If I could ever put my thoughts together it would have been a word by word what an Armenian blogger Arshak Mkrtchyan wrote. This is of an utter importance for all Armenians around the world.
The Armenian-seeking person that I have always been, one afternoon in July 2007 I ended up with an interesting mixture of people on my sofa at work. People who ethnically had a lot in common – they were all Armenian, but nonetheless struggled to make any sort of meaningful contact for at least an hour of being sat next to each other, waiting for me to finish my business and act as a connecting bridge between them.
It is rather hard to blame them, though.
First of all, there was the linguistic barrier, because they were:
- a Beirut born Western Armenian from Kuwait, fluent in Western-Armenian and English;
- a Northern Caucasus born Armenian from Moscow, fluent only in Russian;
- an Akhaltsikhi born Armenian from Moscow fluent in Russian and the Akhaltsikhi dialect Armenian;
- …and my little cousin from Armenia, who although was fluent in both Russian and English, but was finding it rather weird to speak foreign languages to Armenians.
I glanced at them from time to time, reassuring them that I was going to be finished sooner rather than later, as I was seriously afraid that the atmosphere of total silence was going to make one or more of them leave.
Luckily, Read the rest of this entry »