Today was the first day I saw her truly smile. Perhaps it was a secret she only shares with the baby. We were sitting at the kitchen table trying to make the bebe eat her eggs and cauliflower. Nora opened her mouth to reprimand the girl for stealing her fork, but instead, when she placed it back into the silverware drawer, she smiled instead. And still I wonder why only now, one week before I leave, has she truly smiled? She has smirked and exercised the corners of her light pink lips, laughed when her mother-in-law tells a joke, and teases me as she giggles at my Armenian skills while she graciously corrects me. But this time, I saw her teeth and the whites of her eyes—the ones that match her daughter’s exactly. I think, finally, she can be alone in my presence.

I don’t know quite where to start, or how. Perhaps this is because I don’t want to write a “what I did on my summer vacation 2007!” reflection. Really, I want to write a profile of my life here—my homestay family, the diasporan friends I’ve made (as my brother says, the most friends I’ve had in my life) and the food. Because really, what is Armenia without talking about the food? Now, I find myself lost in not so much an overwhelming feeling of my first experience in Armenia. Now, it is a feeling of emptiness. For the first time in my life, I feel as though I have nothing to say; I only look and stare. Like I’ve actually gotten dumber on my “summer vacation.” Maybe that’s what I should be writing about. We spent a weekend in war-torn Shushi, and all I could do was look at the stars. There are so many that you can hardly tell where there’s any room for the tip of your finger to fit between the sparkling white. Two of them were shooting. Or were they falling?

I traveled back, to that place; that place called Armenia. Yet it is the Armenia of a different age, where I – supposed to be threatened by the rifles of the men on the watchtowers, guarding our sacred mount, Ararat – could not cross the line to Turkey. That sacred mount which disconnects my family’s true home in Kayseri from the Armenia my eyes behold. But the Armenia I see is a new kind of beautiful, with blossoming vines of grapes lining the Ararat plain. The mountains, tall and majestic, guard us. I sat alone in the pews at Etchmiadzin and I cried for my grandmother, who will never see this new Armenia. And why, I ask, do I yearn to see it so terribly? I begin to walk through the fields where the memories of Mariums have trod. I carry them with me. From Marium, to Mari, to Marie—my middle name, the skipping generational name of the women in my family. The strong. The Armenian. The dry heat beats down on my fair head, and I imagine that I fall to my knees, in search. I crawl through the vines, pining for the fresh mountain water, but my legs are held back by a past that tugs me away from the mirage. I lie on my back and my vision blurs in the hot light of the sun. My heart takes my body through this country. It’s imbedded in me. This seemingly desolate land that God-knows-who would want, besides these proud Armenians. My eyes close, and I lose myself in its presence.

As my friend Sam pointed out, “you can tell the time of year here by the fruit.” During the summertime, most of the fruits are ripe in Armenia, especially the dziran. I had three this morning while I watched her smile. “Are you married?” an old woman I met a few weeks ago asked me. This was her third question, which followed, “Anunut inch e, yev kani daregan es?” On a bus-ride back from the Hagpat and Sanahin monasteries, we designated different fruits to match each other’s personalities. I was assigned an apricot, apparently, because the consensus was everyone loves me, and who doesn’t love an apricot? Aside from their light coloring, apricots are through and through the fruit of Armenia, ‘why, for heaven sakes, it’s scientific name is prunus armeniaca! Armenian plum, see!?’ (Which means I’m a lighter kind of version of Yanina, our designated plum.) And their pits are pretty much indestructible, they said. I walk down the street in Yerevan and sometimes I feel like a ripe dziran. I’ve learned to feel comfortably violated by the eyes of the men who follow my gait, not just with their eyes, but with their entire heads. Rubbernecking at its worst. As an apricot, with the features to prove, I must exude a bright orange ripeness. I am a perfectly softened piece of fruit, ripening with the seasons and ready for someone to take a bite, at age twenty. Or am I just making all this up?

But this is not what I want to talk about.

