Yerevan-Hrazdan-Tsaghkadzor transit

Is the dialogue a category of the capital city?

When you live in Yerevan, it seems to you that this is the center of the world and all the political and semi-political passions are stirred up in this city. And when you go not so far, only 50-60 kilometers, away from the capital city, you ascertain that there are no political processes and the existing problems are almost completely of social nature; people outside Yerevan, to be exact in Tsaghkadzor or Hrazdan are very far from politics, their thing is their not existing field and not existing grains, not existing harvest and revenue, not existing hope and belief. Journalist’s profession is a profession without holidays. It was not possible to hide in Tsaghkadzor, to be frank basically because of the professional “khasyat” (character). If there is nothing else, inquiring is always there. A woman selling fruits and vegetables understood immediately that she had found a good listener and started to tell about her customers. One of them, a plump woman made a big deal out of 50 drams yesterday, threatened that she would do everything in order that the vendor did not work there, i.e. would not sell pears and apples. It seemed to the woman who had come for a rest who paid 50 thousand drams for three meals a day and stay that the vendor had swindled her out of 50 drams. And she started a fight. The fruit vendor went, “let’s change places; I will go and live in your hotel and you come and sell this tomato in my stead.” As a journalist I try to politicize the incident and I cannot succeed in any way, “What does politics have to do with that in the first place; that woman is surely less educated than I, but she had her hair waved and it seemed to her that she could solve every issue. What issue can that woman solve in the first place, my husband with higher education does not come from Russia, what will he do if he comes, and this woman’s husband surely has a good job, that is why she shows off.”
 A taxi driver by the name of Vardan more or less liked to talk about politics, since he stands near a newspaper booth, but he thought, “Whoever he is, if he eases the state of the people, there is nothing else needed, beyond that we will take care of ourselves on our own.” He convincingly claimed that comparing with other years, Tsaghkadzor is empty this year, visitors are few, “There has been no such year, how can they come – everything is 3-4 times more expensive, his kid wants an ordinary cotton candy, it is 150 drams, people gather their stuff and go to Georgia, there is both the sea and low prices there, the respect is up to standard.”
 Every evening old men of Tsaghkadzor gather near the church, speak, argue, watch the passerby and wink at pretty women. I tried to ask one of the winking what he knew about the ANC-coalition dialogue that is taking place in Yerevan. The old man got surprised at first, “What are you asking about? Right, you are talking about what they show on TV every day, that little Levon and Davit Harutyunyan, you bet I know, they meet, talk, they both are handsome guys. Are they not together? Are they not in the same team? Then why do they meet in the first place?” winked the naïve-foxy old man. Another old man who called himself Vanush thought necessary to take part in our conversation and claimed in an authoritative tone, “Yeah, I know, Serzh and Levon have made up again, they have always been good to each other, and they don’t like Robert, now they want to do business with each other.” In response to my question what business may the former and present presidents have in common, Vanush reproached, “Don’t pretend to be naïve as our Movses here, as if you don’t know – they want to improve the state of the country, to improve the state of our things, if our things are good, theirs will be good too.” Another man went, “The devil, they do, they don’t get any sleep and think of improving your things.”
A group of women working as maids or dishwashers at different hotels gave themselves the trouble to enter into conversation with me, on the way home before the midnight and told about their problems, the men have left for guest work or have simply left their families and gone away, mothers are to take care of the children, the living is difficult, “Ah, sis,  don’t go on about it, what question are you asking, I don’t care what the government or the opposition says, they may say what they want, all the same, they both come to Tsaghkadzor in Jeeps and good cars, one cannot understand who is the government and who is the opposition.” These days when the press and the social networks are filled with topics like dialogue-activist-policeman confrontations, the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia living outside Yerevan does not care about this kind of things and tries to make its living.