A tale of two Septembers

The recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh is already a twice forgotten war. Forced to flee twice, Anush Petrosyan describes the experience.

Anush Petrosyan

Anush Petrosyan is a writer now based in Armenia. She is originally from Nagorno-Karabakh.

A sunset dramatically silhouette's a ruined tower and people at its base.

A September 2023 sunset over Stepanakert.

The ethnic cleansing of 100,000 Christian Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh has left Armenians around the world questioning the world order that allows dictators to have their way without impunity.

Following Azerbaijan’s brutal war of September 2020, the people of Karabakh were subjected to a complete blockade of their region – an exclave of Armenia in Azerbaijan. In the small stretch of land where Armenians had fought for independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, civilians were being kidnapped, the elderly were dying for lack of basic healthcare, and schools were closing due to no heating gas. To the outside world, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev was speaking of peace and integration. Inside the region, experts were warning of genocide by starvation.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan at last got what it wanted - the territory of Karabakh without Armenians. After an attack that left hundreds of people dead, Azerbaijani forces moved into the region as people began to flee to Armenia, forever leaving their homes and homeland.

This is the story of Anush Petrosyan. A native of Shushi, Karabakh, which Azerbaijan took control of in 2020. Since then, Anush had been living in the Armenian-controlled Karabakh capital of Stepanakert, which she was forced to evacuate during the ethnic cleansing.

In September 2020, I left my birthplace in Shushi, Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) with a strong conviction that I would be back soon.

In September 2023, I left Stepanakert, my new hometown, with only the hope of staying alive.

In September 2020, I had a father. He drove us to Yerevan in our own car.

In September 2023, I no longer had a father… A kind person from Martakert, Artsakh, who I had not met before, agreed to evacuate my mother and me to Yerevan in his car.

In September 2020, I left Shushi when there were still some people in the city.

In September 2023, I was among the last to leave Stepanakert. The hotel where we had been living as refugees from Shushi for the last three years was empty. I had never seen the streets of Stepanakert look so desperate. There were stray dogs roaming, and those without cars and were waiting for public buses to come and evacuate them.

In 2020, we left behind the harvest of my father's garden in Shushi, and an abundant life.

In 2023, we left a few kilos of buckwheat, rice, and potatoes in our hotel room in Stepanakert. Food we had managed to get a hold of during a nearly year-long brutal blockade.

In 2020, I left Shushi with dreams in my heart. I had not been broken yet, I had no personal loss, and I was confident I’d be back.

In September 2023, I left Stepanakert with a sense of uncertainty about my life and my future. I had lost a homeland, my father, and I was lost in my own life.

I have written much about Shushi since the September 2020 Artsakh War. I left a whole life and a garden of violets there.

But I haven't written a single line about Stepanakert since the violence and ethnic cleansing of September 2023. Maybe one day I will write about this cozy city and its beautiful stadium where I would jog and regain a sense of peace.

In September 2020, for the first time in my life, I felt how alone and powerless a person can be.

In September 2023, for the second time in my life I felt how alone and powerless a person can be.

In September 2020, I started to realize that in any hopeless situation a person should put their hope only in themselves and God.

In September 2023, I became convinced that in any hopeless situation a person should put his hope only in themselves and God.

I went through hell twice, or through different stages of hell. It is difficult to say which hell was worse.... I am only afraid to imagine that there are people whose hell has been more hellish than mine.

But in the midst of hell, I came across the most compassionate people, who made me feel God’s presence in this absurd world of ours.

Stepanakert and Sushi

An avenue of colourful flats beside green trees.

Stepanakert before the exodus.

A hillside road blocked by stationary vehicles.

Cars evacuating from Karabakh to Armenia.

Hunot Gorge State Reserve near Shushi, Nagorno-Karabakh.

War ruins and gardens in Shushi, Nagorno-Karabakh.

Voices of Artsakh is a new series developed in collaboration with The Armenia Project, an educational non-profit in Armenia, that features the stories of the refugees who were forced to flee Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh). These personal essays will focus on their experiences, and life after Artsakh as they try to rebuild new homes following the ethnic cleansing from their historic lands.

Snippet

Art

Change

Doubt

Spiritual formation

31 January 2025

3 min read

Gallery-going has lessons if you're hesitant to cross a church’s threshold

Both welcome those seeking ideas or restoration.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

Gallery-goers mingle around large paintings on a wall

The National Gallery/

People have been evangelical about the van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. Demand was high, with people sharing membership cards, and the gallery keeping its doors open all night on its final weekend. So off we went, except with a toddler and a baby (not for the late night session).

Along with the disapproving looks at the noise generated, and the security guard telling me I couldn’t have my son on my shoulders, was also the kind lady in her 60s with her large print guide expressing sympathy and empathy. We stayed for about half the time I would have wanted, and even that time was divided attention to put it generously, but it was glorious. Our kids were utterly, blissfully ignorant and had no concentration span for such a high concentration masterpieces. I was also grateful that our baby didn’t join a protest by throwing her purée at the Sunflowers.

It was less of an immersive experience than I might have had in another stage, and I wasn’t following the implicit and explicit rules of a very particular subculture. As a priest it pains me that this is so often the message transmitted by the church and how visitors can feel.

David Cameron wrote in his memoirs about how his first encounter with the late Queen was as a schoolboy reading at a carol service, with the monarch in the front row. When he finished the reading, he walked off, before realising he hadn’t said the right words - 'thanks be to God' and then he panicked and swore. This can often reflect our impression of church: you’ve got to be neat, make sure you say the right thing, don’t say the wrong thing - with this authority and power figure there near you watching with a keen eye that you do everything just so. And that's before you consider how weird it can be to participate in a public meeting in a church in a format called a service.

A church is not a gallery with perfect pictures. Lucian Freud said of the National Gallery: 'I use the gallery as if it were a doctor. I come for ideas and help.' Church should be a place where we are inspired, to have our 'hearts lifted' in the words of Thomas Cranmer, but also we would do well to think of it it more like a hospital. Where our right of entry is our weakness and need for help. Van Gogh himself said that 'Art is to console those who are broken by life.' Church should be a place where more than observing a master's work from a safe distance, we are in the presence of a master who made us and wants to restore us, all the while finding our company amusing and enjoyable.

It mightn't feel like the hottest ticket in town, but I regularly hear people finding courses like Alpha a refreshing way to taste the essence of what church can be: where it is made explicit that no questions or thoughts are off limits, and you don't have to worry about standing up or sitting down at the right time. Belonging isn't performance art.

And if we have the courage to come close to the colour and the texture - we find the possibility of understanding a little bit more about the artist behind it all.

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