Armenia continues to be a land of stark contrasts. Yesterday I went, for the first time in months, to the offices of the Aghbyur children’s journal, and spent some time looking through the last few issues. The issue with a short piece I had written about William Saroyan and his relationship with our family, in the old days near Fresno, had several pictures painted by school-age children in Armenia. Several of the pictures were good, surprisingly good, by 8-12 year-old children, especially one that reminded of village scenes painted by Minas Avetisyan, and another in the image of an illuminated manuscript, the painter seemingly a future Toros Roslin.

The same evening, on National Television, competitions took place to see who would represent Armenia in Junior Eurovision. Last year’s contestant, an Armenian girl from Baku, sang, in the words of many here, “like someone’s morkuyr (aunt).” This, while other countries featured individuals and groups who actually sang like children, after all, it is a competition for children. This year’s Armenian contestants, while being interviewed, spoke in either street slang, or mixed in English, with some acting like little mafia characters or rap stars. Even our 11-year-old guest, visiting with his parents, became disinterested and shut the program off.

While some blame our bad cultural situation on the Diaspora, some on our leaders, who love rabiz and pop, and some on forces trying to destroy our national culture, now, Armenian singers and actors who had been working in Los Angeles and elsewhere are returning to Armenia, due to the financial crisis in the US, and are appearing in serials, concerts, and the like…”with their new accents and movements, how disgusting,” as a local actor put it. “And not only that, besides the mafia serials, there’s one starring orphans, several being the sons and daughters of those in other serials…I guess they want everything, all the money, for themselves…”

In closing, a joke is going around Yerevan about an Aparantsi who can’t find a job, and who changes his approach, telling possible employers, “I’m from Aparan, but my heart and soul is in Karabagh,” referring to the general feeling here about Karabaghtsis getting so many of the better jobs in Yerevan.

An academician friend walked through the door smiling, saying he had heard the latest absurdity going around Yerevan: “Have you heard, (pop singer) Sirusho is the Armenian ambassador to Greece? Even though this might not be true, the fact remains that in Armenia, it’s a possibility. Now that Sirusho is a member of a ‘royal family,’ and that family is from Karabagh, it’s more than a possibility.”

This statement didn’t go over very well with a Karabaghtsi visiting our home at the time. Nevertheless, the academician continued his thoughts. “Many who remember the Dark Years in Armenia, and what Levon Ter Petrosyan did during those times, think that it’s better to have these Karabaghtsis in power. But in Levon’s time, our culture hadn’t slipped to where it is today, with oligarchs promoting their girlfriends into becoming major stars, and, education was still at least fairly strong, which isn’t the case today.

“And you can’t say that Karabaghtsis aren’t favored when it comes to getting jobs, good jobs, in banks and the ministries, especially in Yerevan,” to which the Karabaghtsi answered, “This is because they’re good at math, and are better workers,” to which the academician said, “I’ve seen Karabaghtsis working in banks who barely spoke Armenian, and had no experience in banking at all, so what are you saying? Karabaghtsis and oligarchs, together, are ruining our country.”

An anti-Dashnak said, “How was it that after 1918, when Armenians had the Turks on the run, chasing them out of Armenia, from Aparan, Sardarabat, and elsewhere, that by 1920 the Dashnaks signed the Treaty of Alexandropol, giving the Turks the right to overlook Armenia’s railway system, and to prevent Armenians from returning to Armenia? The Dashnaks never should have signed that treaty. It was the Soviets, disapproving of the Alexandropol treaty, who signed the Treaty of Kars, which wasn’t all that great but was definitely better than Alexandropol…”

Such continues the conversations being heard daily in Yerevan, all connected to the possible opening of the border with Turkey, and its positives and negatives.

“We’re not ready for it, the border opening,” a Dashnak said. “Between globalization and a government that propagandizes rabiz and pop music, culturally speaking we’d go under in a second if the border opens.”

