Future stories

Story by Artavazd Yeghiazaryan
Translated by Nazareth Seferian
Illustration by William Karapetyan
In cooperation with the European Union Delegation to Armenia

During the year, various events take over the city. At a certain moment, usually at the end of May, it is time for the so-called Final Bell, the last day of school — for one or two days, all over town you can see happy former high schoolers as well as their emotional parents and teachers, everyone acting loud and joyful. During March, there is at least one week when Yerevan seems to be lit up by a neon sign that says “Novruz” and thousands of Iranian tourists enjoy their New Year celebrations in the Armenian capital. In July, there is a single day — but it is a very impressive and wet one — when the city is taken over by Vardavar, the water festival. In December, it is time for New Year’s helter-skelter and the ham as the centerpiece.

“Dad, maybe it isn’t worth it. Why do we need a pork leg?” Lilith asked, full of hope, as she and her father walked around the market.

She had long since stopped taking those unnecessarily abundant New Year meals seriously, and had actually stopped eating meat completely. And the pandemonium got on her nerves particularly during this holiday season, given the sunny and almost spring-like weather they were having. It was like people did not want to enjoy the sun, but rather felt the need to force themselves to focus on the cold winter. Lilith tried, but Armen Asatryan (like many others past the age of fifty) found it very difficult to give up old traditions. Buying a pork leg and cooking it at the last minute on December 31 was one of them.

“You simply don’t understand, honey. If we don’t have a pork leg at the table during dinner, it will upset me,” he said to her, taking the three kilograms of oranges the shopkeeper was giving him. “So we have to buy a pork leg.”

Lilith sighed with dissatisfaction.

“But there’s no need to help me with it, because I’m having a pork leg delivered to us directly from a village. You go ahead and run your errands.”

Lilith brightened, kissed her father and ran in the direction of Gazebo. She had to convince Arman to plan a holiday party there. Lilith wanted to celebrate the New Year there with her friends. She did not want to wander around the pubs in the city centre, where the constant puffing of smoke would mean there was no air to breathe.

***

“Have you bought all your presents?” Lilith asked Armine and Anahit, slurping her second cup of coffee at Gazebo. Arman had not yet come, so Lilith, Anahit and Armine were calmly sipping their coffee while they waited, “As always, I’ve only just started to think about them.”

“I’m only getting Armen a present, but it hasn’t arrived yet from France,” Anahit sighed, “It’ll be so embarrassing if it doesn’t make it in time!”

“I’m taking it easy this year,” Armine — who taught media literacy at TUMO and had spent the previous month in Gyumri and was going to Dilijan in January — said proudly. “The New Year is a good holiday, but the only way to enjoy it is to avoid the stress of running around for days and weeks, hunting for presents and food for the New Year meal. I’m just going to party!”

“Aren’t you Armenian?” Lilith asked, pretending to be an angry neighbour and arching her eyebrows. “Who’s going to wrap those dolma leaves? Aren’t you going to make three hundred blinchiks?”

The three of them laughed.

“The times, they are a changin! Armenian women will soon change in tune with those times,” Armine predicted.

“Seriously, though, what about that guy from Gyumri — Mr. Hakobyan?” Anahit asked, but regretted as soon as she saw Armine’s face darken. It had been some time since Armine had told them anything new about her dramatic romance in Gyumri.

“I saw a crocodile in the supermarket the other day,” Anahit quickly changed the subject.

“Was it sitting at the cashier’s desk or working at one of the stands?” Lilith quipped and the three girls laughed again.

“See? This is exactly what I mean. Instead of enjoying this peaceful holiday, people are attacking food items as if we’re on the brink of a famine and there won’t be a single egg, lavash or ham to be found tomorrow. Then, half of that food ends up going bad, and we start the New Year by eating spoiled food,” Armine chimed in again.

Arman finally showed up. And the attack was launched.

Arman set up his defences (“I’m going to be at home, I’ll take a sip of champagne at midnight and go to bed, I’m tired…”), but the girls were insistent (“Just imagine it — people will be coming to Charbakh to party at night”, “This is an act of patriotism”, “The regular customers of Gazebo deserve this”)… Arman even considered that it could be a good occasion to direct the proceeds from the night to a good cause. Perhaps they could help renovate the crumbling school on the other side of the street? An event was created and posted on Facebook within an hour.

