Hard Questions

As I watch the Armenian and Azerbaijani grandmothers

mourn the loss of their children and grandchildren,

I pose these questions.

Azerbaijanis need to ask themselves:

Why do the Armenians of Karabakh fear

pogroms and genocide by the Azerbaijani government?

What happened to the Armenian cemeteries and cross-stones

in the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhechevan?

Why did an Azerbaijani military officer brutally kill an Armenian officer

at a NATO educational meeting in Hungary?

Why did the Azerbaijani government promote the officer

upon his return to Baku?

At the same time,

Armenians need to ask themselves:

Where is the Muslim minority’s 20% of Karabakh’s former population?

Where are the hundreds of thousands of displaced Azerbaijani refugees

 who once inhabited the lands surrounding Nagorno Karabakh?

When Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders pose these hard questions,

maybe the long and difficult peace process can really commence.

In the meantime,

they need to listen to the wailing voices of grandmothers on both sides.

Alan Whitehorn

November 1, 2020

Alan Whitehorn is an Armenian Canadian poet and professor emeritus of political science.