Armenia At Last

I’m quite enamored with Armenia.

I’ve experienced a feeling here which I’ve had no where else in the world and it isn’t déjà vu but that’s the closest I can come to describing it in a word (or rather, two). It’s the feeling that I am in a foreign place and yet am vaguely familiar with a little bit of everything.

This happens with the language and the food but most notably with the faces. I keep seeing people that I feel I must know somehow. Like when you start to wave at someone across the street and then realize you don’t know them at all… I keep having that sensation of excitement of recognition and then mild embarrassment at having mistaken a stranger for a friend. Yet I continue to think that I know the people around me.

The dark eyes and thick eyebrows and long hair that I associate with looking Armenian surround me and it’s overwhelming and exciting and oddly comforting.

I can’t help but feel a surge of happiness when I look around and think: they’re all Armenians!

Growing up in West Hartford and working in Hartford the only Armenians I’ve encountered on a regular basis, aside from my mother and medzmama, were at church. I’ve attended various programs for Armenian youth over the years and it has always been exciting to meet other Armenians but it isn’t the same as actually living among them.

There has always been this notion that I have to go to where the Armenians congregate, like some type of queer watering hole where only Armenians hang out, in order to be with other people who share my culture. Now I don’t have to go anywhere, I don’t have to seek them out; they are all around me.