Every morning when I was younger, my health-obsessive mother would make a bowl of fresh fruit for my brother and I to eat before our breakfasts. My favorite was when she mixed the ruby red pomegranate seeds she picked out of the fruit’s white film and mixed it with a mango. It makes me laugh now because we named two of my four closest friends here a mango and a pomegranate on that bus ride from Lori. The mango has always been a fruit I’ve associated with strength and voluptuousness, in personality and appearance. She carries an admirable presence, but her demeanor is always smooth. And, there are many times when you can cut a mango and not be quite sure if it’s ripe or not (although it does give hints when it softens). But you cut open a ripe one, when you know it’s perfectly comfortable with you going inside, and it has a personality that simply melds with your own. And, even though its texture enables the eater to get caught up in stringy details, one learns that you quickly move around them to accept and indulge in those eccentricities in order to get to its pit, which always holds firm the core of its being. With pomegranates, all that need be described is their leathery appearance and personality, which may throw the indulger off at first, however, little jewels of ruby red are discovered around each crevice of filmy white. One just has to take the time to open it up, learn its character, and always be pleasantly surprised with the new little clusters of sour-sweet beads that make your mouth twinge in all different ways. You know a pomegranate when you meet one. They’re rare. It has also become the symbol fruit of Armenia. Armenians are just like pomegranates—rare and involved. Traditionally, they ripen in the fall, but I tasted bite of one before I left this year. My mother would always tell my brother and I to be careful when we ate our pomegranates. Those red stains are permanent; they never come out.

I remember the first thing I was going to write for the beginning of my reflection. It was my third day here, and I had come back from a goodbye party for the girl that stayed in my host family’s house for seven months before me. How was I supposed to compete with that? I didn’t even speak the language. The first sentence in my reflection was: I am not Armenian. I immediately felt guilty and erased it. But now, I wished I had kept it. All my life, I have been Armenian, felt Armenian, but then felt so compelled to disown my entire identity in a matter of three days of coming here for the second time. Still, I’m not exactly sure what it means, or what it meant. Actually, I think I’m afraid to define it. What it means is that I was afraid to be in a “foreign country” for two months, and was ashamed to call it a “foreign country.” And that I was under the misnomer that I was going to miss having people around that I actually knew, including my family, who I tried so hard to get away from. The truth is, I ran away, and felt stuck. The truth is, I ran away to home and want to be stuck.

How can one attempt to measure time and place? I came to Armenia with a sign on my back, saying goodbye to my family and finally, being selfish. My reflection: Armenia has been one of the best moments of my life. But by best, simply, I mean that I feel at home traveling through the treeless mountains covered with green. I feel free jumping into the rivers and streams between gorges, and following the end of the road by foot aside the edges of a cliff after our not-so-reliable marshrutka broke down on the way to Tatev. And even more so, that marshrutka driver’s reaction, which was to get out of the vehicle after the engine stops, with the edge of the dirt road that falls into a cliff on our left, walks to the side of the road, picks up a large rock, places it behind the back right tire and says to us, “For brake.” Simply, only the best dziran are found on the side of the road that the village people sell. And, when you ask to buy one, they say, “koorig, yete mi hat uzumes, take it.” ‘Voch inch’ they say. And you take the fruit, the ripe dziran… meg gar meg chika, it leaves their hands. Gam, meg gar, heto meg chika…

It’s really this that I want to talk about. Giving away fresh, ripe fruit. The man on the street who gave me a dziran for free because I only wanted one. And how much does he make each day? And what did he think when he looked at me, with my blonde hair and blue eyes, his brown pants worn for years only he can count, stained with the number of days or weeks in a row he’s worn them. Stained. The dirt probably can’t get out, and he has that smell all the villagers have here—this musty smell trapped in all their wool. Really, it’s not much of a bad smell, but it’s distinct. You know it. When we left Sushi after three days of being there, it was stuck in all my clothes. And I don’t want it to leave.

