Flight
You just have to give yourself over to the idea of 16 hours in a plane. I didn’t even try to sell myself on the idea that the destination was worth the ride. Human beings just aren’t designed for that kind of travel. I surrendered myself to the airport and standing in lines and sitting in small spaces and going to the bathroom in even smaller spaces. I knew I had to not think about it, and I also knew that I couldn’t not think about it, not for the full 16 hours.
My plan was to lop off 7 hours by knocking myself out. I figured I would wait until we were four hours into our journey; that would leave five on the other side of my Ambien induced nap.
I ate the meal that was alleged to be spicy. It was ok. I read a little of the New Yorkers I brought. That strategy worked well the last time we went to Chicago, but not as well for this trip. I listened to some music on my ancient iPod– some Santana and then some Dylan. But I was restless. So I took the pill a little ahead of schedule, and as it turned out I only slept four hours, and most of the time I wasn’t even sure I was asleep. But I did dream, so I must have been asleep at some point.
I dreamed I was standing on Alameda Street, not far from NBC Studios, in my hometown. Everything was brighter and clearer, the way we are inclined to picture our past. The sun was almost white, and the sky was closer and more open. I started walking home, right up Catalina Street. “I’m back,” I thought to myself. I was way, way in the past, maybe 50 years back. There was Mom and Dad in the kitchen. My sister was ensconced in her room, and my brother was out somewhere.
“Tell us about it,” Dad said.
“About what?”
“Maybe he hasn’t gone yet,” Mom said.
“Where?”
“You didn’t go? Aren’t you going?” Dad said, with that edge in his voice that was often there.
I thought I had arrived, but I needed to go.
Then Grace was nudging me. Then the hum of the engines and shaking of the plane, as if it were trying to wake me.
“What is it?”
“Turbulence, you have to put your belt on,” Grace said gently.
“Where…”
“There, right there. Well, you’re probably sitting on it.”
“No, I….”
“Your seat belt, please sir,” the flight attendant said.
She seemed to be very tall; she was going to stand over me, smiling until she heard the click of my seat belt. “Yes, of course. Ah, here it is.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
Between the throwback uniform and the way she was all dolled up with lots of makeup perfectly applied and one little curl in front of her ear, I was left with a kind of wave of nostalgia, as if it were 1964 somehow. I was able to forget I was crammed in a plane 10 across and 40 rows deep, with recycled air and processed food, in a gigantic tin coffin flying over the Arctic Ocean at 400 miles per hour. The presence of the flight attendant gave me some peace of mind, but only for a moment.
Now I was awake and had over 8 hours to go. I looked through the movie choices and I was a little surprised to see “American Sniper” offered on a UAE airline, and I was shocked to see a 13 year old boy watching, especially since he was seated next to his mother who was wearing a niqab, the full robe and head dress that left nothing but her eyes exposed. The boy appeared to be fully engaged in the movie.
I picked “Die Hard” because I had seen parts of it so many times on a lazy Saturday afternoon, that I knew I would be able to watch it without concentrating much at all. I was able to try to guess the stories of the other passengers, check what they were watching, check the snail-like progress of the plane on the big screen in front of the business class section, while we bumped along, feeling hypnotized by the monotonous, low frequency rumble of the turbines, which made me think about a Doors songs with the lyrics “listen to the engines hum/people out to have some fun,” and all the while watching “Die Hard.”
Grace was asleep. She didn’t take Ambien; she took Benadryl and she slept better than I did. Her snores were different than the usual ones though. These were sounding like little question marks full of contentment. I was happy for her. We were going to have a great time in Armenia, but we just had to get through this part.
I looked for more movies and sampled a few but there was nothing that held my interest. I finally selected “Bob’s Burgers,” the animated TV comedy series. I had seen an episode or two and found it to be devoid of humor or anything remotely interesting, but I thought I would still give it another try. Maybe it was one of those things where you had to watch more than a couple of episodes. As it turned out I watched one of the episodes I had already seen, and it was just as boring as it was the time before. I must have nodded off for a while because the next thing I heard was that we were about to land in Abu Dhabi. And for that nap I would like to thank the creators of “Bob’s Burgers.”
As for the trip from Abu Dhabi to Yerevan, Armenia, I don’t remember it. It took three hours and my mind was numb. The airport in Abu Dhabi had very bright, white lighting everywhere and also huge, high end, designer clothing stores. I didn’t know if it was day or night, or what day it was or whether what I was seeing was real or not. I just kept walking when someone said, “This way,” and sat down when it was ok to sit down. The buckets where we dumped our shoes, belts and all the other stuff were white instead of grey, which I imagined was the color of the boxes I’d used in the U.S. airports. I thought about it for quite some time in the sitting in the airport in Abu Dhabi, waiting to fly to Armenia. The only other thing I remember is the Muslim men getting their own line to stand in. All their lines were shorter. I was wondering if it was because they couldn’t stand in the same line with the women, or maybe the women and the non-Muslims. I think someone in our group said something to that effect. But then if they were traveling with their wives, they had to wait for them anyway. I didn’t think of that at the time; mostly I was thinking about not knowing what time of day it was and why one country used white boxes and the other used grey. I could be wrong about that though, I could be wrong about it all because it was an unknown hour and day. We had spent 24 hours—including the very pleasant getting to know you ride from Fresno to LA we got with Larry and his wife Diane— trying to get to Armenia, and we were in that state of mind where everything’s ridiculous and raw, and we weren’t even in Armenia yet.
