As I’m approaching the final week of my language program I find myself walking around Yerevan more and more, exploring its corners, committing them all to memory. Every evening after classes I go for a long walk—the kind of walk where a purpose would get in the way.
As I walk I become a part of city life.
This city lives in the evenings. The evening crowd is a city landmark sui generis as it moves through open squares, parks lined with art, and streets where elderly men and women sell fruit out of tired baskets. Everything is open: restaurants, coffee shops, pharmacies, supermarkets. Major city buildings, shop windows, streets both wide and narrow light the way around the city. Strong evening winds rustle the leaves of the many trees that line the streets of Yerevan. Stray dogs come up to people looking for love and tenderness. They lean into open palms as people offer them the little bit of time they have on their way to joining city life. The evening walk seems like a ritual event. Men, women, and children dress up just to roam around this city. This city thrives on their energy. And it’s so safe here.
This city sings in the evenings. There’s so much talent on the streets, both immigrant and native. Every few meters a new artist catches your eye. A young band living on a prayer; a group of older men playing traditional Armenian music on traditional instruments; a young classically-trained man trying his hand at street performance. Music blaring from bars and restaurants: Armenian here, Russian or English there, occasionally Persian in between, as city life and history blend into one. The fountains on the central Republic Square put on a show every evening from 9pm for an hour. Lights, water, music—and every night the crowd is huge as people laugh, talk, and celebrate this city against the backdrop of the National History Museum.
But this city also protests in the evenings. Every few days crowds with banners, flags, and megaphones gather on one of the major streets and make their way around this city. Because while Yerevan lives, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh face violence and famine. The lives of Nagorno-Karabakh haven’t been safe, or even guaranteed, in decades. And so few people in the world know of their plight, and even less care. “A tiny place in constant conflict since the 1990s,” said Vice News about Nagorno-Karabakh just a day or so ago. It’s not a tiny place “in conflict”. It’s a place that is home to around one hundred and fifty thousand people—real lives, who have been resisting genocide for decades. Those are Armenian lives, constantly threatened by Azerbaijan who is currently blocking humanitarian aid to the region. People have started dying of starvation and related illnesses. Trucks with food and medicine wait to be let through into the area. But Nagorno-Karabakh lies within the borders of Azerbaijan, and their answer is “no.” So when Yerevan comes out to protest it shouts for those whose voices are silenced by Azerbaijan and the oil money it hands out to critics like ear plugs.
And when Yerevan lives in the evenings, it lives loudly—because it lives in protest.
_______________________________________________________________________
“Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.”
—W.B. Yeats Easter, 1916