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Here’s a great video we shot last night.  Never heard Areg chuckle so loud. Take a look:

You can see the original “HD widescreen” version on YouTube.

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and successful New Year!

Areg is the only thing I really care about these days. He perks me up with the beaming smile he shows me every morning just after opening his eyes, and we enjoy the entire day together. All we seem to do is laugh and have fun. I suppose that’s all we should be doing.

Photos by Gohar

As some of you know I’ve been living in Armenia steadily since 2004. In that time, a lot of things have changed related to society at large, politics, economy and the landscape (Yerevan has changed dramatically whereas the regions haven’t). There are some pet peeves, however, that are enduring. Here’s a few:

Hearing “aper.” The term “aper,” which is distilled from “akhbar,” a word for brother derived from the Arabic that has been used by Armenians from the Middle East, is used to address seemingly anyone under the age of 60 (once gray hairs set in, a man is addressed by someone far younger as “hopar,” which is slang for “uncle”). Its usage is epidemic. When a man has to get another’s attention, say on the sidewalk, he would yell, usually at the top of his smoked-out lungs, “Aper!” repeatedly until the person he wishes to speak with finally turns around (naturally, everyone turns to look at the guy yelling, thinking he’s talking to them). Guys call each other aper, used in the context of “dude,” although another term, “ara,” which is first and foremost a popular male name, is used interchangeably (perhaps it would be more accurate to delineate ara as “yo” in American English). The grating usage of aper is not only irritating, it has changed the way people call one another, from a formal approach to animalistic, as if apes were trying to stand out in the jungle. The Armenian equivalents of “sir” or even “mister” don’t even seem to be used anymore (although if you’re lucky you might be addressed as “my respectable one,” usually by a traffic cop). I must hear aper being either shouted or spoken at least a hundred times a day, and half the time I don’t realize it’s spoken. You can hear it when a male, young or middle-aged, is talking on his cell phone, or when he’s chatting with his buddies on the sidewalk. You hear it when you obtain a good or service, at the grocery store or the gas station. Honestly, if I know the person and he calls me aper, I am not offended since it’s a casual form of address between acquaintances. Nevertheless, this blunt method of stating presence at inappropriate moments and places has long gotten out of control, and the more frequently aper is used, the more people are sounding idiotic or disrespectful to each other. Even women call strangers aper. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Catholicos of All Armenians addresses his business associates or archbishops the same way.

Noise pollution. All clanking, crashing, grinding, banging, sawing, and growling associated with construction and transportation have pushed me to the point where, at least for the time being, I hardly leave my apartment if I don’t have to go outdoors. Yerevan is noisier than ever–I actually don’t remember it being so loud as it is now–and much of that cacophony is coming from cars and trucks with faulty exhaust systems (or a performance muffler that magnifies the sound 10 times) and police sirens installed in place of car horns. Unfortunately my apartment is situated at an intersection with a traffic light, so when one motorist is late by a split second to engage in first gear when the light turns green, everyone waiting behind him lets him have it. Usually they hold their hand down on the horn for no less than three long seconds (some people hit the horn in short bursts, like their playing the dhol.

Mafiosos and wanna-bes. The cool thing is for men and adolescents to look and act as though their part of a gang associated with a mafia family. Daily life on the corner downstairs resembles a scene from the beginning of the film “Goodfellas,” when Henry Hill is describing what life was like in the neighborhood, hanging out with Paulie’s crew, waiting for a job to do. The sad thing is that criminal activity does exist in my neighborhood, and apparently it has for years according to what I’ve heard. Last year from my balcony I personally saw someone, a regular who hangs out in the area, deal drugs out of his car window to one of the kids that lives around here. It seemed like a scene from another movie about inner-city life. In fact, use of narcotics by the youth in this part of town is not uncommon. Around the corner in front of the Amsterdam Café a police detail is always there. The cops, usually red berets, are either trying to protect some big shot hanging out inside or busting someone for one reason or another. The beer bellies, sharkskin suits, dark designer sunglasses, slim cigarettes, black Japanese SUVs, Bentleys, BMWs, blinding white pimped-out Nivas and all other gangster-associated material nonsense is everywhere. They continually shout, show off, and annoy. There’s no escape. You can even see the same things in some of the villages just outside Yerevan.

