Three-year-old Maneh of Mataghis didn’t want to hear the name of the village for three days. Her mother says she was afraid, wasn’t smiling or communicating for a couple of days. Now she is talking and communicating, but there is sadness in her eyes.

I start talking to Maneh, asking her where she was, what she remembers, how it happened, but all my questions remain unanswered. Her mother helps and tells her to talk so that her father can see her, but Maneh looks down and smiles, sadly. I start my conversation with Maneh’s mother, Hripsime Aslanyan, who has been living in the New Yedesia village of Aragatsotn Province since the 3^rd of April with her three chidren, including one-year-old twins and three-year-old Maneh, as well as her husband’s paternal aunt. They couldn’t imagine that they would leave their home and village in a couple of minutes on the night of 1 April. There had always been firing, and the residents of Mataghis were used to hearing them. On that day, they thought it was another firing.

“It was 4 a.m. when the firing began. Around 5:30 a.m., it was a little calm. We heard a powerful explosion at dawn, and after the third powerful explosion, my husband told us to gather our clothes and leave. I only managed to dress the children in clothes and leave. We ran out in our pajamas, and my husband managed to take us to Stepanakert in a microbus…”

Julieta Sarsyan, 53, was only 27 when the first war broke out. Julieta says this attack reminded her of those cruel days when the village was in smoke, and people could hear the sounds of mines exploding and the cries of children. They had managed to survive all that, and they survived this time as well. Her son, Artsakh, took them to Drmbon where there was a crowd of people who were also seeking shelter from the enemy’s attacks.

In Drmbon, they sat in a microbus leaving for Armenia and reached Yerevan. “There were eight women in the microbus, three of which were pregnant. There were about ten children. We sat and came without any documents. It was horrible. Wherever the bus stopped, we thought the enemy would shoot at us. When we crossed the border with Armenia, I was a little at ease…” Julia said, emotionally, according to womennet.am.

At this moment, they are in Armenia, but are in Artsakh, next to their son and in the familiar village with mind and soul. They didn’t manage to take anything with them, even their passports and other documents. Her husband took the documents when he went to the village three days later. The house had been completely robbed and destroyed. “We had saved money for my operation, but there was nothing left. They had taken all the gold in the house,” Hripsime says. She lives with her three children in her father’s house and is in need of food and clothes, but what she wants the most is peace and to return to the village as soon as possible…

“We want to return to the village, our home and work again,” Hripsime says, and Julieta adds that the only thing she wants is to not hear shots. “It’s alright if there is one shot, but not like the shots that were fired,” Julieta says.

P.S.: This family from Mataghis has been split into parts. After the cruel night of 2 April, the members of the family took shelter in different corners of Armenia. Julieta Sargsyan, 53, is staying with her paternal aunt in Yerevan. Her daughter-in-law is living in Ashtarak with her three children. Her sister is in Masis, and the others are in Hrazdan. Her son, 27-year-old Artsakh stayed in Artsakh…