Why is Shusha/Shushi so important for Azerbaijanis and Armenians?
On May 8, 1992, I went out of the basement to the courtyard of my house in Stepanakert to buy eggs and greens.
We had been in the basement since September 1991. At the time, Stepanakert was being shelled from all sides, but the most fierce shelling was from Shushi, which is located about half a kilometer above Stepanakert. From Shushi you can see all Stepanakert at a glance.
While I was buying greens, shooting began. I was about to run for cover, when I suddenly saw men in the old clothes of Armenian fedains coming out of the entrance [ed. “people’s avengers” who fought a partisan struggle for the liberation of the Antalya region in Turkey, which many in Armenia call ‘Western Armenia’] – with a mustache up, sheepskin epaulets, with cartridge belts and machine guns.
They came out like 33 heroes, singing something very masculine under the mustache. Seeing me, they stopped: “Don’t be afraid, we’re on your side, we are starting the liberation of Shushi. Do not hide. Look how ours are shooting.”
I looked up and saw the rockets flying in the opposite direction – towards Shushi. On this day, our people liberated Shushi.
On that day, the war ended for me. My 10-month-old son and I left the basement and returned home.
Shushi is the head, and when the head is in order, the whole body works like a clock. The history of Shushi can be studied in the cemeteries, there are seven of them near the city.
There was such a person – Hrachik Harutyunyan, may he rest in peace, he studied Shusha cemeteries for many years – five Armenian, one Russian and one Muslim. He discovered all kinds of graves there – an Armenian princess from Tbilisi, a Russian officer with an obviously Swedish surname, a missionary from Basel, and a wealthy Armenian merchant, whose grave losted all the things he did for Shushi.
Armenian historian Leo and writer Muratsan were born in Shushi, as well as the ancestors of many famous Armenians, who proudly say that their grandfathers – Tadevosyans, Zhamkochians – built hospitals and water pipelines in Shushi, which work to this day.
My aunt Raya, my neighbor in Stepanakert, told how her family fled from Shushi in 1920, where a bloody massacre began.
She, a five-year-old girl, was brought to the village of Gaybalu, which is just above Stepanakert. But the merciless hand reached this village too. Now in an empty village there is an old 17th-century church, standing all alone.
Armenian roots cannot be pulled out from Shushi, or they will have to do it together with a huge layer of soil – from Maikop to Ardabil, from Batumi to Vienna.