On the seventh day of the 44-day war, when it was no longer safe to take refuge in the forest near Shushi, and it became impossible to provide baby food for the newborn, Mikael Ulikhanyan evacuated his big family from Shushi to Goris. Shortly afterward, they moved to Yerevan and from there to Dilijan.
Today the Ulikhanyan family of seven lives in Aghavnavank village of the Tavush region.
The rented village house doesn’t have communal conditions, making it more challenging to take care of five minor children.
“In Shushi, we had a big house and a plot of land near the house. I set up a greenhouse and a garden where we kept chickens,” says Mikael, who moved with his family to Artsakh in the 1990s from Kirovabad (the historic Armenian town of Gandzak, which is now part of Azerbaijan).
The father of many children assures that their house in Shushi was standing and wasn’t affected by the bombing until the end of the war. Everything created in the last 30 years has remained in Shushi.
At the age of 42, Mikael lost his home for the second time, and today he dreams of having his corner, a small plot of land, where he will be able to plant a tree again and start a wood carving workshop.
