To be or Not to Be (Armenian)

Tightly woven into the lives of many diasporan Armenians is the struggle to remain Armenian against the ever-present pressures of assimilation. Indeed, fundamentally, what separates diasporans from their native counterparts, in my opinion, is the former’s struggle to preserve identity.

It should be noted, however, that this struggle is a choice; being Armenian is voluntary abroad, and involuntary in Armenia. For your average native, born in Armenia, raised to speak Armenian, and who works, lives, eats and thinks in Armenia, Armenian identity is a given. Sure, he may stress, between cigarette puffs from his apartment in Yerevan, the fact that his parents hail from Shirak, and he knows their dialect and has drunk their water - and that actually makes him drastically different from his next-door neighbor in Yerevan, who is a Loretsi - but, that is to say, the differences in identity are confined mostly between locals: region to region, city to city and even village to village. Armenia’s inhabitants are immersed in an Armenian matrix, in the way that human beings are immersed in a matrix of air. Breathing occurs involuntarily and unconsciously, noticed only when that air is absent or mixed.

For most of us Diasporans from all corners of the globe, where Armenians comprise a minority, we are outside of that matrix, outside of that Armenian air; we are underwater or engulfed in a cloud of a strange gas, perhaps helium, so our breathing becomes voluntary. We often hold our breaths and may choose to only let the Armenian air into our lungs, but a little helium inevitably slips into the nose of even our most dedicated patriots, and now his voice has risen in pitch; now he eats his kebab with barbecue sauce, and celebrates Christmas on the 25th.

In the presence of foreign cultures, then, Armenian is as much something you choose to be as much it is what you are. It means choosing to learn Armenian when you could be learning a more global language. It means upholding Armenian traditions in the face of inconvenience in most cases and prejudice in the worst cases. And, it means making the hardest decision brought by being Armenian: choosing to devote your time, your hopes and emotions on a nation beset with existential troubles and teetering on the precipice of annihilation.

After twenty-five years of choosing to strive to be Armenian, I have come to Armenia with Birthright Armenia to see if my choice had been worth it. Did I measure up to the mark? Was I Armenian and was it worth being Armenian? Or was I better off eating burgers instead, speaking only English, and thinking only of the United States and its future. I wanted to know which was better: to be or not to be Armenian.

It wasn’t the beautiful landscapes that convinced me: neither Lori’s lush forests, nor the sublime mountains in Vayots Dzor. The delicious food, juicy pork barbecue, creamy spas [սպաս] and cold compote, served on our volunteering excursions, was not the main reason. Not the iconic hospitality of complete strangers in every region, who were ready to invite you into their homes and share their warmth, nor the hundreds of stone monasteries and their faithful khachkars dotted all over the country, nor the ancient history, millennium-long, wrapped around every site convinced me that being Armenian is worth the effort.

No, it’s not the components of this rich and resilient culture alone which compels me to choose to be Armenian; rather, it’s the way in which the community, diasporan and native, expresses that culture, changing its aesthetic yet preserving its essence, like white light refracted through a triangular prism dispersing into the colors of the rainbow. The attitudes, customs, faces of Armenians from Lebanon, Syria, Iran Russia, America, France, Shirak, Lori, Syunik, Yerevan are like the red, green, yellow, blue, orange violet beams dispersed from the white light; each is a different hue, but each remains essentially light, and each can light the way in darkness, as happens, when, in a crowd of foreigners, I spot the familiar eyes of an Armenian.

Our culture does not lose its definition even as we incorporate the customs and ways of our birthplaces and residences within the Armenian framework; instead, it serves as a conduit for sharing them. Those lush forests of Lori remind me of my hikes in Northern California, but to the French Armenian beside me, they may remind him of Southern France. When we gather at the dinner table, I may add a few drops of A1 hot sauce to my beef kebab or follow the example of my Syrian Armenian friend, who dips his in garlic-sauce. And when the Birthright Armenia volunteers gather together to discuss change in Armenia, we can each offer the experiences of the nation’s that we come from; I can describe the American mindset concerning privacy, another may compare Russian attitudes on education, still another can offer insight on transportation in Europe. These minor differences in expression of the same culture create a form that is unique yet familiar.

And every time, when I talk to an Armenian from a community that I was not acquainted with, as happened recently when I met an Armenian from Argentina, it’s as if my eyes discover a new color on that rainbow of lights. Here was a person raised in Argentina, speaks their dialect of Spanish, knows their ways and customs, and yet we can converse in Armenian, talk of Armenian holidays, and Armenian traditions. Where we contrast as Argentine and American, elsewhere we rhyme as Armenian.

In the struggle to preserve our identity, our foreign influences can enrich our expression and understanding of Armenian culture. So, I choose to be Armenian, American-raised, to add my hue to the spectrum and to see those of my compatriots. I admit that variation in culture is not unique to us; every nation on Earth has differences among the customs of its people. Yet nowhere is the gradient so vivid, and so global, for such a small group of people. Even though there are only about 10 million of us, I love that Armenians come in any colour you like.

Hovhannes Zadikyan