A letter to someone who will never read it

Dear Telmuran,

I’m writing to you, knowing very well you may never read this letter. So much time has passed since we met. Years have gone by, yet I remember every day we spent together and I’m sure you do too.

Do you remember how we met? To be honest, I don’t any more, but it’s probably not that important. What’s much more important is the fact that there is something for us to remember. I recall I saw an advert for a youth programme, there was a course for young people in the conflict zone. The idea was for the participants to spend a few days living together, talking about their feelings, their emotions and experiences.

I remember how easily we could talk to each other right from the start. We were both amazed to find out how much we had in common. I saw myself in you — it was the first time I had seen so much of myself in someone else. I don’t mean that we had similar personalities, more that the way we saw the world was almost exactly the same, we believed in the same ideals, we had exactly the same convictions.

Do you remember how you persuaded me to play table football that first time? I’d never played before. We started playing every day, every spare minute and we became the unbeatable pair.

The other people in the group were kind of scared to play with us, because we were almost impossible to beat. From that day on we were always together, we talked about everything – except the borders and hatred.

I remember one time we went out of the hotel for a walk around the city. On the way back we started singing our traditional songs – you in your language, me in mine. I still remember how it sounded, the same song in two different languages, from the mouths of two people from different countries. We crossed those borders, brought them down, smashed that chain of hatred which had bound us before we were even born.

Living so close and yet so far from each other, we only got those few days to talk together, in that city far away from both our homes.

Do you remember how we sat on the roof on the last day, looking at the stars and not saying anything? All our words and thoughts gave way to silence, the sky and the stars. When it was time for you to catch your plane, we had one last game of table football. Everyone was asleep. It was just us, just you and me, the unbeatable pair, who stayed awake and played our last game of table football, saying goodbye to one another without saying a word. I thought it was such a beautiful and moving way to part.

We didn’t make promises to each other about meeting again. We didn’t make any promises about the future. But now I want to make you a promise: we will meet again, sit on the roof again and talk about us, our emotions and experiences, our goals. And we’ll sing our national songs in different languages together. I promise you that one day we, the Unbeatables, will cross those borders and destroy them.

I’m sure we’ll meet again. And when we do, we won’t say ‘goodbye’, we’ll say ‘see you soon’.

Your friend Anna Sargsyan

Pseudonyms have been used to protect the safety of the writer and recipient of the letter.

Unheard Voices is part of International Alert’s work on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is the result of work produced with journalists from societies affected by the conflict and their collaborative efforts to highlight its effects on the daily lives of people living in the conditions of ‘no war, no peace’. The purpose is to ensure their voices are heard both at home, in their own societies and on the other side of the conflict divide, allowing readers to see the real faces hidden behind the images of ‘the enemy’.

This project is funded by the European Union as part of the European Partnership for the Peaceful Settlement of the Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (EPNK).

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