Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Erevan blues

It would've been nice to have a blog during the tumultuous years of yore & give a play-by-play of the cloak and dagger days, when nary a blog existed. But I suppose now's as good a time as any [insert swelling head/literary aspirations here]. Wasn't I complaining just yesterday that everyone is a poet/painter/writer? I mean, isn't everyone these days? Well, I'll come off my high horse and say, why the hell not? If it makes one feel good, and if feeling good is in short commodity in these troubled times, and if I, the victim, have the free will to stop reading/toss book/throw up my hands in consternation--then more power to them, I say. Write/paint/annoy-the-hell-out-of-everyone, kayl arach, on! Mostly because we come from a culture of silly people whispering "ohmyGoddidyouhear--snickersnickersnicker" inanities, dragging people down (everybody's a critic, right?) The old illusory bring-myself-up-if-I bring-you-down routine. What's the purpose to all this ranting? I haven't the slightest. And thanks to the blog, I needn't have a reason. I know, that's terrible, truly it is. But back to the title of my blog. Maybe I should offer an explanation of some sort. Way back when on a cool autumn day, I decided to visit the gravesite of my piano teacher, having not been in the country when she passed away, and subsequently had been unable to attend her funeral. One of the wonderful gifts of our religion--good old fashioned Christian guilt--kept hitting me in the gut, and I felt I had to go over there and say hello (or goodbye, as it were). I got to the ominous booth with the green golf jacketed attendant and asked for the gravesite of Mercedes A. "Oh, that's great, it's her birthday." Never knew that before, I thought to myself. Her birthday. September 20th. How sad that I'd never said Happy Birthday to her in life. She was a spry little woman with a French accent, in an immaculate apartment with red and white striped awnings on the windows and more importantly, two baby Steinway Grands. I loved the lessons, hated the practicing. Nothing unusual there. The very last time I played with her, she accompanied me on Beethoven's 1st Concerto in C--I tried to keep up and make it sound halfway decent. In truth, I couldn't be bothered to worry about it because it was just so much fun banging away on a baby Grand on stage with my teacher. Yes kids, keep up with the lessons. Even if you can't play a piece in its entirety to save your life. Because the music stays with you. Trust me on this one. So, I navigated the ginormous kingdom of the dead which is Rose Hills Whittier, and finally finding her final resting spot, plopped myself down on the grass and read the marker--Stay quiet and come with me. It dawned on me that she'd used those words so often as she rushed students in with quick movements, "hush, hush...wait, sit here...listen", leading us to a seat, gently admonishing us to wait quietly for our turn while the student with the previous time slot finished up their piece. Usually, she'd rush to her library in the back room and drop a book in my hands..."read this, it's very good." I remember finishing Little Women during those 'wait' sessions. I'd make my mother drop me off early so that I could read the next chapter before my lesson. Stay quiet and come with me. It would be a great title for a short story collection, methinks. If I ever finish them. I can thank Ms. Mercedes, God rest her soul. Just last week, I was in Erevan for a lovely little respite from the salt mines at work, to visit my husband, still fighting against the windmills like a latter-day Don Quixote, bless his heart, and to catch up with my close friends. As I sat in the airport in Amsterdam and waited for the Armavia flight, a familiar face turned my way and we began talking. This and that. "You lived once in Erevan, didn't you?" Yes, during the days of electricity on the grid (two to three hours a day, if you were lucky), of 'barsigs' (Iranian-made kerosene lamps, which warmed your room but gave you bronchitis from the fumes in the process), of generators (if you could afford them) to offer some light by way of a fluorescent bulb, of frozen, bursting pipes and hauling water in buckets for a quick one-handed shower from the fountain across the street, six storeys down. Then six storeys up. "Yes, for a short time beginning in the fall of '94." And in December of the same year, the President announced on television the ban of a certain political party, while I sat in the dark, alone in our apartment with no electricity, unaware of the speech and the lovely days to transpire from that moment onwards. After the President's mandate, the phone went dead and shortly thereafter three men in trenchcoats (I could faintly make out their silhouettes through the peephole) pounded on my door. For a good hour and a half. "Who are you?" I'd ask. To which they'd reply, "Just open the door." And after an hour in the cold winter air a softer, "Please open the door, we're freezing out here." "Would you open the door to someone pounding on your door, refusing to