***

Hovhannes Asatryan was stuck in a traffic jam in his car as he recalled and even slightly missed the years he had spent in Belgium. The Pork Leg had not ruled in the days leading up to the New Year there, everything was much calmer. They would celebrate Christmas, have a light, but special meal, and then go back to work… He was not considering leaving Armenia again, that was for sure. The Migrant Reintegration Program had settled him fully back in his native land. It was just that… Everything would be much better if the first snowflakes of the season did not paralyse the whole city that way…

Hovhannes was carried away with these thoughts, when the back door of his car opened, after which he heard the sound of it closing. His rear-view mirror was suddenly filled with the image of Anahit in an apparent hurry, her hair frizzled and her coat unbuttoned. Hovhannes did not know this 25–26-year-old young lady.

“Hello, I need to get to Kochar Street quickly, it’s a matter of life and death,” Anahit fired like a machine gun.

Hovhannes turned around and looked at the young lady carefully. For a second, he even thought that he was still working as a taxi driver and that this was his next fare, but he then recalled that the job at the taxi company had simply been stage one of his life as a repatriate, he had set up his own business after that. Anahit realised from the way Hovhannes was looking at her that she had gotten into the wrong car.

“Oh no, please don’t tell me this isn’t the right car…”

At that very moment, the traffic jam seemed to dissolve slowly as the cars in front of him began to move.

“I won’t tell you that, especially if it’s a matter of life and death,” he smiled.

A short while later, Anahit was telling him how the man she loved had dropped everything for their relationship a couple of months ago and had moved to Gavar with her. Now, she wanted to get him a memorable gift. The memorable gift was supposed to come from France but had only just arrived. And the office of the company that had transported it was closing in half an hour and would reopen only after the holidays.

***

The two men standing in front of Anahit were discussing the relations between Armenia and Europe. One of them insisted that we had nothing to gain from them, because we had had a theatre long before Germany had even been populated by barbarians. The other was more tolerant.

“That’s exactly our problem — we keep mentioning those times that were a million years B.C., as if that relates in any way to you or me.”

“Of course it does, our Armenian…”

“What have you done for our ancient Armenian theatre or for the Armenian kingdom that stretched from sea to sea?”

“Well…”

“You haven’t done anything, but you’re proud of it. Instead, you should do something now, so that you have something to be proud of. Europe is trying to help us with various things. I was sceptical too, until I went to Berlin myself. Remember the training programme for Ministry officials that the European Union supported? Those people aren’t saying that we should imitate Europe. They’re saying ‘Here are some of the things we’re doing. Maybe you should try this too, it will make life easier for you.’”

“How, for example?”

“For example, they’re saying, ‘You shouldn’t use fake documents to work illegally as a migrant in Frankfurt. Go back to Armenia and I’ll providing funding for you to start your own business in your country…’”

“You’re kidding!”

“Yes, someone I know started his own taxi company here, and now he isn’t even thinking of working abroad. Also, my daughter’s female friend is seriously into football because the European Union had financed the formation of a girls’ football league.”

“Girls playing football? I don’t know…”

“Yeah, so what? Stop acting like it’s the Stone Age…”

Anahit almost joined in on the conversation to tell them about her own experience. She wanted to say, “Can you imagine that Europe is teaching Armenian women to be strong and independent?” but the shop assistant gestured to the two men, who were wearing suits, at that moment. She was called over a minute later. Ah, that moment was almost here when she would get the package she had ordered from France, the one with the travelling gnome that had belonged to Amélie’s father in the French film Amélie.

She wanted to open the box right there, but the store was closing down, Anahit had been their last customer. She sat down on the first street bench that she found and tore into the package impatiently, opened it and… stared wide-eyed in surprise. Oh no… The New Year was just a few hours away, but instead of the long-planned, well thought-out, profoundly symbolic present she had ordered, she was looking at a pair of red handcuffs made of soft material and meant for very suspicious purposes, as well as several items for which she could not even imagine the instructions for use… She ran back, but the store had closed and Anahit was left with a package of something she hadn’t ordered (and, instead of handcuffs, someone else was going to end up with a gnome under the Christmas Tree that was supposed to have a completely a different purpose).

