99 - all you should know about the Genocide April, 2014 | Page 63

Andranik Matevosyan | 01.07.1912, birthplace – Kars
My mother and father were regular village workers. We had a house in Kars, some land and
livestock. I was 6 years old when, in 1918, my family migrated from Kars to Batum. We were
fleeing without knowing where we were going. But if we had not left, the Turks would have killed
us. They killed my uncles, my grandmother and grandfather in Kars. My mother would talk about
how they had made the decision to flee, but something had held her back halfway and forced her
to return home. She went back and remembered that she had not taken her copy of Narek, the
holy book of psalms. She only picked that up from home and left again.
On the migration trail, only I managed to survive among my three brothers. Many people ended
up unable to carry their children any further and dropped them in the river, hoping that they
would somehow stay alive that way.
The Armenians pretended to be Kurds and did not speak the whole journey. My father covered my
mother’s face using her hair, so that the Turks would not spot her and take her away. The migrants
would walk for days without rest. After about a month, my father, mother and I reached Batum.
We sheltered in army barracks there. Many people left for England from there, but we remained.
In 1928, my family emigrated to the city of Maikop in Russia. I married Siranush there and we had a
child. We moved back to Armenia after a while – first to Karabakh, then Goris and finally Yerevan.
I never got an education, I have been a laborer all my life. I now live in a house I built with my own
two hands.
My heart says, “Go and see Kars.” But where should I go, how should I go? I don’t trust the Turks.

A portrait of Andranik Matevosyan’s father, 1880s.