I really don’t know what the solutions are to these societal problems; I can only identify them. Some reading this might ask: Isn’t simply leaving Armenia an option? For foreigners like myself, sure it is. But what should people born and raised here who share the same concerns do? Continue to emigrate? Or keep putting up?

In memory of Andy Rooney.

After a two month hiatus in the US me, Anush and baby arrived safe and sound last night. Areg slept most of the time on the flights and never had any major crying fits throughout the journey, even during our six hour layover at Amsterdam Schiphol airport.

I’m still a bit groggy from the jetlag and felt it while walking Chi Chi in a sort of vaguely trancelike state last night, but I noticed two pluses worth mentioning. One is the new terminal at Zvartnots airport, which is quite spacious and impressive. It just opened a couple of days ago according to the taxi driver who took us home, a far cry from the awkward, cramped original arrival hall still in use up to five years ago. Chi Chi along with my sis-in-law and Levon were there to greet us (Chi Chi peed all over the new glossy stone tile floor). Another is the newly paved sidewalks on Hanrabedutyan Street, where we live. The rippled, crevice-ridden pavement has finally been smoothed out, which means there’s no chance of tripping for klutzes like myself.

Here’s some recent photos of baby.

Some photos of Areg’s baptism at St. Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown, Mass.

Yesterday I returned from a three-day trip to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, known as Artsakh in Armenian, after an embarrassingly five-year hiatus from visiting the area. It was one of the most exciting, pleasant road trips I’ve taken in the South Caucasus to date.

I asked my father-in-law Levon and Sergey Minasian to accompany me, since both of them have a fondness for exploration and also haven’t been to the areas I wanted to visit. Those included Tigranakert, which is located in the Armenian-controlled Aghdam district, and Dadivank, found in the uppermost left corner of the country. I also wanted to visit Amaras in the Hadrut region, housing the first known school where the Armenian alphabet was taught by St. Mesrob Mashdots himself. Time restrictions, however, prevented us from driving south. I dedicated only two nights and three days for our trip so I could rush back to my family. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to be away from Areg for very long.

The trip got off to a slightly disappointing start when I was pulled over by the traffic police only 100 meters after crossing the Ardashat city border in the Ararat region. The law stipulates that motor vechiles can only drive up to 60 kilometers per hour in small towns and villages, apparently even on four-lane highways where there’s hardly a pedestrian around, which I wasn’t aware of. I was driving 90 kilometers per hour, but because I am a “guest” in the country they fined me 15,000 dram, a half-price discount, and they wouldn’t take away my driver’s license as they would supposedly ordinarily do . I had to sign a form in five different spots to make it all look official, shook the police officer’s hand, and we were off. Only seconds after we started moving again within the speed limit several cars whizzed by us. Just my luck.

Once every so often we would stop to drink some water fresh from a nearby source. In the Vayats Dzor region we picnicked beside the Arpa River, an area which is one of the most lovely in all of Armenia, situated in a narrow gorge.

Long ago I realized that each time you cross a regional border in Armenia you enter an entirely different world. The mountains transform and increase in girth and height, the fields are blanketed with carpets of golden wheat. The azure sky of the Syunik plains is the widest I’ve ever seen anywhere on the planet. Not only does the nature and landscape magically change before your eyes, even the general personalities of the people you meet do. The further south you drive, the warmer people generally are from my experience. That applies particularly to the people of Artsakh.

There I find people to be very self-confident and complex-free, especially the youth, who have nothing to prove unlike some of their cocky, obnoxiously delirious counterparts in Yerevan. People speak softly to one another, even on the phone, and you don’t hear rabiz music blaring from cafe speakers. Stepanakert is immaculate compared with Yerevan, where thousands of people are still battling the disease of chronic littering. Artsakh’s capital city is also more picturesque and vibrant, to me at least.  There haven’t been numerous changes in terms of construction since I was last there, at least to my eye, although there are new buildings housing the National Assembly and governmental ministries, and the new headquarters of the Freedom Fighters Union is also going up. I also noticed that Stepanakert’s central cascading park has been completely reconstructed.

