We memorialize Aladdin Huseynov in old.pressklub.az's "The Lost ones" project. Remembered by his mother Asya Huseynova and brother Valaddin Huseynov:

- My brother was so happy he was officially born on the Republic Day, May 28, 1968.

- But that is not true. Aladdin was born on September 28. We were living in Baku. My mother asked me to come to Gafan when he was about to be born, so she could keep an eye on him. Thus, Aladdin was born in Gafan. When my mother went to collect the documents, she said that "he was born on the 28th of the month". They thought she meant "month" as in "May" and wrote that... Before Aladdin, I had a son and a daughter, after him I had a daughter, and then a son again. Three sons, all three fought in Karabakh, along with my daughter's husband. She also had two children...

- In general, our family is very patriotic. My grandfather Mehdi played a major role in our upbringing and thinking. My grandfather lived for 120 years. He was born in 1852 and died in 1973. He had seen two world wars, he even knew Gachaq Nabi... but he hated the Soviet Union...

- My children are Turk oriented. So was their late father. To be honest, I learned to love my country from my husband. I learned from him what a nation means...

- Back in the 70s, when we went to Gafan, my father showed us the border and said that the other side of the barbed wire is also Azerbaijan. Aladdin and I were dumbfounded, how could both this and the other side of Araz be Azerbaijan? Then we saw that one person on this side and another person on the other side were shouting to each other in Azerbaijani. Aladdin and I understood Azerbaijanism then...

- Aladdin's greatest dream was a united and whole Azerbaijan! He had very good sculpting and painting skills. Back in 1985-1987, he wished to build a statue of Babek in place of Kirov's statue. And in Guneshli, a statue of Koroghlu with a large sword in his hand...

- He loved literature and poetry. He subscribed to 100 volumes of World Literature. He was thinking of making a statue of all the authors. Originally started with Homer, but was unable to continue…

- The small bust of Homer was my son’s first handiwork... I keep it to this day. He had painted a perfect painting on the balcony door. That picture was too small in the book, so he had to enlarge it. He painted a mother, a child in her arms and the another by her feet... However, he didn't draw the woman’s face like it was in the book... It was the face of the girl she loved who was his classmate...

- Honestly, Aladdin was the smartest among us. The least talkative, and the most knowing, the wisest. Also very handsome... I'm a historian, but by God, Aladdin knew history better than I did. He loved literature. At that time, he used to come and go to the "Vatan" Society a lot. Ramiz Rovshan and Mammad Araz were my brother's favorite poets.

- He studied in the same class with the writer Fakhri Uğurlu, they were close friends...

- They were like brothers; he wasn’t even that close with us. Agha Lachinli always said that he owed a lot to Aladdin because he had a positive influence on Fakhri.

- After finishing school, he served in Ukraine, he was part of a tank crew. After returning, he worked on the railways and wanted to study painting. But no such luck...

- My younger brother was in military service, he fought in Fuzuli. I was a history teacher, we lived in a rented house. My son Tural was barely a year old and our daughter was going to be born. The summer of 1992 had just begun, a mother who lost four sons in the war was shown on television. I don't remember her name exactly; it was either Gultekin or Gulchohra. She was armed and fighting... I thought “I am a man, why should I just sit at home? As a teacher, what am I going to say to the children tomorrow?” So I got up and went to the military commissariat. It was June 12, I called home and said I was going to the frontlines... I fought in the 708th military unit until school started. We were in Aghdam, intense firefights were taking place towards Nakhchivanik, Aranzemin, Pirjamal, Papravand, Janyatag, Gulyatag...

- In those days, his father told Aladdin “Your brothers are fighting, why are you at home?” He replied “I will go whenever the government calls for me. They haven’t called yet.” In November 1992, he was summoned by the military commissariat, so he left…

- He was a tank operator in Vagif Jabbarov’s battalion in Lachin, Gulabird. Cousin was an artillery commander in Gubadli, he wanted to bring Aladdin in. He prepared all the documents, but Aladdin said “I am staying here. I have dismantled 4 Armenian tanks and 4 Azerbaijani tanks and put them together to make 8 tanks. I am the commander of these tanks I have built, I am not going anywhere.” So, he was with his cousin only on paper, but stayed behind in Vagif's group...

- He came back for a vacation in the summer. He brought a notebook with him in which he wrote the home addresses and phone numbers of his friends... He also wrote down his memories... He was not a very talkative child, but when he came, he asked me to cook pilaf... He loved pilaf...

- Then I asked Ali, “Have you ever killed an Armenian?” He said no... I was surprised, he asked me the same question. I said, “Of course I did! It happened so many times during battles that... He cut me off saying that he had the opportunity, but never pulled the trigger. He was very religious, he said, “Humans are also creations of God... I cannot kill a person.”

- That’s the kind of man my son was... God only knows what happened to a son like him...

- It was September 23, 1993. I came back from the 40th day funeral of my aunt's daughter who died of cancer. I was told at home that my friend passed away. I went to his funeral... I returned heartbroken and as soon as I got home, my cousin’s husband came and asked about Aladdin. We said there were no news, then he started crying... "Aladdin burned with the tank," he said...

- Turns out, my sister-in-law's son hid it from us, told his uncle and he came to tell us...

- As soon as we received the news, my father and I immediately left. It turned out that the incident happened on August 31, the day Gubadli was occupied. Also on my son Tural's birthday...

- Since then, we do not celebrate my grandson's birthday.

- There were three people in Aladdin's tank. They saw a tank with an Azerbaijani flag in Bala Soltanli village of Gubadli and approached it. It was apparently an Armenian tank. According to his fellow soldiers, the driver got off and ran into the forest, while Aladdin and the other soldier were captured. They said that it was impossible to get closer, they were watching from afar with binoculars. They saw the captives being head banged against the tank and being held at gunpoint...

- My sister's children had many friends in Gafan, they tried to establish contact. We hoped that maybe they would find him among the prisoners... We didn’t receive any news.

- My father and I went to the Red Cross many times. He did not receive official confirmation that Aladdin was in captivity. You know, the Armenians were extremely cruel, I don't believe that they would keep the prisoners alive. I’m hoping, as mass graves are found in the territories freed from occupation that we will finally receive some news. But there is always a voice inside me hoping that maybe he would come back...

- No, son, don’t wait... I saw him in my dream. Even before the news came, I dreamed that he entered a thorny place. The thorns were very big, black, dense... They kept stinging my son... I said “Son, why did you go there, don't you see those thorns? Who would even go there?” I suddenly got up to find him sound asleep by my side in his soldier uniform. He wouldn’t wake up and was unnaturally large.  Seeing someone in such a large form in a dream is not a good sign... You know, they once showed it on the ANS channel... Armenians laid our wounded soldiers on the ground and drove a tank over them. One of the wounded looked like my son. I saw it with my own eyes on TV. I was a complete mess that day...

- Look at what happened to a man who could not even fire at the enemy in war...

- He was such a sensitive and attentive person that... When I got a little sick, would clean up the whole house... No other woman was even that neat. He would make the house as neat as a flower just because his mother was sick...

- We both worked, I spent my salary on myself, but he gave it to my mother so she could buy whatever she wanted...

- Being the mother I am, I was saving up for him. I was making wedding preparations. I also bought jewelry. I still keep everything I had bought in Aladdin’s name. All the gifts I bought for the bride, Aladdin's suit and shirt, I will keep them until my last breath.

Vusala Mammadova