A note about Bishop Nerses Bozabalian, who died recently after being beaten by intruders at his apartment in Holy Echmiadzin, as told by three elderly women in the courtyard at St. Gayane church, where the hogihangist took place:

“Bishop Bozabalian was going to be elected Catholicos,” one of the women said. “He had passed the first round of voting, and we all thought he was going to be elected. Then ministers and others started mixing into things, and the result was, Bozabalian wasn’t Catholicos.”

Another commented, “He was a man of the church, an honest man. It’s obvious there were those who thought he wasn’t the right man for the job, as he wouldn’t have agreed with a lot of what’s going on these days.”

Continuing, the third woman said, “Why haven’t they found the guilty? Who were the guilty? Nothing is even being announced, possible suspects, nothing. And it’s disgusting to me, that hoodlums were able to get to a bishop’s apartment right on the grounds of Holy Echmiadzin. Remember the old walls around the vank, which they decided to tear down in 2001? Do you think they would have gotten to his apartment if that old wall had been there, with guards at the gate, like in the old days? No way.”

“Sometimes I like to talk about the past,” the Diaspora Armenian said, “just to forget about the situation Armenia is in today. You look around, we’re at peace, and Yerevan, at least the city center, looks like a European city, the streets and coffee shops full of young Armenians and hundreds of tourists. But think about what’s going on around us. It won’t be today or tomorrow, but in the future, Georgia and Azerbaijan will be in NATO. Our only friend, Russia, will be unable to help us, with Georgia blocking the way. We need to stay close to Iran, as our interests are closer than most realize.

“And then there’s the Turks. I’m worried that our government will agree to open the border with Turkey, if the opportunity arises. They’ll do anything to stay in power. I know it’s not easy, playing ball with Turks, Russians, the US, and Europe, but making crazy deals with the Turks is the last thing we need. Here we are, sitting in a nice coffee shop. If they open the border, who will be sitting at the next table but Turks, and there will always be some of our girls, with either financial or moral problems, ready to be there sitting with them. Our youth is already listening to rabiz, Armenchik and the like, which is just a poor imitation of Turkish music. These lovers of rabiz, and there are plenty, will welcome the Turks and their culture with open arms.

“This music, if you can call it that, is a slap in the face of people like Komitas and Toumajan, who saved our folk music from being totally lost. We owe Komitas more than people realize. If you look at the music he saved, his work, it is of a higher, more refined quality than others who did similar work. He was a genius. People say that Komitas, before being sent to the asylum in Paris, spent time in a Turkish asylum, because rich Armenians wouldn’t give the money needed to send him to a good hospital. I can picture what the Turks did to him there.”

Again speaking about the possibility of opening the border with Turkey, our friend continued: “If the border opens, and what happens here is what I think will happen, I’ll never return to Armenia. I’d rather live in the US or Europe, or even Turkey. I am Vanetsi, on both sides. I might consider living there, maybe in the same village my mother was from.

“My parents were both in Van in 1915. After the defense of Van, they both came to Eastern Armenia, then returned to Van with the Russians, and stayed there until the Russians left. They were there when Aram Manoukian declared the Van region independent, which lasted a month or so. There was also a Dashnak named Hambartsumyan who declared Van independent, again lasting just a month. They even printed their own money.

“Aram Manoukian was Karabaghtsi. Ruben Ter Minasyan, another important commander, was from Javakhk. At the time, Dashnaktsutyun considered it of the utmost importance to maintain the regions of Van and Moush, to make Armenia complete, and they came from everywhere to help.”

Commenting on the fall of Kars, he said, “It wasn’t the Dashnaks’ fault that Kars fell. Khatisyan was in Kars during the fighting, waiting for word on what to do. Then the Russians took Eastern Armenia, so Khatisyan had no say. He signed a treaty, which in fact meant nothing, as the Dashnaks had given up the government to the Russians. But keeping Kars was impossible, with the Russians advancing from one side and the Turks from the other.”

Then, quite seriously, he added, “What the Turks didn’t finish in 1915, they’ll finish in 2015. And without firing a shot. Just by opening the border.”

Note: As Shoghaken will be leaving shortly for a folk festival in Slovakia, the Yerevan Journal blog will take a short break, and will resume on July 9.