There is one moment I actually like when traveling by plane. Some people don’t like it, in fact they dread the moment when the wheels of the plane hit the ground. It’s a miracle: damn 800,000 lb plane was in the air cruising at 400 mph and next thing you know—bang!—it’s on the ground and we’re all ok. It’s a great feeling. And it was even greater when we touched down in Armenia.
“Here we are,” I said to Grace. “Armenia,” she answered.
There is nothing in any airport that can tell you anything about the city or locale where you landed. I could technically claim that Grace and I have been to Dallas, Texas, but we were only in the airport so it’s not true. Every airport is at least 10 miles from the actual city that claims it and sometimes it is not even in the city. But we did feel something in the airport in Armenia. The first was that it was a modern complex; we really had no idea what to expect but we were favorably impressed. But more important was the feeling that this was Armenian. There were flags everywhere—proof that we existed, that we had our own country. Seeing the flag and the signage in Armenian and Armenian people speaking Armenian in that familiar rollercoaster rhythm. We have a place.
“Look, the flags.”
“Yeah,” Grace said.
My eyes started to tear up. For most of my life Armenia was invisible, something we all carried in our hearts and minds. Now we were there and it had an airport and the flag on display everywhere in the airport. It was no other flag, no other place in the entire world; it was Armenia and only Armenia. Something invisible became tangible, visible, real. We saw in the airport that also bowled us over. “1915: 2 million dead — 2015: 10 million live.” We in diaspora were included in that number; I suddenly felt connected in ways I never felt before. Sleep In the first week we slept three and a half hours one night and rejoiced because the night before we had slept two hours. Armenia is a wonderful place, a wonderful experience, filled with people we feel we already know, not just by their looks—although every matronly woman looks like a great aunt or someone’s grandma—but by their character, their soul. Armenia had been a place we in diaspora invented, and the country was only ourselves, what we did, the things our grandparents told us, and how we treated each other, how we stood together and looked out at the rest of the world. But now Grace and I are actually in this place and there are street signs with y-a-n and license plates with the Armenian flag.
We have a place, I can’t get over it, and it’s real and we’re in it, we’re part of it and it’s part of us, even awake at 3am, having taken a series of 20 minute naps and finally giving up, the morning completes the picture, the morning is the missing jigsaw puzzle piece buried under the couch cushion along with crumbs and loose change. We lived all our lives without the missing piece, wondering about it unconsciously, and now the piece is in our hand and we put it in the open space and pat it down with satisfaction.
We are in that place and there’s art in it and art museums and escalators, and people bring their families and stand on the escalator with their darling little children who hold their balloons that they’re parents bought them and it’s like they’re part of a poem and it’s wonderful.
Of course we were awake at three o’clock in the morning. Why wouldn’t we? We opened the window and Yerevan was alive. Grace played tavloo (backgammon) on her iPad, and I listened to music. Music sounds better in Armenia. I listened to “Summer Days” by Bob Dylan. I listened to it three or four times. I heard three guitars playing that I had never heard before. It was like a perfect song—instrumentation, lyrics, phrasing, everything—and I fell asleep for a little while and daylight was creeping in; the street light that illuminated our room was out. Maybe I was and was not awake when I had a conversation with Armenia.
“Motherland, are you still there?”
“Yes, dghas. I’m still here.”
“Are you real?”
“Of course.”
“Always?”
“Yes, always.”
“Oh Armenia, Armenia. I feel like I found something I didn’t know I was looking for.”
I knew it was true because as great it was listening to “Summer Days” in the Best Western in Yerevan in the middle of the night, it was not as great as walking around the square at 10:30 that night, the men, standing with their chests out and their chins up, holding their cigarettes perpendicular to the night sky, like an exclamation point to their bravado, seem to be saying, “You’re just the world, that’s all.” And the women dressed for a fashion shoot while carrying the weight of everything that needs to be considered all in a one second glance. The whole place alive, energized, packed with people moving, talking, eating, drinking, laughing, shouting, having a Saturday night out with friends and family, and that is to say everyone there, all of us, thousands of us, alive and free, fellow countrymen and countrywomen in our country, and all the while music pouring out of a PA system, and “Somewhere My Love,” playing for all of Yerevan rolling down streets, alleys, intersections, bouncing off buildings and statues, rustling branches on trees, while the fountains keep time and the golden light from the street lamps bless us all. Yeah, that was better than “Summer Days,” or any Dylan song at any moment. Oh, and we had ice cream, too.
Fruit
“There is more fruit on the trees than there are leaves,” Grace said one morning.
Apricot trees were everywhere and they were full as they could be. I could imagine hearing Dad say—with awe-inspired joy—“The branches are gonna break!” and I could imagine my father-in-law saying, “I don’t believe! Umpossible!” There seems to be just as many fruit trees in Armenia as there are shade trees. Very Armenian: If you’re going to have trees, they should give fruit. Everywhere—in the city and out in the country, public and private property, highlands and lowlands—you would find fruit trees. Roadside stands were likewise everywhere, sometimes just a person sitting on a stool with a huge bag or bucket of apricots, sometimes they sat without a stool, and the selling was competitive; they sat side by side by side, sometimes, shouting that their apricots were better than anyone’s apricots. And apricots were offered in many different forms . Apricot leather, chocolate covered apricots, dried apricots, apricot jam, apricot vodka, but mostly fresh, delicious apricots. Their color was yellow on the outside and a very faint orange on the inside and appeared not ripe yet. Most of them had blemishes and looked like they would have considered culls in the United States. But they were ripe and very sweet and tasted was unlike any apricot I’ve ever eaten. I understood why Dad considered apricots “God’s candy.”
