I landed in Yerevan, Armenia yesterday around two pm local time. I grabbed my pack from the baggage claim and made my way out of the airport. Not knowing who would pick me up I scanned the crowd gathering around the the exit of the airport. I couldn't find who might be picking me up. Then I heard it. "Eamon! Eamon!" I spun around to find an old familiar face. The cab driver who had driven me around last year was standing there holding sign reading "Eamon Burke" a grin on his face and a cigarette clutched between his fingers. We hopped in his black cab and made out back to the main area of Yerevan. We weren't in the car more than two minutes before he was passing smokes to me and turning the radio up on obscure 80's dance music that most people who grew up then would struggle to place. It felt exactly the car trip I took with him last year towards the end of my stay in Armenia. The only difference was ABBA had been temporarily replaced. As we made our way through the bustling streets of Armenia we passed under a banner that hung over the street. "Welcome Home" was all it said.
This morning I made my way to the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial. A little under three miles away so I chose to start early to avoid the midday heat. I walked through the familiar parks outside of my cousins's home. The pedestrian tunnels to void the city streets where the only change was new graffiti on the walls. Most notably lyrics of Tupac Shakur urging me to "Keep your head up". After about a mile and half I began to walk down a road that winded down along the valley next to the Hrazdan River which divides the city. Trees that reminded me of cottonwood trees out West lined the road and their wispy, white seeds created almost a haze in the morning light. Dotted along the street were cab drivers. They busied themselves washing their cars in preparation for the day's work. I passed through largely unnoticed. It seemed like most were still coming to terms with the dawn that passed a number of hours ago. They worked. Most in an isolated silence. Some humming or singing along with the radio that danced out of their car windows. My Heart Will Go On became stuck in my head all day while passing down the road. Courtesy of a eccentric Armenian who was hastily sudsing his car while getting about as much soap on his white polo shirt as his white car.
The Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial are beautifully laid out. The museum is built as a spiral leading you further down into the horrific events that seemed the engulf the Armenian people from the late 1800's through the 1900's. Each step was greeted with a new story, a new face. The portrait of starving Armenian orphans being driven from their homes into the desert. The faces of the Ottoman political party of the Young Turks, the main perpetrators of the genocide. The story of a young woman named Aurora Mardiganian who miraculously escaped the genocide and found her way to safety. She would later write a novel titled "Ravished Armenia" which would become a silent film in 1919. As you walk around the galleries it is easy to become enveloped in the past. You may ask yourself why these things that happened over a century ago matter today. How all these black and white photographs and old stuttering movie clips play into the world we live in. One of the last stops out of the gallery is focused on the world reaction to the Armenian genocide. To this day only a handful of counties recognize it. As you climb the steps out of the museum galleries, out of the horrors of the starving children and the ravaged women, you pass by a quote on the wall. "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" a question posed by Adolf Hitler.
After the sad but incredible museum trip I began to make my way slowly back to the apartment. Along the way I passed through a long pedestrian tunnel where a man sat busking to a crowd of no one. His guitar and voice echoed off the walls of the tunnel that seemed to stretch on for miles. I listened to him for a while before we began to talk. He asked where I was from and what I wanted to hear. After some indecisiveness on my part he began to play saying he knew what I wanted. A slow tune sung out from his guitar. He sat in this dark tunnel and strummed a quiet storm that bounced off the walls. "So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell? Blue skies from pain?" he asked the air around us. I kneeled down next to him and we both continued on. Singing Pink Floyd as a handful of people passed before us. At the end he took a swig from his flask and I tossed him some money and went on my way. Slowly I made my way back to my cousins home. Giving myself ample time to do some wandering and chatting in broken English and unknown Armenian along the way.
It feels good to be back in Yerevan. Running over the same old grounds as I did a year ago. Finding the same faces as before. It does feel a great deal like the banner from the airport suggested. It feels almost like coming home.