We stayed in Shushi with the sister-in-law of Saro Saroyan, who with his wife operates a bed and breakfast. His gigantic home that was once a boarding home for Russian vacationers, dating back to the 1860s, was overrun with AYF members from California and Stepanakert, so we were redirected to Valentine’s house, only a stone’s throw away. Her house is also quite old, but it is not entirely clear who exactly built either home, although we know that primarily Armenians and Persians inhabited Shushi in the late 19th century.  And according to Saro, a segment of the Silk Road separates their properties — see the photo down below.

We only met Valentine on the last day, as she had gone to send off her son to Yerevan. Valentine and her children were born in Karabakh but wound up in Georgia to live temporarily when hostilities broke out in the late 1980s.  Her husband had been serving in the army as an anti-aircraft gunner, and the army encouraged the family to settle in Shushi.  Valentine’s husband left for Russia with his mother and extended family in 1997 and never returned. Her son is studying medicine and wants to practice his profession in the military. Her two daughters, Armine and Ilona, were extremely accommodating and friendly. Ilona incidentally is a talented artist and her oil and watercolor paintings are displayed on the second floor, where we stayed. They put up with Levon’s quirky, occasionally corny humor very well for two days, and served us light, tasty breakfasts of fresh eggs, homemade bread and cheese.

From the left: Valentine, Levon and Ilona

The remains of the Silk Road

Much seems to have been written about Saro in newspaper articles and travel guides. He has a beaming personality and has lots to say about the region.  When he speaks with you it’s as if he’s known you for years. He moved to Artsakh from Baku in the late 1980s and fought in the war, having been wounded twice. Then he was given an apartment in Shushi, where he vowed he would live for the remainder of his life (unless it would be possible to return to the village where his ancestors were from, under Azeri occupation).  Then an opportunity arose for him to move into the home in which he and his family currently live. During our last night there we chatted with Saro mostly about regional politics while downing shots of mulberry vodka (tti oghi). He critiqued me (and Armenians from Yerevan in general) for my “maximalist” views as he put it when I complained that more had not been done to reconstruct Shushi (see below) since the Armenians took control of the town 19 years ago. For instance, in order to get to their homes, you need to drive along a crumbling, pothole-riddled narrow road past the main regional hospital. That hospital serves not only Shushi but the adjacent villages, and it’s where surgeries are performed. Although it is visited by European doctors who provide trainings and is supposedly in relatively good shape, the road leading to it is in atrocious shape, and I can’t imagine someone wounded enduring the pain endured from all the bouncing in the ambulance. Unfortunately, we only spent a couple of hours with him altogether, which wasn’t nearly enough to tap into his storage bank of knowledge. Next time I hope to talk more in depth with him.

The land around his home resembles a campground. Picnic tables were arranged in long rows under an immense walnut tree on his property, which must be several hundred years old.

The Hayastan All-Armenia fund is spending a lot of money in the Shushi, replacing water mains and repairing roads that have been neglected for years. The road leading to the hospital, however, should have been a priority. You can read more about their efforts on the Fund’s web site.

Shushi is a special, very scenic town. There are two fortresses overlooking Stepanakert and its surrounding regions in the valley below, one of which dates back to the Soviet era and contains a prison (see below for more information). The magnificent Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, constructed between 1868 and 1887, is found smack-dab in the center of town, and it was renovated several years ago. It was infamously used as an arms depot by the Azerbaijanis during the war.

As I wrote above, Shushi was once a resort area, and to this day there are lovely parks and orchards around town. The Persian mosques  are stark reminders of the town’s multicultural past; it must have been extraordinary to live in a community where several ethnic groups lived harmoniously in one compact area, when differences in religious faiths were insignificant where community building was concerned. That all obviously changed during the Soviet era and the building tension of clashing beliefs came to a head in the late 1980s when the horrors of senseless war ensued.

I allotted only one full day to see both Tigranakert and Dadivank, which were two and a half driving hours apart from each other. Luckily, we saw both and were even able to stop at Gandsazar Monastery on the way back from Dadivank.

