Armenian Hospitality

I ate lunch alone today for the first time since arriving. It was deliciously solitary and thanks to some fabulous reading from a friend (a few choice articles from Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism), I sat head-in-a-book-in-the-corner happy. I was indulging in a wealth of favorite things: crepe salé with chicken and crème fraiche, academic criticism, filtered coffee and a very quiet lunch hour. My meal carouseled on in gastronomic and literary bliss. And then I got a piece of chicken stuck between my teeth. My attempts to gracefully remove it with the corner of my pinky nail and then my thumbnail produced no successful results. I could not be the picture of post-college ennui and intellect with a piece of chicken between my incisors. The lone lunchtime diner, I kept at it as I read on about how academic feminists can best serve contemporary causes. Then, the waiter, who had been standing by the bar throughout the meal, breezed by my table, dropped a container of toothpicks and slid off into the back room.

Now, every travel guide I’ve ever read about Armenia mentions the “unrivaled hospitality and kindness of the indigenous people.” I share the sentiment- these people are gems. But there is a subtlety to Armenian hospitality that is oftentimes overlooked. That is to say, in Armenia, not only do they service you with toothpicks to tidy your teeth but they let you do it in privacy as well. All without a single word to mar the whole affair.

Proud granddaughter to the dentist at the ATDA office,

Samantha

No Need to Retract: A Summer Flanked by Fisk and Schultz

You know you’re having one shad lav (very good) summer when you get the opportunity to hear two fabulously inspiring journalists speak. Not just those big writers who use big words and drive in big cars with tinted windows. I’m talking about the field mice of journalism: the people who scuttle about, sniff around and see the story first hand. It was a mouse, after all, got that thorn out of the lion’s paw.

I started off my post-college career with a rousing graduation speech courtesy of Connie Schultz (The Plain Dealer). I am happy to say that I’ve been asking the wait staff at all establishments if they keep their tips ever since. Baristas in Starbuck’s smile more, believe me.

Flash forward to next inspiring journalistic talk: A group of us cabbed over to the American University in Yerevan to seize the unparalleled honor of seeing Robert Fisk (The Independence) speak last Thursday. Mr. Fisk did a great job of telling things in the nitty gritty style for which he is so esteemed. And he’s honest, to boot. In the air during the 9/11 attacks, he admits that even his racist stripes slithered out into the open as he identified 14 sketchy characters on the plane on which he was flying. There they were, he says, “looking suspiciously at Bob, because Bob was looking suspiciously at them.” Sometimes people stare because you stare back. Haskatsa (Understood), Mr. Fisk.

Now, forgive my nostalgic indulgence as I depart in just over a week. What was it that Neville Chamberlain once called Czechoslovakia, RF? Oh yes, “a faraway country of which we know little.” Armenia, for most of us, is just this. For me, the distance has shrunk like saran wrap in the microwave- rapidly and accompanied by the smell of burning plastic (thank you, Yerevan Sanitation Department). Here’s hoping that some of my words brought Hayastan a little closer to home for you, too.

Just in passing, I’d also like to mention that we saw an Armenian dance troupe perform on the side of a mountain beside a castle this Saturday as the sun shone down in buckets. That was shad lav too.

Drenched with Light (and Sun) in August,

Samantha