Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Yesterday morning an attempted I’m not sure what took place at my mother-in-laws house.

On my fiancé’s sister’s last night before returning to Europe, we stayed up all night and around 5:45 a.m. everyone other than me went inside the house to get a couple hours of sleep. I sat on the porch outside, as it was way too hot inside and rested my eyes.

Before I could doze off, I heard in the yard the sound of someone slowly walking on the dry grass.

When I lifted my head, the noise stopped.

As soon as I put my head back down, the steps began and were getting closer.

I got up out of my chair and went into the yard to investigate what could be causing the noise.

It was pitch dark and as I made my way into the yard, I turned on the recorder in my cell phone just in case it was an intruder and being that it was dark, I would at least document their voice when they cry out when I start to beat on them.

I got half way into the yard, looking towards the pomegranate trees that line the walkway to the outhouse.

Behind one of the trees (about 10 meters from where I was sitting), I spotted a curled up black creature and was not sure if it was an animal or a human.

I picked up a good size sharp rock and hurled it at the creature, but unfortunately my aim was a little bit off and I hit the edge of the tree, which gave out the sound you hear when a baseball bat smacks into a hardball (the bark is gone where I hit, as well as good dent in the wood).

The creature jumped to it’s feet and I went chasing after it yelling like a madman, “You bastard, I’m going to kill you!!!”

This young man who was dressed in black from head to toe answered me by yelling out, “I’m an officer.”

I repeated my call to him as I moved into to corner this beast, who in front of him was a 2.4 meter tall wall (a little over 7 feet) and behind him a raging lunatic, looking for his blood.

As he got to the wall, I thought I had him, but next thing I knew, like a frightened cat, he hurdled the wall and jumped as if he was diving into a pool of water.

Being that my adrenalin was rushing, but not so much to hurdle the wall, within a second, I made my way to the steel door that leads to the back street. By time I got there, the beast had vanished into the dark.

I ran back to the house and dialed “102” which is the number for the police. I kept dialing the number, but it would not connect.

I tried to call the mayor on his cell phone, but it was turned off.

I was not sure who to call and even tried to call information “109,” but that too didn’t work.

After about an hour, I remembered a phone number that rings in the operator’s room at the phone company, 2-13-99, and when they answered the phone, I was greeted by a friendly voice who congratulated me on my wedding and then gave me the number to the police station, 2-12-29.

I called the police and told them what happened.

Officer Bedrossian asked me why I had not called earlier and then said that in 15 minutes someone would arrive.

Fifteen minutes passed and sure as can be, officer Vasken, who is the police officer for one of the village areas showed up to see what had happened.

Officer Vasken said that we would have to wait for the detectives to arrive, who did within 10 minutes of his calling them on his cell phone.

Detective Allen found footprints in the soil on the other side of the wall and said that the guy took a hard hit coming down, so he could have possibly hurt his leg.

I downloaded the voice clip on my computer, which detective Allen opened up with Nero Express’s wave editor and cleaned up the suspects voice.

We determined that he had a Hayastan accent, thus was probably a conscript serving at one of the neighboring bases, maybe looking for some food or something that he could sell.

The police said that it would be hard to find the suspect and it was too bad I didn’t call them sooner, as there is no doubt in their minds they would have caught the guy if I had.

This afternoon I called Dosig, the head of the Martuni branch of Karabagh Telecom to find out why I was not successful in getting through when I repeatedly called 102?

Dosig told me that during the war, the phone company building was hit by rocket fire and the equipment that controls fire, police and hospital service does not work. He said that they have tried in the past to fix it, but have had no luck in doing so. He said that I should know that 2-12-29 is the phone number to call when I need the police.

I asked Dosig when they plan on fixing this service, as someone visiting from the outside could certainly not know to call 2-12-29 when they need police in Martuni and I would think that this is a minimum obligation that Karabagh Telecom should fulfill, being that they will still monopolize the telecommunication network in Artsakh for the next 26 years according to their unpublicized license agreement they have with the government thanks to the Prime Minister.

I told Dosig that I was going to write a letter to his Executive Director Ralph Eirikyan to find out when the emergency sercice numbers would be repaired.

Dosig got defensive and said that it would not be of any use to write to Ralph, as to make that system operative, the whole system for Martuni would have to be changed.

I not sure what to think of what Dosig told me, but I’m writing to Ralph, who knowing his devotion to Artsakh and it’s well being, will do everything possible to restore this lifesaving service that we should never be without.

It’s really too bad to bad guy got away, but I’m glad that there was no loss to report other than some sleep for me, who instead of getting to go to sleep after we sent off our guest, I got to stay up and deal with the police.

I’m going to drop Ralph an e-mail in a few minutes just to get the ball rolling. I’m almost certain he will do something to remedy this problem in a timely manor.

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