By Ari Neuman

(These are my recollections of my time spent in Armenia over the summer of 2012. This is the second installment. Best to start from the beginning)

I had a flight to Yerevan in less than a week, but nowhere to stay and no Armenian teacher.

My spam messages to Couchsurfers had yielded no results, unless you count a thorough telling-off from one girl who was, like me, also not interested in embracing the Message of Couchsurfing:

“I charge $20 a night. No laundry, no meals, no Wi-Fi. No TV. I lock the door at 21:00 sharp. You decide.”

And variations of the same.

I’m screwed, I thought.

But Varduhi, the eventual bane of my day to day life in Yerevan, came roaring to the rescue.

An ad she posted online offered her “highly qualified and comprehensive” expertise in the Armenian language to middle school students. I asked if she’d be up for teaching a foreigner for two hours a day, five days a week, for two months, for $400. She accepted immediately.

Perhaps surprised and flattered by a foreigner’s wanting to learn Armenian, she opened up to me rather quickly:

“I’m 18, but I look younger. Everyone says so. My mom and me live on the edge of town, sort of near Erebouni fortress? Which I’m sure you’ve heard of. It’s world famous…We also have a dog I found out by the trash dump by our house last week, Shunik. I know it’s not a very clever name, but I’m just sobusy these days, I didn’t have the time to think of something better. Believe me, I could have. Anyways…where’s my dad? He walked out on us when I was young. I actually ran into him last month, completely by accident in the Moscow metro. He was drunk, and told me, ‘You know your mom is into dogs, don’t you?’ This was actually just a few weeks before we got Shunik. My dad’s an asshole, by God, but I did get one thing from him: I’m as stubborn as an ox and can make people do anything I want them to. Anything.»

She also told me that she was:

Left-brain dominant: “Creative types don’t get anything done in this world; it’s just us… mathematicians, and the like.”

A killer chess player: “I could give Kasparov a run for his money, if he’d let me. I sent him a letter once, inviting him to play… But he never responded, the coward!”

A middle school track and field star: “I’m big-boned, I know, but I used to run circles around the boys in gym class!”

And that she had a green thumb that could shame any botanist for their formal education.

Thrilled to have found a teacher, I nodded to the tune of her self - praise and didn’t ask myself how concerned I was with her plant skills.

–––––

My language needs provided for, I looked further for a housing solution.

First I spoke to the Armenian community of Izhevsk, where I was studying. But this only got me lured into an Armenian opera performance and the number of one woman who thought her relatives in Yerevan might be interested in hosting an American at a very reasonable fee.

This ‘reasonable’ (for - Americans - only) fee was a mere $550 a month, in a house in Artashat (an hour outside the city center), where the family’s grandmother lived with a small garden, and a large litter of cats.

I turned to Varduhi for advice:     

“Well, our place is tiny. But if you’d like, I bet we could fit you in. It’s cozy. We don’t have hot water right now, but it’s summer, and you probably won’t want a regular hot shower here anyway. You can sleep in my room, with Shunik. And I’ll sleep with my mom (she doesn’t like him sleeping with us), and of course, you don’t have to pay us or anything…We’d be happy to have you as our guest. We’ll be spending so much time studying together; it’ll make things more convenient for the both of us…”

Not stopping to think that it might not be a good idea to throw myself on the mercy of complete strangers, I agreed to what I at first glance thought was a generous, no - strings - attached offer…

_____

It was a blinding hot morning when I arrived in Yerevan. I walked out of customs, trying to imagine how Varduhi might look in person. All I had to go off was her Skype profile picture, in which she was smiling maliciously yet seductively into the camera as she slithered against a wall, her hands inching down her thighs towards her knees.

She was waiting for me in large, black sun-glasses, her arms casually draped over the edge of the barrier separating passengers from greeters. She had elbowed her way in between two grizzly taxi-drivers, and was noisily smacking gum about her lips, seemingly snarling and hissing at those who passed in front of her.

Her shoulder-length black hair was as frizzy as a dog-comb.

She was a head and a half taller than me and twice my shoulder-length in width. She had ripped short-shorts that came more than half way up her enormous and vein-spiked thighs, and was sporting dirty, pink and blue flip - flops on her feet. She was all nose and mouth and bright-white teeth. Tiny, orange-brown eyes peered out venomously from behind heavily-painted black eyelashes.

She looked like a feral fourteen year-old that had been abandoned at birth and brought in by a pack of wolves, who, in turn, eventually came to the realization that even they would be unable to deal with her as she got older, and so gave her back to humanity when she had become completely impossible to handle.

