Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (52 page)

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The Orange Revolution was a series of protests in Ukraine in 2004 and 2005; the Rose Revolution took place in Georgia after protests in 2003. The “snow revolution” was one of the names for the anti-Putin protests that swept Moscow in 2011 and 2012.

Oh! That’s not what I’m talking about…that’s not what I want to talk about…I want to talk about other things…

I still sleep with my arms behind my head, an old habit from my years of being happy. I used to love life so much! I’m Armenian, but I was born and grew up in Baku. On the seashore. The sea…my sea! I left, but I still love the sea. People and everything else disappointed me, the sea is the only thing I still love. I always see it in my dreams—gray, black, and violet. And lightning bolts! The way the lighting dances with the waves. I used to love staring off into the distance, watching the sun set in the evening. It would get so red toward nightfall, it seemed to sizzle as it descended into the water. The rocks would get warm in the course of the day, warm rocks, like living beings. I loved to look at the sea in the morning and during the day, in the evening and at night. At night, the bats would come out, and I was always so scared of them. Cicadas sang. A sky full of stars…You won’t see that many stars anywhere else. Baku is my favorite city—my very favorite, in spite of everything! In my dreams, I often find myself strolling through Governor’s Park or Nagorny Park. I go up on the fortress wall…Everywhere you go, you could see the sea, the ships, and the oil rigs. My mother and I liked to go to
chaikhanas
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and drink red tea.[
She has tears in her eyes.
] My mother lives in America now. She weeps and misses me. I live in Moscow…

In Baku, we lived in a big building. It had a large courtyard, with mulberries growing in it, white mulberries. They were so good! Everyone lived together like one big family—Azerbaijanis, Russians, Armenians, Ukrainians, Tatars. Miss Clara, Miss Sarah…Abdulla, Ruben…The most beautiful woman was Silva, she was a stewardess on international flights, she’d fly to Istanbul. Her husband, Elmir, was a taxi driver. She was Armenian and he was Azerbaijani, but no one ever gave it a second thought, I don’t remember any discussion of their nationalities. The world was divided up differently: Is someone a good or bad person, are they greedy or kind? Neighbor and guest. We were from the same village, the same town…everyone had the same nationality—we were all Soviet, everyone spoke Russian.

The most beautiful holiday, everyone’s favorite, was Navruz. Navruz Bayram is the celebration of the arrival of spring. People waited for it all year long, it’s celebrated for seven days. During Navruz, people didn’t close their gates or doors…no lock and keys day or night. We’d make bonfires…bonfires burned on the roofs and in the courtyards. The whole city was filled with bonfires! People would throw fragrant rue into the fire and ask for happiness, saying
“Sarylygin sene, gyrmyzylygin mene”
—“My hardships to you, my happiness to me.”
“Gyrmyzylygin mene…”
Anyone could go into anyone else’s house—and everyone would be welcomed as a guest, served milk pilaf and red tea with cinnamon or cardamom. And on the seventh day, the most important day of the holiday, everyone came together at one table…We would all carry our tables into the courtyard and make one long, long table. This table would be covered in Georgian
khinkali,
Armenian
boraki
and
basturma,
Russian
bliny,
Tatar
echpochmak,
Ukrainian
vareniki,
meat and chestnuts Azeri-style…Miss Klava would bring her signature “herring under a fur coat” and Miss Sarah her stuffed fish. We drank wine and Armenian cognac. And Azerbaijani cognac. We sang Armenian and Azerbaijani songs. And the Russian “Katyusha”: “The apple and pear trees were in bloom…The mists swam over the river…” Finally, it would be time for dessert:
bakhlava,
sheker-churek
…To me, these are still the most delicious things in the world! My mother was the best at making sweet pastries. “What magical hands you have, Knarik! What light dough!” The neighbors would always praise her.

