YEREVAN. – Mari Khngikyan, who moved to Armenia with her family 3 years ago due to the war in Syria, remembers with horror how she reached Armenia from Aleppo.
In an interview with Armeninan News – NEWS.am, the 70-year-old Syrian Armenian woman said that before the war in Syria, she came to Armenian with her family to get Armenian citizenship. At that very time the crisis started, but Mrs Mari and her husband decided to return to Aleppo. On 11 September 2012, they returned to Syria.
100 air passengers were heading to Aleppo from the airport when firing was opened at the cars. 6 people died, and Mrs. Mari’s husband was wounded.
Mari Khngikyan remembers that at about 8:00 pm, when shots were still being fired at their cars, with the help of an Arab they could hardly take out the bodies of the killed and wounded from the cars and take them to hospital, as well as themselves reach Aleppo. The Khngikyans were able to soon return to Armenian with the help of the Armenian authorities.
The family, which has been living in Yerevan for 3 years, isn’t going to return to Aleppo even after the normalization of the situation in Syria. According to Mrs Mari, they are in their homeland, in safety and near the Christians.
The woman’s two daughters are doctors, and her son is an engineer; they all have a job. “It’s safe here. Of course, in Syria we never felt that we lived among Muslims, since we had our own circle and didn’t communicate with the Arabs. They respected us very much for that stance. Each of us had our own house and car, but we didn’t have real flats, and now we have a real flat on out land,” Mari Khngikyan said.
She also noted that women mainly didn’t work in Aleppo. The 70-year-old woman finds it odd that women in Armenia work to bring home the bacon. “We lived very happily there, but left everything and relocated here. Here we are also in our homeland and we don’t complain,” she said.
Mrs Mari believes that the situation in Syria will soon normalize, the war will finish and the Syrian state will again start developing, and they will be able to visit their favorite Aleppo as tourists, go to their native district and see their house in Syria.