identify themselves?" I asked. "Probably not." At least they were honest. "Well then you'll have to break the door down." A flash of uncomfortable defiance. A short time later a family friend ran to the door and screamed for me to open it. I'd put up a barricade in the dark--chairs, tables, pillows--pacing the small apartment like a headless chicken smoking cigarettes (I'd never lit one up before). I reluctantly opened the door and they all rushed in like a hurricane. Our friend Arshak took me in his arms and hugged me. Calm down. Calm down. Arshak had eyes in the back of his head and you felt safe in his strong and commanding presence. Calm down, calm down. Everything was overturned. "Any guns? Documents?" the coats asked. Drawers opened, carpets rolled up, a nice little Roman pillage. "Ah, what's this?" one curiously self-important khouzargogh asked as he held up a plastic baggie filled with parsley, bringing it close to his eyeball. He opened the bag and took a sniff. Just parsley. After a good few hours--who knows, it could've been longer?--we sat with the coats and they asked questions. I don't remember hardly any of them, only that at some point, Arshak looked at the lead questioner and said, "Are you from Ardzvanik [the village]?" The man looked at him and realized they knew each other. He wasn't like the others. There was a gentleness about him, a realization that he'd violated trust, trespassed and trampled on a part of me. I shouted obscenities in English, the Armenian having left me a long time before that. He spoke in a soft and gentle voice. "Ani, if I see you in the street tomorrow, can we be friends?" "No." My eyes glared. At this point, I wasn't ready to let bygones be bygones. They left and my friend took me to a 'safe' location. My husband was arrested, as were many others. Questioned, released. Questioned, released. Some just arrested. 'Enemies' of the state. His passport confiscated, visa cancelled. An odar exiled. How many times can one be an odar? What lovely little dreams brought so many to the City then? How many have remained? I told just a little bit of my story and the woman looked at me, her eyes wide. Yes, many people have forgotten about those days. Erevan itself has forgotten those days. The trees from that era have all been chopped down, the potholes that I gingerly drove past, filled. Glossed over, like a reflection in an H2 cruising down Sayat-Nova Avenue. Erevan has been undergoing a cosmetic makeover for some time, and it's sort of approaching the Jocelyn Wildenstein 'school' of plastic surgery. I mean, most of the city's buildings have become unrecognizeable--having lost their architectural flavor and charm as storey upon storey upon storey is added, pell-mell it seems, to certain buildings. And even though we enjoyed the new restos and dives in town--Baghdad, Bangkok (great Middle Eastern at one, mouth-watering and saliva-producing trout curry at the other)--and sipped, at long last, a decent espresso at Central Cafe--a certain sadness, a sense of loss, filled this little bourgeois soul and hung through the air like wet laundry. Heavy, but it smelled good. Part of that love/hate relationship with Armenia. It sucks you in, and takes takes takes--but then gives you a wonderful something in return, a certain something that blooms in your head, shouting out funky colors and images, refusing to let go. The absurdly comical--like my friend Melik asking to have his tea at Central Cafe served in a larger glass--the waiter adamantly refusing to change 'policy'--and later the barman refusing to accommodate the executive order of the management to finally acquiesce--while Melik's tea got colder and colder. That lovely service ethic at work, once again. But the hilarious story of the week was Melik's once again. While we sat in his Gallery before a movie screening, he showed us location photos for the film he's producing called 'Chnchik.' All systems are go--minus a few Euros of course, so he's in active get-funding-now phase. Anyway, they found the perfect location in a village in the Lori Region, an entirely rundown little property that would be the protagonist's home. They took photos of the house and gave the villagers who owned it some money as a good-faith down payment to use the place for filming. A month later, Melik took one of the directors to see the place. As they stepped into the house they suddenly stopped dead in their tracks and felt their mouths hang open. The property had undergone the dreaded 'Yevroremont'--European remodeling (because whatever's of superior quality is European, bien sur). The villagers used the cash to change the doors, fix the wood flooring, paint the walls and add new lighting fixtures. The villagers explained that they felt ashamed (amot) that their house would appear in such a sorry state in the film, and decided to remodel it--unawares, it would seem, that the rundown property is exactly what was needed for the film. Melik took photos of the 'upgraded' property. As he passed them around, we all howled with laughter. Back to the old drawing board. Never a dull moment in the City of Nana Taxi.