During the funeral of doctor Vahe Avetyan who has died as a result of being severely beaten at Harsnakar Restaurant, a stranger was pouring earth on Vahe’s grave with his hand being on his knees all the time. After an inquiry, the relatives and friends found out that this man was a father of an ordinary soldier whose son was operated on and rescued by doctor Vahe Avetyan.
A month after the incident, www.aravot.am met with Vahe Avetyan’s closest friends – Artak Garik and Arkadi – who were with him on that day. It was hard for the guys to talk about all that. They kept their feelings under control with an effort, but when they remembered the words Vahe used to say, “I see love in your eyes,” a smile appeared on their faces at once.
“Vahe loved life very much, Vahe was a festival by himself, a big patriot, a humanist, as a magnet attracts metals to itself, Vahe attracted people to himself in the same way. Vahe lived 33 years, but 300 years are not enough to tell everything about him,” the guys described Vahe in that manner at first, then added, “Blessed are those who didn’t know Vahe, it is an unbearable pain to lose a friend, a man like him.”
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July 17 was Arkadi’s last birthday and the last day of Vahe’s life. Coming back from Arzni where they had been on the occasion of Arkadi’s birthday, the friends decided to stop at Harsnakar, listen to music and eat something, but afterwards, as the friends told, the events happened so quickly that they didn’t manage to realize what was going on. Although Vahe’s friends didn’t wish to tell about it again, since it is hard to relive all that, but in response to our observation that the director of the restaurant had stated that they had been drunk and had behaved badly, for which the guests had asked them to leave, the guys said in annoyance, “It is a lie, Vahe hadn’t drunk at all – he was driving the car, a sample was taken, they can check very easily whether there was alcohol in his blood or not. And a few of the guests even approached our table and said hello, embraced; there were people who knew us. We had visited that restaurant roughly 10 days before that again at the invitation of the singer – we had operated on him – and we talked to the waiter very respectfully, after changing his training suit and coming back to the restaurant, when we had been sitting around the table for 10 minutes already, Vahe asked the waiter whether he couldn’t wear a hat either… Then they told us to go outside and immediately 15 people surrounded each one of us and all that lasted 3 minutes, we didn’t even manage to defend ourselves. We came to ourselves as if in a deserted place, there was no one, it was the parking lot of the restaurant.”
After violently beating, the restaurant workers didn’t even call an ambulance; the friends reached the hospital in their car with great difficulty.
According to Arkadi, the best description of Vahe’s human qualities is strange people’s attitude toward him; they didn’t know him personally, but have heard of him, “I was burning incense on his grave once. A stranger approached me and asked whether it was Vahe’s grave and I said yes. That guy asked me to allow him to burn incense too and admitted ‘I didn’t know Vahe, but I have heard a lot of good things about him.’”
Another friend of Vahe’s, Artak, told that when Vahe helped someone with something, he wouldn’t even wish them to know that he had done that, “He had a moneybox in his office and he would joke asking whoever entered his office to put money in it. But he would collect the money to make a good surprise for someone. Last year he found out that the Zatik children’s home needed a hi-fi system. He opened his moneybox at the threshold of the New Year, bought a hi-fi system and various presents for that money, visited the children’s home with his wife and friends; its director hasn’t probably found out so far that this surprise was made by Vahe Avetyan.”
On June 17, in very Harsnakar, the friends decided again to support this time the needy family of some freedom fighter who had died in the Artsakh war with the money collected in the moneybox.
Vahe Avetyan, according to his friends, loved Armenia so much that whenever he heard about leaving the Motherland, he would take it as a personal insult, “Where are you going, shall we all leave, what then, then the Turk will come and live here. If you are doing badly, let’s think what we should do to make it go well….”
In 2007, when he was working as a military doctor in Sisian, even at 3 a.m., Vahe wouldn’t fail to cross kilometers to reach a village and to help a patient, although the village had its own doctor, but people loved and trusted Vahe very much.
Vahe was such a cheerful man full of surprises that he invited actors to play the parts of cartoon characters on the birthday of one of his friends, although it was his 31st birthday, “That day, the guests and the one whose birthday it was were so very happy. He was a natural leader; he liked to organize everything by himself.”
According to his friends, when Vahe worked as a military doctor in a remote village of Armenia again, one of his friends was serving in the same village and was in love with a girl from that village, “Imagine what a soldier can do, let alone, in that remote village to win that girl’s heart. Vahe would buy flowers and send to that girl on behalf of his friend.”
On August 2, Vahe Avetyan would have celebrated his 33rd birthday with his friends and relatives, but the public will mark 40 days since his death on August 7.
Nelly BABAYAN
