We were dropped off at Stepanakert, at a homespun hostel without a name; I’ll call it Seda’s Hostel, after Seda Babayan, the twinkly-eyed 80-year-old grandmother who runs the place. (To reserve, call 374-47-94-13-48 and hope you get an English-speaking grandchild.) The three of us were the only guests, and she charged us a total of 8,000 drams to share a brightly painted but underheated dorm room.

Then it was off to meet Sonya’s friends, most notably Armond Tahmazian, a talented jewelry-maker who came from Iran in 1999, met his wife (an Australian-Armenian) here, and stayed. Armond welcomed us into his shop, Nereni Arts and Crafts, where he sells his own jewelry, the work of local artists and CDs by Armenian singers, including Sonya. Not for sale: the wooden bellows camera he said was the “first camera in Stepanakert” (How did he know? “It’s a small town.”) and an odd contraption that looked to me like a stubby World War I howitzer but turned out to be a rusty German sausage stuffer.

Armond served us his own homemade grape vodka, with small chunks of pickled beet as chasers. As Sonya translated, I quickly picked up on two elements of his personality. First, a wry humor. “There is a water shortage in Karabakh,” he said. “The main source of hydration is vodka.” Second, a deep sense of patriotism, conveyed in emotional soliloquies about the war. “To the boys,” he toasted at the end of one.

He would have taken care of us for the entirety of our trip, but I wanted us to escape and see the town on our own. So we went to Evita Café, a trailer on Alex Manukyan Street with a couple of tables stuffed inside, like a cross between a diner and food truck. I got to try the epitome of Karabakh cuisine: zhingyalov hats, paper-thin flatbread folded over a kaleidoscopic variety of greens, and toasted on a griddle. The cook, who is also an owner, told us there were 11 greens in all: coriander, spring onion, spinach, lamb’s lettuce, beetroot leaf, dill, wild tulip leaf, three others Sonya couldn’t translate and one she could translate only literally, as “old person’s bellybutton.” The resulting battle on my taste buds ended in a surprising harmony.

On Sunday after a stop at the market (sour “fruit rollups” called chir, 300 dram and highly recommended), we headed to Shushi, a partly walled hilltop city that has seen plenty of sieges in its time, most recently its capture by the Armenians in 1992, a key and still celebrated victory of the war. (The Azerbaijanis refer to the town as Shusha; I am using Armenian names here, since they are the ones travelers are most likely to encounter.) The plan was to see the town and then have Sonya’s friend Sevak, who lives between Shushi and his village across Karkak Canyon, Arkateli, lead us on a hike.