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  • People At The Bottom

    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.
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