Second grade was the first time I fell head over heels in love. Or so I told my mother when she asked me if I had liked someone. “I don’t just like him, mom,” I’d said “I’m in love.” Mom took the situation with all the gravity it deserved (this had been my first love after all) and took me out for ice cream.
The subject of my ardent affection was Murad, a boy who sat behind me in first grade. He used to torment me mercilessly: I was a huge bow head, and he’d yank on my pigtails throughout the class, until I got fed up, turned around, smacked him over the head, and proceeded to get in trouble with our teacher. As soon as the bell rang I’d chase him down the corridors to seek revenge. Not for the pigtails: I could have lived with that, but I was an uber nerd even then, so getting me in trouble with the teacher was what I deemed revenge worthy.
Murad wasn’t all bad though; he would bring me Mamba fruit chews, share his lunch with me, and draw me when he got bored in class (I can’t imagine his drawings were very good, but I remember being rather pleased I was his muse). At the end of second grade we were in our class play together: Alice in Wonderland. I was Alice, of course, in my favorite checkered red dress, and Murad was the Cheshire Cat, and every time we had to rehearse our scene together, we’d both blush to the tips of our ears. But I figured this was method acting at its best: Alice had got to have been flustered by a big talking cat! (Though all this blushing during the play was what had given me away to my mom – I’ve been working on my poker face ever since.)
One of the times I was avenging myself on Murad for all the pigtail pulling he’d been doing, he managed to catch me by the arms to neutralize me, at which point I resorted to kicking. I’m a nice person, I promise, but apparently I kicked a little harder than I should have and with impeccable aim (draw your own conclusions here). And the long and short of it was that parents got called to school. That was when my mom explained that Murad was yanking my hair because he liked me (what?) and could I please maybe not kick him in the future? Or maybe at least not in the groin?
But apparently my and Murad’s mom had gotten to talking, and mom learned about his family. What I hadn’t known was that when we started elementary school in 1990, his family had just come to Yerevan as refugees from Baku, Azerbaijan. Even as a 6 year old I knew about the Baku pogroms, targeting the Armenian population of the Azeri capital. This was the second time since the Sumgait pogroms 2 years prior that I saw my mom pace back and forth by the phone, wringing her hands, and looking pale, late into the night. She would only stop pacing and sit down (and exhale for what looked like the first time all day) when she finally got the phone call from her aunt Lucya saying that even though they had to leave all they had behind, they were smuggled onto a ferry by an Azeri neighbour who took pity on them, and were safely out of Baku and would soon be in Yerevan.
This pogrom had been even more brutal than the one in Sumgait in 1988. And I think it hurt my mom more than she ever let on. Both of her Armenian parents had grown up in Baku, had met there (set up by my maternal grandmother’s meddling aunties, bless them), and she had often visited her cousins on the Caspian Sea after her dad passed away when she was only 12. Mom had a special place in her heart for her Baku roots, so hearing how 90 Armenians were killed (many in the most inhumane, despicable ways, including being set on fire), hundreds injured, and thousands fleeing their homes, I think she was robbed of this place where she had always felt a sense of belonging. She knew that the Baku she’d grown to love no longer existed, and she would never be going back.
Sometimes during the summer after second grade, my mom got a call from Murad’s mom. Things had already gotten pretty hard in Armenia: there was an energy crisis, food shortages, and rampant unemployment (and things would soon get to be much worse before they got better a few years down the road). Murad’s family had nothing in Yerevan: no home, no jobs, no belongings to speak of – so they had decided to move to Moscow and try their luck there instead. I got to say goodbye over the phone and didn’t see Murad again. And though we’ve never been much of a touchy-feely sort of family, my mom did take me out for ice cream again (and I concluded that things weren’t really all that bad after all – nothing a little ice cream couldn’t fix).
P.S. Dear friends, my home Armenia finds itself under attack today. The situation isn’t merely a territorial dispute, it’s a matter of survival for the Armenians of Artsakh, much the same way it had been a matter of survival for the Armenians of Baku 30 years ago. And much like 30 years ago, the Western world is standing by politely as people perish.
Please help support humanitarian aid to Armenia and Armenians by donating to Armenia Fund – https://www.armeniafund.org
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