Chronicles of Armenia
Part 1.2
by Alessandra McAllister‘The trouble’s gonna spread all the way here, I’m sure of that.’ I awoke to these words not too many hours after my departure from the club. The speaker was a stocky bald guy on the bottom bunk opposite me. His words were directed at an older man with thin strands of long grey hair elegantly tied behind his nape who sat nodding pensively over a polka dot cravat. The stocky guy continued. ‘What’s happening in Ukraine is just a prelude to what’s gonna to happen all over the former Soviet Union I tell you. Next Georgia next Armenia. Shame to pack up my business but I had to get out of Ukraine. Dubai’s the dream anyway. That’s where the money is. Hey, you’re out of a job, aren’t you? You could get good work as a French teacher in Dubai. They’ll pay you lots of money. You’re not gonna find any in Armenia.’ At this point I made the effort of swinging my legs over the bed and sitting up. They stopped in conversation and both looked at me. ‘Bonjour,’ said the man with the cravat, ‘anglais ou francais?’ ‘English,’ I croaked, ‘and bon-joh to you.’ I was not in the mood for conversing and made a quick escape to the bathroom.
Dressed and breakfasted I headed out to a place I had heard was well worth a visit for the tourist to Yerevan: Etchmiadzin, the spiritual centre of the Armenian Orthodox Church and the incipient seedling of all Chrsitiandom. Any Hai will tell you Haiastan was the first Christian nation. I bussed it back to the bus station in the backwaters. It was livelier in the light of day; fruit stalls and shwarma stands cluttered the roadside, dominated by a government building standing on high above the motorway. It was flanked by a wine factory and a cognac factory, running a country is thirsty work after all. I spent some time walking through an underpass. With no Russian skills to speak of and even less Armenian, directions were hard to decipher. I was also suffering from whisky withdrawal symptoms. I bought an orange and took a moment to gather my fading wits. The girl I had contacted on couchsurfing.org had told me to get a minibus from here to the holy site where I would find her in the museum to the right-hand side of the pink tufa stone church. Her instructions might as well have been in Russian or Armenian because I had no idea what pink tufa stone was. As it turned out, it is what all the official buildings of Yerevan are made from: a pale pink, cream or grey colored marble textured stone, solid as the rock valleys but softer on the eye. It is local to Armenia and what bestows Yerevan city centre its stately air. Etchmiadzin lies forty minutes outside Yerevan. To one side of a dusty town road I found the entrance to the holy complex and went in search of the pinkest building amongst the domes and stained facades. Everything looked beige. I sauntered uncertainly down the wide avenue and admired the trees, turning right in front of a domineering building. ‘Do you need help?’ A sharp-nosed man with slick hair and a long detective’s coat was looking at me with curiosity. The day was hot and I did not envy the coat. I told him I was looking for the museum. As I spoke he stepped towards me with more interest. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘England’ ‘I love English!’ he said with sincere joy. ‘I taught myself. Let me practice with you. I will show you around. Don’t worry, I want nothing more than to do something for humanity.’ I wanted nothing more than to get out from the sun and find the girl who would talk me around the cool shade of the museum, but I decided his was a nice enough gesture to put my agenda to one side. As we walked around the complex he talked excitedly about the architecture and even more excitedly about the tufa stone: ‘See here, in the early churches they didn’t use paint for the interior, no color, just the stone. It is beautiful, no?’ I said it was beautiful, although I enjoyed the added frescoes and tessellations of later centuries. I lingered by the world’s first church to inspect the weathered carvings of a fourth century stonemason. At this my guide became impatient, ‘Ali!’ He beckoned me over with a childish eagerness out of sorts with his stiff character, ‘Come see this now! You must see this!’ He stood in front of some tombs where he folded his hands in respect and assumed a somber air. ‘These are the tombs of the patriarchs. There are eighty-three of them here.’ He bowed his head. I cleared my throat and asked if we could go into the museum. He was slow to respond and when he did his words were tinged with regret. ‘Yes. Let’s go inside.’ The church air was heavy with the smell of incense and candle wax. Orange faces half concealed flickered above rows of small flames. Some uttered silent breaths of prayer and others were still, washed clean of all expression. We walked into the back room where my internet acquaintance was waiting. The museum held a multitude of Christian relics catering to the superstitions of the faithful: a fragment of Noah’s Ark, a splinter from the cross, a torn rag of St. Peter’s robe. All were embedded into precious stones and so small as to be almost imperceptible. We stopped in front of a Chinese-carved priests’ cane formed by two bejeweled serpents intertwined. ‘The snake,’ whispered my acquaintance, ‘protects the unmarried priest from the devil.’ ‘And what about married men?’ I inquired. He suppressed a giggle, ‘They are already protected.’
I rejoined my sharp-nosed guide on the gravel path outside. He was immersed in deep, solemn conversation with a priest. On noticing me he resumed his role as keen host. ‘I invite you to eat at my parents’ house… my mother has made chicken soup today.’ As a man in his mid-forties with a job in the foreign office, I was a surprised to find that my guide still lived with his parents. I supposed this was not so unusual for an unmarried man in Armenia. My guide, the unmarried layman, was protected by neither serpent nor holy matrimony, which left him unbound in an earthly limbo of devilish temptation where he had to fend alone for his male virtue. It would explain his stiff manner and the sadness is his eyes and why he spent so much time amongst priests. In his invitation I heard a distant, ungraspable expectation, a desperate reach for matrimony and the shield it offered against original sin. I was not keen on the idea myself but was starving, so I accepted the invitation gratefully. He lived out in one of Armenia’s many Soviet tower-block clusters, which rise from the land like concrete seaweed from a dry ocean bed. The individuality of their interiors never fails to surprise; the family apartment opened out into an airy high-ceilinged abode decorated in nineteen-seventy’s floral wallpaper. Hanging plants swung delicately from the small terrace outside and inside the array of indoor foliage cast a soft green hue about the room. I sat on the edge of the sofa and gazed out of the window onto the low-lying plains. The light was long and golden. He sat across with his hands on his lap. We kept silence whilst the bubbling of soup and the clatter of aluminum came from the kitchen. Finally, his mother emerged and arranged a table in front of me: white cloth, cutlery, plates, bowls, salad and flatbread, pickles and roast potatoes and a chicken soup with the poultry’s limbs escaping from the liquid; fresh fruit, dates and honey. It was a delicious medley of the best Georgian, Persian and Turkish home cuisine. She and I chatted in our respective languages whilst her son watched on hopefully, translating when the need arose. Her eyes had the same deep green hue as the room; she was more handsome than her son. As I hugged her goodbye at the front door she gestured that I was always welcome back. I knew I would never return. Outside, magenta rays of evening danced upon the wheat heads. A hushed wind blew through the concrete rise. Life was calm. I wished my guide a sincere goodbye and hailed a taxi. Click here for Part 1.1
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Pamphlet. Magazine - 2014 -