SELF-PORTRAIT EXPERIMENT
Four of my uncles from SHRGKENTRONTS were at the front, now my father and his cousin Shakro, who was also the son of my mother's aunt, were drafted. My two uncles, Haykaz and Vardan, didn't come back, Shakro didn't come back, my great uncle Oska came back bleeding from a non-healing wound, started drinking and is still drinking. The other, my uncle Artash, did not reach the front, I think he did not see the front. "he was a difficult boy", perhaps with the consent of his father, Grandpa Ishkhan, the military commissariat wanted to rid the city of his troubles, but he managed to escape every time. Artash died of cancer recently, Shakro left five descendants, two of my deceased uncles left no descendants and it is not the most painful, because many boys in our Ahnidzor village, far from the centers and the civilization of the time, did not even leave a photo. My father is there, he was mowing my favorite meadow last summer, the old hen was cooing behind me like a house bird, he was very worried about my appearance, in the native's opinion, I was a stranger in his and the old mower's meadow. But now we are talking about the moment when the thirty-three-year-old Ignat, an excellent carpenter and a dumb tiller of the soil, and his cousin Shakro, thirty-four, a brigadier, an activist, and in general someone who always snatches a position from among the village soldiers, are standing in front of the military committee, and between them and the military committee is my grandfather Ishkhan, who is a man of wealth or his relatives in the distant village of Ahnidzor. poverty imposes on him in that foreign city and he is obliged to help his sister's child and the girl's husband, my father. By explaining well to Zinkom that those two are leaving behind eight orphans, the pope was able to postpone the conscription of one or the other for the time being. that one must stay in the village and be the head of two families. Those directors of people's fate left the choice of life or death to Shakro and Ignat for a moment. let them decide among themselves who goes to the front and who goes back to the village, but the pope suddenly realized that the luxury of military life might attract Shakro of a good horse, song, good clothes, chrome boots and orders, and the same luxury repels the shy and shy Ignat, and the pope himself chose. "I give it to Ignat? I give it to Ignat, Ignat, Ignat is a dumb and untalented person, the village doesn't need Ignat." It so happened that Shakro was also taken after Ignat. I also remember my grandfather Ishkhan in a military overcoat, three more orphans from Dsegh village were added to our eight orphaned children, Ishkhan's hundred-year-old mother was also brought to Ahnidzor from the distant Sanahin village, during the long winter nights, we, the oldest children, barely wanted to read the only art book in that house, with sparkling pictures "Sasuntsi Davti" for that class of milk eaters and old women. The gorgeous 1939 anniversary edition, and the grandmother of us all, the Prince's sister, took the book out of my hands, folded it, lied that it was the story she was telling, and told me the nightmare of her life. I may ever be able to awaken our childish breath of those distant nights, the understanding, the misunderstanding, the fear, the secrecy and hints of the old woman after losing everything, when even the fairy-tale clarity of that life would have betrayed little to my three-to-ten-year-old children. is not fit to extort from men the bread of his children, and he consents.
IT BRINGED OUR LUCK. the gathering was sorted in Makhachkala, the rest were sent back to the military commissariats. my father came with four like him, those four became the joy of our collective farm, the district military commissariat sent my father to a work battalion for forest cutting - from Dsegh to Ahnidzor to cut down trees in our forests, break them, transport them with snowmelt and flood waters, build a dam, catch wood, load it, and saw it. With the end of the war, the forest again passed to forestry, and forestry was removed from the subordination of the military commissariat, but the content of the army times hardly left the convenient form of that economic institution. to learn, they gave daily bread to the laborers, they disputed the rights of forest clearings with the surrounding kolkhozes, they owned grasslands and arable lands, they had an ox as a draft power and a dairy farm, in a way, they were both workers and peasants, and my father had no idea of transferring from there to our poor collective farm, so he was not as bad as Ishkhan thought...
Partially posted. You can download the full version (pdf)