When the royal prince and princesses tell Queen Ekaterina with fear that the people are starving, the queen is amazed and says, “Let them eat pastry”. When the President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan was cut the red tape for the opening of the second ropeway line in Tsakhkadzor, he told journalists that Armenia overcame yet another obstacle for attracting tourists. Since the president and his family are on vacation at Sevan Lake for free, in other words, with the money we taxpayers give, he isn’t aware of the prices for rest homes in Tsakhkadzor and Sevan and has no problems with the staff. Thus, the president can go ahead and assure himself that there will be a huge flow of tourists coming to Tskahkadzor with the opening of the ropeway. However, the significant attributes for attracting tourists to Armenia, such as the elegant hotels, long-legged girls speaking different languages are not enough to attract Armenians from the U.S. and Europe or foreigners. Former journalist for the “Yerevan” show on Public Radio Anna Hakobyan may prove this. Nine years after she left Armenia, Anna, her husband Sevak Yarulyan, who lives in America but is Armenian by nationality, and their two children came to Armenia so that Anna could show Sevak her historical homeland. I present Anna’s speech without interpretations or editing.
“I left Armenia after the Karabakh movement, but the city was much cleaner back then. Yerevan is very polluted. For nine years, I have blamed myself for leaving Yerevan, but now I must say that I don’t because the miserable conditions here would endanger me and my family. While walking on one of the streets of Yerevan with my husband, we met a handicapped woman, who wasn’t a beggar. We started to think how that same woman would live in the U.S. or Europe. There is no state organization that cares about people like her. I am not leaving Armenia physically tired, but rather spiritually tired, desperate and sad. I don’t think that the people who left Armenia are traitors. Believe me when I say that most of them left for abroad leaving behind their relatives and friends with the purpose of helping them financially. Many of my educated, intelligent relatives living here are on the verge of poverty. To tell you the truth, I came here so that my husband could see Armenia. We also went to Karabakh and I saw the contrast between the people of Karabakh and Armenians. I’ll tell you one story: when we left Lachin and reached Shushi, our car broke down. We stopped by a nearby motel and the owner was from Karabakh. We asked the worker at the motel to let us use the phone so we could call our relatives to come pick us up. My two children were in the car. The female worker told me that she didn’t have a phone, although we did promise to pay her for the call. We hadn’t even stepped out the door when we heard a phone ring. I felt that the reason she did what she did was because I wasn’t from Karabakh. I felt the same thing in Armenia too. We faced some problems in the city of Vanadzor. We had to spend the night at the “Gugark” hotel. The hotel administration told us that they had 24-hour water and electricity. However, as soon as we paid the money, the water got cut off. We had to tell them to turn the pipe on so we could take baths. They tricked us. We all got the worst impression at the “Harsnakar” hotel in Sevan, where the worker was speaking to us in Russian. We were talking to her in Armenian, she was replying in Russian. We paid 55,000 AMD (120 dollars) for a four-bedroom suite and there was no towel in the room. When we complained, the hotel manager got frustrated and threatened to kill us. “I’m going to kill them”. However, he cooled down after he found out that we were U.S. citizens and I felt really bad about that too. Let’s suppose I’m a poor Armenian woman, I have worked a couple of months just to bring my kids to Sevan. Then some hotel manager or hotel worker treats the average Armenian citizen like that. He got scared when we told him that we were from the U.S. He really has to be afraid of Armenian citizens. The people are not protected by the law and I feel sorry for that. What I didn’t understand was why there were so many prostitutes on the streets. I was a girl raised in Yerevan and I understand everything, but I would see some 40-something men with young girls. What can they possibly have in common? I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see my Yerevan, but I’m happy that at least my friends hadn’t changed. They tell me, look, there are cafes here, there. Fine, but what’s a café? They destroy architectural monuments, homes of intellectuals so they can build some huge…elite buildings and get rich? What are they so happy about? Who’s going to be the ones living in those buildings? I’ve been telling my husband the same thing since we came: look at this country through the eyes of your mother and father. His father has done a lot for Armenia abroad and he died with Armenia on his mind. I asked him not to tell his mother about what’s really going on in Armenia. I’m happy to see that my daughters are crying because they don’t want to leave Armenia. They feel that they are on their land. Oh, one more thing I would like to share: police officer Hakboyan pulled us over on the Khanjyan-Tumanyan intersection. He said that we had passed some line, or something…He threatened us that he would take our car, started giving a lecture; we asked him wasn’t all he wanted 1,000 AMD, and he said ‘no, 5,000’ because he saw that my husband wasn’t from here. Anna Hakobyan works for the “Mher Manukyan” school in America. Armenian children abroad are very patriotic. The parents of Armenian children born abroad teach their children one thing, the same thing I teach my daughters: you are Armenian, you are Christian and you must marry an Armenian. I had an Armenian student from Istanbul who didn’t know a word of Armenian. It was hard to teach that 17-year old boy. He hated Armenians. I tried getting him to like the Armenian language and Armenia during the lessons. Then, one day, he said that he is Armenian and he has to go to Armenia to ask for an Armenian girl’s hand in marriage. One of my colleagues Vartuhi Simonyan called me on the phone one time from Armenia and asked me: ‘did you go all the way to America just to get married? Leave your husband and children and return to Armenia’. No, I want to make it clear to everyone-I went to America and saved a young Armenian from assimilation and now I’m doing the same for my children. Don’t treat Armenians from the Diaspora badly. Believe me, those people live for Armenia. This country is also theirs.”