Daughter-Father Find Each Other After 27 Years

Her mother had told her 2-year passionate affair with Manvel ended in 1980 as his army service finished and Manvel had to return to his fatherland.

“My mother learned she was pregnant and told my father, but he could not stay. He had tried to convince my mother to come to Armenia with him, but my mother did not want to leave Estonia,” says Anna-Kaisa. “But they managed to decide my name; mother wanted to call me Kaisa and father wanted me to be called Anna. That is why I have two names now.”

Anna Khachikyan or Kaisa Oderma was born months after Manvel’s departure. She recalls her mother used to talk with him on phone once in several years before she turned 10, but the years and distance finally separated them.

“17 years past since their last conversation, and we had no connection. It was the period of economic hardships for both Armenia and Estonia, people fought just to survive leave alone the chance for a father or daughter to look for each other,” says Anna-Kaisa, who had been planning to come to Armenia every year, but never managed until last month – arriving on April 24, Genocide Recognition Day.

“I thought it over and over to come or not to come. On the one side I wanted to find my roots, on the other, I thought of what could happen. He might have another life now, he might have family, children, what if I came and intruded in their life, disturbed their family ease and comfort,” Anna-Kaisa shares her thoughts, who, despite her background of a psychologist needed one for herself.

After visiting Yerevan, according to the plan, the Estonian tourists left for Tbilisi. And despite the road back from Tbilisi was hard and exhausting it turned to be fatal for finding Manvel Khachikyan.

“One of the Armenian border guards asked us on the way back from Tbilisi where do we come from and why were we returning to Armenia. I told him that I had come to find my father,” says Anna-Kaisa.

It turned out that the border guard was himself from Noyemberyan. He asked Anna-Kaisa’s phone number, her father’s contacts and started the work as if she were an old friend. In a couple of days he called to say he’d found Manvel.

“I can’t tell what was going on with me. All my feelings messed up, I couldn’t understand anything,” recalls Anna, who hurried to Noyemberyan with her friends and settled in one of the neighboring hotels, where she would meet her father. She says she was not ready to go to Manvel’s home.

“The border guard said he had prepared my father, so he has to be quite now already. But all the same our meeting was very-very exciting,” recalls Anna who looked for a meeting with her father with her heart trembling.

She tells like a memory how her father came, entered the room excited, put his hands on her shoulders and asked: “Anna?” Hearing the answer, he embraced her and cried.

“He then began restlessly walking in the room. I was excited as well, and couldn’t recall anything later; I remember everything based on my friends’ story,” says Anna, whose newly found father encouraged her and her friends to move to his house immediately, where a warm hospitality and Armenian table waited for the guests expected for 27 years.

Anna learned only in her father’s home he is divorced, and that she has two brothers and a sister, with only one of them living with the father in Noyemberyan. His ex-wife and the rest of the children came to Noyemberyan as soon as they learned about Anna’s visit.

“My brothers met me warmly. We talked with my youngest brother Tigran who knew neither Russian (Anna’s first language), nor English for hours trying to make each other understand what we meant… and we managed, you know, I suppose it was the blood talking,” tells Anna with tears in her eyes. She also managed to visit her grandparents living in a village on a slope of a mountain. And they, happy with finding a new granddaughter in their last years encouraged her to stay with them.

History repeated for Anna and her father. This time, it was she who had to leave – to return to her mother and to obligations in Estonia.

“The moment to say good-bye came in several days… it was hard and difficult, and we said good-bye almost crying, embraced, exchanged all possible contacts,” Anna Khachikyan says. “Most importantly, we promised to find a way to live together for at least some while.”

Source: By ArmeniaNow.com, Copyright, All Rights Reserved