They came by group in trucks; a few people owned one, but most rented them.

“Some villagers would rent one truck and offer to transport their neighbors’ belongings,” recalls Michael Gharibyan, 48. “A few Azerbaijanis helped us get to Armenia, so that we were safe on the way here.”

As tensions over Nagorno Karabakh broke into a full-fledged conflict in the late 1980s, Armenians living in Azerbaijan fled to Armenia while Azerbaijanis in Armenia moved to Azerbaijan. Many families exchanged houses and properties.

Originally from Mirzik, Azerbaijan, Gharibyan left in1988and resettled a few miles away, just over the administrative border with Armenia, in Jil. As he headed west, hundreds of Azerbaijanis from Jil headed east to Azerbaijan. Neither the Armenians nor the Azerbaijanis ever returned to their original homes.

Jil sits on the northeastern bank of Lake Sevan, in a narrow strip of land squeezed between the water and the Sevan mountains.. Until 1988, Jil was mainly a village populated by Azerbaijanis. The Armenians who settled there were mostly from Azerbaijan’s Dashkasan, Shamkhir, and Khanlar (now Goygol) regions.