April 16, 2018
I’m sitting at a cafe in downtown Yerevan that we have converted into a makeshift office. It’s a dark, quiet corner. There are camera bags and wires strewn around me. Several water glasses and half-empty cups of cold coffee teeter perilously at the edge of the small, round table. Light is streaming in through the large arched windows. I have one eye outside and the other on the livestream. It’s mid-April, the early days of the Velvet Revolution in Armenia, although at the time, what is happening doesn’t have a name yet.
Thousands of people are gathered at France Square about a 100 meters from where I’m sitting. Baghramyan Avenue, to my left, is blocked by water cannons, armored personnel carriers, riot police and barbed wire. It’s the day that parliament is set to elect the sole candidate as the country’s new prime minister. After completing his second and final term as Armenia’s president, Serzh Sargsyan, who had promised not to seek the office of the prime minister, has been positioned by the ruling coalition as the only viable choice to lead the country. Opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan has been in Yerevan for several days now after a two-week trek through the country to mobilize the population against this pending vote. Several members of our modest “crew” are out on the streets, including my son.
I’m nervous. I always am when there are protests. You would think that after more than a decade of reporting from Armenia, it would get easier. It doesn’t.
My husband arrives. He sits down beside me and orders a coffee. He’s asking questions I don’t have the answers to. I give him one of my earbuds so he can listen to the livestream. Pashinyan has been addressing the crowd in France Square for the past half hour. He’s giving an impassioned speech and the people on the square are listening intently. He announces that the time has come for him to go to parliament to take part in the vote that is expected to take place within the hour. My heart misses a beat. This won’t end well I think. He leads the massive crowd toward Baghramyan Avenue and in a few minutes I no longer have to follow the livestream, I see them walking by the cafe. My son is somewhere in the crowd taking photos and videos. I know he knows how to do this, but my anxiety kicks up another notch. Soon it will have nowhere else to go. When do you stop being a mother?
The crowd is now facing rows and rows of riot police on Baghramyan. My eyes are glued to the computer screen, my face crumpled into what has now become a perpetual frown. The situation is tense although relatively calm. Suddenly, things quickly escalate. There’s shouting, pushing, shoving, things are being thrown. Pashinyan is on someone’s shoulders, trying to jump over the barbed wire.
As I continue to watch the commotion on my computer screen, I am startled by a deafening explosion and then what sounds like an immensely loud hissing noise and then another and another. I look out the window of the cafe and see people running in all directions. I look back at the live feed and think it’s tear gas because there is white smoke everywhere. And I’m screaming inside my head, “Stop, stop, stop!” I am transported back a decade to March 1, 2008, when I was a much younger journalist trying to report and later understand how ten people were killed in severe clashes… “Stop,” I whisper. “For the love of God, please stop.”
I can’t bear to look. I remember my child is out there. I turn to my husband and say, “You go find my son right now.”
I don’t know how the words come out, whether I yell or utter them through clenched teeth, but he immediately gets up and runs out of the cafe and into the crowd. As he disappears into the moving mass, I see people being carried out, most of them bleeding from their feet and legs, others screaming for doctors and ambulances. I grab my phone, leaving behind my computer and purse in the cafe, and run out to film the bloodied and injured being piled into ambulances. My hands are trembling but I know I have to capture these images because the rest of our crew is near the barricade. I run from one ambulance to another, my heart is pounding so hard I think it’s going to break my ribs…
I race back into the cafe to start uploading the footage. I try to call my colleagues, but the lines are jammed. A few minutes later, my husband rushes back in and I give him a quizzical look. “Did you see him?” I ask. He says that he couldn’t find him, but he was able to call and get through. “He told me to stay back because they’re throwing concussion grenades,’” my husband says, choking on his words.
Parliament elects Serzh Sargsyan as Armenia’s prime minister.
Just as we’re discussing the impossible possibility, a young man runs out of our building and screams, “Sargsyan has resigned!”
There’s a split second of silence. The world stops spinning.
And like a wave, as the news spreads, the sounds of people’s shouts gets louder and louder until nothing in the world matters anymore. I remember holding in a scream and then I’m running through the door, running into the elevator to get to my computer to break the news. I run into the office and see my daughter in front of my computer, with my son standing over her, bent down to see what she’s doing. Their backs are to the door and they don’t see me.
I don’t say anything. I just stand there for a second. They intuitively feel my presence and simultaneously turn around, a bright light emanating from their eyes and all of a sudden, they are no longer adults. Before me are my babies, 9 and 12, the ages they were when we moved to Armenia. My sight blurs from the tears that are quickly gathering in my eyes.
Videos by Roubina Margossian.
“Mama, Serzh resigned!” my daughter exclaims.
“I know baby,” I say.
They run toward me and we fall into each other’s arms. As I hold my children tight to my chest, I know that 17 years of my life in Armenia was meant for this very moment.
I tell them to go outside.
“Go be with the people,” I say.
“Are you sure, mama?” my son asks.
“Yes, hokis, go, go…”