Tigranakert is located to the northwest of Stepanakert, very close to the once thriving city of Aghdam, which has been completely destroyed and is essentially inhabitable.  We saw Aghdam from a distance by car, as none of us saw the need to enter a dead city.  Tigranakert is still being excavated, and there’s a tremendous amount of work to do.  On site there is a three-tiered visiting center, which was a former Persian fortress turned restaurant  by the Azeris during the Soviet period. The ground floor of the center houses the museum, where dozens of recently artifacts having already been unearthed, some dating back to the 5th-4th centuries BC, are on display. Earthenware, capitals from columns, and trinkets are among the items in the collection. The director of the museum, whose name is Anahit, talked to us at length about the items found and during the conversation politics were eventually discussed. Anahit is originally from the Shirak region, close to Ani, but moved to the Aghdam district nine years ago to do humanitarian work. She conveyed the same thought that virtually everyone living in Artsakh swears by — not one centimeter of land can ever be returned to Azerbaijan.

Tigranakert is situated on what is technically considered internationally as an “Armenian occupied district.” But she makes the valid point that if there was any intention of handing over the district to Azerbaijan, the government of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic would not go to such lengths to fund the excavations. (I’m going to defer further political discussion for my other blog, Footprints.)

Behind the visitor’s center on one site workers were uncovering the floor and foundation of what is believed to have been an Armenian church, which had been destroyed and its bricks removed at some point in history. Most of the citadel, part of which is on the slope of the mountain there, has not yet been discovered, and it appears it will take several years, probably decades, to reveal most of what is buried.

To travel to Dadivank, Saro suggested that we backtrack to the area just outside the Stepanakert city limits and travel north along the North-South Highway. He did not recommend the alternate, westbound road via Martakert as he said the road was rough and the distance actually longer than what the map portrayed.

Artsakh is wild blackberry country. Although it may be known for its plethora of mulberry trees and aromatic vodka, there are wild blackberry bushes everywhere — on the sides of roads, in tourist sites, and throughout back yards. Strange that the ripe berries vary in flavor from region to region.

A note about the recently completed North-South Highway. The route’s construction, a tremendously ambitious undertaking, was completely financed by the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, which collects funding primarily through an annual telethon held on Thanksgiving Day in the US. Not surprisingly, most of the funds collected are from donors based in the Armenian Diaspora. Although the road is in generally very good condition, several parts of the asphalt, especially north of the westward passage to the village of Vank, is already crumbling. The thickness of the pavement on the sides of the road appears paper thin, and the inferior quality of the asphalt is apparent in areas where it is either buckling or caving into the ground.  These are obvious signs of contractors skimming off the top whenever possible and pocketing money that should have been used towards obtaining high quality asphalt. There’s no excuse for a road that was completed only a few years ago to be already crumbling, and the Fund’s executive board must hold the contractors accountable for the shoddy workmanship and inferior materials used if it isn’t already doing so.

The road to Dadivank on the other hand has yet to be repaved, and it’s not clear to me what that funding source will be. In order to get there you must follow the North-South Highway to its end, near the Sarsang Reservoir in Drmbon, and bear left. It should go without saying that the lake and its environs are stunning, although I’m a bit concerned about the ecology because there is gold and copper mining going on there, only meters from the lake. Apparently the metals are refined only one time, then they are sent to Germany for further refining and separation, so it’s likely that the environment is suffering minimal levels of damage, although the extent still hast to be gauged. The processing facility appears to be newly installed, which I imagine means that it is operating far more cleanly than the one in Alaverdi.

Near the beginning of the road to the monastery we asked a man who was drifting whether we were on the right track. He said we were, and asked if he could tag along. It turned out that our new companion, whose name was Artak, was working at the mining facility, sent there from Alaverdi. Apparently, the parent company of both mining facilities is the same.

Judging from the dozens of roads that I’ve traveled on during the last ten or so years, I would rate the road to Dadivank as moderately difficult. Some torn parts of the road seemed to have been filled with sand, but in general the ride was far from smooth. Nevertheless, the journey is not unbearable when traveling in an SUV with a decent suspension. My Niva absorbed the shocks from the bumps and crannies just fine. For the last stretch of the road leading to the monastery, which is no more than a kilometer long, I engaged the 4 x 4 just in case, since the pavement was quite gravelly and there was surprisingly no guard rail.