***

When he had fallen victim to the urges of the three girls, Arman, the founding father of Gazebo, had not considered how stressful and tense it was going to be to organise a New Year party at this young establishment. There he was, at nearly midnight on December 31, standing alone on a ladder in Gazebo (thank you, Mrs. Chorekchyan, the neighbour from one floor above, who had transformed from an enemy to a loyal ally a long time ago), decorating the wall with a symbolic handmade Christmas Tree.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Arus had made several kinds of finger food and cookies, while the Erasmus alum Arthur — who had returned after studying with a scholarship and was working on his first novel — had brought a jar of organic honey (the official symbol he shared with his new muse, to commemorate how they had met) and a bunch of ginger roots (bought from the same family of farmers) for a cup of midnight tea.

***

Anahit stood in despair on the sidewalk, her arms holding a box that once contained a microwave. “This is better than nothing,” she said to convince herself. Once she had discovered that she had ended up with someone else’s order from France, she had been forced to find an alternative within a few hours. She had been inspired by the German Weinachtskalendar, when people get a present every day during the weeks leading up to Christmas. This box would be one such gift for Armen — he could pick a small but fun gift from this box every day…

A car horn blared. Anahit saw with surprise that it was the same car — the one that was not a taxi at all. And Hovhannes was gesturing with an arm for her to come over. Anahit smiled and walked to him.

“Did you call a cab?” Hovhannes said with a laugh, “I’m headed for Charbakh…”

“Yay!”

The door to Gazebo was open and the chairs were placed upside-down on the tables, the multicolour lights had been partially put up, the cakes had been placed next to the fridge and a piggy bank was placed on the bar with the words “Help the school” printed on it… It looked like someone (Arman, of course) had given up and left things half-done. Anahit put down the box on one of the tables and walked forward carefully. Arman had fallen asleep on one of the armchairs further inside the place. Anahit smirked, picked up a shawl from the cupboard and covered Arman. Then she took of her jacket and got to work. She had to finish up at Gazebo and then rush home to help her mother, so that she could be back here after midnight.

***

The flow of people seemed to consume everything and everyone. The endless crowd was taking care of last-minute shopping, and Armenian drams were being spent in kilograms to buy tonnes of food and drink. Those who had not yet done so were grasping at the final morsels of the Mighty Pork Leg, while grabbing handfuls of dried fruit to fill into their bags. Oranges and tangerines were going by the box, candy came in all kinds of varieties — Russian, Italian, Armenian; ham was plentiful, chees was yellow, white and blue, bread like lavash, matnakash and baguettes were weighed out in kilograms, eggs went by the dozen, coffee, spices… Oh, we forgot about fish! Let’s go over to the fish section. Oh no, what about mushrooms? Did we get any kiwis and bananas? Should we go for vodka or wine? Brandy too? Are our Christmas Tree lights from last year still working, or should we get new ones? Okay, let’s leave that for last; first we need to get cooking oil… And the long lines in each section, the traffic jams caused by the overflowing shopping carts, the tired and utterly un-festive expression on the faces of the supermarket staff, the hurrying people who were unable to escape the clutches of the holiday hurricane… Or perhaps they did not want to. Perhaps this was a kind of torment that had already begun to cause a kind of masochistic pleasure, as the evil Pork Leg watched from behind the scenes and laughed maniacally…

Armen Asatryan had been standing in line for around thirty minutes when he suddenly decided that he did not need anything. He left the pork leg in his shopping basket and wished the store staff happy holidays. He walked to the payment terminal and people watched him in surprise as he made his final loan repayment of the year. Eighteen months ago, his daughter had convinced and helped him to renovate his home on credit and make it more energy efficient. He was no longer afraid of the cold winters. Now he could go home and prepare the holiday meal in comfort — there would be less food on the table this year, but no less warmth.

***

Arman woke up from the car horns and the fireworks going off on the streets. His muscles hurt. It seemed that sleeping for eight hours straight in an armchair was not the healthiest way to get some rest. He twisted his body, stretched, and tried to understand where he was and what had happened. He rubbed his eyes and recalled that he had to get Gazebo ready for the party that was supposed to start after midnight. But it seemed that his “Let me just get five minutes of shut-eye” had turned into many hours of sleep. And that could only mean… Arman finally managed to open his eyes fully, only to find that Gazebo was ready! All that he needed to do was switch on the music and wait for his guests. How could that be? He noticed an unfamiliar box at the bar, and a card. “I don’t know when you’ll wake up, but don’t open this gift before midnight. I hope I set up everything right. The girls and I will be there soon. XOXO” the card said in Anahit’s handwriting.