I briefly stopped myself from scampering back into the duty - free zone, and plodded on. I approached her, and smiled weakly. I stuck out my hand, which she grabbed and pumped with such enthusiasm that I winced. She blurted out: 

“I’ve always wanted an American friend! I’ve really, really, really been looking forward to meeting you! But let’s get out of here quickly, yeah? I’m sweating like a horse!”

She placed a firm hand on the back of my hiking bag and started funneling me through the crowd towards the exit, her flip flops click - clocking behind us. Unable to resist her admittedly superior, hulk-like strength, I hurtled out of the terminal with Varduhi hot on my heels.

She looked excitedly from side and side, and yodeled from behind me: “Uncle! Uncle! Hey Uncle!? Where’d you go?” And then loudly, in my ear, “He was supposed to wait for me right here! I told him not to move. Ass! He never listens.”

Varduhi continued to steer me forward. Distracted by her missing, vagrant Uncle, she didn’t notice that we were steadily approaching a cement flower bed by the street curb. Stunned and bewildered by the force of her lightning assault, I couldn’t react, and waited for things to unfold. I crossed my hands in front of my chest to break my fall, squealed, and went flying face - first into the dirt, with Varduhi coming down hard on my back side and knocking the wind out of me.

I had barely spat out the last grains of soil and recovered oxygen flow when she was already dragging me forward, continuing her ear-curdling search for her Uncle.

“I came with Uncle to pick you up!” she yelled again in my ear. “But he gets impatient and wanders off…like the donkey he is… I should have thought he’d pull something like this. Eeeesh! And of course the idiot won’t buy a cell phone because he thinks…Actually, I don’t know why he won’t buy a cell phone? He’s just stubborn. Come on, Ari, can’t you move faster? I’m sweating like a dog and want to get home! And mama’s waiting for us.”

She dragged me along the terminal sidewalk, stopping twenty feet from a tan-grey Zhiguli in front of us. She turned around and wagged me a finger:

“Alright, this is his car. But before we get in, I have to tell you –– he’s not really my uncle. He just comes to our house often for coffee, and he’s bald and kind of fat, so I just call him uncle. Also he’s a close friend of Mama’s–– they might have been married at some point, I’m not really sure, because mama tells me to mind my own business ––but if I didn’t call him Uncle, he’d get mad, see? And try not to speak in the car, alright? He doesn’t like Russians, or Russian…or anyone who speaks Russian. And wipe the rest of the dirt off your mouth; you look like a crazed animal. Here.”       

She rolled down her shirt sleeve and wiped the remaining schmutz from my lips. 

Uncle was indeed bald and fat. Varduhi slid into the front seat beside him, and I crammed into the back with my bag.

The ride into Yerevan’s city center was a blur, mostly because I was too concerned about Uncle’s –– admittedly impressive –– weaving in and out of traffic, and his intermittent verbal assault on me in Armenian, which I responded to with a look of pure helplessness and by muttering angry responses to myself in English.

This seemed to be just exactly what he wanted, for after every medley of unsuccessful, non-communication between us, he’d throw his head back, and laugh.

I learned two vulgar expressions in Armenian on the ride home.

Arrived at Varduhi’s apartment block, I hauled my gear out of Uncle’s car, and tried to scamper away with my hostess with a feeble ‘merci’ for Uncle. But he caught me in his chops, and I received a loud and rather moist kiss on the cheek. Pulling away, he left his arm on my shoulder, smiled and said in what I suppose he thought was English, “Wilkommen Armenia! Wilkommen!” I laughed nervously in response, rubbed some slobber from off my cheek, and hurried after Varduhi.

_____

Varduhi’s mother opened the door. Plump and with shining brown eyes, she reminded me immediately of Mrs. Alikian. A smile spread across her face as she looked me up and down, taking me in. Approving, she stepped aside and motioned for me to enter.

“Welcome, get inside, get inside!” she told me in Russian. Her voice was warm and soft.

I smiled back, and squeezed by her with my bag.

Our tender moment was broken by Varduhi, who came tramping into the foyer from behind me, and stormed into the living room with her flip-flops still on. She threw herself on an armchair and moaned loudly with burp-like inspiration, “My God, it’s hot out there.” She wiped sweat from her forehead, sighed and told her mother, “Maam! Uncle says he wants to talk to you outside.”

Lusineh ignored her, and eyed me with a mix of suspicion and amusement as I set my heavy hiking bag down on the floor.

She put her arms on her hips and laughed: “Vaay, just look at you! Poor thing, what a wreck you are! Take your shoes off. What’s your name again?”

She turned to Varduhi: “Vaaaardush! This one, what’s his name again? It was something strange and stupid…right? Ali?”

And turning back to me: “Aaron? Ali? Ari? Ari! That’s it, god, what a stupid name. Ari, Ari. That’s right. What were your parents thinking? But come in! Relax! Sit, sit down! My home is your home. Would you like some coffee, or tea?”