This fertile and rocky land we visited is the origin for the apricot tree, so far back in time in it was before the Armenians were called Armenians.
The wood from the apricot tree is said to be the wood used for our earliest musical instruments, including the oud, the Armenian equivalent of a We stood at one of many roadside fruit stands; the vendors thought we were funny and silly to take pictures of their product and location, but one elderly woman said in Armenian, “Take my picture!” and I took her picture standing proudly closely next to Grace. There was an instant kinship that you could see in the picture. The woman was delighted, proud and looked completely at ease and at peace standing next to someone from the other side of the world whom she had just met 8 seconds earlier. She laughed, we laughed, all the vendors were laughing. We took more pictures. They laughed more, knowing maybe no picture could capture the smell of fruit, dirt, age, history, the struggling breeze, the intense sun or the wonder and humor of the moment.
Our hotel room became filled with fresh fruit, including, “tute,” mulberries, and there was always at least one relative in every Armenian-American family that had a mulberry tree. For the Chavoors it was Dad’s cousin, Maljan.
“Here,” Dad said to me when I was maybe in 1st grade, “open your hand.”
“What is it?”
“Just open your hand! It’s good!”
It was good, too. While there is no particular flavor to mulberries, it is nevertheless, like a straight shot of pure sugar. After that I when we visited I would always hope we somehow ended up in the backyard nabbing some mulberries and gobbling them down. Even if we went to visit them in the middle of winter, I was hoping to go outside, thinking maybe there would be a mulberry left on the tree that no one saw. And now 55 years later I was at the source, because maybe Mal’s father had a tree in the old country and then Mal grew one in his own home, but who can say how far back that tradition went? No matter how far it went, it was somewhere in Central Asia. There was a lot of that during our visit; things came from somewhere, and now we were there.
Our hotel room bore the fragrance of all the fresh fruit we purchased. We had more than we could ever eat—apricots, mulberries, cherries—all laid out across the dresser, the night stands, and jammed in the tiny fridge. We couldn’t not buy the fruit. We ate it every time we saw it. We brought it on the van and shared it with our wonderful group. When we moved on to the next hotel, we left the fruit there for the maid. The fruit that was picked just a short time before we bought it was as important as the ancient, sacred artifacts we saw all over the country. I felt as though everyone who ate the fresh fruit was blessed in some way. It was a cultural sacrament.
Dream
There were warnings on the Ambien instructions: may cause disturbing dreams. But I needed to sleep, so while I was a little scared of having disturbing dreams, I took the medicine as prescribed. It was something beyond sleeping. Effective, but it felt like my very existence was put on pause, and then I woke up. That was more disturbing than any dream I had and in fact the only dream I had was not disturbing in the least. A little odd maybe, and everything was brighter and clearer than my usual dreams.
I had entered an essay contest at Roosevelt High School. I knew I had written something good, that the students there would cry when they heard it, and that I would cry while I was reading it to them. I was in the stately but comforting and familiar auditorium and the narrator of the dream asked me a question.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Because I’m retired and don’t have my own room anymore.”
“Yes, and will you read the essay to all the students?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Only if you win the contest.”
“That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with that.”
“You do have a problem, though?”
“Well, I’m in Armenia. Shouldn’t I be dreaming about that?”
“Win the contest.”
“The essay is good.”
I could see everything in detail in the auditorium. I stood on the stage and looked at the different spots I used to bring my classes to sit. The very front and center, or the balcony, or the middle on the right hand side, and at the end at the back near the exit for prompt departure.
I was sure I would win the contest. Not because everyone would cry upon hearing it, but for the merit of it, the heart and quality and truth in it. Afterwards, I would tell the students that the story was their story, because they lived it and the award belonged to them and that it would go in the display case not with my name on it but with “c/o” and whatever year it was. I wasn’t sure where I was, whether I was in the present, the past or the future. But it would have their year on it.
I didn’t win. I came in 2nd to a very young teacher. But there was no 2nd place; you either won or you were out. I started to cry for the wrong reason. I saw a student who was upset not so much at the outcome but disappointed at how I responded. He moved away from me, shaking his head. I tried to catch up with him and tell him he was right, that I had responded poorly and that the other teacher deserved to win and that anyway my story had merit on its own without a contest or award, and story writing was what was important, the act of telling your story and speaking the truth from your heart and preserving moments of truth forever because it got written down, those were the real rewards, not having someone say your story is better than someone else’s. And that didn’t mean that the young teacher’s story didn’t deserve to win, it did. But all the stories entered had merit and all the stories not entered had merit and every story ever written or told across all time and all around the world had purpose and value.
I wanted to tell him all this and more, and I felt obliged to tell him, to tell as many as I could, but a teacher only sees his students for a short while, a very short while, then they are gone for the rest of their lives. And a teacher is in the classroom for only a short time and then you’re out, doing something, going back to Armenia, trying to sleep and dreaming about school.
I needed to sleep so that I would not miss one step of my journey through Armenia. We walked several hours a day and it is a land of 10 million stair steps, on mountains, and Grace and I climbed at least half of them. We needed the energy and for energy you need sleep. Our surroundings inspired us but inspiration may not have been enough without proper rest.
We also were eating much more than normal. It was like eating an extra special Sunday dinner twice a day for 14 consecutive days. And there was that day where we ate lunch three times, and then had a big dinner. We needed to walk up and down stairs 4 hours a day to burn off the increased calorie intake. I was hoping to break even but I haven’t yet stood on a scale to see how that worked out.