***

“Dad, why doesn’t this homeless person have a place to stay?” the six-year-old boy on the opposite seat asked.

“I don’t know, son, that’s the way his life has worked out.”

The subject of discussion opened his eyes, took out his red hat, scratched his abundant beard, yawned and said, “I’m Gaghant Bab, little boy. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!”

“Gaghant Bab?” the boy grew surprised “Happy New Year?”

Gaghant Bab smiled back. The unseen voice at the metro station announced that the train had arrived at Republic Square. An hour ago (which was already the previous year), a semi-forgotten theatre actor named Jules-Verne Ter-Gabrielyan had decided to play the part of the traditional Armenian Gaghant Bab on New Year’s Day, walking among the people on Republic Square, telling them about the ancient customs of Gaghant, the Armenian New Year, and also making some money by selling the books in his sack with stories about this festive occasion. But he no longer felt like it. He had lost the mood completely. A good actor would probably not have given up so quickly, but he had known one thing since way back in the 1990s — he was not really a good actor. And he fell asleep with these thoughts in his head.

He woke up at the Shengavit station, changed trains, and was in Charbakh a few minutes later.

“Now that’s what I call bad luck,” he muttered to himself and walked aimlessly past the windows of people celebrating the New Year, leaving his footprints in the snow crunching beneath his festive boots.

He stopped twenty minutes later at the sign that said Gazebo. His feet had frozen. Why not ring in this particular New Year at this strange spot, where a bunch of happy young people seemed to be having a good time? So Jules-Verne went in.

He looked around for a Christmas Tree, but could not find one. Instead, he felt someone’s hand on his shoulder and then a voice, probably belonging to the same person, boomed in his ear,

“Heyyyy, it’s Gaghant Bab!” It was Arthur the author who Jules-Verne, naturally, did not know. “Come join us! Later on, you can show us the wonderful presents you have in your sack.”

“But you haven’t been nice this year,” someone laughed.

A short while later, the unlucky actor was deep into the craziest New Year night of his life.

***

Karen, who worked in tourism, rang in the New Year at home, with his wife and children. After midnight, as he had promised two of the French tourists who had been among the last to arrive in town the previous year, he had gone with them to an alternative New Year party at Gazebo. Four of them sat together at a table and spoke loudly about Armenia among the general babble.

“There’s a lot to see in Armenia, you just need to look in the right direction,” Karen was proposing a toast in English, “May this year bring us all kinds of discoveries, my friends. By the way, which sights do you plan to see?”

“Syunik?” one of the French tourists attempted to pronounce.

“Oh, super!” Karen was delighted, “Look what we have here, it’s such a wonderful tool.” And he began telling them about the online tool about Syunik that had been launched several months ago.

At the same time, the party was picking up pace. Lilith’s cousin Zaven had brought his best records and a player, and Charbakh was being treated to an unprecedented feast of electronic music. But Arman and Anahit did not feel like bouncing on the dance floor, so they stood there holding one another, slow dancing to the other music they were hearing through their earphones, not paying attention to the rest…

Jules-Verne gave out the last book in his sack — having already taken photographs with almost everyone there and generously doled out the good wishes that were in line with his character — and plopped down with satisfaction in a corner so that he could continue drinking his wine. The night had not gone as he had planned, but that had actually been a good thing. The year had already proven unique at its very beginning, perhaps it was finally time for something to change…

***

Giorgio’s friends, who worked at the European Union Delegation, came towards morning. He had made them promise several days ago that they would join him here.

“It’s such great news that you’re settling down in Armenia,” one of them said to Giorgio, who was having the best New Year of his life, “This country has such a great, great future…”

“Yes, fratello,” the coach of the Goris girls’ football team said, placing a hand on the European diplomat’s shoulder, “This is how we’ll do it, through teamwork, helping each other out. Raise your glass…”

Clink!

Charbakh was the centre of the universe that night, and Gazebo was the heart of the district. Even revellers from the city centre were finding it hard to resist its pull, coming down on the special twenty-four-hour metro service to join the party at Gazebo. People were having fun, sharing stories about the previous year and making plans for the new one. The future promised many memorable moments to come.