The distant view of Dadivank appearing in focus when turning around the bend is simply shocking. The compound is certainly the most stunning I have ever seen, even more so in retrospect than Tadev (pre-restoration).  A kind of stone totally different from tuf had been used during construction, thus there seems to be less wear and tear overall, although recent renovations have been made with funding from Edele Hovnanian. There are at least three churches and one small chapel on sight, along with several buildings to the south partially buried, which seemed to have been used for food storage, a seminary, and probably a guest residence. It was built in the name of St. Dadi, who was a disciple of the apostle Thaddeus. Dadivank resides in the Shahumyan region of Artsakh, as we learned when reading the sign along the side of the road going there.

My photos present a more appropriate description of Dadivank where words simply fail.

The lofty dome of Gandsazar is perhaps the most ornate I have ever seen on any Armenian church. It is adored with remarkable reliefs and carvings on its facade. While we were visiting an end-of-day church service was under way.

The village of Vank down below is home to a factory where wooden flooring is produced (the wood is imported from Russia), a sort of amusement park as well as hotel, and a new regional school, all of which was financed by Levon Hairapetyan, a businessman based in Russia who was born in the village.

That same night we ate the standard fare of pork barbecue and washed it down with mugs of cold draft Kilikia at Shushi’s Reda Cafe, found in the southeastern section of town. At the far end of the patio was a mini decorative pond on the edges of which geese were perched. Birdcages were also hanging from the trees. Although the service was generally substandard since there was only one waitress who was swamped and harassed by a guy at the adjacent table, the food was satisfying. It’s hard to find bad barbecue in this part of the world.

The following morning just before returning to Yerevan we did the typical sightseeing undertaken by probably everyone visiting Artsakh, namely visiting the Shushi fortress, the “We Are Our Mountains” (a.k.a., mamik-dadik) monument in Stepanakert, and the tank that lead troops into Shushi during the war in 1992 perched on the side of the road.

The construction of Shushi fortress was completed in 1762 by Panah Ali Khan, who was the founder of the Karabakh khanate. The town of Shushi was actually founded in 1750 and named Panahabad — before that it was apparently desolate. The name was changed to Shushi, which was the name of a nearby Armenian village, by Ali Khan’s son after his death. Why Azerbaijan claims Shushi as being so vitally important as a center of its national culture is unclear since it had been inhabited mostly by Armenians after its founding (although in the Soviet era the town’s population majority was composed of Azerbaijanis).

I want to stress that Shushi is on the rise. There are new construction projects underway across town, and I counted at least two hotels about to be opened. Much certainly has to be done to revitalize Shushi and it will take years to do so, but once all the new water pipelines are fitted and new housing is constructed, not to mention jobs created, I imagine there will be an influx of permanent residents.

On the way back we lunched at a kitschy hole-in-the-wall restaurant unofficially called CCCP in the heart of Goris, a wonderful, rustic town with gorgeous stone architecture. The walls are completely covered with Soviet-era propaganda, and there are even old radios, helmets, busts of Lenin and Stalin, and odd telephones on display. The food was pretty good — we ate some lamb khashlama, which is essentially boiled meat that can contain potatoes, depending on the chef (Levon simmers the meat in beer, tomatoes and peppers, simply divine). They also fed us lamb and pork barbecue, surprise surprise, since there was only a half-portion of lamb khaslama left that was split between the three of us. It’s located on the right side of the main road that leads to Kapan and can be recognized by a sign showing a photo of a roasted chicken. There’s also some old Russian tea pots set atop a table out front.

Artsakh is magical. You feel an unbreakable sense of pride when talking to people there, and that confidence is contagious. Now it’s a question of when the world will finally accept it as legitimately being Armenian territory so that the region can strengthen peacefully, with no threat of renewed war. That has proved to be extremely difficult, but one thing is clear — anyone visiting the country understands that Artsakh belongs to the Armenian people, and nothing can ever change that.

This summer we’ve seen an unprecedented number of ants marching in file along the baseboards and walls of our kitchen. No matter how much we try to keep the counter and table free of crumbs and miscellaneous food bits, the ants keep coming back to the same spot looking for things that are or more often not there.

