The Blog

At the end of the humanitarian corridor, about 700 meters from the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam, the crowd of refugees from Khojalu Village were hit by a volley of GRAD missiles.

Phedais did not use that military equipment yet, all the attackers were equipped with were assault rifles and white bandage fastened over the khaki trench coat sleeve.

Those rockets burst far away from the Khojalu battle. That night the fleeing civilians from Khojalu walked 20 km, there remained just 700 m to the city of hope, security, life… It was a full discharge of missiles from a GRAD installation which did not participated in the storm of Khojalu. It was a bloody dawn.

In a couple of hours mass-media correspondents were brought to the spot of the tragedy, on a helicopter.

Some inhuman war-spare-parts did not want at all to let the conflict die out…

"When leaving Azerbaijan (another quote from the official Azerbaijani site about the Khojalu Tragedy) some servicemen from the 366th Motorized Infantry Regiment attempted at taking outside the Republic big undeclared sums in foreign currency…"

[And again, in the best traditions of the Soviet Army, the personnel got fucked up by the Commander Political Deputy! Although it’s not quite clear which side had paid the confiscated dollars. Were they ripped off the tank men who failed to capture the Armenian Askeran City? Or the money was on those who fired from their armored personnel carrier at Khojalu? Were the petty officers not smart enough to get out of the region via Yerevan? Why to come to Azerbaijan with Armenian bribes on them?

In a nutshell, some complete lunacy in the style of post-reconstructional absurdity, where no Thomas de Vaal will ever find any ends in or out.

Although the guy was nobody’s fool in his a within-limits-red scuff, when he came to collect material for his book. I noted it back in 2002, a Holland family name and a job at the BBC, both at once. And the work was produced in so streamlined manner of statements that both sides quote him at their sites now in innocent belief he pulls for their side.]

Later on, the 366th Guards Motorized Infantry Regiment was dissolved… (Which is fucking dishonesty at all! Not fair way to treat guardsmen!)

The storm was started at midnight sharp, as planned. Valyo the Phedai, when forcing the river in the western outskirts of the Khojalu Village, slipped off a boulder and fell. The end-February-mountain-river water felt dead cold but he got up and ran after his comrades-in-arms.

As a component to the current war-machine he ran and fired and hollered although being drenched thru and thru.

At about 1.20 am, in a village lane he was lucky to come across a burning house which fire gave him an opportunity to dry up his sides. An hour later, in a deserted house at some other place in the village still echoing with stubborn shooting out, he found a casserole of hot barmy borshch. He ate it, not all but until got warmed inside.

His mother, of course, wouldn’t approve of the action. All her 4 children were born in Baku where she worked at a factory, packing baby perambulators, while her husband wandered about the USSR as a seasonal construction worker.

In 1989, so as to stay alive, they moved from Baku to Stepanakert.

Next year Valyo finished School 9 there and a year later he was already a full-fledged phedai in the group fighting in Krkjan. When in the storm of Malubalu besides the nasty mortar battery they captured also a big farm, he was awarded 4 sheep and a horse, all of which prize he brought home.

‘No’, said his mother, ’take them all back, we don’t own the animals’. If you ever try to drive 4 sheep and a horse from the School 9 neighborhood to Malubalu you would understand Valyo’s frustration, but he did it, he always was an obedient son. However, on that tragic night, he ate that borshch not cooked by his mother because he was too cold.

At 4.40 am, he caught a hostage (not a special police officer). He felt swoony and sat on a bench with his back to the hedge, and demanded of his prisoner to behave (which that promised) yet, just in case, he took the clip from his AK and shoved it in the inner pocket of his trench coat, before dozing off.

His sleep was disturbed with an AK barrel prodding at his forehead, he pushed it away and said, ‘Stop it, moron!’.

In response, the iron barrel hit hard and he awoke to see the stardust lover Gavo from Yerevan lying on the ground, and his buddy Syamo standing over Gavo whom he had just knocked out.

"It’s Valyo! He’s ours! Can’t you see the bandage, you fool!" shouted Syamo.

"He talked Azerbaijani, not Armenian!", whined the comer from Yerevan…

Valyo and his group stayed quartered in Khojalu. His hostage together with 5-6 other ones were kept in the same house (but in the room with a grated window). The prisoners were made to feather the fouls caught in the village to make the noodles tastier. In a month the Red Cross took them away…

But it was a flash forward, so back to February 26 –

From Khojalu they brought a pregnant woman to Stepanakert. Both the hospital and the maternity hospital was then in the city's safest basement – under the previous Regional Committee of the CPSU.

The woman gave birth to two babies. I never asked if they both were boys or girls, or just twins. Too late we grow wise enough to inquire about the most important…

______

List of links:

1.

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A5%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%8F

2.

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F_%C2%AB%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%86%D0%BE%C2%BB_(1991)

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Bottle #14: ~ Bye Dear Chris! Be Back Whenever Feeling Like That! ~

“Hi, Don”, was delivered by Chris evenly, perfectly stripped of any emotion, however, too impartially and colorless as if by a theater school student articulating the lines learned by rote before a mirror to control the output.

The stare of his African eyes shot with the meandering snakes of venous blood twined, unyielding, with the frozen steel-hued glare of the man looming close by the two buddies table…

...In a London tavern, the blades of two daggers clang, tangled up to the scraping jingle of their cross-handles, the crowd of drunks shut up, a-gaping, the flutter of the torches in the walls grew in volume…

The counterparts paused their exchange of conversational clues to expertly check-up the overtones in the greeting by Chris. Was there a treacherous strain of discarding the fatal “key” in the name?. Nope, not a slightest hint, it sounded OK, the piece, like, rehearsed well enough.

"With your kind permission, gentlemen."

Don pulled out and bestrode the third chair at their table, the right profile of his face opposite Chris’ stare turned to its reflection in the cold glass partitioning from the street dark, from the cars dozed off by the sidewalk in the slow thick snowfall.

Two slobs in long black coats, like that on Don—lacking though the exceeding elegance of the outfit which, on them, smacked of a uniform, sort of—without doffing their slouch hats got seated at two different tables nearby.

"Tell you what, Chris? Seeing you never fails to make me think of ol’ good times."

Don lied and they both knew that he was lying. The needless lie told Chris that the meeting was not accidental and in the past week they did inform Don of a new patronizer at Make Or Mar, just in case, because the boss always showed interest in the movements of old-timers. At times he even helped them to move on. To the better world.

Why it was so, his hitmen did not know, it was not their concern, they just were doing their job so as to live on, and go on doing their job, and retire to a warm place with a beach and palms or long-needle pines of Sochi, and there, to the sound of the surf, which they couldn't bare to watch for longer than 6 seconds, to go thru the routine dying of desiccating cancer or bloating obesity, you know, if only a bullet with their name on it had not rendezvoused them on the way to that happy end, the control shot in the brow eschewed.

However, the number of those reaching the juncture of feeding the cancer was somewhat higher.

Don lied and he knew that Chris knew that he was lied to or, maybe, even got it that the meeting was arranged to plumb how deep he, old Chris, apprehended the extent of Don’s hatred to the "ol’ good times".

'That Bugger Donkey, he would get you anything – pills, weed, snow, intravenous,' knew all the advanced dudes at school.

Donkey had a reliable provisioner, his step-father brought home by his Mom who fucked Donkey for a change, when bored with effing her or if his high fancied that tack.

In time, Donkey's map became familiar to the provisioner's provisioners, and when discharged after his stretch for the shitty car stolen from a relative of the judge, he tore his step-father. Literally. In four parts.

Which makes him sorry, at times, now. The bugger died way too fast.