I don’t regret taking the Ambien though. It was an unusual dream and it was bright, clear and detailed, but not disturbing.
The Boy
We went to the Genocide Museum. We had seen pictures before; every Armenian-American has seen pictures of emaciated children and stacks of skulls. We were overwhelmed anyway. Village by village, the dates, locations, losses. And the pictures, some we had seen, others we hadn’t, but life-sized images and then some.
I stared at one particular picture of a group of Armenian children who had survived and were living in an orphanage. I looked into their eyes and saw what you would expect to see—fear, pain, sorrow, confusion, grief, and brokenness.
There was a boy in that picture though, around 10 years old, who looked at me and would not look away. He knew he was looking into the future. We looked at each other for a long time. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel myself breathing. His clothes were threadbare; his body was malnourished. His head was disproportionally oversized and he pushed it forward and looked directly into the center of the lens, through time and space. He was outraged, and he wanted to say, “I am here. The Turks didn’t kill me. What happened won’t destroy my spirit.” I remained still and let him speak.
The catastrophe in his life had awakened his will to fight. He had nothing. He was broke, alone, his hometown was destroyed, his family was dead. All he had was his will. And when someone pointed a camera at him, he knew what message he wanted to send.
“I’m not scared, I’m not broken. I will find a way and I will share it with all the rest. I am angry but the anger will drive me, give me the power.”
That boy was how the Armenian people survived the genocide, then the earthquake, then a struggling economy. Sheer, relentless will to keep going, to keep the goal right in front. Not just to survive but to restore, well everything, and thrive. End with something better than before.
This manchild, this orphan, this fellow Armenian was frozen in time but I stood listening to him from his eyes to mine and from my eyes to my heart. We are a people of strength, will, and determination. Anything God allows to happen, anything the devil tortures us with, any act of man or nature, we will come back stronger and more determined. I was going to say “simple as that” but it’s not simple. Well, it is and it isn’t. Also, can something good come out of something evil? You could make a case for it. We live out narratives that have been passed down from generation to generation. We are survivors. We have the will to keep going. We have passed the message to stay alert and find the path forward.
Work
The floorboard had been torn out. There were no window frames or doors. It was a house though, a bigger good-sized house than many others we had seen, with a tremendous view of open fields and mountains at a distance. Everything was wide open like a painting from the early American West. A breeze blew the weeds this way and that. The view was like living in a painting. As for the house, there would be work.
A bathroom that would replace the outhouse, and there would be a much bigger kitchen than the one they were using. They had chickens and pigs and a vegetable garden. A long dirt road led to their house. We—the group we traveled to Armenia with—were going to help this family refurbish the house. There were seven of us, and there were five pairs of gloves, six buckets, one wheelbarrow, and no ramp at the threshold of the doorway. Our task was to fill the rooms with a foot and a half layer of dirt and then a layer of rocks on top of that so that they could pour cement floors in the rooms. It would take all three days of work that had been blocked out on the trip.
There is a kind of beauty and peace in simple, physical, repetitive tasks. There’s the rhythm of it, and the muscle pain and perspiration, and that feeling that what once seemed like it would take an interminable amount of time eventually becomes a measureable amount. Your mind turns off and the body takes over. When your body starts to complain then your mind, which has been enjoying this role reversal, becomes the drill instructor to the body, “Shut up and keep moving!” It’s a wonderful thing.
We formed a bucket brigade and divided ourselves up by the tasks required: bucket filler; bucket passer, bucket dumper. We filled three rooms with a one-foot layer of dirt and then a layer of rocks in three days, a bucket at a time. Ok, they did build a ramp on the second day so we put the wheelbarrow to use along with the buckets after that but it was still an arduous, sweaty, demanding task. And our crew was cut by three the second day when the women in our group opted to go shopping. Then on the third day, Larry, 75 years young, said he’d done as much as he could do.
I have to say, Larry is a hero to me. He is the co-Capitan of our trip and he was knowledgeable and had many stories for us that had equal portions of insight and humor. He has been coming to Armenia serving God and the Armenian people for 9 years. For two days he worked like a 30 year old. I love his devotion, his level of commitment, his approach to things. It was a privilege to work with him.
The third day there was three of us: Josh, a bright young man in his 20’s; Ara, the pastor (Badveli) of the Pilgrim Armenian Church. The mayor of the town came by though and took Badveli for a long drive; it might have been social, or business, or it might have been that the mayor felt it was ahmot (shameful) to have a badveli working like a regular person.
The result was there were two of us on that third day, along with the husband who would live in the house and his friend. We were slugging away at it, and I kept thinking we were working like donkeys, which was ok. I survived heart surgery and the doctor told me I could do anything because my body would tell me when to back off. So I was in there working away unlike anytime in the last year and a half, and it felt great. I brought two pair of blue jeans and some old t-shirts just for the work part and it awesome to see the jeans so full of dust, dirt, and perspiration.
I thought I was going at a good clip until the wife joined us. I tried to match her pace but I was twice her age. It was a humbling experience to think that I was blazing away and then someone much younger jumped in and outpaced us all and then left to bring us our snack for a break time. We had apricots, ice cream, and Armenian coffee. Then she was the pace setter again and I was starting to really feel it and was thinking about quitting, but fortunately she left again, this time to go make lunch.
Her son, an adorable four year old with a toy pickup truck was filling his truck and bringing to the window. He worked intently and with great joy. Thank God I was able to keep pace with the lad.
Lunch was memorable. There was lavash, the homemade bread, and salad featuring vine-ripe tomatoes and cucumbers. We had cheese that was probably home made. And I’m getting all the lunches mixed up but I believe we had some kind of boiled meat, I think it was lamb. Everything was delicious.
