“Grandma
Ofelya has read a book for the first time in her life!”,
Anna and Astghik informed me solemnly. I heard this another
six times during the day from different people.
Grandma Ofelya (Ofelya Shahnazaryan, 79) is a refugee from Karabakh
who now lives in a dormitory in the suburbs of Yerevan. Three
years ago she became a part of “Psycho-Social Care for
Elderly Refugees” program run by Armenian Red Cross Youth
and she is now one of the 330 lonely elderly refugees who get
visits from young volunteers. The book she was said to have
read is a manual on the history of the Red Cross that she got
from a Red Cross Youth volunteer, Tatevik Hambardzumyan (20),
she is one of the 55 volunteers visiting and taking care of
the elderly.
This was the first time I met Ofelya. She was very lively with
warm, soft hands and a kind smile. She jumped up vigorously
and offered us seats. She started to speak without waiting for
a question.
“I don’t want to complain. Thanks God, I have a
roof above and my daily bread to eat, the rest is up to the
merciful God to give or not to give. But I don’t like
the loneliness here, it’s so depressing. I am abandoned,
we are all abandoned here.”
“This is the only person that fills my heart with
joy. When she is here (She points to my companion, Tatevik)
I feel that there is someone in the world who really cares
for me. Once she found out when my birthday was, and made a
party for me with my neighbours. She even brought me a big clock
and a jelly cake as a present. You know she has found a woman,
Nina, who is from my village in Karabakh. She was also there
at my birthday party. I didn’t know Nina lived here in
Yerevan. Now we see each other quite often.”
Ofelya continues to speak, sharing the story of her life with
us.
“I was born in Karabakh. The name means ‘dark woods’
and my home was in dark woods up in the mountains. Then I saw
the war: I have seen the war and starvation as a child and as
a young woman and as an old woman. It’s terrible, the
war I mean. I hate it.”
For the first time during the whole while we were in the tiny
dormitory room, it occurred to me that she is old, and that
she had a lot of wrinkles. She lost her parents and her two
brothers in the war as a child and was left for his uncle’s
family to take care of her. Later, in 1942, she joined the Soviet
army in the secret hope to escape her foster family.
Ofelya never had a chance to continue her studies after that
year: there was a war and she had to help her new family.
“I went to school for only a year, but I can read and
count,” she says.
“I don’t like reading books. It’s what people
invent, I don’t believe it. It’s all lies... I never
read a single book.”
Surprised, I asked her why she had read the book given to her
by Tatevik. The reply came quickly:
“But it’s not a lie! Tatevik can not have given
to me a book that tells lies.”
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| Ofelya,
a 79 year old refuge, together with Tatevik, one of the
many youth volunteers in Armenian Red Cross taking care
of refugees. |
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| Ofelya
together with other refugees who are also receiving assistance
from the Armenian Red Cross are going to a monument in
Yerevan within the framework of the organized event. e
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