Catching the flight

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

Hovhannes Asatryan opened his eyes. For a few seconds, he was unable to understand where he was, what time it was, and what was going on. He stared at the ceiling, and the cracks in its white surface seemed unfamiliar. He blinked several times and glanced at the window. The rays of the sun had broken through the grey clouds that were covering the sky. And suddenly Hovhannes’ forty-year-old body was overcome with panic. The hair on his arms stood on end, and the scalp under the rare strand of hair on his head broke out in sweat. His heart started pounding in a way that would provoke the envy of the Metallica percussionist. He jumped out of bed in terror and threw himself at his mobile phone. The phone confirmed his fears — he had overslept, and his plane was due to take off from of a runway at Zvartnots Airport in 73 minutes. And that meant he had only half an hour to get there. “Because, you idiot, you were too lazy to check in online yesterday, weren’t you?” Hovhannes swore at himself, putting on the first pieces of clothing he could find. Then he leaped towards his bag; it was a good thing he didn’t have any luggage to check in. He had come to Yerevan for a few days to bring some items and take some things back with him, as well as to taste the water and air of the homeland (this last statement was the official version he used, but not the completely honest one). He had already opened the door when he decided to nevertheless run a quick check of the important things — his passport, the statement regarding Haso’s disability, Sako’s university diploma, a few thousand drams and several dozen Euros in cash. He had everything. With a last glance, he saw that the large rectangular package he had brought from Antwerp to Yerevan was still at the bottom of a wall, already covered with a layer of dust. He sighed. Slam! The door closed of the apartment in Charbakh that had not been renovated since Soviet times.

***

There were three apartments on the third floor of the narrow building constructed in the seventeenth century. Haso lived in one, Sako in the other, and the third was given to short-term tenants. Hovik from Antwerp had rented it for two days. It had already been an hour and a half that they were seated in Sako’s modest abode. He was tired and would have gladly lain down and switched off his brain under the antique Belgian ceiling, but the other residents of the building wouldn’t let their compatriot off the hook that easily, especially since he had such an important mission to fulfil for them. The coffee table had been covered with bottles of local beer and large portions of suvlaki ordered from the Greek restaurant in the neighbourhood.

“I worked in Greece for around four years,” Sako recalled, raising the piece of meat he had dipped in tzatziki to his mouth, “It’s like my second homeland. Then the crisis struck, and I was forced to come to Belgium. How did I get here? Well, first I went back to Armenia, got thoroughly disappointed, and then got a tourist visa and came here.” Sako laid tiles in Belgium, he worked in the team of another local Armenian. Haso’s work visa had expired eight years ago. Right about that time, she had “coincidentally” lost her Armenian passport and, for all intents and purposes, she no longer existed. In the mornings, Haso waited tables at a café owned by a more successful Armenian (for which she was, naturally, paid in cash), while she spent her afternoons selling the local Arabs’ supplies of bags, caps and glasses to tourists. That’s how it had been for twenty years.

***

“Don’t worry, my man, we’ll zoom over there in no time,” he reassured the heaving, pale and pointy-haired Hovhannes, who had run over to the bus stop and stopped the first taxi he could find. “Has the plane already landed?”

Hovhannes didn’t hear the question because his trembling fingers were busy texting his niece Lilith — ‘Rushing to the airport, I’ve left a present at home for you-know-who.’

“I said, we’re going to pick someone up at the airport, right?”

“Huh?” said Hovhannes, who was now thinking about the present that he was leaving,not having finished the real task he had set himself, when he finally realized that the driver was looking at the bag that lay across his knees. “No, no, we’re not picking anyone up. I’m flying. Check-in ends twenty minutes from now.”

“Oh, well that’s different. I’ll step on it, then,” and the driver pressed harder on the gas, sharply overtaking the bus that was rambling ahead of him, and making it through the blinking yellow traffic light with a split second to spare. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve taken lots of people in the same situation as you right up to the door of the plane at the right moment. A couple of days ago, I was taking this young guy to the airport — I think he was flying to Rostov — he was with his dad. And then, when we were at the Argavand intersection a couple of minutes from the airport, this smart aleck realizes that he hasn’t got his travel documents. Can you imagine that? I turned around right there and we zipped back without talking. We got to Zeytun and back in just twenty minutes. They were closing up the check-in counter, but I went in with them and talked to them, told it was my fault and stuff, and he managed to get on his plane and get to his labour contract. If he’d missed that plane, he would’ve lost his ticket, and if he’d gone the next day, he might’ve lost the job he had waiting for them there. What do you think of that?”

What would Hovhannes lose if he didn’t get on the plane that day? The life he had built over ten years? The truth was that, over those ten years, Hovhannes had barely managed to make ends meet. Any success had been brief, and his days were accompanied by the constant tension that he could be deported at any moment. But was he rushing now because there was finally hope for a bright future? For the future that had forced him to escape, to leave the most important thing in Yerevan… his thoughts were interrupted by the driver’s swear words and exclamations.

