THE YEREVANIAN SKETCHES OF 2009
TRANSLATION BY ANUSH MKRTCHYAN
EDITED BY DR. ALFRED G. MUELLER II
The street caught its breath. The body of the boy sitting beneath the wall was tattered like a boneless corpse in a bloodthirsty predator’s jaw. But the boy, oblivious of his body, moved his wounded hands upward and murmured some obscure words.
When it was possible to make sense of what he was saying, we realized that it was the Lord’s Prayer pouring out of his bloodstained mouth onto his crossed legs. The street stopped dead. The boy looked hazily towards the people; in shame he rapidly dropped his hands and covered his face with his dirty fingers.
The street shook its head, smacked its lips and went on to dine.
I shuddered; we ought to feel ashamed instead of him. My heart ached, but in the everyday hustle and bustle I went home and frowned as though I had seen a nightmare. Finally, I came up with a decision and calmed down.
The next day, I changed my route to expiate my sin; I had put iodine and bandages in my bag. Having taken some sweets, a shirt, pants and a half-sleeve vest, I made a neat package. I came to the street and struck with astonishment. The boy, now well-groomed, sat enthroned on a small carpet that was spread under the wall. There was an ice-cream in his hand, and he was licking it heartily.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Taking a couple of steps I saw a red banner on which the following was written in black letters, “Everyone to the elections.” There was a table full of sweets, with an obvious effort to satisfy the vagrant boy’s hungry eye. I saw that the boy had the same wounded face and the same grubby black hands that stood out vividly against the background of his snow-white shirt.
What a collage!
Every time I try to offer my help, trapped in my naïve conscience, it appears I’ve been awfully mistaken. In broad daylight, the filth crawling under the snow-white shirt that is being smoothed and concealed is shoved in the street onto you taking great opportunity of the “Elections”. The most important thing is that the Lord's Prayer wasn’t poured in vain onto the boy’s crossed legs. I felt myself to be anachronistic, like a moral victory in the life of a contemporary Armenian.
Recoiling, I hung my head in disgust and crossing the road, I threw the charitable package into the trash-bin.
***
It takes a half-hour to reach the downtown from our underdeveloped suburb if you take a minibus. If you walk, as once my writer friend was doing when he lacked 100 drams[1] of pocket money, it will take two-and-a-half hours to get there. And if you happen to afford the luxury and take a taxi, ten minutes later you’ll find yourself on North Avenue, where lazy oriental melody, rending from the tar[2], echoes in the depth of uninhabited super-European buildings.
Yesterday when I was in a minibus on my way to the downtown I realized that the killer driver collecting 100 drams is ready to do away with a dozen people since he has no other place to perform his driving stunt. Suddenly he would accelerate at high speed. On each turn, the car would swing right and left, and the passengers jolted bundling on each other, and at the bus stops, with a weary smile, he would paternalistically announce, “Guys, let them get on.” Sitting on each other, smelling each other, having no other way out, people would hold onto whomever they could or onto whatever body part they could.
Happily like this, we were driving from our underdeveloped suburb to the downtown when our familiar self-satisfied minibus driver accelerated and, with a crash, bumped into a car that had parked near the pavement, destroying the car’s lights and breaking the right door window into pieces.
Imagine what would happen if our eccentric driver were in charge of another steering wheel, of a spaceship’s, a city’s, or a country’s.
But wait, this is not the end yet. With the experienced manner of concealing his guilt, our outrageous driver, cursing strongly, came down from his throne and stormed at the driver of the damaged car. “You are to blame, brother; the passengers will unanimously attest to it…No? You say no? Wait…Don’t you know what is in store for you? I’ll just make one call, and they’ll come and take you, twist your arms … just wait and see! Folks get out, I am not driving”
The driver was smiling complacently and confidently. He was savoring his victory. The people got off the minibus silently, with their mouths shut with heroic effort of concealing their fright, anger, and disgust. Being among these people, I didn’t know whether to cry or to be happy with the minibus driver’s divine gift, with our bad luck that every day with 100 drams we employ a “killer” and wait for our glorious demise.
***
With the first beams of the sunrise, Nunufar as usual set off to the Malatia bazaar, pulling her cart on rocky shortcut road. From the wholesale market she would buy several kilos of cheap onions, potatoes, carrots, beets, and cabbage, some bunches of basil and fennel. She would take the same rocky road back, put the vegetables in front of her house, and sell those for 10 to 20 drams more per kilo to earn living for her family.
On her way to the bazaar, the sun was piercing, and the birds were flying in circles touching the windows of the fifth floor. Nunufar was unhappy as there was no wind: the laundry wouldn’t dry and would get wet in the rain. Squinting her eyes, she indignantly looked at the clouds building in the sky and yawned, rubbing her darkened face with her even darker hands. Then she remembered that in the notebook of debts some twenty people owed her more than hundred thousand drams, but one could never take even a penny from them. “And now how can one live?”
Nunufar sighed and with a great effort pushed the cart out of the stone pile. In her mind, she calculated how much income she would have if she bought a sack of potatoes for 60 drams and sold for 80. She wanted to buy some stuff to send to her son in the army. Then she would add some money to arrange her daughter’s dowry and, if she had enough, she would buy some medicine for her husband.
Nunufar’s palm itched. “Today I’ll get money,” she thought. The wrinkles of her forehead smoothened, and she emerged from the alleys and byways onto the main street. Suddenly the wind began to blow. Nunufar’s long hair tangled and covered her eyes; the wind waved her skirt and heaved it about. Nunufar was bewildered: pushing the cart with one hand she pulled her skirt with the other, shook her head to remove her hair from the eyes. But the wind would attack and, tousling her mass of hair, would pull it over her eyes again. The sounds of car horns exploded in her ears, and she heard a woman scream nearby.
The cart exploded into the air in a mess. Nunufar was stuck in the middle of the street traffic. The drivers were shouting, a couple of them cursed, a young woman stuck her head out of the car window to yell at her, “Hey, woman, are you tired of living? Look where you are heading for! Are you damned blind?” Finally, a boy came to her rescue, took Nunufar’s elbow and escorted her out of the turmoil of the street. People gathered around her. One of them brought a bottle of water and splashed it onto Nunufar’s face and neck. The other rubbed her hands, and another held her chin and propped the bottle to her mouth to take a sip. Little by little, Nunufar came to herself, and when she realized what had happened, tears went streaming down her sun-and-wind-beaten face. 2009
