“To Go on Living: Stories” by Narine Abgaryan

To understand the short stories of Narine Abgaryan in To Go On Living, I realized rather quickly that I had to learn more about a conflict I’d never heard of. I was familiar with the genocide of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. That included the murders of more than a million Armenians, forced Islamization of women and children, and death marches into the Syrian desert.  

But Abgaryan’s stories seemed based on something far more recent. And they are – what’s known as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The roots lie in the old Russian and Soviet empires and what happened when the communist Soviet regime fell. Like many other regions, that of Armenia and Azerbaijan featured a mingling of ethnic peoples. 

 

Historically, the Russians had favored the Azerbaijanis. The region of Nagorno-Karabakh contained mostly ethnic Armenians, surrounded by seven districts containing mostly Azerbanjanis. In 1988, a referendum in Nagorno-Karabakh was held to transfer the region to Soviet Armenia, and violence erupted between the two ethnic groups. Once the Soviet Union dissolved, the violence became all-out war, ending in 1994. 

 

Two decades of relative if uneasy peace followed, until 2020, when conflict erupted again. Three years later, the victorious Azerbaijanis took control of Nagorno-Karabakh. In both wars, border towns suffered. Berd, in northeastern Armenia, was one such border town. And Berd is largely the setting where Abgaryan’s short stories are largely set. Collectively, they raise the question of how people survive war, deaths of family members and friends, and destruction of their homes and livelihoods. 

 

And the individual stories do need to be read collectively, with many of them involving the same families and characters. The title answers the question for you: you survive the destruction wrought by war when you go on living.

 

Some of the stories are set during the war, while others are after the war. A woman attends the funeral of her brother, only to return home to find her house destroyed. A man and his son travel like they usually do for their business, and they never return home. Families are cut off from each other. A bus filled with people is hit by a mortar shell; half of the passengers die. A young woman spends her time anticipating the evening of each day; nothing else matters. A man sitting on the stoop of his house is killed by a projectile. 

 

Narine Abgaryan

Lives are disrupted, people die, children are maimed, injured, and mentally stricken. And yet, life goes on. Abgaryan finds survival and resilience in customs, culture, and even the food that’s prepared and eaten. The familiar and the customary survive war and destruction. 

 

The 32 stories, translated by Margarit Ordukhanyan and Zara Torlone, ae short and succinct, amplifying their impact. They often surprise and horrify, but Abgaryan isn’t writing about the destruction of people’s lives  as she is their  continuation.

 

Abgaryan was born in Berd. She’s published numerous books which collectively have sold more than a million copies. Three Apples Fall from the Sky won the Leo Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana Award and an English PEN Award, and a trilogy has been filmed as a television series. She lives in Armenia and Germany. Ordukhanyan is based in New York and translates both her native Armenian and Russian into English. Torlone is also a native of Armenia and a professor of Classics at Miami University in Ohio.

 

To Go On Living tells a story of war and destruction, yes. But it also tells a story of hope.

 

Map by Golden - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The dark yellow area is Nagarno-Karabakh; the small red dot in northern Armenia represents Berd.

Some Monday Readings

 

Conservation on mysterious Vermeer painting reveal it may have been his final work – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

How “Tesla Takedown” Activists Fool the Public – Christopher Ruge and David Reaboi.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict

 

Up Close with the Beauty of Gatsby – Emma Heath at The Metropolitan Review.

 

Seeking the Grail – Andrew Henry at The Saxon Cross.