My mother was close with Zeinab, and Zeinab had two daughters and a son, Anar, who was in the same class as me at school. “You’ll marry your daughter to my Anar,” Zeinab would joke. “Then we’ll be relatives.” [
She talks to herself.
] I’m not going to cry…There’s no need to cry…When the pogroms on Armenians began…Zeinab, our sweet Auntie Zeinab and her son Anar…We fled, and kind people hid us…While we were gone, they took our refrigerator and television in the night…our gas stove and our new Yugoslavian wall cabinet…Anar and his friends ran into my husband and beat him with iron rods. “What kind of Azerbaijani are you? You’re a traitor! You live with an Armenian woman—our enemy!” My friend took me in to live with her, she hid me up in her attic…Every night, they would unseal the attic, feed me, and then I would have to go back up there, and they would nail the door shut. Dead shut. If anyone found me, they’d kill me! When I came out of hiding, my bangs had gone gray…[
Very quietly.
] I tell people: No need to cry about me…but here I am crying…When we were in school, I had a crush on Anar, he was good-looking. One time, we even kissed…“Hello, Queen!” He’d wait for me at the gates of our school. “Hello, Queen!”

I remember that spring…Of course I remember it, but I don’t think about it too often these days…Not very often. Spring! I had completed special courses and gotten a job as a telegraph operator. At the Central Telegraph office. People would stand at the window: One woman is crying, her mother just died, the next one is laughing, she’s getting married. Happy birthday! Happy golden anniversary! Telegrams, telegrams. Calling Vladivostok, Ust-Kut, Ashkhabad…It was a fun job. Never boring. Meanwhile, I waited for love…When you’re eighteen, you’re always waiting for love. I thought that love only came once, and you understand that it’s love instantaneously. But the way it happened was funny, it was really funny. I didn’t like how he and I met. In the morning, I usually walked right through security, everyone knew me, so no one would ever ask for my ID: Hi, hi, no questions. Then, one day: “Your ID, please.” I was dumbfounded. There was this tall, handsome guy standing in front of me, not letting me through. “But you see me every day.” “Your ID, please.” It just so happened that that day, I had forgotten my ID. I dug around in my purse, but it turned out that I didn’t have any of my documents with me. They called my boss…I got chewed out…I was so mad at that security guard! And he…I was working the night shift, and he and his friend came by to have tea with me. Imagine that! He brought me pastries filled with jam, they don’t make them like they used to, they were so good, but it was scary to bite into them because you never knew what side the filling was going to come out of. We laughed! But I didn’t talk to him because I was still mad. A few days later, he found me after work. “I got tickets to the movies. Wanna come?” They were tickets to my favorite comedy,
Mimino,
starring Vakhtang Kikabidze. I’d seen it ten times already, I knew the whole thing by heart. It turned out that he did, too. We walked along quoting lines, testing one another: “I’ll let you in on something smart, just don’t get mad at me.” “How am I supposed to sell this cow if everyone around here knows her?” So we fell in love…His cousin had big greenhouses, he sold flowers. Abulfaz always brought me roses, red and white…There are even lilac-colored roses, they look like they’re dyed, but they’re real. I fantasized…I’d often dreamed of love, but I didn’t know how hard my heart could beat, how it could feel like it was jumping out of my chest. On the wet beach, we’d leave our writing on the sand…“I love you!” in giant letters. And ten meters further along, “I love you!!!” again. Back then, there were these vending machines all over town that dispensed soda water. They’d have cups attached to them by chains, and everyone would drink out of the same cup. You’d rinse it out and drink from it. We went up to one of the vending machines, but there was no cup attached to it, and the next one didn’t have a cup, either. I was thirsty! We’d sung, shouted, and laughed so much when we were by the sea—I was thirsty! For a long time, magical, improbable things kept happening to us, and then, one day, they stopped. Yes, yes, I promise, it’s the truth! “Abulfaz, I want to drink! Think of something!” He looked at me, raised his hands to the sky, and began muttering. He muttered at the sky like that for a long time…Suddenly, from behind the overgrown fences and shuttered kiosks, this drunk appeared out of nowhere and handed over a cup: “For a be-a-u-ti-ful girl, I can spare it.”

