Will the last one out please turn off the lights?

[Guest]

Will the last one out please turn off the lights?

Text and Photo by Onnik Krikorian

 

YEREVAN, Armenia -- There seems to be some confusion regarding identity in Yerevan these days. Talk of 'rabiz' (villagers) moving in to the capital and degrading the aesthetics of the city makes little mention of the new elite, and their fixation with the bright lights of tinsel town. Mesrob Mashtots would turn in his grave if he knew that the road now bearing his name on the approach to the Matenadaran claims to be the 'main strip' in Yerevan. Casinos, nightclubs, strip bars and fast food restaurants light up the night sky while other streets throughout the city remain in darkness. Mashtots might also wonder if it was even necessary to invent the Armenian alphabet, given an infatuation with the Latin script spelt out in neon.

 

 

Those that can afford to frequent these new establishments are proud. "Doesn't Yerevan look like America?" they ask. "No," I respond. "It looks tacky," and I yearn for the dusty atmosphere of Komitas, or the civilized beauty of Goris or Stepanakert. Instead of eating pizza with a knife and fork, I yearn for the delight of drinking vodka around a table with good friends, eating the simple but effective khoravadz with my bare hands. "Armenians have a culture where eating at home is the norm," one visitor from the Diaspora tells me in an attempt to explain away the phenomena of western cuisine in the city, but I refuse to accept that any culture allows the near total absorption of foreign influences to the detriment of national tradition. Other countries as diverse as Greece, Turkey, France, and Belgium are testimony to that.

 

What exists instead is post-Soviet transition, and socio-economic development has become inverted by corruption and emigration. No amount of Mercedes parked on Abovian or Mashtots will negate the reality that the majority is living in poverty, and that there are those in the republic with bank accounts running into hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, but who do next to nothing for their own people. How many of this new 'elite' donated money for the north-south road in Karabagh, the reconstruction of Gyumri, or are sponsoring orphans in the republic? Instead, their only [dubious] contribution is to constitute the real 'rabiz' responsible for degrading contemporary Armenian society. The latest in this obsession with the west opened two weeks ago. 'Cactus,' a green-lit Mexican restaurant situated on the corner of Mashtots and Toumanian, seems to have found more from images of Las Vegas broadcast on private television than in any appreciation of world cuisine. A neon, animated cactus, sporting a sombrero, waves at passing drivers more concerned with whether police will instead wave them down for bribes further on up the road.

 

However, it is not that foreign cuisine is wrong or out of place in Yerevan, but rather that there is no balance, and that circumventing planning regulations has turned the center of the city into something of a farce. Were it not for the fact that most can only expect an hour of water a day [and I haven't had water for five days in a row now] and that Gyumri still lies in ruins, it would all be rather humorous. Moreover, there used to be Armenian restaurants in Yerevan, and a successful tourist industry. A thousand and one Soviet books on sale at the Vernisage are testimony to that, even if foreign influences also had a defining role during that bygone era. Russian culture, ideology and the obligatory vodka also shaped contemporary culture in the republic, but was also responsible for developing and sustaining a stronger sense of nation, and of culture. For now however, yet more neon contrasts with the time when families huddled around candles in the midst of blockade, and the predictable graffiti already adorns the walls at Zvartnots:

 

"Will the last one out please turn off the lights?"

 

Perhaps it will be these new external influences, and an economic reality that favors the corrupt and the 'connected,' that presents a greater threat to the continued existence of the republic than Turkey or the Azeris ever did. As one politician in the republic recently remarked, the emigration of an estimated million Armenians from the country is in itself, nothing short of cultural genocide.

 

Articles and reviews of existing and future Armenian restaurants and venues for live Armenian music will be added throughout the summer.