Today was my last day in Armenia sadly. Last night Sylvia helped set up a trip to Lake Sevan for me. It's about two hours away from Yerevan. The driver who took Levon, Santiago and I to Gyumri would be driving me again. Just me this time. I met him downstairs a 9 am and soon we were off. H brought his mp3 player and gave me a sampling of Armenian music. Driving through the beautiful hills of Armenia listening to the Armenian variants of the Beach Boys and Donna Summers. The hills were cut through to make way for the roads and in the exposed rock veins of obsidian glittered black in the mid morning sun. It looks almost as if the mining companies and cut straight through the heart of the hills and the veins of ore burst and were spilling their black glassy contents down the rocks. They looked like streams of darkness flowing down the rocky road sides. It was so beautiful to see.
We made it to an old cemetery called Noratus. It is home to over 800 khachkars, some dating back to as early as the 9th century CE. They stand as solid stone giants. Surrounding two old chapels built in the 13th century CE and abandoned not long after. Now the main inhabitants of the grounds are sheep that range and graze on the grass that grows from under the colossal rocks and the old women who wait and sit, knitting woolen gloves to sell to passerbys. After wandering around the old graveyard I headed to the newer monuments that stood next door. Row after row of gravestones and statues. Almost all featuring the portraits of the people who lay below the ground beneath stones laid over them. As I walked around I came across three men digging a hole for a new member of the community. They worked with picks and shovels knocking away rock and earth to reach six feet deep. I met them when they were at their shoulders. They worked as we talked. They offered me cigarettes and we smoked as they rested. Oram, Arta and Valik. We spoke in broken English for a while as they told me of their relatives in Glendale, their favorite sites to visit with their family.
After a while I left and went off to Sevanavank, an chapel built in 305 CE. It sits on what use to be an island in the vast Lake Sevan. Since then it has become a peninsula that stretches out into the lake. Steep stairs climb up to the hill where the church sits. It is settled with the beautiful water on three sides, seagulls calling out above your head, wild flowers sprinkling the grassy meadows around it, bulbs of purple and yellow standing out against the stone walls of the church. We left to head to lunch. A wonderful spot sitting right on the lake. We ate outside on a porch so low you could almost feel the waters of Lake Sevan splashing your feet. When I say we ate I mean we feasted. Salads, cheeses, barbecued lamb and lavash bread to wrap it in. We ate in silence, drinking our beer and soaking in the wind off the lake. I studied his features. Crosses tattooed on the knuckles of one hand, an M dyed into the skin on the other between his thumb and index finger. His pinky nails had been left untrimmed for some time and the smoke from his cigarette only occasionally cleared to see the blue of his eyes. Nestled into his wrinkled olive skin were two swirling lakes with black voids in the center. His peppered hair blowing around in the gusts. He was an incredibly kind man but you could see he was weathered.
On our way back he continued to play songs from his mp3 player. Songs would split the silence and as ones came on that colored the interior of his car grey with sadness he would listen for a while before changing them. After a song I never expected to hear came on. Agnetha Fältskog came busting out of the speakers. Hasta Mañana by ABBA hit just as the realization of this is my last day hit me. I was struck by the strangeness of the moment as she Agnetha sang "Hasta mañana till we meet again, don't know where, don't know when." My mind became flooded with everything that has happened this week. The sites I've seen and the places I've gone to. The chapel carved into the side of the mountain, the pagan temple left standing against all odds. "Hasta mañana till we meet again, don't know where, don't know when." The road stretched on line by cypresses on each side. The people I've met and spent time with. The women in Gyumri, struggling to make a home out of a broken dream for their families. The men digging the grave for someone I'll never meet sharing stories of their families. "Hasta mañana till we meet again, don't know where, don't know when." Levon so driven to make a better life for the people that no one else seems to be able to. Sitting on the balcony with Hilda nightly too deep in conversation to realize 3am had come and passed. Sylvia striving to change the pace of a nation starting with the children. Vasken working without pay day in and out to better Armenia for the future. To everyone I have met, the people I've seen I can't thank you enough. Hasta mañana till we meet again. I don't know where. I don't know when.