When Armenia Used to Be a Whole Wide World
My plane landed in Yerevan airport at 1 a.m. It was a sudden trip, a training meant to save me from writing that fearful big story. Strategy proved 100% success. After 2 hours in the country I was moderately drunk, had three new friends and learnt first hand from taxi driver that everything in the world used to be Armenia.
But first things first. Two days before the trip I got the info-sheet that said “In the airport please only go with the person having our sign. We recently had cases where other drivers approached our participants and claimed that they are from our organisation.” Where these fake drivers took them was left to our imaginations. But I’ve been in Armenia before and was prepared for good things. Our driver was a somber-looking gentleman called Mikhail who looked like a spy from a Soviet movie. He collected five tired travelers and without saying much took us to the parking lot.
The fact that we were six in a five-seat car was no problem:
“Yesterday I fit 8 people in this car.” — said Mikhail without a blink, and started the engine. What he got very happy about, though, was the fact that we all spoke Russian. After the usual “oh you poor thing, what is happening in that goddamn Ukraine of yours” (I nod and make a victim face), we switched to the fact that all four of my car neighbors were journalists and loved everything about Armenia. At that point Mikhail’s heart started to melt.
We were driving past Republic Square. In rosy street light it looked almost as impressive as a new sparkling casino down the road.
“Yes, this is new.” — admitted Mikhail, squinting at the golden casino pyramid. — “But the city… It’s older than Rome.” Then he started to speak about centuries before our era, precious obsidian mountains around Yerevan and their ancient alphabet, and that many many centuries ago in the galaxy far far away we were all Armenians together with Belarus, Donbass and Baltic sea.
At some point we stopped by the shop. And while journalists from Moldova went to buy cigarettes and other first-aid medical aid, Mikhail suddenly turned to me and a girl from Belarus and asked which of two we prefer:
“White or Red?”
By the seriousness of Mikhail’s face we couldn’t tell what kind of a sphinx puzzle it was. The Belorussian was the first to unfreeze:
“Red,” — and when everyone returned from the shop we were already drinking delicate and sweet home-made wine. Moldovans were not surprised. With plastic glasses trembling on the road bumps we continued talking about film director Parajanov, and academic Sakharov, who earned a monument in the city center for the single fact that among hundreds of Human Rights petitions he signed there was one in support of Armenians in Karabakh.
“Or maybe his wife was Armenian, don’t remember, but for sure one of these two,” — corrected himself Mikhail.
Then he offered us another choice — ten different fruits, which turned out to be home-made vodka he was able to carry in the hood of his car on top of our five bags. If I were local government I’d give this man a PhD in tourism and keys from the city.
The remarkable contrast between light and heavy, and serious and fun continued to be true about Armenia in the following days. In the mountains of Aghveran every day brought a new kind of natural disaster. I woke up one morning to see that the path in front of my room was snowed down to the ankle.
In the capital city just 1 hour later I walked along a +15 sunny street, and men wore T-shirts. Gigantic like all Soviet Empire ambitions Mashots Avenue, lined with luxury shops and modern sculptures, ended up in a museum of ancient manuscripts.
In front of the museum somebody hung children closes to dry on the window of an ordinary looking two-story house. In one room of the museum two women were speaking about ancient curse. In another room two similarly looking women talked about kitchen appliance and early divorce. On a flee-market down Republic Square people sold one-penny used books next to hundreds of dollars silver necklaces.
Like my local journalist friend said, “when we investigated an oligarch who counterfeits vodka from Ukraine, he called me and said “Yes, we counterfeit. But our quality is still good, so why not.””
And the whole spirit of the city seemed to not care about this sadistic choice of “either/or”. One evening we went to listen to a devastatingly beautiful set of old Armenian folk songs. When we asked the singer-guitarist what the saddest song was about, he answered “well, that one was about trees. Just trees.” Then he went on to play a cover of Irish river-dance.
And like the seminar which I came here to attend was called “The End of Culture?” that cultural contrast of co-existing folk songs of varying nationalities and seriousness put upfront a question of why we are so hung on territorial belonging. I thought of academic Sakharov belonged to Armenia now even though he’d probably never been there. And I kind of preferred at that moment that all our woes together with Donbass went to the state of that mythical prehistoric Armenia that our taxi-driver Mikhail had so colorfully described.
