Why Are The Armenians An “Untrendy” Nation?
by Anna Matevosyan
May 1, 2022 / OPINION
“We are Our Mountains” monument by Sargis Baghdasaryan in Artsakh
Ever since I graduated from the university and started to travel, I have painfully discovered that many people in the world simply do not know what and where Armenia is. In 2012, in the UAE, a non-Armenian lady, upon hearing me say that I came from Armenia, asked me if Armenia was part of Russia. It disappointed me incredibly. Years later many more people confused our country with Romania, Albania, in better cases with the city Armenia in Colombia.
Why is it that when they give weather forecasts on popular news channels, one can see the capitals of our neighboring countries on the map, but cannot see Yerevan among them? And why is it that a European tourist can listen to Armenian music in Armenia and all of a sudden say “This sounds pretty Turkish” without meaning to hurt anyone’s feelings?
It seems like we are doing something wrong. The world does not know us. The world does not distinguish us. It seems like we somehow always end up being an “untrendy” nation.
The popular social media got flooded with reports, supportive texts and emphatic comments in the address of Ukraine at the beginning of March. Thousands of Facebook users replaced their profile photos with those of the two-colored Ukrainian flag. Meanwhile, a considerable part of the population in Armenia, and the majority of the Armenian Diaspora were silent on this topic. And you might ask why. Are the Armenians heartless? Are they ignorant or jealous? No.
We always think that disaster is something that happens to others. And war is the worst of all disasters because, unlike natural cataclysms- earthquakes, hurricanes and pandemics, humans could have avoided all the wars, but they did not.
Photo by Vahagn Grigoryan, provided by the author
Here, in Armenia, we experienced a four-day war in 2016 when Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh, historical Armenian land, populated entirely by Armenians). We went through nightmares during those four days, and lost more than a hundred soldiers, mainly young boys aged between 18 to 20 years. In Armenia, two-year military service is mandatory for men, so the soldiers who fight at our border are usually that young.
The four-day war back then felt like a stinging slap, both psychological and physical, after which one needs time to recover. When it stopped, even though in pain, we exhaled, relieved. We thought we had overcome that. But the worst was yet to come.
I have to confess, I had no idea what an air raid siren sounded like. In 2020, when the 44-day war broke out in Artsakh on September 27, one of my friends, coming back from Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh, told me of the shock the siren had given him there, but that the people of Artsakh, he said, normally just lifted themselves from their seats and went down to the bunkers as if it was all a usual thing.
Several days into the war, they informed us here that we should be ready to hear the air raid siren any moment in Yerevan too, because Yerevan might also get targeted. And then it was the first time I ever knew what that terrible sound felt like because I simply paid closer attention to the evening news on TV as they were showing Stepanakert being intensively bombed by Azerbaijan and the air raid sirens warning desperately. I know what the Ukrainians have been feeling for quite some time now, I really do.
The whole world reacted to the devastating news of the war in Ukraine. In Europe, in the USA and South America, in Caucasus and Trans-Caucasus, millions of people sounded worried for real. It didn’t happen back in 2020, when my country, Armenia, was fiercely attacked my Azerbaijan and supported by at least five other countries, and when forbidden armaments like white phosphorus munitions were used against the 18-20-year-old Armenian soldiers who bravely fought to defend my country against so many others. Back then, no Ukrainian citizen showed empathy to Armenia and Artsakh, and when the ceasefire was established, the Ukrainian president officially congratulated Azerbaijan on their “victory.”
Destruction at the marketplace in Stepanakert, Artsakh
photo by Angel Hovakimyan, provided by author
Thousands of people are leaving Ukraine every day. The TV channels all over the world have done their best to spread light on how Mariupol, Kharkov, Kiev, and other cities and villages of Ukraine are getting intensively bombed, with people hiding in bunkers, hungry and scared. It’s vital that the population of the planet know what is happening to the Ukrainian people currently, it’s vital to help and support them now. But does the population of the planet know that back in 2020, many Armenian kids in Artsakh had to desperately use their own humble driving skills to drive their families-mothers, grandparents, younger siblings- out of the villages which were under the raid of missiles and UAVs? They had to do that instead of their fathers because the latter were far away, at the border. No, most of the world population probably does not know that. During the first days of the war in Ukraine, they showed a Ukrainian woman give birth at a metro station where she was hiding from bombings. Back in 2020, pregnant Armenian women of Artsakh also experienced the shock of their lives, having to leave their homes in the darkness of the cold nights, wearing just sleeping gowns and slippers. Many of them had to sleep on the bare ground in bunkers. Many Armenian parents congratulated each other when they managed to find something remaining from their sons’ bodies in the morgues. It meant that those parents were going to have graves for their sons and mourn on them later. Because hundreds of other Armenian parents never found their sons and never learned what happened to them. Did the world learn about all these things? No.