As an example, the table cloth  that we use is vinyl on the top side, while the reverse is coated with a sort of short, woolly felt. Once in a while we’d see an ant or two exploring the surface of the table and we’d either leave them alone or flick them off the table, landing somewhere on the kitchen linoleum and walking away unscathed. But they keep coming back.

It wasn’t until I just happened to lift up the cloth when I saw that the parts that drape across the edges of the table were invested with ants. Seems the intense summer heat is getting to not only people and animals but insects as well. Apparently everyone in Yerevan has problems with hordes of ants in the home, and it seems they were looking for a new, temporary home somewhere cool. Evidently, they like the feel of felt. I noticed the same thing in the spare bedroom — the underside of the ironing pad which has the same woolly felt as the table cloth was also coated with ants. They were exterminated using a solution of water and vodka (the cheap stuff, vodka lovers shouldn’t freak).

In the kitchen, I’ve been using concentrated white vinegar and water to kill them on contact and supposedly keep them away as they hate the smell of vinegar. But these ants, being as stubborn as virtually all Armenians on the planet, were unphased. I also used Vasoline to blockade the intersections of their roadways, but that backfired. They would come back to carry away or eat their friends who perished in the globules of petroleum jelly, and a chain reaction of ants coming to the rescue was initiated. I’ve vacuumed thousands of ants in the last couple of weeks, but their buddies always managed to find the way in, and I couldn’t necesarily locate the source since they were marching either close to the floor or high on the walls out of reach from the gigantic, noisy predators below.

Online I found other suggestions for keeping the ants away using kitchen supplies, like crushed mint and cayenne pepper (they walked unfazed right across the lines I laid along the counter edges) and black pepper, which they didn’t like but would soon find a bypass route to avoid it. Supposedly boric acid works great but I was afraid Chi Chi would take a whiff of some deposited in a corner and get sick or die.

Finally, I stumbled upon one site that mentioned using chalk.  I asked Anush to look in the neighborhood shops and she found some that was specially formulated to kill ants and cockroaches. I drew likes along the bottom edges of the rotted wooden double-door windows, having finally realized they were sneaking in from a hole in the lower right corner, and in other hot spots. With 50 dram (14 cents) worth of chalk — two sticks to be precise — I managed to eradicate them completely, including those trying to get in. Miraculous.

Anyone reading this living in Yerevan who happens to have ant problems in the home should rush to the local hardware store (transliterated into Armenian as tntesakan aprankneri khanut) and buy some sticks of chalk (kavij). Once you manage to close the gaps through which you suspect the stream of ants are seeping in and draw some lines in the troublesome areas, the problem will be completely resolved in ten minutes. Then it will be time to sweep up all the insect carcasses.

We transported the porcupine in a small cardboard box designed for an electric tea kettle, so it was cosy accommodations for the 40 minute ride. In the meantime I was often concerned he would break out and get under my feet while driving; I kept looking down the entire way.

 

There’s plenty of shady spots for him to snooze under and bugs galore on which to feast. Something tells me he’ll have a blast out there. Better than an unprotected balcony on Sayat Nova Street any day.

The mobile that is attached to his crib plays gentle arrangements of famous delicate classical compositions, which even put me to sleep, but sometimes they just don’t do the trick. One afternoon George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” came to mind when thinking of trance-like melodies that may induce slumber. My mother had told me that my uncle used to play it for me repeatedly while rocking me to sleep in one arm when I was about Areg’s age.

Whenever I put the song on for him it works without fail. Even if he’s complaining, as soon as he hears the guitar strumming during the first few seconds he calms down immediately, and by the time the “Hari Krishna” chorus comes in he’s out cold. And to ensure maximum chill out, I enable the repeat cycle in the music player. The efficacious influence of song on the uneasy soul is undeniable.

If anyone residing in Yerevan has a mischievous mutt that could use a good dose of discipline, consider calling Leonid Istomin, the Armenian dog whisperer. He is one of the most gentlest, spiritual guys I know and Chi Chi is in love with him.

Due to his efforts Chi Chi can walk alongside me proud, and her behavior in the house has improved immensely, from being dominating to fairly submissive. When we first asked him to help us within minutes he trained her so that she would no longer enter our bedroom, and things only improved thereafter. Incidentally, aside from his clever canine training skills he’s also a talented painter.

