Ongoing Projects: Artsakh: Between War and Peace: NKRWP_024

Nineteen-year-old Arman Karapetyan was in an ambulance helping transport the injured members of his squadron to safety when they were struck by a missile. “For ten seconds, there was nothing but fire,” he recalls. “The doors wouldn’t open. Then we were able to get out through the window.”

Due to the severity of his burns, Arman was moved to the National Burn Center in Yerevan, where doctors have performed multiple skin grafts with limited success. This and other indications, including the appearance of phosphorescent blue-green specks under a Wood’s lamp, lead doctors to believe that Arman’s burns may have been caused by white phosphorus. “Whatever it is, it’s still burning him,” says Hamlet, who has barely left his son’s bedside. “It just won’t heal.”

Arman doesn’t know how long his treatment will take or how fully he can expect to recover. When asked what he wishes he could do right now, he looks off in the distance: “I want to run.”