History is sad

Yerevan Day Two
History is sad. Today, a colleague of mine, an Armenian with a phd in Turkish linguistics and two masters in other things philosophical, said “it’s the cost of history” as he walked me past the National Academy of Sciences back to our offices. It was one of those clusters of buildings that had been completely ignored since the fall of the Soviet Union, as opposed to the shops and empty business complexes down the street, the national academy of sciences lost more than it gained with the collapse. Who is going to invest in the humanities, social sciences and oriental studies departments of a country of 3 million?
On the inside the building looked like a war torn abandoned building. We walked in and found the going up elevator. It was a 4 feet by 4 feet long. The smell of body odor overtook my normally adaptable nose. The hallway and offices were too familiar, old and dilapidated, suitable only for abandon, but strangely inhabited and used, as if these venerable academics were proudly holding on to the last tangible asset they were given.
We went to see the head of the Oriental Studies department and though he had a large office with a secretary, compared to the store fronts of corruption down the street, he was no longer valuable in capitalism. I tried to imagine his previous world, where academics are paid for the sake of thinking and studying only, where they neither apply for grants nor take on management positions to boost their salaries, where they publish solely because they have a new concept or piece of research and not because their tenure or good name requires it. A world where people are allowed to think and publish freely, not trying to fit a political agenda, or a cause, except the improvement of humanity through knowledge. That’s where I go too far. Though these halls were adequately funded during Soviet times, they were perhaps never truly free of political bias.
I could imagine these buildings, these departments, these hallways twenty, twenty five years before. Bustling with theories, fancy suits, and big conferences of experts from all across the Soviet Union. It was an investment in knowledge for knowledge’s sake, an investment in understanding problems. Nobody cares about that in this new Armenia.
As my colleague and I walked away from the building, I ask my favorite question- how is it different pre-and post Soviet Union? He states clearly “look freedom is number one” let me say what I want, travel as I want, eat what I want, go for the job I want and I am happy. Poverty is horrible, hunger is horrible, but the lack of freedom is unbearable. The poverty, illness and death that resulted from the crash of the Soviet union, was the cost of history.
As we sit for lunch later that day, I start to like this guy. He has been through it all, it seems, and yet he has a clear head, a rational mind, and a sincere heart. He tells me about taking up cigarettes in the early nineties because it was more affordable than eating. “A cigarette and a coffee, that’s all you needed.” I ask him about what Moscow was like in the eighties while he was getting his phd. I wonder if he had any indication of what was to come. He said one day he turned on the television and he saw a man actually talking in an unrehearsed, natural way for the first time in his life and he thought “this country is going down.” That man was Gorbachev.
He explains that though his family was treated poorly by the soviets, he never wanted it to completely evaporate, because of the benefits it gave to his country. He thought a unified body of independent states would have been the best solution, but “a bunch of crooks and rogues wanted to pilfer off the goods of the country and so they separated.
Walking back, the cost of history burns in my mind. I realize I am not sad that the academics are under funded, because other academic institutions are doing quite well in Yerevan. I am sad because a whole world, a whole culture of thinking, is disappearing. It is like an endangered species, maybe we don’t care about it anymore, but it has some value independent of what humans find trendy today. This academy of sciences might one day disappear or take on a completely different culture, but today it still has the feel of soviet life and that’s hard to let go.
I suppose it is like letting go of the Iran of thirty years ago. I still look at the pictures of my parent’s Iran with nostalgia. How do you recreate a time when people had gardens in the courtyards, and time for family and money for feasts?
A time when information and money were not as important. A time when cities weren’t overcrowded, the environment was still clean, and food was cooked at every meal. A time when people used their minds instead of the media to make decisions. A time when wisdom had a chance.
Walking home
That evening a colleague offers to take me out to dinner with her husband. She astutely takes advantage of the cool autumn air and walks me through large parts of the city. As she talks to me about marrying at age 20, I notice the light. The light is different in Europe, and even further east, than it is in America. It is closer, the sky is less far away. It is sunset as we walk, but since it was a cloudy day, the light gets grayer and grayer but bright, the way rain light can be. She walks me through the parks and a pathway of outdoor cafes. It is a lovely city.
We passed a set of four ping pong table, men battling it out with tiny paddles and balls. We walk on narrow pathways that weeds and flowers have cracked. The dirt and sediment in the streets and the untrimmed hedges, trees, and grass around the streets makes walking a bit more adventurous. I miss this organic way.