We, Armenians, are a nation spread around the globe. Those who want to know why it is so, Google our history and focus on the beginning of the 20th century. But it’s not about that now. In 2020, when the war in Artsakh was going on, many of those Armenians spread around the world did their utmost to draw the world’s attention towards us. And the world did somehow did cast a glance at Armenia, “urging both sides to cease the war immediately.” But mostly, the world just silently watched all those atrocities against my nation and moved on to post more TikTok videos, to take more selfies and oh, to fight the Pandemic. Later, when it was over, they started to come to Armenia and when I showed them Erablur as we drove by (Erablur is the cemetery where the Armenian soldiers are buried), they politely “ahh-ed” and “ohh-ed” and shook their heads barely glancing up from their phones. I apologize for being way too straightforward, but this is exactly what happened. A month ago I saw a Facebook friend living in Buenos Aires post a photo in support of Ukraine. He never posted anything for Armenia in 2020. When I talked to him about the war in Artsakh, he replied that “it was all sad and all, but now it was real serious because now Europe would be affected.” Back in 2020, I only noticed a few of my foreign Facebook friends post the Armenian flag to their profiles, thus supporting Armenia, whereas now the whole world is in amazing unity,in support of Ukraine.
Again, this is not envy as my readers would assume. No one ever envies any warring country, and I sincerely wish the war in Ukraine to end soon, so that everyone is able to feel safe in their homes again. My only question is, if human rights matter so much in the 21st century, how come some nations’ human rights get so badly ignored by the whole globe? Are some humans less humans than others? It’s not about political things; it’s not about how powerful a country is; it’s simply about human rights of ALL the humans living all around the world.
Meanwhile, here in Armenia, we are not enjoying a danger-free life even after the 44-day war of 2020. We get daily menaces from our neighbor country Azerbaijan. People living at the border in Artsakh are being ordered to leave their homes and go settle down elsewhere “before it’s too late.” In mid-March, around a month ago, the gas pipeline in Artsakh was damaged. It was still the heating season in Armenia, so you can imagine the cold people felt in their homes at night. The reason for this? In a normal situation, fixing the pipeline would be a matter of several hours, but the pipeline in Artsakh happened to be under the control of the military forces of Azerbaijan. Certainly, Armenians could not get close to it in order to fix what was damaged because Azerbaijani armed forces gave them no such permission. Now everything is working, but we do realize the Azeri soldiers are capable of shutting off gas in Artsakh any minute, don’t we?
People of Artsakh do not currently hear the air raid sirens, but they do hear the Azeris announce on their loudspeakers that people should leave the villages immediately, otherwise... They hear this daily, weekly. The world does not know anything about this either.
It is time to focus on the things that matter, is what I read in random comments of social media users from different countries, in response to a comment by an Armenian girl who had mentioned the Artsakh war and its outcomes. I do wish they knew that we matter, I do wish they cared enough to know. I wish more of them would Google what Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is about. I wish people Googled Armenia itself much more and figured out where it is exactly located when someone talked to them about us.
And one day, I wish, I would no longer have to wonder why the Armenians are an “untrendy” nation. Can somebody tell me what it is that we, Armenians, need to do in order to make it finally happen?
Anna Matevosyan is a professional tourist guide, researcher and educator, born and raised in Yerevan, Armenia, currently based in Yerevan. She is an aspiring writer, her short story “Jingylov Hats” was published in HyeBred literary magazine in 2021. She is currently working on her first short story collection based on true stories narrated by Armenian women.