It was an exodus - people squeezed on trucks and buses, piled suitcases on horse-pulled carts, and carried children. In the early 1990s, as the Soviet Union was faltering, hundreds of thousands fled the armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno Karabakh: communities were driven away from their homes, and, as the conflict remains still unresolved, most still live in a limbo as they cannot return.

The war, which claimed over 30,000 lives by the time the 1994 ceasefire was agreed, produced over 600,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) and some 250,000 ethnic Azeri refugees from Armenia according to figures from the UN Refugee Agency. Since 1993 the Azerbaijani government, with the support of international organizations, has allocated 6.2 billion Azerbaijani manat (USD 3.65 billion as of 2018 rate) for the social needs of IDPs and refugees, including subsidies for food, utilities and housing allocation as well as a monthly allowance of up to 36 Azerbaijani manat per person (USD 21).

Poverty, however, is dire among the displaced population and housing is critical for many. Evacuees settled anywhere they could find as a refuge -- schools, hospitals, kindergartens, libraries, abandoned public baths, crumbling factories, deserted libraries. They were supposed to be temporary shelters, yet over 25 years later, for many these non-houses have become permanent dwellings.

The Stage

Vali Akbarov’s life is a stage. Literally. The 65-year-old amateur folk singer had never thought that one day the wrecked stage of an abandoned dom kultury, house of culture, would become his home. In April 1993 his native town of Kalbajar fell to the Armenian forces, pushing him on a journey that took his family first to Tartar, then to Sumgayit and, in 1995, to Nagharakhana, a village in the municipality of Shamakhi, about 122 kilometers west of the capital Baku. Once there, they walked into the deserted house of culture of Soviet memory.

“Our immediate focus was our kids’ education,” explains the father of four children, now between 33 and 42 years of age. “We overcame hardship, in poverty. The displacement took so much from us.”

The family survives with the 36 manat of IDP allowance plus 140 manat of pension (USD 82) that Akbarov receives. Only two sons still live with them and financial hardships mean that Akbarov has been unable to support him to get married.

The building has no heating, no toilet and curtains are used to create the different living areas - the kitchen is in the parterre, the dining table on the stage. Garbage and wood collected from the forest used to heat the place, with little result.

“It is cold here, we keep our coats on as it feels like winter for nine months of the year. We cook where the audience used to sit, and then we eat on the stage. Was life like this in Kalbajar? Leaving your native place behind is not a good thing at all. I do not even wish it to my enemy.”

The dream to return to their homes is what keeps Akbarova going, she says.

“We are not in a foreign country, Shamakhi is also ours, but Kalbajar was our homeland. We lost so much, but I would endure all these again if I could see Kalbajar again one day.”