The Rail Station Longing For Its Trains
Three kilometres separate Armenia’s Akhuryan railway station from Turkey’s Doğukapı, yet no trains have traveled between them for 23 years. In 1993, following the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh, the border was sealed and the tracks connecting Guymri and Kars have long since gone silent.
Martin Gevorgyan was 26 when he started working at Akhuryan in 1979. When he left 34 years later, the station which had been at the crossroad between East and West since 1898 was no longer the same. Day after day, year after year, he carried out his duties, wearing his dark blue uniform with shiny golden pins, waiting for a train that never came.