The hospitality, the generosity, the abundance of food crowded on to the table—if you’re going to be known as a people with certain traits, well, these are pretty good ones to have. Wherever we were for a meal, it always looked and felt very similar—an overflow of food and the hosts making sure your plate and your glass were never, never empty. We had wine, we had vodka, and there was this sweet sugary fruit nectar. I drank them all.
It was the vodka though that kicked me into an alternate reality with one sip, boom! I was somewhere else and had only drunk half the shot. I had two shots and felt like Major Tom, floating in space. I tried to think of the words to that song but I couldn’t. I just had a sense of peace and after I stop floating, a kind of permanence.
It was one of those three days that we had hosh for lunch. I thought Badveli said hash and thought we were about to be served corned beef, which I do not like and as far as I know isn’t Armenian. I was a little confused so I turned to Badveli Ara.
“Hash?”
“Hosh.”
“What is it?” I spied a large bowl with unidentifiable objects in it.
“It’s offal.”
“Uh-fell?” I said, thinking it was an Armenian word.
“It’s great. I love, love, love it,” he said, waving his hands in the air like a choir director.
I wasn’t convinced that something that sounded like the English word “awful” could be great.
“Yeah, but, I mean, what is it exactly?”
“It’s where they don’t waste any part of the animal.”
I looked at the bowl. There was a greyish tint to parts of it, while other parts had a darker, maroon like hue. There were other shades of dark involved as well, and I could see strands of onions and a generous dousing of spices.
“You mean, like…”
“Heart, lungs, kidneys…”
“Ok.”
“Delicious!”
When the bowl came to me, I passed it directly to Badveli Ara. I figured if I stayed with the lavash, salad, cheese, and vodka, things would be fine. We ate and drank and had fellowship despite the language barrier. I wasn’t sure if the hosts notice that I passed on the hosh.
After lunch we went back to work and we went at it steadily but not as manic as before. We quit early, having reached our goal. Helping others directly was a good feeling. I might have mentioned this already but my dad used to say the gospel is a direct action. I also may or may not have already mentioned that even though Dad was born in the United States and passed almost 20 years ago, I felt his presence often while we were in Armenia.
Mother Church
The Apostolic Church of Armenia is the Armenian equivalent of the Vatican. Armenians from all over the world make a pilgrimage there. The seven of us went there as well. Etchmiadzin was established in 301, is believed to be the oldest cathedral in the world, was built on the site of a pagan temple and has been renovated a dozen times in the last 1700 years and is said to be Armenia’s strongest tourist attraction.
We are a people of faith. Once we made up our minds. we would not let go, and throughout history there were heavy prices to pay for remaining faithful. I did not know much about Etchmiadzin until I visited the place. We were Protestants, after all. I take that back; I’m sure there are protestant Armenians who knew the history of the Armenian Church. But not in our family; it was just not something that came up. I knew that there were two groups, the Apostolics and the Protestants, but I generally thought we were one people. They were just more like Catholics and we were, well, protestants.
I thought everything with the two groups was cool until one day, 40 years ago, I went to buy gas. I pulled into an Arco station in Burbank and when I went to pay, the manager was Armenian. Whenever we find each other it is usually cause for a 30 second celebration of the fact. We have identifiable features, I guess, mostly concerning the nose, and the eyes as well. Also, hand gesturing and a certain outlook on the world. And the clincher in this case was his name on his shirt, was Armenian but I wasn’t going to say anything. As soon as he saw me though, he said the opening phrase of the ritual.
“You Armenian?”
“Yes, I am.” “Yeah, I thought so.”
“Yeah.”
“You eh-speak Armenian?”
“No. Voch. Chem hahs genar. I don’t understand it.”
“Why not?”
“My great-grandparents came here in 1897. My grandma was 7 years old.”
He was disappointed but we talked a little more. He asked me what church I attended. I was quite proud of my church and I told him the name.
“Pees polkagon!”
I knew from the look on his face that he did not like protestants.
I had never encountered such disdain before.
“We’re all Armenian, aren’t we?”
“You polkagon,” he said, “you left deh Mother Church. You not Armenian.”
I was deeply hurt and felt hurt for a long time.
But standing on the grounds of Etchmiadzin and then standing inside the cathedral on Sunday, listening to the choir sing sacred sharagons, looking at the faces of the devout, who ignored those who entered only out of curiosity and as tourists, I was moved emotionally and spiritually.
We are protestant Armenians—in my family my great-great grandfather changed his affiliation in the mid 1800’s—but we are Armenians and we are connected to all the history, good and bad, of our people. In our tradition we don’t make inanimate things sacred and neither do we elevate our Badvelies, who they call Der Hyer, to half a step closer to God just by their title. But we could use the heightened sense of reverence that followers of the Apostolic way have.
Whenever I was at a cathedral or monastery—and there were quiet a few of them— the notion of being on sacred ground kept coming to my head. I usually don’t think that way. When Grace entered the church her head was covered, and when we left we walked out backwards, as we had seen other do.
“It’s a building,” Grace remarked later
. She didn’t mean any harm by it. That’s just how we look at things.
“Yeah,” I said, “the music was beautiful though.”
“True.”
“And the architecture is astounding. And the paintings, and the detail. And even the way the grounds are laid out. The symmetry.”
“Very beautiful.”
“I understand what you are saying though.”
