Dedicated to my friend, Hero of Artsakh Edgar Markosyan
The shadow hanging in the air didn’t need promises. Only then did light come down to earth. For the first time. Like a loner.
The earth hears the heartbeat of the guys. Quiet. Expectantly.
Early in the morning, the guys took up combat positions. Two hours later there was a change in the weather: shelling. Nothing changed in Ed’s eyes. He knew what he was to do. The shells mingled with the light, and from afar, the tanks moved towards their positions. The target was destroyed within minutes. Well done, guys, it couldn’t be otherwise.
Country: war like a wall, like a dream… War entered the house։ it was already in the Motherland.
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He left the observation post so that the position would not be fired upon. Together with Hamlet, they again took up a combat position. “Grad” shells, “Kamikaze” haunted them. As if that were not enough, there was the fighter aircraft. Ed hit the first tank. The second moved towards the village, but immediately noticed the location of Ed, turned and targeted him. Ed was in the corridor between life and death. There were a couple of minutes left before life.
‘Ed, hurry up,’ his friend said.
“Kamikaze” was approaching from behind. Acting quickly is half the battle for being saved. There was a pit in the forest, they ran and rushed into it. “Kamikaze” struck about ten meters from them, and another one circled overhead. The survival pit widens and then narrows again, slowly and abruptly. This was not a moment for searching, but for action. The tank was trying to enter the village. The guys ran back. It was a “ballroom dance” of archers in the sky and on the ground. Ed didn’t have time to wait.
‘Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,’ he mentally calculated: the missile should have reached the tank in ten seconds.
‘Three, four, five, six.’ After launching the missile, he began to count by the clock and stood up. He looked into the optics and saw that the barrel was aimed directly at him, but they had already seen the missile from the tank and were trying to escape.
At the last moment, Ed aimed the missile at the tank, right where the tank shells were. No convention, no approximate step. The tank exploded.
War… Wall… Dream. One land. The war was not leaving the house.
Ed was shot in the back. He was more concerned not with his condition, but with the fact that he was not with his friends. He was with them in his thoughts. Always. The look in his eyes reflected the battle on the battlefield.
‘Ed, are you hurt?’
‘No, just because of the missiles, my back finally “failed”.’
One country. One sky. This war doesn’t want to leave the house.
Ed watches the change of people, lights, smiles and tears. He talks with friends in Yerablur. Their silence is the continuation of life.
Ed is still with us.
Vova ARZUMANYAN
P.S. I wrote this essay in November-December 2020 in Artsakh. Only recently have I dared to open the second part of my war diary.
“Aravot” daily, 29.03.2022