“You moron, can’t you see we’re in a hurry? Drive, damn it!” the driver roared from the depths of his soul. The car bearing Hovhannes thrusted itself forward, already at the intersection the driver had mentioned earlier.

“So where are you going?” the driver asked, calm once again.

“Belgium. First Brussels, then Antwerp.”

“You live there?”

“I… yeah.”

“I lived in Utrecht for five years. It was tough at first, but we got used to it, got our papers, and the kids went to school. My son got work as a chef, and my daughter became a psychologist. She calls me sometimes and says ‘Dad, come for a session with me, you’ll feel better in no time.’ I say, ‘You can’t help my psyche with that psychology of yours, baby.’”

Hovhannes did not really feel like being a part of this conversation, but he didn’t want to leave the driver on his own. So he asked,

“Why did you come back?”

“Actually, my wife and I separated. I couldn’t find a decent job and then… well, I did something wrong and they caught me at once and deported me. I tried to go back a couple of times, but it didn’t work out. Then I asked myself — why put in so much effort? My kids have settled down, and I’ve done everything I needed to for them. I need to think about myself now. Luckily, there was a program for former emigrants, the European Union had started it. So I went to some of those meetings and things; they were helping out and supporting people who wanted to start their own business here. And I thought, ‘I’ve been driving cabs all my life, why don’t I open my own taxi service here?’”

Hovhannes was about to express his amazement when another taxi coming from the right cut in front of the car, and the former emigrant did not manage to swerve away in time since he too was going too fast. The cars crashed and it grew dark.

***

Hovhannes closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead and would have probable fallen asleep right there in his seat, if Sako hadn’t half-exclaimed in the darkness,

“Um, you’ve heard a saxophone playing, right? The instrument they use in jazz performances?”

Hovik blinked in surprise at first, and then understood the question, finally nodding his head affirmatively.

“For six months, I stayed at a camp in Dinant — that’s the city that invented the saxophone. It was a very good place,” Sako hurriedly wiped his hands using a paper napkin, picked up his phone, rummaged the pictures on it for a few seconds, then brought the screen closer to Hovik. “Here it is. They worked me hard, of course, but that’s how it is… These are my friends; a good family, but they were deported eventually.”

“But were things going badly for you in Armenia?” Hovik asked out of politeness, even though the answer didn’t really interest him.

“They were good, I had a shawarma place and stuff,” Sako said enthusiastically, opening a bottle of beer, “But I don’t know… I thought I should try something new…” Sako’s train of thought was interrupted by a Viber call. From the corner of his eye, Hovik caught sight of a blond girl with Slavic features on the screen. “Sorry, Hov jan, it’s my girlfriend, she’s stuck in Marseille… she’s Ukrainian,” Sako added at the last minute, as if responding to a question.

Sako picked up the phone and zipped to the other room. Despite the months he had spent at the camp, the dozens of conversations and discussions he had had with the relevant state bodies, despite the various residence permits and documents he possessed, Sako did not have the right to work in Belgium.

Looking at the medieval pattern on the ceiling and feeling sorry for Sako, Hovo suddenly realized that his own situation was not much better. And while Sako and Haso — despite their semi-legal and uncertain status — had a clear idea of what they were going to do the following day (the same thing they had done that day, as long as it kept earning them a couple of bucks), the only thing he knew was that he was leaving for Yerevan in the morning where he would help his brother with the money he had promised and boast about how well his business was doing in Antwerp. He was going to try and meet his underage son, to attempt to explain to him that he had packed up and left on that occasion so that he could build a better future for him, but everything simply hadn’t worked out the way he had wanted, and he had ended up unable to take everyone with him, and that he hadn’t wanted to break up their family, but… His son, in all probability, would not want to hear all that, and would reject the present he had brought him — a high-quality new record player and several rare vinyl records of jazz music. His niece Lilith had told him that his son, Zaven, had taken a liking to good retro music and had started a collection of records. But… even meeting him would be difficult. Then Hovhannes would pass on the money that Sako and Haso had given him for their relatives (so that Sako and Haso could continue justifying their illegal status in Europe), and then he would sit in despair with a bottle of wine and fail to understand what he was supposed to do next. What to do next? Perhaps give his European dream one more shot — it seemed like his new business partners had promised to solve his work visa issues and to make an investment, perhaps something would finally work itself out. If only he could see his son and explain everything…

Hovhannes would have continued to wallow in his troubles for a long time, but fatigue overcame him and he fell asleep.

***

Hovhannes was running.

