Today is my country’s birthday. Independent Armenia is 31 years old, younger than me. As an ‘older sister’, I feel I’ve failed to protect him.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the start of the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990s, I spent my childhood in the dark and cold. I slept in my bed with stone bricks heated on wood stoves to keep warm. My food was heated up on an oil lamp.
Since then, I’ve witnessed a few wars, big and small earthquakes, unrest, revolution, and a pandemic – the list is not complete.