As a part of the birthright program, we came to Shushi, Karabakh and stayed with Edo, Gayane and their three children in their home, formerly owned and abandoned by Azeris after the Karabakh war. Five of us sat at the kitchen table as Gayane boiled hot water for tea and Edo placed the lemon and raspberry preserves on the table. And the butter, and the madzoon, and the bread, and the cookies. Gayane sat down with the five of us girls after we had our tea and after everyone had troubleshot the best natural remedies to combat my lost voice and stuffy nose. Gayane then asked Setta how her work at the women’s center in Yerevan was going, since Gayane was involved with a women’s center in Shushi. Yanina, our designated plum, was sitting next to me, speaking in Russian with Gayane and translating for the rest of us who were all struggling to understand any Armenian we could. Setta started to talk about her work teaching sessions on rape and crisis counseling at the women’s center in Yerevan, and Gayane listened with a delayed reaction while Yanina translated. Then Gayane said something in a serious, Russian tone, and Yanina’s eyes widened in shock. We looked at her and she didn’t know where to start her translation. She began to stutter, “Um, she’s asking what to do because Edo beats her all the time.” We were all silent, trying to find the right words, and Gayane burst out laughing. Edo laughed, and said in Armenian, “Haha, she beats me, with the broom,” and he lifted up the small, handmade broom and they both looked at each other and laughed. And Edo cleaned the table as Gayane showed us how to work the bucket above the sink outside so we could brush our teeth.

For two months, I’ve been working as an Armenian Assembly of America intern and Depi Hayk volunteer at ArmeniaNow, an independent, online newspaper based out of Yerevan. When I first got here, my editor recruited me to the duty of writing “daily news digests.” Each morning, I read several online Armenian newspapers, learned what the daily news was, and paraphrased and compiled news. However, ArmeniaNow’s news digests stand out since the digests I compiled cited their sources. In addition to the digests, I was given some assignments to write my own articles. Really, I was surprised that my editor had given me this responsibility, however, I suppose that’s the great thing about Armenia—you’re given chances here that really, not many people would have the opportunity to do outside of this country, or in the United States, for that matter. Perhaps it was because he saw that I could actually put a coherent piece of writing together but I also think that it’s because the Armenian community is so small to begin with that it’s easier for everyone’s talents to surface. This provides every Armenian that comes here a unique opportunity—you can actually be someone, and do something if you really want to be that change. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true.

That change where you can actually start to make women believe they can have a job outside of their families, and tell the Ministry of Education that it is necessary and their responsibility to replenish the building’s toilet paper supply. Or how about lights in the stairwells of the apartment buildings when it’s dark so you don’t trip over the garbage thrown outside the building? When people haven’t seen the sun rise outside their village, with no running water and dry dirt streets, bathrooms that are four-walled structures with a hole in the ground that makes you pinch your nostrils together even before you enter from the stench, and even then, you leave because you prefer to relieve yourself in the bushes near the side of the road. When beggar women hold out the palms of their hands, holding their two-year-old sleeping child with the other arm. And you’re not even sure if they’re running a racket or they really need your money. How do you change this? When families of five sleep in a single bedroom under one blanket in the wintertime to keep warm, sharing body heat and a few winter coats. There can be no concept of “health codes” and “safe” living conditions where mold grows behind the peeling sheets of wallpaper on a house with no running water and one-inch thick walls to protect a family from the cold. Where buckets of water line the outdoor sink and toilet, with pots to flush down the shit. At a market on the way to Karabakh, there was no toilet paper when I walked into a stall and had already done my cheesh. I wiped myself with my right hand and then rinsed my fingers in the river.

When I come to Armenia, I feel at home. And here, I listen, and I yearn to go back to the stories of my family. This country I grew to love, but did not truly understand why. Because, at first, I loved it without sight and without reason. Because I loved it; loved my family, loved my heritage. Loved my Armenianess. And I traveled in search of myself in Hayastan. And I found friends, and I found laughter. And I cried at the sight of Mt. Ararat. My Mt. Ararat. And I saw the villages where my great grandmother’s parents had grown, and I swam in blue Sevan. And I saw myself in the rivers, in the sky, in the people. And I fell in love.

