How I ended up in a crowded alleyway in Artashat with a watermelon in one hand and a cellphone in the other

I was in a play lately, a representative of the "absurd" school (which is not called what it is called without reason... but that's another story). Our darling director was graduating from the dramatics institute, and this was a production for his diploma. It went well, but it may have gone better for the director, because he was carted off to serve in the army a short time later.

So, I received a phone call a couple of days back. Apparently, Sunday is the day when our young cadets take their military vows or some such thing, would I like to accompany the cast to meet up with our director ? Well, of course I would! For one thing, he was indeed our darling director; a very nice guy. Secondly, I had heard so many stories, good and bad, about our army, and compulsory military service, it would be fascinating to go and have a look with my own eyes the goings-on of our armed Armenians.

As it was a group that was going, and as we were all Armenian, and - to top things off- some members of the group were girls... You guessed it, we were late. In fact, we left two entire hours later than planned. Still, left we did, and it was decided to buy a watermelon en route, so as to not show up empty-handed.

I had never been to Artashat before, and I didn't get to go exploring around the place, but it seemed like a decent-sized town. There were, as I knew, ruins nearby of two of our greatest ancient capitals - Artashat itself, and Dvin. But all that for another day; we were making our way to the zoramas or, to make use of the more commonplace expression, the "chast". ;-)

There was a MULTITUDE there. It was a narrow alley, and friends and relatives of 400 conscripts had made their way to the place. The actualy oath-taking ceremony had finished already, and the crowd was wending through cars, trucks, buses and people and more people. Oh, there was a Mormon church there, too, strangely enough. Anyway, I was given the privilege of carrying the watermelon as we tried to find our director-in-arms, and my brother called just then (cf. the name of this post; I thought it would be a cute title). We finally found the guy. Members of his family had come, too, and we spent an enjoyable few hours together afterwards.

Things in the army are... interesting. It's strict, disciplinarian, with a rigid schedule, but it seems that things are relatively easy, at least at that base the atmosphere was easy-going. Loads of conscripts have cellphones, so they keep in regular touch, even though it's not officially allowed. They are supposed to receive 1200 drams a month in pay, which they don't. They have regular exercise routines, classes on military-related and other subjects, but plenty of free time, too. They just don't really have anything to do in their free time, it seems. Weekends are relatively off. Nutrition and toilet facilities weren't up to par, though...

This was an interesting insight into the whole deal, and I especially wonder, if we have this double-citizenship thing, how the younger dual nationals might feel about serving in Armenia's army.