Pack… Fireworks

We are walking down Saryan Street in full view of the outdoor diners who I think are really only there to show themselves off – they don’t actually care about us. I feel less precarious and take your hand. It’s not something one does around here outside of established relationships because “what will people think?” But I take your hand anyway, and my skin tingles. This is the longest I’ve been home in ages, in more than ten years actually, and I have found myself falling in love. With the tender blush of the sunrises in my city and its empty streets in the early mornings that are just mine, with its smiling babies with enormous eyes, with the easy familiarity of needing haggle at the flower stall on my way to my mom’s house, even though the guy always gives me an extra bunch of flowers for free in the end. I don’t remember what loving these things is supposed to feel like, so when my heart feels full to bursting, I fall in love with people.

We walk down the street with my hand in yours, despite the sweltering heat of August. It is as if your hand is what’s tethering me down to this city that is both familiar and foreign to me after so many years away. It will all blow away if I let go – the sunrises, the smiling children, the sense of belonging. Or maybe it will be me who is blown away. Either way, I don’t want to find out, so I hold on tightly despite both our palms sweating.

People stare at us. The simple answer is that between the tattoos and the piercings and the strange choices in hair color, my presence is nothing like subtle. Over the years, the more the society has pushed me to conform, the more I have pushed back. You get to have the real me only if you can see the real me, past what’s on the outside. To quote the Little Prince: “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential, is invisible to the eye.” “It’s like dating a firework,” you say. I think I’m supposed be flattered, but it makes me impossibly sad.

When I was a kid, there was a stretch between when school would get out in late November-early December and New Year when I used to feel particularly listless. The sky was way gray, it was too cold to play outside for hours on end, and it hadn’t snowed yet to make the risk of frostbite worthwhile. My boots were too tight – it was the second winter that I was wearing someone else’s hand-me-downs, and they made the cold that much more unbearable as I imagined my toes turning blue. I wondered if I could lose a toe.

It was too early in winter break to be worried about assignments and too boring not to. My friends and I roved in small packs, trying to find something to occupy ourselves with. This is when we started to sneak into abandoned buildings in the neighborhood to investigate – partly motivated by curiosity and partly just wanting to get ourselves out of the cold. The neighborhood I grew up in is called Zhamatsuytsi Gortsaran, the Clock Factory, after a gigantic factory that was in the center of the neighborhood. Once upon a time they made clocks and watches for the entire Soviet Union there. But these days the premises were occupied by stray dogs that ran in packs much like my friends and I.

We weren’t particularly deterred by the dogs, so there were a number of improvised entryways we’d used to sneak into this fortress that was now a testament to the fall of an empire, as it were. We hopped fences, shimmied into broken windows, and even climbed into wide enough pipes. And on the inside, the time had stood still. Quiet, so deafening that my own heartbeat would echo, filled the dusty rooms. It was as if the world had stopped abruptly, and the workers didn’t have the time or just couldn’t be bothered to put their things away. Rather, they all stopped mid-task, put their half-assembled clunky alarm clocks down, and moved on with their lives in a new reality, in which there were no other Soviet Republics to make clocks for. They invited the dust in.

At around New Years, I would find myself fascinated with and looking forward to the midnight fireworks: the big bright flashes that spangled the sky over the city, which was almost fully submerged in the dark otherwise. But also with the small flashes of sparklers that lived in the pockets of the neighborhood boys and had the sound that took us all to the reality of the war in Artsakh. How something small could bloom so big and bright to make you hold your breath in awe…

I had managed to scrape some money together by skipping lunch and saving the 100 dram daily allowance I had been getting and by collecting and returning cans and bottles. There were so many things I wished I could spend the money on: Kinder candy that had collectable toys inside, which were highly en vogue, stickers, because God knows, I still like stickers, and much more. But it was December 31st, and the most enticing, relevant purchase at this point was fireworks: these small bursts of magical sparkle and light that one could hold in their hands against the gray dreariness of abandoned buildings. No more waiting for the city fireworks at midnight: we could be in charge of our own magic.

My best friend Karish and I snuck into the factory soccer field – it had been built to provide the factory workers with a means for recreation, but had been abandoned long since, along with the factory itself, the nets hanging gray and limp and ragged off the goals. I took one of the fireworks in one hand and struck a match with the other. The flame flickered in the wind and went out – apparently even the big magic of fireworks started with small tender wisps of flames that needed careful tending. I struck another match. The firework lit and fizzed: Karish and I took a step back, as if I could have distanced myself from the firework that was in my own hand. Flash and sparkle, flash and sparkle, flash and sparkle. And a gray quiet that followed that felt grayer and quieter still after the excitement of the firework. We lit sparklers and crackers, white, and red, and purple, fireworks that I had to hold, slightly terrified, and ones that I could set on the ground and take a step back from. It was New Years Eve, and we were in charge of our own magic on that gray cloudy day.

…

We walk down the street hand in hand, and it’s the sweltering heat of August, instead of the New Years eve in my memories. I shake my head “I”m sorry, what did you say?” “It’s like dating a firework, whenever I’m with you,” you squeeze my hand. And it’s good to know that on gray cloudy days we can still make our own magic.