The two angry cab drivers were behind him, in the middle of the street, left to decide who was to blame for the accident that had occurred, until the insurance experts arrived. Ahead of him, Hovhannes could see the abandoned tower of the old Zvartnots building. As a child, Hovhannes had often found himself at the top of that tower with his father and brother, in the restaurant that looked like a spaceship. He would watch the planes through its round windows and dream that he too would someday travel all over the world. “So you don’t have the right to complain now,” a breathless Hovhannes rebuked himself. He then saw the new airport building. It was pretty and well organized, but it was no spaceship — just a regular airport. He checked the time as he ran past the barriers — he still had five minutes before check-in closed, he was going to make it. He saw that he had four missed calls and three text messages from Lilith. He didn’t call back or read them — he’d do so only after checking in.

He gave himself a twenty-second break to catch his breath before the final dash. He also needed that time to dispel the final pangs of doubt. Yes, he had to return to Antwerp, and on this very day, on that very flight, because he had a critical meeting in three hours. A meeting that was supposed to finally give meaning to the ten years he had spent as a migrant. “It’s okay — this will be the last time that I trust those dubious Armenians and fishy Arabs, and I won’t need them any longer after that.”

“Are you on the flight to Brussels?” the girl at the check-in counter said. Hovhannes only nodded, approach the counter and reached his hand out to the pocket on his bag that held his passport.

“We were just about to close the counter, you know that, right? You were the only passenger left. Please put your luggage… Excuse me, we’re really running late, please but your luggage on the scale, or do you only have a carry-on?”

Hovhannes had frozen in place. He had taken out his passport, but he hadn’t reached the counter, something inside prevented him from taking the next step.

“What to do, what to do, what to do…” the words kept buzzing in his head. The girl kept looking with concern, shifting from Hovhannes’ face to the passport that hovered in the air. He suddenly took out his phone again and quickly read the text that Lilith had sent. “Hov, wait. You’ll give the present yourself.” Then the next one — “Don’t get on that plane, wait. I know he hasn’t answered your calls, but you can’t just leave.” Then the third — “Zav is coming to Charbakh, come back Hov.”

“I’m sorry, but we have to close this counter…”

“That man,” Hovhannes pointed to someone who was standing near the entrance to the gates, constantly hugging goodbye to the several people who were seeing him off, “Did he check in before me? Is he flying to Brussels too?”

“Um… yes, he arrived just before you. He was late too,” the girl said with surprise.

Without saying anything else, he put his passport and phone back in his bag and took out the other documents, running to the white-haired man in his fifties. He caught up to him at the very moment when the people seeing him off had finally come to terms with his departure and had taken a step back as the man had turned to enter the gate area, where only passengers with boarding passes were allowed.

“Excuse me, excuse me, I need to ask you something,” Hovhannes managed to get the man’s attention and he turned around in surprise. “I need to get two documents to Brussels, could you take them with you? I’ll tell my friends to come get them from you at the airport.”

The man stared for a few seconds at Hovhannes and the folder he held in his outstretched hand. Hovhannes himself would also get angry when a complete stranger would ask him such favours, but at that moment it was the only solution he could find.

“Yes, of course, no problem,” he finally heard the response.

***

Vazgen the cab driver sat tiredly on the curb and watched fixedly at the two insurance experts who were examining the damaged cars from every sort of angle. He no longer had the appetite to hash things out with the other driver. The insurance companies were here, let them take care of everything and make a decision. He thought about calling his daughter and complaining a bit about life, saying something like, “Forget about Holland, come and comfort your father’s soul a bit,” but then he imagined that his daughter was probably already at the office, working with her patients.

His view of the damaged vehicles was blocked by a pair of unfamiliar legs. Vazgen raised his head and saw with surprise that it was the passenger he had driven to the airport a short while earlier. I guess the poor guy didn’t make it, the cab driver thought. But he noticed the very next moment that the tardy migrant had a strangely happy and content expression on his face.

“So, you didn’t make it?” the driver asked, getting on his feet.

“I made it to the counter, but then I thought of turning back and checking on the cabbie who got into an accident because of me.” The both laughed. “And there was an important person I hadn’t managed to see during my stay here.”

Hovhannes told him about how he had come back to see Vazgen.

“You mentioned a reintegration programme for those who had returned from Europe. I think I need to attend their events as well.”

“It’s a good thing you’ve come to that decision, my man.”

Vazgen approached the damaged cars, opened a door, dug around in the glove compartment and returned with a business card. Hovhannes noticed the star-studded blue flag of the European Union that had been such a common sight in Belgium. A few minutes later, he was already making a call to the number on the card,

“Hello… I wanted to ask a few questions about the migrant reintegration programme… Yes, yes, I’ve just returned, and I have a few ideas I’d like to try and implement in Armenia… great, I’ll come to your office. Thank you.”

His trembling fingers brought up Zaven’s number on the phone. He wanted to send a text, but then pressed on the call button. On most occasions, the phone would ring without a response. But this time, he heard a familiar voice after the second ring.

The stress melted away and the tension vanished as he closed the chapter on illegal migration. For now. It was time to start a fresh page.

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