“It’s just…”
I do understand what Grace was saying. I guess I am carrying two opposite points of view around in my head, and it certainly isn’t the first time I’ve done that, and Grace was only taking the position that “the flag is not the nation” as S.I. Hiyakawa said, and the cathedral is a tribute to God, but not the experience or existence of God. I believe, though, that our visit there that day helped me to understand the man at the Arco gas station all those years ago. Not that he wasn’t rude, but I have a better understanding of how deeply rooted our culture is to our faith and for him faith and culture were likewise rooted in Etchmiadzin.
Fish
Some people don’t eat fish, either because of the tiny bones that can add a mild kind of terror while dining, or because fish are fishy. I was that guy. But Grace and I were in San Francisco one weekend 35 years ago and we were with another couple and we went to a famous fish restaurant and, I think we were with our friends, Cathy and Craig, and Cathy said, “Come on Jack, you’re in a restaurant famous for fish, you’re not going to order beef, are you? You wouldn’t order chicken chow mien in a steakhouse, would you?” This made tremendous sense to me and so I decided I was in. Not knowing one fish from another, I consulted with Grace and picked red snapper, or maybe it was orange roughy, and dinner was a success. So for a long time I ordered one of those two, for decades in fact, if I ordered fish anyway, the choice was one of two. Then I tried salmon and now wild salmon is my favorite meal.
In Armenia though, I was thinking mostly about lamb and chicken. There was plenty of it and it was superb. They barbecued most of the time and they used wood, not charcoal, just like Dad used to do.
We had heard that in Armenia there was a lot of pork and potatoes for their meals, which was true. But they also had other kinds of meat, including a meal that featured something that tasted like barbecued chicken but didn’t come in the shape of chicken. It was almost like a kind of flattened shaped ball. We wondered if it was dove or rabbit but they said it was chicken so I’m taking their word.
As for the potatoes, they were smooth and tasty. At one meal sliced and fried potatoes were served at the beginning and near the end, and after that they brought French fries. There was no rice pilaf. Imagine that, my fellow Armenian-Americans. We’ve been in America for 100 years, eating pilaf, because we’re holding on to our Armenian-ness and yet all the while in Armenia, Armenians eat potatoes.
I didn’t see any choreg (a slightly sweet bread), either. No choreg? But in any case, this section is about fish, the best fish I have ever eaten. You can’t get fish fresher than at Cherkezi Dzor in Gyurmi; the fish were raised there. It’s a fish farm but not like we think of farmed fish here with antibiotic-fed fish packed into crowded tanks. Their set-up was a series of ponds in a natural setting. You can, as we did, walk past all the fishponds before you get to the restaurant. I even saw some customers picking out the fish they wanted for dinner.
I didn’t know anything about sturgeon. It didn’t sound like an appealing name for a fish. Sturgeon sounded like a fish that Eastern block tribes would eat, and only when all the other options were not available. I don’t know how stuff like that gets in my head, but it was there, and so here I am reporting it. But I was in a fish place, a famous one at that and I had decided that I would eat everything while I was in Armenia, well, except hosh and pizza with basturma (very spicy, dried, thinly slice beef) on it. I picked a big piece of sturgeon from the plate and it was so good I had to fight off the urge to immediately get another piece of it even while I still had some on my plate.
I already have said it was the best fish I have ever eaten and I have been trying to think of what I would liken it to. Well, you know that song “Iko,Iko” that Dr. John did? It is one of my favorite songs of all time. It is alive, it inspires; it is something that’s wonderful and amazing. It’s so good that I am sad when it gets close to the end. How could such a wonderful feeling end? And Dr. John himself doesn’t even end the song; he segues to the next one. That’s how it was with the meal of barbecued sturgeon. I was trying to think of a way to that it wouldn’t end.
I had eaten two pieces of the wonderful, miraculous sturgeon and there wasn’t any more left, so I considered all the other delicious offerings, including a very good local beer and the spirited, friendly service we had there. Our group at dinner was amiable, and had the joy of life; we had all successfully dodged life’s challenges, stress-makers and near heart-breakers, at least for the night. The wind was blowing and it was cold when the sun set and there was a long, dusty, bumpy ride home ahead of us; it was ok though; we had share a wonderful, unforgettable moment together.
Gyurmi Girl
Grace and I were walking slow down the streets of Gyurmi, a city that still has reminders of the horrible earthquake that took place in December, 1988, when thousands of buildings, including school buildings full of children, collapsed, and 60,000 people died. I remember it because it made the national news at the time and all of a sudden non-Armenian people knew Armenia. It was a shock, a sudden conk on the head to Armenian-Americans that Armenia existed. A reminder that the place was real, and that things go horribly wrong for no reason at all.
It was a revisiting of suffering, as if that’s what our legacy was again. And again the why of it arose. The stories then and to this day that were circulated concerned themselves with poor building standards, or poor materials or even skimming of rebar. That’s right, skimming of rebar. I don’t even want to talk about it. Some of the aftermath is still on display, including an apartment where half of the building was rubble not unlike the pictures of post-World War II Europe; there is also a cemetery of the victims that seems to go on for miles.
As we walked past the destroyed buildings, we weren’t thinking about building standards or poor materials. We felt the loss and pain and the frustration for what must be the slowest recovery and restoration imaginable: over a quarter of a century and hollowed out or flattened buildings still there. In fact in one apartment complex we passed, we had heard that people were taking shelter in the parts that weren’t completely leveled.
We didn’t know what to do, so we took pictures. Grace had the big camera, and I had the blue Sureshot camera. That’s when a little girl approached us. She surprised us when she spoke English.
“Hallo.”