I was having a conversation with one of my friends the other day while we were sitting in one of the Jezzve cafes at the opera, talking about why the women in Yerevan don’t smile when they walk down the street or when you make eye contact with them. It’s quite an interesting dynamic. The men can’t seem to take their eyes off you or violate your American concept of “personal space.” But that’s exactly why the women don’t smile. They can’t give the men an inkling of interest. So they harden and try to remain virgins so they can get married young to be financially taken care of by their husbands who work all day and drink when they come home, then go back out with their friends to play cards or tavlu on one of the covered picnic tables on the street after their wives serve his friends soorge at the house.

I cannot escape my family here. I think, ‘Who am I, wrapped in the recollections of history? I embody all that was, that is. Am I not myself, for the weights I carry are strong and heavy? They are my weights through history, but what do I know? How can I know, and rites how am I to claim? I look into a pool of rippling water, and my eyes’ reflection searches for me—with blonde hair, blue eyes, skin pale as the dry dirt on the road. How do I belong, with a language I cannot speak, but claim to love? Perhaps with a dance, a Haygagan bar, one that I feel…

The weight of my history. The valleys of Eve and her garden, the mountains of Noah. Erebuni. The deep blue lake of Sevan and Sevanavank’s stone dome made from khatchkars. Here, my true path has always been known. I look from Khor Virap, down to the lush Ararat valley. Pure beauty under the snowcapped mount. I roam the land, and climb down hills, looking beyond into the sun’s clearing. The fields are a deep green, the poppies a vibrant red. I run to its heart, by the trickling creek, and I hear its pure, uninterrupted sounds. My essence—I feel it here. I know it here and I can take it back with me. And my feet begin to sway through the dried crinkling grasses, because I can breathe in this crisp air, among the poverty, among family, among the fruit, among war and continued life in Karabakh, among the friends that have become family, in Armenia, and truly, I realize my place in the world.

Only in Armenia:
Only in Armenia can you find yourself sailing on Lake Sevan in the Armenian Olympic Sailboat with three operators— one of which had no arms, another with no legs— and have a smooth ride with no charge. Only in Armenia can I call a man I read an article about on my newspaper’s website, meet him just to talk about his work because I’m interested in Armenian oral tradition, and end up being recruited to edit his book of Armenian oral traditions in English. Only in Armenia do you randomly get invited to take vodka shots on the side of the road when you make a cheesh stop… do you run into people on the streets of Yerevan that you went to summer camp with eight years before in the States… find yourself surrounded by a whole country of people who agree that madzoon is the universal cure for every ailment… can you attend the first-ever reading by Armenian women authors in an artsy restaurant and realize that you are witnessing a slow history of social change and women’s roles… do the marshrutka drivers have high-speed chases with their minibuses packed with people when one accidentally hits the side-view mirror of the other… do horse-keepers have the nerve to charge $2,000 for a twenty-minute horseback ride at Lake Sevan, “because it’s a tourist area” and then argue about it with you after you laugh at their price because you thought they misunderstood—“oh, yergu hazar dram gites?” “Che, che!” they say. “Yergu hazar dollar!” And only in Armenia do you find people like Emma Loryan, ashamed of her black, walnut-stained hands that she clasps together so no-one will see; because the only way she is able to provide for her family of five is by picking the nuts from the forest trees and selling them to the other villagers.

Armenia makes me feel like this—confused about why Americans get to live the way they do, in excessive luxury and without family values. And, why do Armenians think that they are the greatest people in the world and that everything was either invented, created or discovered by an Armenian? And worse, you notice that you yourself never miss the opportunity among your non-Armenian friends to point out that x,y and z “was invented by an Armenian!” It makes you second guess and think about everything—when and how you’re getting your water, the poverty, the wealth, women’s roles and rights, the stares of men and their infuriating and socially-unacceptable-I-don’t-care-which-country-your-from courting habits, how they make khorovats, or bbq, taste so good. It’s a country in constant flux and change. It’s impossible to describe the feeling of a place, but here, I’ve attempted to relay what Armenia has felt and meant to me. My work started to become a passion, and my opportunities opened. I began to speak Armenian. I’m editing a collection of Armenian fairy tales and oral tradition—a life dream. Simply, I gained a family with Arsen, Nora, Seda and Sedoolig. And finally, Nora truly smiled.

Deanna Cachoian-Schanz (USA)
AAA Volunteer and BR/DH participant