airport visits climb as tourist season opens once more
i hope the last of the snow has melted... and i am assured of this as the tourists increase... one usually does not go with the other.
i was at the airport till 2 am... picking up a friend who will join the other klan of american medical students doing a rotation in armenia. scattered among a few hospitals... (one was unlucky enough to get proctology)... they are amused, interested and amazed by their experiences.
last night at the airport i saw something that made me skip a beat. the zvartnoc airport has colored its windows so that the locals coming to meet their tourist friends and or family at the airport will not see the friends and or family collect their luggage (and perhaps be accosted by customs officials). this window paint however has been chipped in some places... with peeping holes more like scratches in the paint... where you can make out images on the other side.
what i saw that made me think was groups of people shoving their eyes to the peepholes... bending over and squatting just to get a glimpse of their relative in these small paint cracks... a long lost family member... a father who waited seven years to get a green card in order to return to Armenia to see his family, a mother who spent the last few years away from her family working for an elderly diasporan Armenian in los angeles, a son who has been away from Armenia for 15 years and finally has returned to see the country that he left so long ago and meet once again the people he knew as mairig and hairig... and although the list can go on for pages and pages... i just kept thinking... es inch ban e karode (what an emotion, to miss)... look what it is doing to my people... as i crawled over a man who had monopolized a penny sized peephole who had seen his tourist and was screaming "vay manvel jan, yes ko tsavet danem, es inch lav ban es arel vor ekel es"... hoping to get my eyeball focused on the small scratches next to it to see my own tourist... I thought we Armenians were blessed and cursed... blessed to love our community, our family and our people to be able to feel the deep love that karod stems from... and cursed to be so dispersed as to feel karod on our flesh, in our bones and as part of our recent genetic history.
march is always a time of karod for me... longing for my family... who are on the other side of the world.
hopefully i will use one of the peepholes soon looking for my father who will be here to join the millions of Armenians commemorating, remembering and continuing the quest for justice in relation to the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
i was at the airport till 2 am... picking up a friend who will join the other klan of american medical students doing a rotation in armenia. scattered among a few hospitals... (one was unlucky enough to get proctology)... they are amused, interested and amazed by their experiences.
last night at the airport i saw something that made me skip a beat. the zvartnoc airport has colored its windows so that the locals coming to meet their tourist friends and or family at the airport will not see the friends and or family collect their luggage (and perhaps be accosted by customs officials). this window paint however has been chipped in some places... with peeping holes more like scratches in the paint... where you can make out images on the other side.
what i saw that made me think was groups of people shoving their eyes to the peepholes... bending over and squatting just to get a glimpse of their relative in these small paint cracks... a long lost family member... a father who waited seven years to get a green card in order to return to Armenia to see his family, a mother who spent the last few years away from her family working for an elderly diasporan Armenian in los angeles, a son who has been away from Armenia for 15 years and finally has returned to see the country that he left so long ago and meet once again the people he knew as mairig and hairig... and although the list can go on for pages and pages... i just kept thinking... es inch ban e karode (what an emotion, to miss)... look what it is doing to my people... as i crawled over a man who had monopolized a penny sized peephole who had seen his tourist and was screaming "vay manvel jan, yes ko tsavet danem, es inch lav ban es arel vor ekel es"... hoping to get my eyeball focused on the small scratches next to it to see my own tourist... I thought we Armenians were blessed and cursed... blessed to love our community, our family and our people to be able to feel the deep love that karod stems from... and cursed to be so dispersed as to feel karod on our flesh, in our bones and as part of our recent genetic history.
march is always a time of karod for me... longing for my family... who are on the other side of the world.
hopefully i will use one of the peepholes soon looking for my father who will be here to join the millions of Armenians commemorating, remembering and continuing the quest for justice in relation to the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
posted by Madlene at 2:15 PM
2 Comments:
Didn't they have the painted windows in the early 90-s?
I think the painted windows are cool... although it's nice to see family members, bla bla.... it makes the process of coming out of that area MUCH SLOWER. The windows help keep them going, otherwise you know how people would be lined up against the windows trying to talk to each other... haha :)
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