“I didn’t want to panic my children so I told them that it was fireworks. My youngest son shook his head and said ‘No, those are bombs. The war is here now.’” https://www.civilnet.am/news/2020/10/25/Eat-it-and-don-t-ask-War-Soup-in-Karabakh/404045

I met Hovig Esmerian &family on a 2018 reporting trip to NK. Visits to their home were a daily routine. They fed me &told stories about leaving war in Syria to settle in then-peaceful NK. Now he’s holding it down in Stepanakert, feeding soldiers &reporters https://bit.ly/3jwkTQ9 

His wife Isabel is one of the most resilient and warm people I’ve ever met. She runs a household of 9 & opened up her own business in NK - the restaurant now being used to feed anyone that turns up even as Stepanakert faces shelling https://bit.ly/34qMspN 

She told me 2 years ago that what she loves most about living in NK is the freedom her children enjoy, that they could run around by themselves without fear something will happen. “Here, if I'm late, all the neighbors on this street, they'll take care of my children," she told me

Then when I visited her again last year, to eat at her newly opened restaurant, she called me back into the kitchen & said she had something serious to discuss. She asked what her 13-year-old daughter Arpi can do to start preparing for college abroad, to study international law

Hovig & bro opened a business in NK too, which they said is rare there. “This was a country of war. People lost a lot of things.They're afraid to take risks because they already don't have much money. If they take a risk on top of it, & don't succeed, they're going to go hungry."

Hovig & his bro Vrej bought & cultivated land destroyed in the 90s war. They now own a beautiful orchard populated w/ fruit trees they brought from Syria. They literally trucked 4,500 trees & drove them through war-torn Syria, past ISIS checkpoints.

The mines & trenches from the 1st war ruined a lot of farmland in NK. @HALO_NK has been working for years to clear mines to make land usable again & to restore communities. Now they’re forced to restart that work as war wages https://bit.ly/3ornYER 

Read more about the Esmerian's and the work of the Halo Trust (circa 2018) here: https://bit.ly/3kxhNwC