“We both could not stand being apart and could not get along with each other,” remembered Tatul Krpeyan’s the only and elder sister of her brother without concealing her smile. “Once he quarreled in the yard and came home with tears. My aunt got angry, you are a boy, beat and be beaten but never come home with tears. And after this incident, Tatul never cried.” There are many stories that Ruzan. Krpeyan has not forgotten, but particularly she remembers this incident, and without concealing her laughter, tells, “When we were little, we were afraid to sleep at nights, we were asking one of my elder brothers, Manvel, to tell a fairy tale for us. My brother began telling that when it was a war, we had gone to fight against the Germans and Tatul was impatiently interrupting, “Manvel, Manvel, how many Turks did you kill?”
Mrs. Ruzan remembers their youth very well, when they were coming together, raise a ghost at dark nights to tell the fortune, and then they were often sitting and dreaming about building their old house, to retrieve it. “It was very romantic, he liked to recite poetry and read very much. He also like when my father and grandmother were telling about Western Armenia, exile and how it happened that they crossed the border, why they came to Armenia and settled in Are village and so on.” Tatul was also very shy. “When my elder brother married, Tatul was shy of our daughter-in-law, when we were laying the table to dine, he was running away from the house and when the daughter-in-law had finished eating, he was coming back home.” When the liberation movement was just in the process of development, Tatul was always keeping their gatherings secret from his sister.” I was married at that time. I had gone to the Memorial on the anniversary of Sumgait and came home late. Tatul was living with us. I came home later than he and said that I had gone for consultation. When we went to the room, he said, you said a good lie, where were you. And I said that I had gone to the Memorial, so he calmed down.” Unlike the gatherings, he did not go to war secretly. Mrs. Ruzanna tells, “At home, he was saying my dad, you have five sons, consider that one is missing. When he decided that he should go to Artsakh, they were arguing for hours. No one could say, do not go, because he had already decided. He was a man of action, he was thinking that staying in Yerevan and participating in the demonstration, nothing will change and went. Tatul travelled as a teacher, he was a teacher at two schools in Getashen, at the same time, he was a Commander.” The sister has a lot of memories of Tatul Krpeyan: letters, photos, items and even the red notebook in which he was making notes during the war.
The sister often turns over the pages of letters and notes, reads them, remembers, relives the past and does not forget to mention that Tatul loved people, and when seeing positive in them, he was devoted wholeheartedly. Everybody remembers Tatul singing and dancing, a cheerful, jolly, full of life, full of faith and hope that everything will be fine. Mrs. Ruzan does not still understand how her brother could be so young and yet so perspicacious despite his simplicity and purity.
Ani MINASYAN