He has a Facebook page that is mainly in Russian, but if you don’t know the language and use Chrome, the browser will translate the text on the fly.  You can also view a promotional video on YouTube to see him in action. Leonid speaks Russian and Armenian fluently, but can also hold a conversation in German fairly well. He can be reached at 093-235-110.

The temperature in Yerevan is blazing, hotter than I ever remember it being for July. Usually the air is arid and difficult to breath in August. Last year the summer weather was relatively mild, aided by frequent rainstorms and cool breezes. Now it’s time to fry.

Luckily Areg doesn’t really seem to mind the high temperatures, judging by his usual moody behavior. The weather doesn’t appear to faze him in the slightest. But having said that, he can’t stand being confined to his jogging stroller for very long and usually starts complaining 10 minutes into our walk. That means either me or my wife have to bounce him on our shoulders during our stroll while the other (usually me) pushes the carriage around. It’s nearly impossible to get him back in, even when he has apparently fallen asleep.

Chi Chi should by nature be easily adaptable to this weather, being an ethnic Mexican. But lately her meals are disagreeing with her, and we haven’t yet pinpointed the reason. I think it might just be the heat. Strangely enough, her mood doesn’t seem affected in any way; she still pines for affection and constant attention.

And although Yerevaners love to complain during the summer about how hot it is, and not much else, they are still lining the streets of the city center in droves. Last night was very challenging trying to find walking space when pushing the stroller down the sidewalk on Sayat Nova Street alongside the Opera House and myriad cafes in the vicinity. Even around 11:00 pm the temperature felt like it was in the mid to high 80s, with a very slight breeze blowing. Since I’m sure most people can’t afford air conditioning, it’s better to be out than boil at home. We actually just leave the windows open to create an air current that gets the job done of cooling the apartment down.

These days I spend most of my free time in the evenings entertaining Areg. I haven’t gone out to hear music in the  jazz clubs in well over a year, and I haven’t been able to check out the new bars and restaurants opening up at the far end of Pushkin Street, which is turning into a sort of Greenwich Village it seems. On the weekends I water Areg’s trees on my land and visit my father-in-law’s dacha in Dzorakhpur, which is a village just outside the city limits off the road to Garni, to help out with repairs. Hopefully, opportunities for adventure will arise sooner or later.

But right now, the most important center of my attention is my beautiful boy and making sure my family is happy.  I don’t care about much else these days.

These days my primary concern is being able to look after the family. Between caring for Areg and entertaining Chi Chi, let alone ensuring that Anush is doing well, I don’t have very much time for my personal projects, including updating my blogs as frequently as I would like.

Fatherhood is I suppose nothing like you had imagined while waiting for baby to make his grand appearance. For me at least, I imagined myself being serious and stern in some ways with caring for the child, even in the way I communicated with him. I vowed I would never use “baby talk” for instance, I figured it would be best to speak with the child as an adult and respect him as such. Little did I know that you cannot help but speak baby talk — it’s like a dormant language that comes into fluency as soon as you’re in the presence of an infant. I’ve read that baby talk actually strengthens a baby’s communication skills as he prepares to begin talking on his own. But I don’t think that assumption really matters much. My main goal in talking with him is not so much trying to make him understand, but to provoke a smile. Watching that grin form on his puffy face is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. It’s addictive, I can’t get enough of seeing him be amused.

Early this morning when I awoke I noticed that he was playing in his swinging crib, making those cooing sounds he makes when he’s excited about something he sees, a pattern, a toy he likes, whatever. Because he is so restless by nature he turned himself around 90 degrees while in a lying position, accomplished by repeatedly kicking his legs in the air and moving his rear end to the right in the movement. That was something new to me, he’s turned himself before but not to such a degree. Shortly after I approached I realized that he had learned how to make the animals hanging from the battery-operated mobile affixed to one of the crib’s rails shake, simply by moving about excitedly. When I turned on the mobile so that the animals began rotating clockwise above him he began to flail fervently, practically non-stop. He only did slow down when he worked himself an appetite and sounded the alarm.