PEOPLE AT THE BOTTOM
Siranush Papyan

LRAGIR.AM
14:13:56 – 13/04/2009

It is not so difficult to reach the Artsakh lane from the Yerevan
railway station, but in order to enter there one should be psychically
ready. For a second you feel of not being in Yerevan but in a far
village, however, it is worse here than in any other village.

The one-time Academy of Art and Tyre factory dormitories are situated
here.

Totally 365 residents live here, or struggle for surviving.

In the former academy of Art where people live, there is no sewerage
system; they satisfy their requirements by throwing them from above,
or under the trees. A lot of people do not have electricity, the only
source for water is the recently constructed fountain in the yard of
the building.

The 41-year old invalid Antaram Arakelyan gave one of her 2 sons
to the orphanage, and the other 6-year old boy collects bottles and
aluminium and maintains him and his mother who seems much elder to
her age. Sure, Mrs. Antaram denies her son going begging, she says
that he goes to school, but, all this is so far from the reality,
you feel that she is just ashamed.

She does not trust the mayoral election at all, but she knows that
very soon, like very time, they will be given 5000 drams, because they
remember about their presence only from one election to the other,
and they will also be given a lot of promises, which will vanish
right after the election.

"We have thousands of debt to many shops, they come and disturb us,
and don’t let us buy anything without money, today I asked 20 eggs
for the Easter for my boy to be happy tomorrow, they did not give
them to me", tells Antaram Arakelyan. Mrs. Antaram wants only one
thing-a job. She visits her child in the orphanage only once a year,
on her child’s birthday.

Karapet is one of the oldest residents of the dormitory. It has been
already 18 years he has been living here after the close of the Tyre
factory; he is invalid, he gets pension and benefit and is worried
not with his own future but that of the children living there, but
he does not see any future for them, because they cannot even write
their names and surnames, but, instead, one of them is a professional
tree cutter and dump digger.

"I don’t know if the children are engaged in robbery or not, but I know
one thing for sure – no one does a good thing", says Sos, one of the
residents, which is sure that their children do not have any future.

There are even "poor but proud" people among those living in such
misery, who do not want to reveal their problems. "You think the
people of this area are miserable?" one of the residents started to
quarrel with the neighbours asking why they reveal their problems.

The residents consider themselves the "13th district" of
Yerevan". "This is the 13th district where neither the police nor a
polite person enters here, everybody is scared of entering our street,
this is a zoo, an island out of the globe, they, the government,
think no one lives here", say the residents.