“Genocide” and “thank you” are notoriously long words in Armenian.

And so is “dignity”: արժանապատվություն | anarjanapatvutyun.

From արժան (arjan) “worthy” and պատիվ (pativ) “honor.”

When the fake eco-activist who blockaded my friends in Artsakh landed on Armenian soil, their lips repeated, Inch anarjanapativ azg enq menq (“What an undignified people we are”). It was an exhausting echo of a collective failure.

From the border delimitations to language amended in a constitution — we worm in and out of undignified changes, calling it “peace.”

In Syunik, my cousins crescendoed with the mountains. A tepid tinkering on the capital’s construction and Areni wine, then the flags would appear and the car would enter an impassioned diatribe against the government. We were scarcely an hour outside of Yerevan when the first shift met us. In the dusty slopes, my cousin pointed out the Azerbaijani military posts. 

“Look yonder, by the horizon — soon, their flags will move up here, and this road will be gone.” That was the first silence. Soon, several more would dot our journey. 

We spent just as much time on the road as we did off it. Through it all, we motioned on and in and over the mountains, relying on navigation apps to get us across. But they all — from Google to Yandex — insisted that the road to Goris was clear, directing our car confidently toward an artery that had been severed. Twice within 24 hours, we had to turn back and take “the long way around,” rerouted only by the physical warning of a local driver, not by a single official sign.

In Goris, the author and her family toasted with wine bottled in Artsakh in 2019.

All along the now-collapsed roadway, the old markers remained, pointing optimistically toward a past that no longer existed: signs for Artsakh, signs for Stepanakert. It was a staggering show of irresponsibility — the kind that makes you question your sanity. These proud mountains now choked us with enemy flags and a gaslighting government. The only guidance offered was a ghost map of a piece of home, ktor muh ergir, that had been lost overnight.

On the way to Zorats Karer (Armenia’s Stonehenge), we passed by a часть (“chast”) of soldiers pouring cement. In the heat, they looked younger. Their taut skin, glistening in the sweat and mud. “Poor babies,” my aunt moaned. A few of them gave us directions and we began drifting on their new road. But my cousin turned back and exited the car. He walked up to one of the babies, handed him some bills and came back in, wordlessly. 

“Ktor muh ergir” in Zorats Karer/Carahunge, one of the world’s oldest astronomical observatories.

In addition to the stale signs and sweaty soldiers, all throughout our journey, my cousin’s cousin, Khatcho, would appear like a real-life game of Where’s Waldo? He was everywhere when you least expected him. 

Khatcho is an artificial flower merchant. Before the war, he would drive to Artsakh from Yerevan to sell his supplies. Business was on the up, so he expanded the operation. But then came the bombs and the exodus, and he lost everything. Now, he journeys to Syunik to try to recoup what he can. It’s been a rough ride, but you wouldn’t know it talking to him. At every juncture, he beamed. 

An Azerbaijani flag is seen from the horizon in Syunik.

After leaving Tatev, we saw Khatcho on the side of the road, by a khatch-kar, drinking shots with a few of his buddies. He opened the car door and told me, the diasporan,

“Our Armenia is so beautiful. We should all love it furiously.”

And he ended it like all his conversations ended: Tsavt tanem, “I’ll take your pain away.” Mom joked that 70% of the words out of his mouth were about taking someone’s pain away. I didn’t do the math, but it seemed on point.

Amid the merriment, Khatcho neglected to mention that the road we were on was closed. An hour later, my cousin felt something was off. He stopped the car, and a taxi driver about his age appeared. The man warned us of an Azerbaijani military checkpoint ahead and urged us to turn back.

“You have to return to Tatev and take the long way around,” he repeated. My cousin asked what would happen if we didn’t. “I go that way sometimes, when I’m by myself, and it’s usually fine — and it’ll probably be fine for you…but you’re with your family. It will be unpleasant.” 

The taxi driver who advised turning back to avoid the new Azerbaijani-controlled military checkpoints.

And with that, my cousin’s face tightened. His wife sat beside him, his mother in the back. As he turned the car around, I attempted a joke, “Mom and I didn’t bring our [U.S.] passports, so it looks like we’re all in the same boat, ey?” 

No one said anything.

We continued through the now-borderlands, Azerbaijani flags at every turn, the mountains looming beautiful and indifferent. In that moment, diaspora — the shortest of words — finally collapsed on the tongue.

“Let’s safeguard our national heritage”

All photos are courtesy of the author.