Tigran Khzmalyan does not treat the hotel meetings seriously
“One of my colleagues, describing this situation, used a short, but a very picturesque word, “tsutsk” (show). It is the Armenian equivalent of the well-known “show” word”, said member of “Sardarapat” movement, film director Tigran Khzmalyan, responding to “Aravot’s” question what will be the future political developments in Armenia, when the government and the ANC have decided, all the same, to sit around one table, even yet without an agenda. “Aravot’s” interlocutor does not gloat. He states “with the most pain”, “It (the government-ANC dialogue – N. G.) does not relate to the real life of the RA, Artsakh, Javakhk, as well as the Diaspora. People live with their everyday problems, meanwhile they have a dialogue. It does not represent either the society or the people or the real opposition.” Tigran Khzmalyan thinks of the ANC as opposition with many reservations, since he thinks that the “opposition” word has changed its meaning in Armenia with the lapse of time, “The people are the opposition now, in numbers, roughly 98 percent of Armenia’s population. From maids to teachers, policemen, even some officials, everybody understands that we live in a shameful and horrible reality and the ways out that the so-called government or opposition try to offer do not arouse any hopes or trust, because they do not reflect the challenges our country and our real life face. Therefore, I am neither interested, nor have any expectations from all that goes on in hotels. All the more so, nothing serious can happen in a hotel – one only receives guests or unfaithful husbands ask their lovers out on a date.” In response to “Aravot’s” remark, do you attribute the role of the lover to the ANC, in this case, Khzmalyan said, “I do not want to add fuel to the discussions on the social networks – “wedding”, “happily ever after”, “red apple” etc. There is nothing to be happy about and there is nothing to laugh about either and as a writer said, “It would be funny if it were not so sad.”
If we consider the government-ANC dialogue only from the perspective that both forces take steps only in their own interest, in that case why are the forces that must fill in the deepening vacuum with the society formed or activated? Tigran Khzmalyan responded, giving the example of the Arab countries, how “the masses erupted” in the revolutions taking place since the beginning of the spring, how the people’s anger took the squares and the streets, but did not enter hotels. Based on these examples, our interlocutor mentions, “One should not seek for forces, parties, leaders – neither in Egypt, nor in Tunisia, nor in Libya there were “forces”, “leaders”, or parties. Even for an unimportant reason the people took the streets and stated that they did not want to live like that anymore and did not tolerate that disgrace that they had been forced to tolerate for decades anymore. The forces are we, all of us. It is the civil society. It is the conversation that we have. Nobody treats that so-called dialogue seriously, because it has turned into a farce long ago and a person that thinks of himself as a more or less sensible man does not pin any serious hopes on that. Today people do not ask what is going to happen. They ask what we are going to do. If we continue waiting and dreaming when the prince on white horse will come, we resemble a fifteen-year-old virgin who has read only fairy-tales. The prince will not come. The prince is in us, it is our instinct, our dignity. If we lack it, we will disappear as a nation, as a result of the degradation, degeneration, anti-statehood taken place for the last decades.” However, since our interlocutor is convinced that there are people who have enough dignity among us who do not want the Armenian people to disappear, he puts the question in the following way, “When are those forces going to appear and why it has not been the time for that so far?” And the answer to his question is the following, “The movement of resistance is burning every day, every moment on social networks, on the street, in the squares, in the kitchens. I will not mention terms on purpose and on principle, but one just has to analyze our history of the last decades and even the terms will be clear. We are the dialogue and not them.”