
Marine Martirosyan
Residents of Bardzruni village in Armenia’s Vayots Dzor Province say that they are known in the neighboring villages as "chatterboxes", and it won’t take long for us to make sure of it.
"Well, residents of all villagesshould have nicknames. Some are said are to be killing the flies, the others - gnawing bones, and we are known as chatterboxes. But, we are very hard-working people, " says 79-year-old Armenak Melkonyan, one of the village elders.
Bella, his daughter-in-law, jokes that the Melkonyans are known as the “family of foxes” in the village. Armenak says that her villagers are “dogs”, instead.
"Well, we are known as ‘bone gnawers’,” corrects Bella.
“I tried to be more intelligent,” says Armenak, and all of us laugh.
"I come from village of Zaritap. There’s a legendthat when someone died in Zaritap during the war, he was buried somewhere. When the villagers wanted to remove his corpse to bury him elsewhere, they found a dog skeleton instead. That’s where the nickname ‘bone gnawer’ comes,” explains Bella.
Armenak has an explanation of the roots of “fox family”.
In 1828, three brothers - Vardan, Stepan and Melkon - together with two other people, went to Nakhijevan from the Khoy-Salmast region in Persian Armenia’s territory. A year after that, they moved to the current territory of Armenia.
One brother settled down in Zaritap, the other - in Yeghegnadzor, and Vardan, the great grandfather of Armenak Melkonyan, in Bardzruni. As soon as they reached Bardzruni, Vardan picked a handful of soil and smelled it, saying that it smelled of Salmast, so he would settle down there. One his companions, seeing this, called Vardan “a fox”.
Armenak says there are two rivers in the village, Jraghats (“jraghats” means “mill” in Armenian) and Shresh. The first one is named after numerous mills in Bardzruni, and the second is named after the plant shresh (Eremurus) that is widespread here.
This river is also attractive for its stones with the pictures of animals. Armenak calls it "an open-air museum."
The old village was on the opposite bank of Jraghats River. After an earthquake in 1884, the residents moved to the present-day territory.
"Our village has a rich history. The distance between the old and new villages is around 5 km. There used to livein a khan here, and the village was called Sultanbek,” says Armenak.
Armenak was born and raised here. He says there were around 360 households in the village in the 1930s, but now it's different. People leave the village. The old man says that 28 years of independence should have been enough for developing and enriching the country.
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