When I wrote about my (post)war days in the (inter)war zone, I left out Nshan.

He was the first father I approached that evening in that chaotic, filthy, staffless lobby—shrouded in smoke, booming with journalists. Nshan was not brooding in the corner, giving the evil eye to the rowdy Italians and Brits and Poles.

Instead, he had made himself so small—almost invisible. One of my friends nearly sat on him, as he lay on the couch. Nshan’s neck was throbbing; his face had bloomed into a cherry. He told us that he hadn’t slept in three days. We barely got him up and found a volunteer to drive us to the hospital.

Like the hotel, outside was covered in mist. We could barely see a meter ahead. Everyone seemed to be flailing in the dark. When we approached the civilian hospital, the gates were closed. Of course, there haven’t been any civilians here in months.

We navigated to the military hospital. The city was still swarming with soldiers. Many, beside themselves, roamed the mountains and slept in their cars—unsure of what to do with their newfound idle time.

Inside, we shoved our way into an operating room. This was the thick of the pandemic, but there was no mask in sight. The doctor barely looked up. “He’s fine; he just needs to rest. Tell him to sleep.” And with that, we made our way back to “Armenia Hotel.”

Nshan collapsed into the couch. The next day, we girls got to work, cleaning the lobby. Somehow, my friends found coffee and soap and we pretended for an afternoon that the men were our patrons. “Welcome to Cafe Armenia,” we joked.

One of the fathers, a veteran of the First Artsakh War, never changed out of his uniform. Approaching our table, he opened the bread basket, and to his surprise, it wasn’t empty. “Ah! Fresh bread. The mark of a woman!” 

That evening, Nshan approached me in the girls’ bathroom, as I was washing the dishes with cold water.

“We got a call from my son’s number. It wasn’t my son, but they found his phone. And someone answered. It’s good news, Lil.” As we hugged, he kept repeating, “It’s good news.”

The next day, his nephew showed up. Nshan was still in good spirits, but the nephew wouldn’t meet me in the eye.

We had stayed the extra night because the fathers wanted company. They were meeting with Arayik Harutyunyan, the president, across the street in parliament on Saturday morning, and they wanted us to help them wrangle the fathers to collect their signatures—with all the corresponding information on their sons: their names, their ages, their numbers, where they served, where they were last spotted, when they last called—anything to help identify them. 

Outside, one of the fathers caught us in a moment of levity—”don’t smile,” he said. “There’s nothing to smile about here.”

But Nshan didn’t mind. In fact, he welcomed a warm face. “My son smiled all the time.” The 19-year-old conscript was four months into his service when the war started.

“I told my boy that I could bribe him out, but he said, ‘Dad, if I do that, then no one would serve, would they? No, I want to serve.’”

“My son was so generous. He would always share his phone too, with his friends. I had bought him the new iPhone before he left.” 

I wondered who it was on the other line that day. Why didn’t they respond?

That night, the girls went out with some of the soldiers. To a restaurant—or what was left of it—from a Syrian Armenian repatriate. I stayed in, hacking up smoke.

When they returned, they said that Nshan’s son is dead. His body was found in the gorge in Shushi, where so many of our boys fell. The same place where the Italian journalist, wide-eyed, two nights before told me that the Azeris were shooting at his drone, trying to get footage.

“Everyone knows except for Nshan.” 

We also heard the Karvachar road would be sealed on Monday—for real, this time. We had stayed, under the assumption that it wouldn’t be handed over for another 10 days. Well, now we were cutting it close. We decided to leave that morning. I didn’t get to see Nshan. 

We were maybe 10 minutes from the hotel when a white van flagged us down. We pulled over and the van stopped. Nshan got out and hugged each of us.

Without saying a word, he got back in his car and drove off.

Lilly Torosyan is editor of the Armenian Weekly and a member of the Armenian Nutmegger community. (That’s Connecticut nutmegs by way of Sasun walnuts). Her writing focuses on the confluence of identity, cultural continuity and language – especially within the global Armenian communities. She previously served as the assistant project manager at h-pem, an Armenian cultural platform launched by the Hamazkayin Central Executive Board, and a freelance writer in Armenia.