A remarkable incident happened in Greece this summer. In one of the sights, two women noticing that we were talking Armenian, smiled and very warmly asked in Armenian: “are you Armenian?”. Receiving a positive answer, they inquired with the same warm manner: “Where are you from?”. When they heard that we were from Armenia, the expression of their faces became tense, even hostile. To be honest, I did not totally understand what they meant by the next question: “how do they let you leave Armenia?”. Although the context of the question was clear (“slave-owning system reigns in your country, people have no rights, including the right to travel abroad”), I pretended that they were interested in the mechanism of traveling abroad: “we go and receive a visa from embassy”. So, the talk ended at this point. By the way, the women began to speak English with each other, although they were talking Armenian before that. Judging by our interlocutors’ Armenian speech, they were not “classic” Diaspora Armenians, but had left Armenia recently.
When they say, “a wall of incomprehension”, this is how I understand it. I think most of the former Armenian residents do not receive accurate information about Armenia. The reason, of course, is not that there is no such possibility, thank God, now the information flows are abundant and diverse. Simply they, or maybe their Armenian relatives and friends filter out the information and the picture gets one-sided, non-objective. If a “Gugush-TV” cable channel in Glendale reports that Armenians are starving on the streets, an average statistical Glendale-Armenian will believe in that.
I suppose, such pulses come from Armenia. “Here” people, of course, know the truth, but since there is a demand for presenting the situation in tragic shades “there”, and people “there” are often ready to pay for it, so this very “product” is being delivered. Even what I believe to be positive, is miraculously presented as negative. An agreement has been signed with the EU, it is bad, Haykaz Baghmanyan was finally dismissed, it is bad, the Armenian PicsArt app has been downloaded by millions of subscribers, it is still bad. Aronian wins, that is bad, Aronian fails, well, that is good. “How else could it be in your country?”.
I do not idealize my country: It is poor, the regime is authoritarian, the power is corrupt. But I really do not understand the hostility of former Armenian residents.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
