It was a beautiful house – 2 storeys – with grape vines that climbed over the balconies.... Address? We didn’t have an address; everybody knew our house near the river. There was a big garden with apple, pear and plum trees, and potatoes.... my father loved boiled potatoes, and rice soup.... One of the apple trees was very small; every year it had just 3 apples, and we were three children. The apples smelled of honeydew melons and one day I took a bite out of one of them, but I left it on the tree; my father asked, ‘Why didn’t you pick it?’Yasemen Hasanova’s eyes are bright with the memories of her childhood home. She tells of the wonderful views from the upstairs window, of gazing out at the town up on the heights in the distance – that town’s lights against the night sky were a thing of wonder to a child. They often went up there in her father’s yellow Moskvich to take long walks. It was difficult to walk anywhere in our town. My father had so many friends and was very sociable; he loved to talk. Whenever we had to go somewhere my mother asked him not to stop and talk, or we would never get there.