Varduhi, irritated, tried again for the attention of her mom: “Maam. I said Uncle wants to talk to you outside!”

Her mother groaned and grimaced: “Ekh, that old ass. What am I supposed to do, go all the way up and down four flights of stairs just to talk to him, girl? Look at me!” She squeezed and clutched at her flowing stomach rolls. “I can barely make it to the kitchen and back without hacking up a lung. Vardush, tell him to go home, will you? Or tell him, I’ll call him later. Or tomorrow. And tell him thanks for picking up Ari. But just get him out of here, pleaaase.”

Varduhi hauled herself up from off her chair and skipped back downstairs to get rid of Uncle.

I watched all this in a state of paralysis and bewilderment.

The yelling, the drama, the oddly charming stream of insults: none of this was what I had expected.

Varduhi’s mother saw me struggling. She took hold of me by the elbow and guided me firmly towards the living room, where she sat me down in a plush arm-chair littered with cigarette burns and ashes. I sank into the fibers of the chair despite the heat, and stifled a sigh.

I took in the living room. Dark red, blue and green carpets lined the walls, and gave off a faint hint of dust and sweat and dog hair. A large shelf with china and glass took up one end of the room, and a medium-sized TV set dominated the other. Shunik the Dog, an exceptionally ugly Corgi, lay below the TV, melting in the heat and having struck an undecided pose between dead-dog-legs-skyward and something that seemed to beg, ‘please-pet-my-butt.’

Varduhi’s mother sat down in the armchair next to mine, between which rocked back and forth a rickety, small wooden table adorned by a half empty cup of coffee and an ash-tray. She tucked her feet up under her and turned to me. Her eyes shining with amusement, she asked: “Ari jan, do you know my name? Did Varduhi tell you?”

“Lus…”

She smiled, and encouraged me on: “Lus…Lusi…Don’t make me say the whole thing! Here’s a hint: it means, ‘light,’ in Armenian. But you wouldn’t know that, I guess. But try! It’s not difficult. It’s not some stupid name like, ‘Ari’, ha! And it’s also not one of those horrid Russian names, like Nastya or Varvara, or Zinaida…God, I hate Russian.”

She grimaced, stuck her tongue out and chuckled at her own wit. Still laughing, she told me:

“So I’ll speak to you in Russian these next few days, Ari jan. Because we need to feel comfortable with each other, and get off on the right foot, right? Of course right. But! I’ll be damned if I’m going to speak Russian in my own home this entire summer. So you’d better learn Armenian quick. You look like you’ve half a brain behind that enormous forehead of yours. I think you’ll get the hang of it quick enough. By the way, would you like some coffee, or tea?” 

All I could manage was an: “Uhm…” which Varduhi’s mother took for American to be:

“Coffee? Coming up.”

She got up to go to the kitchen, and was about to round the corner when she was interrupted by a fearful thought. She poked her head back into the living room:

“Did you speak Russian in the car, by the way?” She narrowed and fixed her eyes on me as she came back to her chair and sat down: “I think my Vardi would have told you not to. Uncle haaates Russians. More than me; and that’s saying somethin’. He rotted for a year in a Russian jail back in the early 90s –– claims he was just bringing some goods from Yerevan to Moscow for family, and that it was a simple misunderstanding between him and the border police. I’ve never wanted to find out more, but still, he hates the Russians. I hope you didn’t open your mouth –– you’ll have started off badly with him. And as annoying as he is, he helps us out a lot. I mean, I’m practically an invalid… ”

I hid a reflexive burst of eye - rolling by pretending that my eye had suddenly started to itch –– 

“…and I need him to do my shopping and the like. And he has a car. Anyways, come on, out with it, what’s my name?”

“Lusina…?” I ventured.

“Lusineh! Apres, Ari jan! Almost. You’ll get it sooner or later. I mean, you Americans can’t really be as stupid as they say you are. I mean, Empire and all, eli? You guys must be doing something right.” She laughed, and slid a cigarette out of a pack lying on the table.

“Do you smoke? And, oh, I can’t remember –– did you want coffee or tea?”

I answered, “coffee”, and refused her offer of a cigarette. She lit hers, and slowly put the lighter back in her pocket and sat down again.

No coffee for me.

She thumbed the butt of her cigarette before asking, “Ari, Ari…where does that name came from?”

“It’s Hebrew, for lion,” I told her proudly.

“Lion, really? Haah!” She threw her head and body back into the cushions of the arm chair. Choking with laughter: “As if! You’re more like a lamb than a lion. Or maybe a baby seal. You’re so short!” She demonstrated how short I was by holding her hand three feet off the ground.

