Armenian News-NEWS.am continues Arianne & Armenia project within the framework of which Arianne Caoili tells about numerous trips across Armenia and shares her impressions and experience of living in Armenia.

Click here to read part 1

My phone is still abuzz with the cry to connect. And I don’t mean ‘connect’ in the Facebook kind of way – that’s just too easy. That’s like taking a stroll down the white sand of some beach near the Great Barrier Reef without taking a swim, and saying that you ‘visited’ one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Nonsense! Take a swim, even if it’s a little chilly, get your snorkels out and take a dive. The deeper you go, the more you meet the weird and wonderful: corals with more colors than Avetisyan’s painting palette, and sharks too, along with fear, warmth, beauty, and risk. That’s what it is like with real human connection. It requires a surrender of your pride, shame, prejudice, and fear.

It is said that perfect love casts out all fear and releases us to be able to connect with others in a sincere way – and perhaps that’s true. But having one mobile phone in Armenia is far quicker than deep soul change. It treats you like a three year old learning to swim from his parents: your pajamas are off and you’re thrown in the deep end of the pool (at least, that’s how many Australians learn). My mobile phone reminds me every hour that I don’t have a choice: I must connect with people. I’m forced into a crowd of Armenian friends solving each other’s problems. And more often than not that means visiting people’s home for dinner (I estimate that I could survive several months here without any cooking. I just need to book a different friend to visit each evening).

Armenian hospitality is simultaneously heartfelt and embarrassing: entering an Armenian home means being welcomed in the warmest way possible. Plates of colorful fruit, candy, and of course, coffee, incessantly beckons. Image and impression are all-important factors in this social construct: what ensues is an artfully done pre-meditated social ritual. When you enter the home as a guest, you give the impression that says ‘I won’t sit; no coffee or khorovatz for me, but thank you very much for your kindness’. And then, like following a predetermined script, the host beckons again to sit, drink a little, and take some cherries, to which of course you must further decline. And for the final scene, in what is an end to the verbal tennis, is a concluding summon to sit and eat, and to sink your teeth into the fresh peaches the host’s relative just brought from Noyemberyan – a resolution to which you must, of course, finally accept. I have been told that Armenians avoid complimenting one another, but when sitting around a table they are somehow released to exchange kind accolades unreservedly.

Then the next wave of invitations – no, demands – to stay for dinner, another brandy, and then some, washes over you like a massage that starts off a little uncomfortable but then begins soothing your nerves into such a relaxed state, that you can’t make yourself leave the table. Nor does the host allow you to. Although initially arriving resolute to leave early and have a single coffee, you have once again succumbed to the warm embrace of Armenian hospitality.

The awkwardness begins when it’s your turn to be hospitable – because you know you can’t do it like them. I, for one, am a terrible host on my best days; but on Armenian (and for that matter, Filipino) standards, I’m an absolute disgrace. But I’m learning. To borrow from the New Testament, my vine branches are being pruned.

Filipinos are world-renowned for their warm disposition to guests and foreigners. Their hospitality is truly the Pearl of the Orient. In the provinces outside of the major urban hubs, people are tremendously gracious, with the attitude that they would ‘kill their last cow for you’ and spill open their very last sachet of American coffee brought from overseas by a relative, which has been treasured for months (and possibly years). Even if the cow is a little malnourished and the coffee a little stale, their attitude in absolute poverty is certainly something to learn from.

But what, really, is hospitality? Broken down, does it just mean a collection of little actions to make your guest feel fuller and merrier? No, it is far more profound: true hospitality knows no boundaries. An a barekam implies a close relationship with friends, certain people from the same village, and even business partners, who are extended the typical favoritism normally accorded to a close relative.

Unlike in the West (if you permit me to abuse such generalizations), I find that in Armenia, nothing is ever too much. It can be from the smallest detail to a large favor – true Armenian friendship knows no bounds, and once you are ‘in’ the akhperutsyun, there isn’t much you can ask for or say that will exclude you from the group. Forgiveness abounds, but so does responsibility.

Even with some of my closest of friends, I would think twice about asking for certain things or bothering them at particular times – one must always have sensitivity to the boundaries of what is private and what might be an imposing irritant. Not so in Armenia.

Perhaps written into the DNA of most Armenians is the ability to (reluctantly?) bind together in order to survive. Armenians excel when they work together. It is no coincidence that the Armenian chess team are the reigning chess world champions - a title they have won several times. As a team, they flourish – their sum is certainly greater than the individual achievements of their parts. They have a special ingredient that other teams don't have: the ability to come together in unison in a sport that is essentially an individual battle.  

There is a very strong sense of solidarity here, and it posits a strong case for the sociological tradition of mending the individual via fixing social relationships (Durkheim would nod approvingly). For as much as my phone’s high-pitched nagging takes some getting used to, its frequent, trusty rhythm is the solution of choice by Armenian society, which declares that there is no challenge, however small and insignificant, to be met alone. As the great W.B. Yeats once wrote, “Think where a man’s glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends”.

Click here to read part 1

Arianne Caoili