“Hello,” Grace said, stooping a little to get closer.
The girl was six or seven and on her own.
“Inch bes es? Parev!” I said, anxious to display my Armenian, limited though it may be.
She ignored me. I felt hurt but then remembered I “spoke” Western Armenian while she spoke Eastern Armenian. Grace said that they understand Western but she could only understand 10% of the Eastern.
I was rolling that formula around in my head the entire time we were there. It didn’t make any sense. I would think that both dialects would understand the same per cent of the other speaker. In any case she was speaking English to us, which for the most part was the exception and not the rule. On the other hand she should have understood me, so I guess my pronunciation wasn’t good, or simply that she was more interested in hearing and speaking English.
“Are you havink good time?” she said, folding her arms as if she were about to conduct a lengthy interview.
“Yes, we are. Thank you,” Grace said.
“We’re having a wonderful time. We’re happy to be here,” I said.
“You are from Ameriga?”
The look on her face indicated she already knew the answer.
“Yes, we are. Your English is very good,” Grace said, with a smile so big and so full of delight I thought for a second that she was about to pick the child up and ask her if she wanted an ice cream cone.
“Tenk you,” the girl said. But her face remained steady, as if to say she was acquiring English, but it was no big deal.
I was trying to remember how to say “good for you” in Armenian. I don’t know why I wanted to speak Armenian to her; I had decided before we got to Armenia that I wouldn’t even try to speak it.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“How did you know we are from America?” Grace asked.
“You are taking picture,” she answered.
“Yes, we are,” I said.
“OK, bye-bye,” she said and walked away with her head up as if there were no barriers between her and a better town, province and country. I believe her, and I am sorry I didn’t take a picture of her.
Travelers
We were rolling in the van, the white 1997 Mercedes 15 passenger van with the air conditioning that didn’t seem to work efficiently and wasn’t always used by the driver when he could have. Sometimes it was because we were going uphill and he probably wanted to reduce engine stress. But sometimes he just didn’t deem it necessary. Badveli Ara told us that convincing him to turn the air on at all took him around five years worth of visits, and he finally relented but sparingly and randomly.
Thinking,“Come on, man, crank the air! It’s hot outside,” made me feel like some overindulged American, so I never said anything. We were on the other side of the world, visiting ancestral land, having an experience of a lifetime. How could I whine about air conditioning?
We were bumping along an open road with fields in the foreground and mountains in the background. There were seven of us, eight with Ardo, the driver. We had been somewhere and seen something. The cathedrals and monasteries and monuments were beginning to look the same in the architecture and use of space and symmetry. This didn’t bother me, though. I wanted to see all of it and hear all about it and feel things I couldn’t anywhere else, even if I couldn’t remember all the names and the locations and history. I would stand in awe and wonder in the moment.
And there are the pictures we took. I would have the pictures and sort them out somehow. It’s like this. If you took a toothbrush and dabbed it in some paint and then dragged your thumb across the brush over a map of Armenia, you’d see a zillion dots on that map. Let those represent all the cathedrals, monasteries, khachkars and all the other tributes to the Christian faith. I tell you, I stood where St. Gregory’s first church was built—there was only a circle of block-shaped stones left and ten million gnats, I mean I was breathing gnats—but I bridged 1700 years and said, “Here I am where you were,” and that moment stirred my soul.
But this wasn’t that day, this was another day. This was the day we went somewhere else and saw something else. It might have been the day we were in the parking lot of a famous place and I was approached by a man holding doves and I was told that the idea was you could release the doves and get a blessing. I told him no, but he said I could just hold them. I was curious to hold doves, although I have no idea why. Maybe it has something to do with my Uncle Paul, who had pigeons and a pigeon pen and I was remembering him holding them and talking to them. Maybe I had found another connection from Armenia to America and family who had brought Old Country ways with them. Or maybe I just wanted to hold a living bird because I don’t think I had done it before.
The man signaled for me to release the bird and I did and it took off, and while I was watching it, he handed me another one and and made the same gesture with his hand. That one took off behind us and when I turned around I couldn’t see it anymore. The entire moment was a matter of four or five seconds. I smiled at the man and he asked for money. I didn’t feel blessed and I didn’t speak enough Armenian to say that we hadn’t contracted to do this, verbally or otherwise, but I gave him the money, something like ten dollars, American. He was a fellow traveler walking through this world, doing what he thought he should do.
On the way back from seeing what we saw, which was something sacred and historical, I saw him smoking cigarettes with his friends, who were, just for own amusement and to make the time pass, twisting a garter snake one of them had captured. When he saw me though, he grabbed the pigeons out of their cage and rushed toward me. I nodded my head and took them and tossed them up to the blue sky. He was holding the snake, pinched at its neck, while the snake writhed calmly and made itself look like a wristwatch.
The man held out the other hand to indicate it was time for me to pay. I said, “No,” loud and clear and walked away. I was figuring five dollars was a fairer price than ten. I was after all, just another traveler walking through this world, doing what I thought I should do.
I think that was also the same that day Larry bought a huge, almost extra large pizza-sized katah, which is an Armenian pastry. It was beautiful and shiny and golden. Larry passed it back to us and we broke, shared and ate the most delicious, freshest, sweet but not too sweet katah ever made. We were not just comforted, we were blessed and inspired. Our ancestors sure knew how to make the most of butter, sugar, and flour.
Food is part of who we are. It may be increased in its value after the genocide, but my guess is that it was always an important part. Food, and how we prepare it and share it, is timeless and a celebration of being. Maybe I should have given the pigeon man some katah.
