By Emily Mkrtichian

Armenia exists. It is the biggest little ex-Soviet state you’ve probably never heard of. And this year, it got a lifeline to the blood coursing through the veins of our consumer-driven, globalized world: a mall. Its first mall ever.

The Dalma Garden Mall opened in October of 2012. It is, in fact, nowhere near a garden. It rests on a large pool of concrete, surrounded by desolate expanses of dirt and rocks. The mall takes its name from the Dalma Gardens, a 530 hectare green space that used to exist just outside the city center of Yerevan, the republic’s capital. Since 1991 (the year of Armenia’s independence), this land had been rented out to over seven hundred residents of Yerevan so they could have a small piece of soil to grow their own vegetables, grapevines, and fruit trees. And for over ten years they did—until 2004, when by a little trick the government likes to call “redistricting,” 250 hectares were declared the new site for major city projects. Specifically, the Dalma Garden Mall. There are still over six hundred landowners protesting every week in front of the Parliament building—they swear their descendants will carry on their fight after they are gone.

The Mall itself is two stories and 45,000 square meters. The inside is a funhouse mirror of linoleum, glass, and metal, with recognizable brand names and logos—GAP, ZARA, ACCESSORIZE—plastered prominently over gaping entrance ways, every so often sucking in a bored-looking passerby. In short, it feels like America.

It was as if I had set out on a long journey to a new and foreign place, only to find that I had accidently walked in a large circle and ended up right back on my own doorstep. And that all of a sudden I realized my house was strange and ugly.

The parking lot is full of more cars then I have ever seen in one place in Armenia. Usually, 90 percent of the cars in a full parking lot here are Ladas, the most popular car produced in the Soviet Union. The Lada easily became a recognizable symbol of city life because, like many things in the Soviet Union, it never changed. From the first Lada to come off the production line in 1969 to the final one produced in 2012, not one design feature was altered—it was just ‘perfect from the beginning.’ In the Dalma Garden Mall parking lot, the Lada has been replaced by midsized cars of other models, SUVs, and the occasional minivan. Seeing this well-organized parking lot full of families unloading themselves from new, mid-to-large sized vehicles and walking together through the neat rows of other new, mid-to-large sized vehicles was disorienting.

I took my first trip to the mall via my favorite form of public transportation in Armenia: themarshutka. Essentially Yerevan’s version of a bus, a marshutka is a numbered passenger van that travels a specific route around the city every day. A marshutka can comfortably fit twelve to fourteen people… and can uncomfortably fit anywhere from fifteen to forty. They have their own social cues and etiquette; for example, a woman should not sit in the front of the marshutka with the driver, but if a woman finds herself in the back of a marshutka with no place to sit, it is expected that any man under the age of sixty-five will give up his seat. If, once that woman sits down, another man over the age of sixty-five shakily enters the vehicle, this woman will in turn stand up and demand that he sit. Such is the logic of the marshutka.

As I emerged from the van into the blinding light of the mall’s parking lot, I blinked in confusion. It was as if I had set out on a long journey to a new and foreign place, only to find that I had accidently walked in a large circle and ended up right back on my own doorstep. And that all of a sudden I realized my house was strange and ugly.

The mall was financed by Retail Group Armenia, an offshoot of Alhokair Fashion Retail. Alhokair is a corporation from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that has been blazing a retail franchise trail through MENA and CIS countries since the early 1990’s. Their record is unmatched—they have brought Steve Madden and Aldo to Kazakhstan, Gap and Accessorize to Egypt, US Polo to Jordan, Zara to Georgia, and now, the Dalma Garden Mall to Armenia.

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