Letters from Armenia, by Antoine Terjanian

Yeghegnadzor, Monday, November 12, 2007 Here, on the steep slopes of our mountains, there is no time for life (Kyanqi hamar zhamanaq ch’ka). We do, like those who rise towards God: We forget pain! That stubborn pain, the pain of hope! Onnik is the man in his seventies who lives at 5 Khachatryan, the other end of our street. He welcomed us so kindly when we first moved in that I thought I would ask him for advice on where to acquire the goods and services we needed locally. I called several times the number he had given us; noone answered. Then I saw him on the street and asked if I had taken-down his number wrong. He said no, you have the correct number, it is just that they have cut my phone line (for non-payment - 900 drams). So I asked him if perhaps his wife would be willing to help us with our laundry, since city water rarely reached our house at the time (because of our altitude). He checked with her and we started taking our laundry there and his phone line starte...

Yeghegnadzor, lundi, 12 novembre 2007 Ici, aux pentes raides de nos montagnes, pas de temps pour la vie (Kyanqi hamar zhamanaq ch’ka). Nous faisons comme ceux qui s’élèvent vers Dieu : Nous oublions la douleur! Ce mal tenace, le mal de l’espoir! Onnik est le septuagénaire qui habite au 5, rue Khachatryan, à l’autre bout de notre rue. Il nous avait accueilli si gentiment quand nous avions emménagé que j’avais pensé lui demander conseil pour savoir où acquérir les biens et services dont nous aurions besoin, localement. J’ai composé plusieurs fois le numéro de téléphone qu’il nous avait donné, personne ne répondait. Je l’ai alors croisé dans la rue et lui ai demandé de vérifier si j’avais mal copié son numéro. Non, me dit-il, vous avez le bon numéro, ils m’ont coupé la ligne (pour non-paiement des frais – 900 drams). Je lui ai alors demandé si sa femme pourrait faire notre lessive, puisque l’eau courante atteignait rarement notre maison (à cause de son altitude). La réponse ...

Letter 24: When Mané's great-grandmother died Saturday, October 27, 2007 Her name was Elizabeth. She was born in 1918, a few months after the Sartarapat victory. She got married in 1936 and had two daughters, one of them Rima, Mané’s grandmother. I met her for the first time six months ago, the night before Mané flew to Canada on a scholarship. Mané had invited me for a good-bye dinner party at Rima’s house. They called her ‘Nana’. She was sitting on the couch side of the dinner table and she looked so sweet with her hair covered in a cone-shaped scarf, I decided to sit next to her. I found out she had almost zero vision, but she was sharp and witty and laughed and responded in kind to my jokes. She was so sweet, I couldn’t help go and visit her regularly after that. I brought her bananas (an imported fruit in Armenia, a luxury in Soviet times). I always joked: “Don’t let anybody have them, these are for you”. She never ate any, they all went to her great-grandchildren. I a...

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 Thank God the parliamentary elections went relatively well (better than the last election, improving like everything else in Armenia)… Thank God there is no war going on here… We still have quite a few problems to deal with though... This morning, our neighbour Vartkes asked me how much I paid for a truckload of cement I bought directly from the factory last week. When I told him I paid 37000 drams per ton + 26000 for the transport, his reaction was: ‘Aynkan tangatsel e’ (It has gone up so much)! And he proceeded to blame ‘Doddy Gago’ for jacking-up the price after he bought the factory. (Doddy Gago is one of those oligarchs who made a quick buck buying-up everything when the Soviet Union collapsed. He is now reputed to be ‘Godfather’ to thousands of local Armenians.) On May 10, I took 300,000 drams cash (about 1000 US$) out of the bank and rode with two young men in an old ‘Zil’ Soviet truck to the town of Ararat, normally a one hour trip across the Nakhi...

Château Armens Yeghegnadzor, March 2006 There is a very well hidden family secret [1] in the Armen family. Garbis, the patriarch of the clan has not told his children or his grand children of the existence of their ancestral château in the south of France, in the St-Émilion wine producing region. As a matter of fact, I understand he did not even bother to put it in his will. “Château Armens” is a ‘Grand Cru’ Appellation Contrôlée St-Émilion, which was acquired a few years ago by the Comte Alexandre de Mallet-Roquefort. We happened inadvertently on the château when we were searching our way to find the town of Castillon. This town, 40 kilometers east of Bordeaux is the site of the last battle of the 100 years war between the kings of France and England. The people of Castillon created some twenty years ago a ‘sound and light show’ which has become world famous. It is the re-enactment of some of the historical background leading to the battle and the actual battle that are portr...

Ottawa Tulip Festival, May 2005 It is that time of year after the Winterlude season is over, when Ottawa welcomes tourists by the thousands from all over the world, again. It is the time of the world famous “Ottawa Tulip Festival”. The festival originated with the generosity of HRH Princess (later Queen) Juliana of the Netherlands and the Dutch people. HRH expressed her gratitude to Ottawa, where one of her daughters was born and where she and her family found refuge during the Second World War, by sending us an annual gift of 20,000 bulbs of tulips. Ottawa photographer, Malak Karsh, in love with the beauty of the tulip, conceived the idea of the “Tulip festival.” He founded it and promoted it. His Armenian family having escaped from Mardin, after the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, Malak was familiar with the splendor of this flower in his original homeland. When it was decided that playing on the Tulipomania of the XVIIIth century would bring an exotic flavour to the Tulip fest...

December 2004 Hazarapet Nazaryan is Mosso Nazaryan’s elder brother and the family’s patriarch. I met Mosso in 2003 when I had given-up on getting proper water pressure in the castle. Arsen from Vayk said he’d take me to the water authority’s boss and we took a taxi there. The boss was not there, but his brother Mosso was there. After hearing my plea, he said come with me, let’s go see what we can do. We rode in his 4x4 russian vehicle and drove up to the castle. On the way he stopped in some employees’ houses, the much feared water baron for my part of town and told him he was going to get me water. Sure enough, he opened a few water holes, opened and shut a few large taps and when we got to the castle, I had water. Mosso was simply concerned that a diasporan ‘guest’ in Yeghegnadzoe had no water. He accepted no gift, hardly a drink for celebration. Samson later confirmed that he had been in a heated discussion with his brother (Hazarapet, the boss) and that got him nowhere. This ti...