Readers of the blog know very well that I love travelogues and reading about different corners of the world. In our singular life, we cannot travel everywhere that our mind wishes to travel. We are often bound by finances, the duty to work, and dedication to family (and now, covid). Even if we were to only travel all our lives, one lifetime isn’t enough.
To be honest, Armenia is never been on the top of my list, but over time meeting many students and friends, I have gained travel interest and a better understanding of the nation than I had before.
I was listening to a podcast episode with Noubar Afeyan, the Armenian-American immigrant entrepreneur and co-founder of Moderna. It is a wonderful episode illustrating how his background helped him tie philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and curiosity to developing science-based solutions to vexing problems.
An Armenian Sketchbook was a compelling short book to read on the same day. It is a peculiar book because the author Vassily Grossman did not speak Armenian and is ostensibly there for a short period to translate an Armenian book into Russian. He is honestly taken aback and makes some curious observations about the diversity of the people.
Some nations and their peoples live in the long shadow of tragic history bent by a meaningless calamity. Armenia is such a country. When lives end in a slow march to cruelty, survivors carry guilt and tears in their bones. I learned that Afeyan’s grandfather survived the genocide and his parents settled in Beirut — another place of chequered violence. Afeyan was born and raised there before his family once again fleed to Canada. Now, we have Moderna. In many ways, in a nation of vaccine skeptics, we are perhaps undeservingly lucky beneficiaries from these lives that strive.
We live decades hence in a wealthy nation that is a continent apart. The villages that Grossman visits have neither the faded memories from the passage of time nor the wealth to drown their sorrows. There is a saintly old man who after decades of imprisonment in Siberia, lives his last days with utter kindness and charity. A mother cries on the parting of her daughter, as a bride, she breaks into tears. Indeed the sad happiness of the ostentious wedding – silver chalice, rosy apple, fine shoes — among the poor workers, hides the hardness of life ahead: more stone in a stony land that sees no rain.
Their lives are exceptionally hard, and yet commonplace for many lives in India are similar. We often fight and do not tolerate differences well, but we are bound by an common angst of life.
Related:
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vassily Grossman. Trans. from Russian by Robert Chandler.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
My notes on Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London