Barev dzes from the sunny Armenian capital! Why am I here? This is the question I guess not only people I know (to a varying degree) might have been asking, but also the one I have been trying to answer for myself over these seven weeks I have spent here in Yerevan.
But why do we travel in the first place? To experience something new, discover new places, meet new people, reconnect with ourselves or escape whoever/whatever has been antagonizing or oppressing us back home.
When I first came here in the late May of 2022, it was all about allowing myself to physically leave Mother Russia for a while having felt like a hostage there since the late 2019. Well, being at home surrounded by your loved ones isn’t quite what could be qualified as a prison, but ironically, the insanity of the global pandemic put us in a desperate situation when we were made to want to escape – even the most precious people and things in life…
Landing in Yerevan after another crises which hit my country specifically and being welcomed in a perfect Russian by an exceptionally handsome Armenian customs officer at Zvartnots airport felt like a start of a perfect escape and discovery. On that long-awaited „foreign“ trip I was to get reunited with a couple of friends I met on my grand journey in the U.S. where I felt a lot freer — again ironically, while away from the most precious people and things in life…
Waking up in Yerevan and walking out of the hotel situated along two central streets — Mashtots Avenue and Khorenatsi Street, I also felt transformed to the old abandoned part of myself — the one who was now wearing her contacts instead of glasses, staring at another gorgeous pink (kind of girly) building instead of her computer. That girlwas also wearing a new khaki (my favorite color) dress instead of a comfy home outfit and catching a few glances of local men which even after being confronted by multiple feminist ideas back in the U.S., she had to admit she didn’t mind at all…
Meeting a few new people who also had that strong bond with the U.S. through the Fulbright program made me realize how even a relationship with the country that almost any other one (particularly mine at the moment) seem to be having a complex relationship with could be that universal glue bringing us — such different individuals constantly going through identity struggles and negotiations needing to rediscover and escape— together … Through these connections I remembered I could feel the feelings I thought I’d forgotten how to feel. And those were those connections and feelings that made me think again of how identity struggles are inherently a part of being a Fulbrighter…
Of course, another important ingredient to connecting with like-minded individuals and a new country is nice food and drinks. There are lots of debates about whether it is legitimate to call Armenia part of the Caucasus, that part of the world which comes with lots of lingering stereotypes — at least those which have been around for decades in what is now post-Soviet space. But there are also those amazing positive „stereotypes“ about hospitality, substantial treats and lots of laughs in between that no one here would be offended by and would most probably happily go out of their way to live up to. When they ask you what kind of food you had here, you can just secretly smile and say „Everything I had looked and tasted absolutely awesome!“.
A high degree of familiarity with the country also helped a lot — especially during the time when being back home we were made to feel most of the world hated us just based on our nationality. As a linguist, I would have to elaborate more on the language part of my experience, but for now let me just say I felt comforted and reassured — even despite being an English teacher — being able to speak my native Russian instead of English on most instances. Being welcomed and accommodated linguistically, it is definitely hard not to fall into the trap of trampling upon the local cultural and national identity, which makes it hard not to be tempted into merging it with your own. But for me personally, this is not an imperialistic attitude to a country which used to be part of the enormous Soviet empire, but rather someemotional comfort you get being away from your home country with all its ever-lasting and currently pressing complexities but still surrounded by people you were technically born in the same country.
Even though I am worlds away from being even remotely religious, one of the reasons I got really inspired to come to Armenia when it was only coming into Russian people’s radar during the time of COVID restrictions was an Armenian church Surb Vardan in Kislovodsk in the Russian Northern Caucasus. That must have been a mix of the architectural beauty of the pink church perched on top of a hill overlooking the mountains, the peace and serenity it projected along with the gentle November sunshine (similarly to the one warming me as I am writing this) and a bunch of Armenians with very distinct and expressive faces reminding me of something I couldn’t yet articulate that made me promise to myself I would get to Armenia sooner than later.