And that sunrise…Not a soul around, just the two of us. The fog rolling in from the sea. I was barefoot, the fog rose up from the asphalt like steam. And then another miracle! The sun suddenly came out! Light…so much light…as though it was the middle of a summer day. My dress, wet from the dew, dried instantly. “You look so beautiful right now!” And you…you…[
She has tears in her eyes.
] I tell other people not to cry…But I…I keep remembering everything…remembering…but every time, there are fewer voices and fewer dreams. Back then, I really dreamed, I was always up in the clouds…Floating through life! Only it never happened. We never got our happy ending: the white dress, the wedding march, a honeymoon. Soon, all too soon…[
She stops.
] I wanted to say something…something…but I keep forgetting the simplest words. I’ve started forgetting things…I wanted to say that soon, so very soon after that, people started hiding me in their basements. I lived in attics, I turned into a cat…a bat. If only you could understand…if only you could know how scary it is to hear somebody screaming in the middle of the night. A lone scream. When a lone bird cries out in the middle of the night, it’s enough to make anyone shudder. Can you imagine how it feels when it’s a human screaming? I lived with a single thought: I love him, I love him, and again, I love him. I couldn’t have survived otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to bear it. How could I—the horror! I only came down from the attic at night, the drapes were as thick as blankets. One morning, they opened the attic and said, “Come out! You’re saved!” Russian troops had entered the city…

I think about that…I think about it even in my sleep—when did it all begin? 1988…People started gathering on the square, dressed in all black, singing and dancing. They danced with knives and daggers. The telegraph building was near the square, it all happened right before our eyes. We flooded out onto the balcony and watched. “What are they shouting?” I asked. “Death to the infidels! Death!” This went on for a long time, a very long time…many months…They started chasing us away from the windows: “Girls, it’s dangerous. Go to your desks, and don’t get distracted. Do your work.” At lunchtime, we’d usually drink tea together, and then, one day, the Azerbaijani girls suddenly started sitting at one table and the Armenian girls at another. It all happened in the blink of an eye, do you understand? I for one could not understand it at all, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t believe any of it for a long time. I was in love, wrapped up in my feelings…“Girls! What happened?” “Didn’t you hear? The boss said that pretty soon, only pure-blooded Muslim girls are going to be working for him.” My grandmother had survived the Armenian pogrom of 1915. I remember when I was little, she would tell me about it: “When I was a little girl like you, they murdered my father, my mother, and my aunt. And all of our sheep…” My grandma always had sad eyes. “Our neighbors were the ones who did it…Before that, they had been normal—you could even say good—people. We all sat around the same table on holidays…” I thought that it had all been so long ago…Could something like that really happen today? I asked my mother: “Mama, did you notice that the boys in the courtyard have stopped playing war and started playing killing Armenians? Who taught them that?” “Quiet, daughter. Or the neighbors will hear you.” My mother was always crying. She just sat there and wept. Once, I saw the children dragging some dummy through the courtyard and poking it with sticks, children’s daggers. “Who’s that?” I called over little Orkhan, Zeinab’s grandson. “That’s an old Armenian woman. We’re killing her. Auntie Rita, what are you? Why do you have a Russian name?” My mother had named me…Mama liked Russian names. Her whole life, she’d dreamed of seeing Moscow…My father had abandoned us, he lived with another woman, but he was still my father. I went to him with the news: “Papa, I’m getting married!” “Is he a good guy?” “Very. But his name is Abulfaz…” My father didn’t say anything, he wanted me to be happy. But I had fallen in love with a Muslim…he prayed to a different God. My father said nothing. And then Abulfaz came to our house: “I want to ask for your hand.” “But why are you here alone without your groomsmen? Where are your relatives?” “They’re all against it, but I don’t need anyone but you.” And I…I didn’t need anyone else, either. What could we do with our love?