in, day out work of becoming flesh. He affirmed the dignity of the marginalised, calling them into action, knowing that action would keep that dignity alive. He knew that new life would come through suffering, not by denying it.

Strongman authoritarian leaders aren’t the problem, they are a symptom of a society who are divided and not encountering each other well

Perhaps hope is hard too because though it is a posture which faces the future, it also asks that we live with integrity, love, and care right now, in this fractured world. Hope is not writing off the present in favour of some distant time or place. It is not wishing this world away so that we hasten to another one. It says, we can work for a better future, but we should not put off good work until then. That better future will only come if we invite it into our present, whatever the outcome might be. Hope is in living deep and timeless and world building values, even if there are no obvious or immediate results. Czech playwright and former dissident Vaclav Havel who led his nation after the collapse of communism said that

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

If a principle is right for the future, it is right for now, even if that requires work. If I espouse values of kindness, love, community, and imagine a future where these things rule, and yet ignore the marginalised, or distrust people not like me, or cut off people I don’t agree with, then my hope for the future is no more than optimism, because I am not willing to do the difficult work of living as if that future were here now.

Hope is turning outwards and living these values with others, even when honestly sometimes it seems easier and more appealing to turn inwards and single-handedly try and fix things — a myth that has grown in our age of individualism, celebrity, and our self-referential rhythms of life.

Hope has lately been asking me to take a Beatitudes perspective on things. In his Beatitudes, Jesus flipped the logic of the world on its head. The last will be first, the poor will inherit the kingdom, the weeping will find joy. Like the Beatitudes, hope asks me to take a different approach. When I look at the world through this lens I find new ways to think. Perhaps, for example, things aren’t getting worse but instead are becoming clear, truths are being unveiled – and so climate change is not the problem, rather, it is a symptom of a greedy economic system in which we are all complicit; Strongman authoritarian leaders aren’t the problem, they are a symptom of a society who are divided and not encountering each other well, and of money and distrust having too big a say in how we govern ourselves. This doesn’t mean we should stop addressing the symptoms, but that we have new possibilities in our scope for action.

Now, as we enter another cycle of — at best — strange politics that is steeped in lovelessness and will have unknowable outcomes near and far, the thing I search for alongside wise voices is hope. And searching for hope means living a good future now, and finding others who can carry both despair and beauty with me. Novelist and critic John Berger said that

“Hope is not a form of guarantee; it’s a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.”

So let us call on that energy, that light in the dark today. It is how we build the future.

Join us Behind the Seen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Alongside other benefits (book discounts etc.), you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing what I’m reading and my reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief

Find out more and sign up