“I was in a tramway when the earthquake hit,” a neighbor lady said. “I didn’t feel anything. When I got home, my husband said our 6-month-old baby boy had been crying uncontrollably, just before the earthquake hit. I believe he felt something, something older people, who have lost touch with nature, can't feel.”

Television stations showed films of people sitting next to fires, trying to stay warm, as others tried to move slabs of cement or crumbled walls in hopes of finding their family members or friends alive. Corpses were being pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings. People were lighting candles in churches, praying, crying, wondering why....

Our neighbor continued: “At the time, I wondered if I’d ever smile again. Then things got worse. The war started, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Our people were hungry and cold. There was no food. Young women, who were children at the time, often have trouble bearing children. One million Armenians left the country, to me the same as a genocide. Remembering all this, I think of one thing, that our government was selling electricity to Turkey, supposedly to be able to buy weapons. I don’t believe that, because at the same time they were selling off the country, the factories, everything. That’s why I hate Levon, and always will.”