Actually I spent more time in the neighboring Georgia on that May-June trip than here and I felt I should have reconsidered my travel schedule. It was the feeling of having to do justice to Armenia as well as that gut feeling that made me think of coming back to stay for a lot longer. Back then I had no rational reasons at all, but it is the same as liking someone — it never is totally rational, but most of us do have a type… Besides, watching a sea of Armenian faces around me, I realized what that something these images triggered in me was. That was the memory of a portrait hanging in a house in Pushkin Str. (which also happens to be the name of one of the central streets here in Yerevan) where I spent the first years of my life living. It was of my greatgrandparents on my mother’s side who I remembered looking quite similar to some people I could see here. I know I have some Don Kazak ancestry, but you never know how much different genes got mixed as the area they lived in and the one in South Western Russia aren’t that far away from one another. I knew I had to spend more time getting connected with some blurred (by living in the huge – mostly Northern – country) parts of my Southern identity that made me feel almost at home here and want to explore how similar and/or different from locals I looked…
After that trip, I came back home a lot more energized and invigorated, which had my family saying „Whatever they fed you back in Yerevan must have worked its magic“. I spent the rest of the summer studying some literature on Armenia, its political system, identity struggles that every small country must be particularly exposed to as well as on Don Kazaks, the Caucasus, nationalism, etc. That again made me try to choose between doing a degree in a related humanities field in order to make better sense of the world as it used to be and is these days and pursuing a research study of identities — the idea I had been playing around with ever since I returned from the U.S. back in 2018.
My birthday which is in late September was approaching. A month prior to it has always been a time of extra reflection and rumination for me. As I was about to turn 34, I was looking back on another year and thinking of some nice ways to kick off a new one. So I decided I might actually treat myself to a longer stay in Yerevan in early October. September is known to be a time of change and turbulence — especially now in Russia under the current circumstance. So I had to wait longer than usual to buy my ticket…
Then on September 13 my Mum was taken into a hospital and thas was also exactly the same day when another wave of the Armenia-Azerbajan conflict started. It seemed that my whole world was crushing and it wasn’t the right time to even entertain the idea of putting myself first and celebrating me a week later. But somehow during one of the scariest and longest nights in my life I spent next to my Mum’s hospital bed, in between attending to her needs, I kept thinking back to my time in Yerevan, that amazing sweet wine we had in Saryan Street and those conversations… I felt on that night me and the whole Armenian nation had even more in common — that fear of losing someone so important, of not waking up to the world we used to know… It was also the power of Armenian cognac that gave me the strength to resist the pain and stress of those few days that made me want to return to Armenia and simply sip on some nice sweet wine again— alone and/or in a nice company of locals.
A day after my birthday I was able to somehow celebrate after my Mum had luckily got better, mobilization in Russia was announced. It was when lots of Russia literally got reminded of how traveling can be an escape. While lots of fellow Russians — particularly males — were flocking to a few countries still open to Russians (including Armenia), I seemingly had to valid reasons to escape – being a female with no family members in danger of being enlisted. But it was again as in that super famous example of putting on a mask on yourself first and then on a child that made me realize that if I wanted to give that extra my Mum needed from me — basically as if she was my child — I had to fill myself with the energy to give back first.
I knew this trip might resemble me the one I embarked on back in 2017 when I boarded that plane to Miami as ironically, I was expecting to regain happiness while being away from the most precious people and things in life. As I got reminded about how fragile life is — on both national and domestic levels – I was worrying whether I would be able to return to the life I used to know while the political situation in the country was growing more and more volatile. In order to put my Mum’s mind at ease, I had to tell her I’d be leaving for a month or so to Russia’s south. I had millions of reasons to argue with her on how the whole world wasn’t against Russia and Armenians are actually a friendly and kind nation . But at that moment in time I had no physical or emotional power to do that with the person who had givenme a gift of life and whose own I was so worried about just a couple of weeks before.
So, finally I got a one-way ticket to Yerevan from Sochi in the Russian South where I did stay for a few days to start a journey where my main goal was simply to celebrate being alive — here and now – the rest I was going to give myself time to figure out later …
So here I am writing this on the sixth floor of a building right at the heart of Yerevan with St.Gregory the IlluminatorChurch right in front of me, a blurry image of Ararat on my right and the pinkness of the administrave buildings behind me. It’s been seven weeks since I left home and I am honestly afraid to return as I might be like a bird who flew out of the cage to gain freedom and when I return, I will willingly fly back in it with no clear prospect of ever flying back out… But there is something else keeping me here which I know no better way to call rather than some sort of Armenian magic…
olgacreateinspire 