“Your parents are probably pretty short, too, I bet? Hah, lion!! As if!” Again a demonstration of my being vertically challenged, only this time illustrated by her hands from side to side (no more than a foot).

“Well actually…”

“So, you’re Jewish. That’s good, that’s very good. It means you won’t be as dim-witted as some of your compatriots. You know…” Lusineh dragged thoughtfully at her cigarette. “America only works because of the Jews on top. America would be nothing without the Jews. Your people control half the economy there, if not more, che? I remember seeing a program about how powerful the Jews are in America, my GOD was it eye - opening. It’s the same in Russia, actually, nothing surprising about that. Always has been, always will be. And tell me, how many relatives do you have in the government?”

I stared wide - eyed at her for a moment, before averting my eyes to the floor and laughing nervously, deciding that silence and awkwardness would be the best response.

She wasn’t dissuaded: “Come on, you can tell me!”

“I don’t have any relatives in the government,” I mumbled, still looking at the floor. “None that I know of…at least. My uncle’s an accountant…?”

“Well, of course someone’s an accountant in a Jewish family. But still, that doesn’t mean you don’t have anyone in the government. I mean, you know, Ari, we Jews and Armenians? We’re the same people, really. Because of the shitty way history has turned out for us, we have tons of relatives we don’t even know about. And that’s probably for the best. I wouldn’t want to know of more relatives if I had any. I’ve enough as is.” She drew her pointer finger across her neck. “But I’d be willing to bet, you have someone working at the White House right. now. I bet you come from a really smart family, too. Short people are generally smart, no? Especially short Jews. Do you want coffee or tea, by the way? Tell me already so I can put the water on, boy!”

The ever-interrupting Varduhi steam-rolled into the living room and delivered her report:

“Maam, I can’t make him go awaaay! God, he’s annoying, god! Why didn’t we just take a taxi, huh? God, I hate talking with him even.”

Varduhi put her hands on her knees as she huffed and puffed her way back to equilibrium, and cocked her head to look at me questioningly.

Lusineh, indignant, put her cigarette down in the ash tray, closed her eyes, raised her head to the ceiling and bellowed: “What does he have to say that can’t wait till next time when we need our groceries?! Let him come up here and say it, if it’s so urgent! Why should I go out of my way? God damn it!” She got up, stomped her way to the window, clamped her hands on the window sill and stuck her head out onto the street below.

“Hayk!” she hollered. “What do you want?! Can’t you go home, akhber? Don’t you have anything better to do? I’m tired, and busy with Ari and Vardi. But thanks for picking them up! I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?!” She ducked her head back inside from the window, and looked hesitantly at the window sill. She drew the curtains across the window, and sighed: “Some people can be so difficult…”

She shuffled back to her chair and slowly turned her attention back to me. She listened carefully for a second for any sound that might come in from the street, but continued with a sigh of relief when she heard the ignition of Uncle’s car:

“We’re gonna understand each other well, I think, Ari. Jews and Armenians are like two sides of the same coin. We’ve both been oppressed and slaughtered and hunted for millennia. Our people know how to survive, like roaches, you see? We can get by on dirt, and see gold where others see shit. Of course, we Armenians…we’ve a longer, let’s say, cultural tradition…I mean, we converted to Christianity the day after His resurrection…”

Lusineh sucked in the last drags of her cigarette, smiling and pleased with her made - up facts.

“And, of course, an Armenian can trick a Jew any day.”

“What?! But...!”

“Ari, stop.” She batted her thick, black eyelashes, smiled and put a hand on my wrist. “You know it’s true. But, we won’t fight about it just now…we’ve an entire summer to discuss these things! I can see already how much I have to teach you. Actually, we won’t even discuss it. There’s no use in discussing something that’s true…I’ll just have to show you. You’ll see, Armenia isn’t the backwards third world country everyone’s told you it is. I think you’ll like it here. Maybe you’ll even stay…? Become one of us!”

Lusineh groped for another cigarette on the table, and yelled to Varduhi, who was guzzling and slurping water from the sink in the kitchen. “Girl! Go get some potatoes and eggplant…”

Turning to me she asked, “Jews like eggplant, right, Ari? I’m not too sure what to cook for you.” She fell into thought for a moment, her eyes widening in pretend horror: “And wait! You probably don’t eat pork! Oh god, what am I going to cook for you…?”

“I’m comfortable eating most anything, except...”

“Ah, good!”  She squeezed my wrist, and put her other hand over her heart.

 “I’m glad to hear it. We’ll have plenty of pork then. And don’t worry. It’s cheap right now, just as your people like it. Now, come, into the kitchen! Do you want coffee, or tea?”