Assyrians
Out in the outskirts of everything, the road goes on forever and can jar you, can make your entire body ache, and can put you in a different state of mind.
The ride is endless, and the heat can be stultifying. After an hour’s worth of it I began to drift back to another time, of sitting in church, the tiny little chapel in North Hollywood, Dad in his bowtie, fanning himself with the bulletin, Mom dressed up pretty, my brother holding his forehead as if someone had hit him or he was about to hit someone, my sister looking at the little old ladies in the front row who would cry at the end when we sang the Hyer Mer, the Lord’s Prayer. It was the Armenian sermon though, that’s when the narrative part of my mind came to life. I didn’t speak Armenian, the seat was hard, no talking allowed, and my mind drifted anywhere it wanted. It wasn’t magical stuff, it was like stories and thoughts.
And now, 55 years later I was still doing it; the drone of the van and the heat and the road heading nowhere or so it seemed, everyone too tired to chat—all of it was the same as sitting through a sermon in a language I didn’t understand, so my mind floated and bounced like the first version of computer games, I think it was called Pong, and I saw myself at Marie Calendar’s in the early 80’s looking at it, not knowing it was the future of things.
Somewhere along that wandering I came upon the question.
“Badveli?”
“Yes?”
“Are there any Assyrian towns here?”
There has been no country called Assyria for the last 1300 years. But for that same period of time the people of Assyria have continued to identify themselves as such, wherever they were, including Armenia.
“I’m sure there are.”
“Wow! Could we visit one?”
“Well…”
“I mean, is there one nearby?”
My family, on both sides, were Armenian speaking Assyrians living in Turkey. It sounds complicated, but it isn’t. Assyrians and Armenians have been hanging out together, marrying each other, trading one language for the other or one surname for the other for 2500 years. Every Armenian I’ve ever met has said, “Oh yes, of course,” when I say “Yes Ahsori yem,” (I’m Assyrian). Armenians and Assyrians are kindred spirits, soul twins.
“I bet there is an Assyrian town nearby. Sure why wouldn’t there be? Let me ask Ardo.”
So he had a conversation with Ardo, our driver, and Ardo became very animated and there was much arm-waving and he pointed off to his left, nodding his head.
“Well?”
“Yeah, he said there is one not far from here.”
“Let’s go.”
“We’ll go tomorrow.”
I confess that I thought the answer was no; that the next day we would have too many things to do. Badveli had planned nearly every minute, so how would there be time for an unscheduled addition? But there was.
We went in the middle of a busy day to a town that made me think of Parlier, California, a tiny farming town just south of Fresno. There were a few streets with craggy, crumbling, stone and mortar houses with tin roofs, and mostly empty fields. So, the Parlier comparison is unfair because in Parlier there are grapevines and more recently build houses. But I had the feeling of something worn down, a little tired, burdened by something almost overwhelming. Ardo pulled up to the Assyrian Social Hall.
“This better be good!” Badveli said.
“It will,” I replied.
He went in ahead of us to explain our presence and then came out and signaled us to come in. I marveled at his skills to just walk in to someone’s life on a regular day, to say, “Hello, we’re from America and we’d like to visit for a while.”
The president of the Assyrian social club greeted us warmly as we walked into his office. He shook hands with each of us; he even bowed slightly from the shoulders. A woman came in and we greeted her. She likewise treated us as though we were much anticipated guests. The president said something to her and she left in a hurry. Badveli Ara was pointed at me and speaking in a bright, excited tone. I assumed he was saying that I was of Assyrian descent. I began to explain myself, while Badveli translated.
“My father’s family were Assyrians. They lived in Kharpert.”
The president nodded enthusiastically, so I continued.
“They came to the United States over 100 years ago.”
He seemed puzzled, so I changed the subject.
“I am proud to be Assyrian and we are all happy to be here.”
That seemed to please him quite a lot and he nodded and shook my hand again. Grace suggested I have my picture taken with the man. We stood proudly by the Assyrian flag, which was in the corner on a stand and a pole. We held it up the corner so there would be no doubt about what flag it was. The blue and red stripes are the Tigris and Euphrates river, the cradle of civilization, said to be the locale of the Garden of Eden. The flag was designed and officially sanctioned in 1971, but the people and land it represents are from the beginning of time.
When the photo-op was over, the women who hurried off walked in grandly with a tray of Armenian coffee and pastries. We drank our surge and socialized. Then we were invited to see their lavash (cracker bread) oven. We went outside and around the corner and we were each given a giant, fresh baked lavash. They were very animated and wanted to show us the Assyrian church.
We walked 3 blocks through the town and the church, when we got there, looked, strong with its dark red bricks and hard angles.
“He’s says the church was originally built in the 1850’s, but was destroyed,” Badveli said.
“Wow,” I said, thinking maybe there was a better word, or maybe there wasn’t.
“The wow is they decided to rebuild it in 1980.”
“Yeah?”
“But they were sure that the Soviet Union would be against it.”
“Hah.”
“So, they would gather at night.”
“Night?”
“You know, like undercover. Each person would contribute.”
“Money?”
“More like tools, materials or doing the work. All at night.”
Brick by brick. Bags of cement. Lumber. Labor. Putting in hours after work. Giving up free time and sleep. And then there’s the risk-taking. When Jonah wrote, “The people of Nineveh believed God,” I wonder if he ever imagined it would still be true 2700 years later.
It was quite a day. The president of the social club invited us to his house for dinner. On the spot. Half a dozen strangers roll up to his place and he says “Come to my house for dinner.”
The Talking Wall 