Author Hasmik Hakobyan
Gevorg Javakhyan: I would love to introduce him today as an artist, an actor, a soldier of the Armenian army, but he lived only 19 years.
Gevorg would have turned 20 years old today, just 20 years old.
On 3 May 2001, a blue-eyed baby boy, beautiful like an angel, was born to the Javakhyan family. His mother’s dream came true. Narine Aleksanyan had lost her father one month before her son’s birth and Gevorg gave her the strength to live.
The mother says that he was a lively and cheerful child. Gevorg had a speech delay, starting to speak at the age of four. Every day he listened to his mother, a Russian teacher, and immediately started speaking Russian.
Gevorg attended School No. 27 after Derenik Demirchyan in their district, where his sister was studying. Mrs. Narine recalls how hard it was for the naughty boy to sit quietly at school classes for 45 minutes, but later he got to love school, his classmates and teachers. He was an active participant in all the events, inspiring his friends and being inspired by everything good.
“He started painting from a young age, but, interestingly, he did not use colors. He mainly painted with a pencil. I took him to a painting club, but he only attended two classes. During the class, when the teacher was showing him how and what to do, he whispered in my ear, “Tell her not to tell me how to draw.” And after that he refused to attend paint classes,” Mrs. Narine tells Panorama.am in an interview.
She now looks more closely at her son’s adolescence paintings and is convinced that the boy really had a knack for painting.
I silently listen to her while she tells me about her son, remembering every single episode of his life, and as if on a film screen, I see that bright, mischievous child, the dreamy teenager and the smart young man.
“I often forbade Gevorg to go down to the yard. I always wanted my son to be by my side; wherever we went I held his hand with a tight grip. I did not understand then what such a firm holding of the hand meant. Now I desperately miss those moments, I want to hold my son’s hand tightly again and never let him go,” the mother says.
Gevorg mainly opened up to his mother, constantly stating that he would become a famous person. Every time her mother smiled or joked after those claims, he said angrily, “You don’t believe it, right?”
“Soon you will hear about me…”
One day before joining the army, he shared a photo on his Instagram page and wrote: “I do not want to share my plans, I would only like to say that soon you will hear my name even louder …” We all really heard Gevorg’s name much louder than he thought.
Analyzing that post today, the soldier’s mother says that her son would not write anything just like that, he wanted to be a hero, and it is no accident that during the 2020 war, when the commander tried to hold him back from performing a combat task, Gevorg told him, “Don’t you want me to become a hero?”
Gevorg was engaged in beatboxing and was among the first members of the Beatbox Association, participating in concerts. Although it seemed a strange hobby to his parents, he wanted to archive progress in that field. He had already gained fame among teenagers. This is how he was noticed and offered to act in the sitcoms “Stone Age” and later “Golden School”.
The mother talks about Gevorg’s childhood, then about his adolescence, starting from his mischievous deeds, parodies of relatives, teachers and friends to jokes
She says that sometimes she heard the loud laughter of her neighbors at home and immediately realized that Gevorg had visited them. “His enthusiasm had no limits, he lived every single day of his life as if it were his last day. He even spent the whole money he earned during the filming in one day to please his family with gifts.
“I did not take seriously the proposal for him to appear on the sitcoms, and when we saw that his role was a supporting one, the whole family joked about it, but he always retorted, saying that the journey to fame starts with small steps. And he kept saying, “Don’t you believe that I will become famous?” It did happen, but on the battlefield,” the mother says with pain in her heart.
Narine recalls her once happy family and sighs heavily: “After all, I imagined our and our children’s live in a different way.” She flips through her large archive and at the same time wonders why she filmed every single episode related to her son. She even filmed the family gatherings in the evening and their conversations.
The parents tried not to pamper their son too much, but his sister always “gave him wings”. “Naturally, I was worried, I tried not to give him a lot of pocket money so that he could concentrate on school classes, but his sister always secretly gave him money so that her brother did not need anything,” Mrs. Narine says, adding she dreamed of her children always having each other’s back and being completely devoted to each other.
