Armenia that has turned into an enclave: Part 1, Verin Voskepar (photos)

When the law enforcement officers and playing on people’s fatal fears are your last hope to cling to, you cannot avoid the stigma of a dictator, no matter how much you position yourself as a beacon of democracy. Okay, you aside, but who should look after the people you are responsible for, the house you have to protect? These are rhetorical and open-ended questions that spread like unconfirmed news, such news with which you embarked on your professional and then your political career. That is your past, which is not in any way related to the past of others; that is why you made the present level with your past. When your past is not binding, your present becomes a burden that you try to get rid of in every possible way. And if no one had anything to do with your personal present, you made others present, which is called homeland, your own. It was a heavy burden, and now you are slowly relieving it, so that your poor existence will at least have some meaning to your eyes.

This is ours, the other is not. And who decides what is ours and what is not, still remains unknown. This is the center of the village of Voskepar, where people’s talks now are not rural at all. The villagers are not discussing daily issues now; now everyone wants to know one thing: how will they live afterward? And the question has not fallen on their heads out of thin air. There is someone whom they brought and elected for, and now that one decides for everyone what belongs to them and what to the enemy.

And if once they used to defend him by beating their breasts, now the problem has been knocking at their doors. It is so close that it is pointless to even run away: either you have to surrender or fight. Moreover, it is not them who decide whether to fight or not, because they may simply not be allowed to fight. There is a bridge just a few hundred meters away from the village, which may soon become a border checkpoint.

 

Aghvan Asoyan