now, don’t you feel a pathway from my heart to yours?” I would throw my arms around his neck and hold on to him. He was so real, so solid, and so eternal…my father would never have told me to go back to an abusive husband.
I worry about Avo the most. I know he is struggling with the ‘family honor’ thing, even though he won’t say a word about it to me. Deep inside he knows where I’ve been and what I’ve done; of course, not any of the details—that would certainly drive him off the edge. But he knows the basics. He knows, and yet he still calls me “
Kurig
,” sister. He hugs me and acts in deference whenever I’m around; and all that anger in him, which sometimes explodes and is enough to blow up our entire village, is never directed at me, even though I know it is about me, it is
because
of me.
I used to see Avo in my dreams when I was in Dubai. He would appear angry and old, and he would always seem rushed and distracted. We would be somewhere in the fields of Saralandj. He would come and say, “
Kurig jan
, Mama is very ill,” and then he would disappear. These were scary dreams; Iwould wake up in a cold sweat, trembling. What is amazing to me is that now, in real life, he looks like he did in my dreams. This is even scarier than the dreams.
I look at my older sister Martha and see how happy she is. She still has the old happiness that I had before my abduction. Her husband Ruben is kind and decent. Their baby daughter is a delight. They live a hard and difficult life, in primitive conditions. The work that Martha does in a day is more than women in much of the world do in a week. But she is happy. She loves life, and that love radiates from her face, through her smile, even from her tired eyes at the end of a long day. My other sisters have the same joy of life, in spite of their miserable living conditions. Only Arpi remains withdrawn and quiet, burying herself every night in books that she brings home from the Aparan Public Library. But melancholy is her nature; it is not unhappiness.
My sisters’ happiness is what I tried to come back to. I remember in Moscow when Anastasia was trying to explain to me that what we did was not so bad, that I could be big in that business, and how jovial and happy she looked all the time. I remember fighting her, resisting even my own inner curiosity to understand her joy, I remember thinking, “I want the happiness I left behind, not yours.”
The question that I don’t want to face now is whether I
cannot
have that happiness back, or I no longer
want
it back. It is much easier to believe that I cannot have it back; that takes the moral burden away from me and puts it on something else. That would be very convenient, if it were true. But the demon that haunts me every day is this question: What if I no longer want it back? What if I have outgrown all this?
Anna and I have become friends. Some evenings, after she leaves work, we go out and walk for hours in Yerevan, in and around Republic Square, up Abovian Street and Mashtots Street, by the Monument, and once in a while on Northern Avenue, which neither of us likes. It is a short stretch of pedestrian promenade between the Opera and the National Art Gallery, and it is the most artificial and superficial part of Yerevan. It is a new development, boasting the most expensive real estate, and showing off stores of the biggest names in fashion in the world. It is not part of Armenia. But Anna and I walk there sometimes anyway, just to see, to compare, to listen to the street musicians performing, and, once in a while, to indulge and have a cup of coffee in one of the coffee shops for a price that would exceedDiqin Alice’s monthly grocery bill. It does not matter where we go. I like her, even though I have not yet told her my story.
One night I invite her to my room and read her Daniel Varujan’s poems. She is amazed at the language, the thought, the strength of emotion. She asks me to read over and over the
I worry about Avo the most. I know he is struggling with the ‘family honor’ thing, even though he won’t say a word about it to me. Deep inside he knows where I’ve been and what I’ve done; of course, not any of the details—that would certainly drive him off the edge. But he knows the basics. He knows, and yet he still calls me “
Kurig
,” sister. He hugs me and acts in deference whenever I’m around; and all that anger in him, which sometimes explodes and is enough to blow up our entire village, is never directed at me, even though I know it is about me, it is
because
of me.
I used to see Avo in my dreams when I was in Dubai. He would appear angry and old, and he would always seem rushed and distracted. We would be somewhere in the fields of Saralandj. He would come and say, “
Kurig jan
, Mama is very ill,” and then he would disappear. These were scary dreams; Iwould wake up in a cold sweat, trembling. What is amazing to me is that now, in real life, he looks like he did in my dreams. This is even scarier than the dreams.
I look at my older sister Martha and see how happy she is. She still has the old happiness that I had before my abduction. Her husband Ruben is kind and decent. Their baby daughter is a delight. They live a hard and difficult life, in primitive conditions. The work that Martha does in a day is more than women in much of the world do in a week. But she is happy. She loves life, and that love radiates from her face, through her smile, even from her tired eyes at the end of a long day. My other sisters have the same joy of life, in spite of their miserable living conditions. Only Arpi remains withdrawn and quiet, burying herself every night in books that she brings home from the Aparan Public Library. But melancholy is her nature; it is not unhappiness.
My sisters’ happiness is what I tried to come back to. I remember in Moscow when Anastasia was trying to explain to me that what we did was not so bad, that I could be big in that business, and how jovial and happy she looked all the time. I remember fighting her, resisting even my own inner curiosity to understand her joy, I remember thinking, “I want the happiness I left behind, not yours.”
The question that I don’t want to face now is whether I
cannot
have that happiness back, or I no longer
want
it back. It is much easier to believe that I cannot have it back; that takes the moral burden away from me and puts it on something else. That would be very convenient, if it were true. But the demon that haunts me every day is this question: What if I no longer want it back? What if I have outgrown all this?
Anna and I have become friends. Some evenings, after she leaves work, we go out and walk for hours in Yerevan, in and around Republic Square, up Abovian Street and Mashtots Street, by the Monument, and once in a while on Northern Avenue, which neither of us likes. It is a short stretch of pedestrian promenade between the Opera and the National Art Gallery, and it is the most artificial and superficial part of Yerevan. It is a new development, boasting the most expensive real estate, and showing off stores of the biggest names in fashion in the world. It is not part of Armenia. But Anna and I walk there sometimes anyway, just to see, to compare, to listen to the street musicians performing, and, once in a while, to indulge and have a cup of coffee in one of the coffee shops for a price that would exceedDiqin Alice’s monthly grocery bill. It does not matter where we go. I like her, even though I have not yet told her my story.
One night I invite her to my room and read her Daniel Varujan’s poems. She is amazed at the language, the thought, the strength of emotion. She asks me to read over and over the
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