Every day she watches a video of his son’s “Last Bell” celebration. And here Gevorg was also in the lead role. With tears in her eyes, she watches several times a day the dance of her son and his close friend, Manvel, noting it was their last dance. Manvel Javadyan was killed in Martuni on November 7. Another classmate of the boys, Zhora Asatryan, also died in Martuni on November 5. Three classmates, three bright personalities, who still had a lot to do…
His flight was in a completely different direction, far away from me
Gevorg was drafted into the army on July 11, 2019. At first he served in Armavir, continuing his service in Artsakh six months later. He was one of the tankmen of the tank brigade of Ivanyan (Khojalu) of the Askeran region and the gunner operator of the tank.
The service made joke-loving Gevorg more serious, but he was always in a good mood. Although he liked to be in the spotlight all the time, he did not tell his fellow soldiers that he had appeared on sitcoms. They somehow accidentally saw an episode from the “Golden School” and learned that their comrade-in-arms was also an actor and intended to continue his actor’s career.
When Gevorg moved from Armavir to Artsakh to continue his military service, his parents could not visit their son due to the coronavirus restrictions. On September 20, Gevorg could not attend the wedding ceremony of his sister, Seda, due to the strict regime also associated with coronavirus. The sister regrets that on this significant day from her, an important person in her life, her brother, was not by her side.
Gevorg’s parents last saw him on January 9, 2020. Mrs. Narine recalls that she hugged her son so tightly while seeing him off and it was so difficult for the mother to say goodbye to her son that the neighbors said as if she was seeing him off to the frontline.
“During his service, I could hardly breathe, I could not stand it, I could not do anything without Gevorg. Although I understood that it was wrong, but I still continued to worry about him. I decided that after his demobilization, I would give him more freedom, I would not make any comments on any of his moves. In fact, this is how it happened. His flight was in a completely different direction, very far away from me,” the mother says.
Pray for all soldiers…
When the war broke out, Gevorg called his parents twice a day, but did not say anything. “He did not say where they were, he answered all questions evasively and hid everything from me. In general, he became very secretive during the military service, especially during the war.
“Every time he called, he said: ‘I’ll give my life for you.’ I constantly scolded him for saying that, while he answered: ‘Mom, dear, nothing will happen to me, you will see how good everything is going to be’,” says Gevorg’s mother.
During the war, he called friends, acquaintances and even teachers. One of Gevorg’s classmates was wounded during fierce battles, he found out about this on the battlefield and told his mother to visit him in the hospital. “He even thought about it,” she adds.
Gevorg’s sister, Seda, recalls that once in a conversation with her brother, she said that she prayed for him every day, but Gevorg urged her to pray not only for him, but also for all soldiers.
The last time Gevorg spoke with his parents was on October 23, promising his mother that he would call in the morning, but the call never came. The family was alarmed.
On October 25, one of his acquaintances called Sede and said that Gevorg was wounded and was being transferred to Yerevan. Gevorg had been wounded on the previous day, October 24.
After looking for him in various hospitals, they finally found Gevorg. Due to the numerous injuries, the sister did not recognize her brother, but the mother recognized her son immediately. Neither experienced doctors nor mother’s prayers could save Gevorg’s life and on 28 October his heart stopped beating.
After the death of their son, the parents learned that his tank battalion was carrying out a special operation. Gunner operator Gevorg heroically fought against the enemy on the battlefield. After October 20, his tank was in the Azerbaijani target and on October 24, at 11:30pm, an enemy UAV struck the tank, which was not performing any task at that moment. Gevorg and his fellow soldiers were standing next to the tank at the moment. After the drone strike, one of the soldiers died on the spot, while Gevorg and another of his fellow soldiers were seriously injured.
Gevorg’s sister says with pain in her soul that on 23 October her brother called her husband and asked him to take care of his sister and family if something happened to him. “He must have felt something,” she says.
All this time, Gevorg’s father, just like all men, Grigor, does not participate in the conversation, experiencing his grief inside. How many plans he had with his son, and they all remained unfulfilled…
Now the life of the Javakhyan family members have completely changed. They start and end every single day at the Yerablur Military Pantheon where their son is buried.
The Javakhyan family is one of thousands of families whose life was divided into “before” and “after” the war. The duty of each of us is to stand with them and not to leave them alone with this harsh reality. Not only we, but also our future generations should know and glorify them and always remember what these young men sacrificed their lives for.
Incidentally, Gevorg Javakhyan was posthumously awarded with “For Bravery” medal.
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