From Aleppo to Stepanakert, in search of the Promised Land
Hovik and Elizabeth had to escape from bombs in Syria. They decided to rebuild their lives in Nagorno-Karabakh. Here the war has caught up with them again, but this time they have decided to stay and help as much as they can in a fight they feel is their own.
In the capital of the Armenian separatist enclave, Stepanakert, the couple is engaged in agriculture and a small café, which has become a refuge for locals and a second family for correspondents covering the conflict.
The couple give free food to lifelong friends and first-time visitors, running to the shelter every few months when explosions are heard in town.
The city is in complete darkness; the siren sounds announcing the possibility of an artillery attack, drones, conventional aviation or all of these combined. However, there is a place where you will be fed in spite of all this.
They are two Armenians of Syrian origin who will be hit by a second war in eight years. They came out of the first one to protect their children, but this time they've decided to stay.
In late 2012, a two-car explosion 300 meters from their home in Aleppo made the couple decide to end their life in their home country and go to what they considered the promised land of their ancestors.
They belong to Syria's Armenian minority, who settled there just over a century ago, fleeing the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Their destination was Nagorno-Karabakh and their choice was not accidental.
On the one hand "it was to honour the memory of those who had died in the past" and on the other "to work to create life in a sparsely populated area". Karabakh has a census of 150,000 people for 4,400 square kilometres.
"We had the idea of modernizing agriculture. Moreover, in the Artsaj - the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh - very good people live, very friendly, very similar to the Syrian Armenians. Thanks to that, it was a very quick adaptation", he says.
The war has caught up with them in the new home, but it is a different war from the Syrian one, he says. "There we had a civil war, here it is a war. Here you know who the enemy is. You concentrate on their direction. In Syria we had to look left, right, up, down, back. Here it is simpler, psychologically it is much simpler. In a civil war it's brother against brother," he says.
In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, Hovik knew from the outset that "it would be serious", although at first he thought that "the laws of war would be followed, we did not believe that it would again be an aspiration to commit genocide with attacks on the civilian population".
Despite this, he and Isabel are not afraid and do not intend to leave on this occasion. "Our obligation is to the people on the front lines, those young people who are fighting. If we leave under attack, what will they think of us?" he asks.
People from Karabakh "have to know that there is a family behind them, someone who is waiting for them, someone who will give them a hot meal", adds Hovik, 50 years old.
The fact is that the man feeds what he can and without charging. Soups based on rice and beans as the first course, and different types of meat with rice or potatoes as the second course.
For him and 45-year-old Isabel, the most difficult thing in this war has been to send their children to Armenia. "I told them not to even call while they were on the road because of the bombing. That wait until they were safe was very hard, the minutes would go by for hours," they say.
Despite all this, Hovik is clear that bad moments bring people closer together. "Anyone can share the wonderful moments with you (...), but in a bad moment, not everyone will be there".
His motto these days is "to smile even when the world is shaking". "We will continue to live, our children will grow up, we will tell this story with a smile", he stresses.