A Karabagh war veteran gave his opinion about the liberation of Shushi and similar matters:

“A lot is said about how we liberated Shushi,” he began. “Some say Shushi fell because of Azeri traitors. And I’ve heard several times that Armenians climbed the rocky cliff at night, from the village of Karintak at the base of the mountain. Nobody climbed that cliff; we came up the road. And there was no betrayal on the Azeri side. The mistake they made was that there were no women or children in Shushi, only a few hundred fighters and a hundred or so inhabitants. Don’t they know that most soldiers will fight only so long, or so hard, if they aren’t defending their families, their women’s honor? Very few men, maybe five or ten out of a thousand, have enough love for their homeland that they’ll fight on and on, no matter what, just for the homeland....

“The Dashnaks made the same mistake at Kars. Fearing possible massacre, they sent the women and children out of Kars, out of the fortress. The siege lasted only so long, then the Turks took the fortress and the city.

“As the war progressed, I found myself fighting for revenge, more than anything else. After what I saw...Maragha, and other places...I couldn’t help myself. War is like that. If I had a chance to join in the Khojalu events, I probably would have lost control and started killing those fleeing. It’s good I wasn’t there.

“But this is probably the only place on earth that does what it does to its war heroes. For instance, when Levon was president, I was shown in video material taken after the battle for Shushi. Then when Kocharian took over as president, they edited me out, and why, I still don’t know. Now, with a new president, I’m still out of the picture. In the future, who knows.

“Yet, more important is what they’ve done to Sassun Mikayelyan and Jirair, from Lebanon. These fellows were fighters, real fighters, who defended their homeland well. What’s their thank you? The government isn’t giving Jirair citizenship, and Sassun is in prison.

“Here, if you’re against those in charge, you’re the enemy. How do these people look at themselves in the mirror?”

A lawyer who doesn’t have a television asked me what I had seen or heard about the events in neighboring Iran. After doing my best at telling what I had heard on Armenian, Russian, and European news broadcasts, the lawyer said:

“It’s plain what’s going on. The West is using what is going on in Tehran, already talking about regime change, due to supposed voting irregularities. There are 18 million people in Tehran, and the news people are making it look like the end of the world, showing some video taken by cell phones?

“A question: Who really thinks George Bush was elected president in 2000? Why aren’t the politicians and news people who are acting so righteous now talking about that election, or recent ones in Armenia or Azerbaijan, for that matter?”

The perennial question with no answer is being asked again: what is a real Armenian? Is it one who speaks Armenian, is Armenian Orthodox by religion, or just what? Can Moslem Armenians be true Armenians?

At a news conference yesterday, so-called experts discussed the subject of Armenians in Turkey, talking about how some have converted back to being Armenian Orthodox, after years of living as Moslems, while others have supposedly said, “better to not be Armenian than to have to be Christian.”

Meeting with a “hetanos” (pre-Christian, pagan) Armenian, and telling him about the news conference, he said, “Who are they, and who is anybody, to say what a real Armenian is. Of course the Armenian Church has done a lot over the years, and is an institution we all should respect. But to say a real Armenian has to be Orthodox is wrong. I am “hetanos.” I go to Garni every year, at least three or four times, to different ceremonies dating back to when, I can say, Armenians had their own relgion, their own gods, not an imported god. I think I am a real Armenian. Not only that, I fought during the war with the Turks, and will go again, so no one can say I’m not patriotic.

“And there are the Armenians who were forced to convert in 1915. True, they didn’t have to convert, but I don’t blame them. Many secretly stayed Christian, but to save their families from being slaughtered, they converted to Islam, even if for show. And many of their children and grandchildren stayed Armenian, in their hearts, moreso than a lot of Diaspora Armenians I’ve met who trumpet their Armenianism, but are just talk, and do nothing to help their homeland.

“To say Moslem Armenians, or pagan Armenians, like myself, aren’t real Armenians, is a joke. Why aren’t people saying that the many thousands of sect members in Armenia, and in the Diaspora, aren’t real Armenians? They’re far more a danger to the future of Armenia than my pagan friends are, or the Moslem Armenians of Turkey.”