POSTCARD FROM ARMENIA: YEREVAN, A FIRST IMPRESSION
ArmeniaNow
14.06.12
In a far-flung corner of London Heathrow Airport-beyond the reassuring
glow of McDonalds and the aseptic comfort of Starbucks-I waited for my
connecting flight among veiled women tugging at their children’s hands
and swarthy men clutching passports. A sign-ominous to an American
journalist with no intention of going there-read “destination: Tehran.”
Onboard the plane, the woman sitting next to me, a black veil covering
her head and shoulders, smiled. “Are you visiting Tehran?” she asked.
“No,” I shook my head emphatically. “Yerevan.” I checked my boarding
pass for the third time. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia and the first
stop of the flight, was printed clearly in black ink. I wondered again
whose idea it had been to set off for a two-month Caucasus adventure
as an Italian-American journalist. The idea was mine, of course. What
better way to dispel the post-graduate Great Recession doldrums than
work as a correspondent for ArmeniaNow?
“So you’re going to Romania?” my friends in Chicago had asked in
the weeks leading up to my departure. “Armenia,” I would invariably
answer, as my baffled well-wishers sniffed goodbye with the stoic
acceptance one reserves for soldiers heading to the front or for the
terminally ill. To this day, I suspect many of my friends believe I
am lost somewhere in the Transylvanian wilderness. The rest envision
me dodging bullets on my way to work, in a geographical hybrid between
Kabul and a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
At Yerevan’s Zvartnots International Airport, I handed my Italian
passport to a bored-looking customs official. A flicker of a smile
spread across his face. “Ciao,” he said, waving me on. I stood amidst
a throng of unfamiliar faces until met by my new colleagues.
The taxi headed toward the city center, speeding past the imposing
concrete U.S. embassy, darkened Soviet-era buildings, and a long strip
of casinos, whose gaudy neon lights glowed in the darkness like a
miniature Las Vegas. In downtown Yerevan, the nightlife continued as
people ambled about in the balmy night air or spilled out of cafes
into the lighted roads and squares. The taxi came to a stop along a
busy street.
I groped my way up a flight of dank, pitch black stairs. After a
series of failed attempts to rent an apartment via the Internet, I
had finally stumbled upon what appeared to be a reliable real estate
agent in Yerevan. The man spoke good English, replied promptly to my
e-mails, and assured me I couldn’t possibly get a better deal. Though
the high price made me pause-this wasn’t New York after all-I accepted
the online contract and clicked away a good part of my savings.
At the top of the dilapidated stairs, the agent swung open a battered,
metal door. We squeezed through a narrow hallway before spilling into
the living room of my new home.
A small, wiry middle-aged man sat sunk in an armchair, absorbed in
the unintelligible sound bites emitted by a clunky TV, a cigarette
dangling from his fingers. His eyes flickered in my direction. A plump
woman perched on the sofa and puffed smoke across the room. She pulled
an ashtray closer. Her cigarette balanced precariously on the edge,
next to the stumps of its predecessors. “Sit down,” she said giving
the threadbare sofa a businesslike pat. The room smelled like mold and,
in my mind, the first stages of lung cancer.
The husband and wife continued smoking as if they had slowly petrified
into obsolete fixtures in the room. For a panicky moment I went over
what I could remember of the terms of my contract. It didn’t mention
sharing the apartment with the owners, did it?
A tour of my home failed to dispel my sense of foreboding. The
landlady led the way into the kitchenette, complete with an old
fashioned sink, yellowed with age, and a series of rickety shelves. I
hesitated in front of the prehistoric single gas burner. Lacking
Girl Scouts training I wondered whether I would ever figure out how
to use it. Bread and cheese appeared to be the safest option for the
foreseeable future.
The bathroom was next. The landlady proudly displayed a complicated
series of handles and cranks along the cracked and peeling walls. She
turned a lever and steaming water trickled out of the shower head.
“Hot,” she explained. She turned the level further. “More hot,”
she said. Apparently anything below scalding was not an option.
By the time we turned into the bedroom, I was pondering the wisdom
of buying a one-way ticket to Armenia. My editor, who had met me at
the airport, looked aghast. “This is a rip-off,” he said, mumbling
something about finding me a nicer apartment-and cheaper too. “We’ll
sort it all out tomorrow,” he said. I nodded numbly as the owners
handed me the keys.
The decrepit air conditioner gasped and wheezed as I sat alone in
the living room surveying the eclectic assortment of furniture and
carpeting, whose common denominator appeared to be a Soviet-era color
palette of tired grays and browns. As the drowsiness of a 20-hour trip
set in, I wondered what I would come to think of the small country
that was to become my home for the next few months. In my mind, a
confused jumble of sights and sounds rushed together, like the broad,
colorful strokes of an impressionist painting. I was ready for the
adventure to begin.
Chicago-based journalist Sigrid Lupieri is spending her summer in
Armenia and will periodically be sharing her impressions.