Hello! 

Here we are, and we’re all here. Except that you’re there and I seem to be all the way over here.

I may be living it, but its still hard for me to believe it, so I have written this, just to retrace, and make sure we both know what is happening.

For those of you who have been patiently waiting, I apologize for the delay. As anyone could have told me, but I could never have truly understood, traveling the world includes a multitude of moving parts, many of which have been slowly aligning into my ability to communicate with all of you, simultaneously, in one place. 

I have left! And although I will return eventually, that thought feels as foreign as the languages that wake me from the street below my window most days. There has never been a time like this in my life, an integration into experiences as entirely new as these. As I write to you all I have begun a new chapter of something quite inexplicable, even to me as I live and write it. 

It started over a month ago, my process of leaving. I felt in the last moments I spent in my room in Bellingham, and in the last moments I spent on the couch I crashed on after that. I felt it in my parents living room and in my childhood bedroom and when I watched my mom and brother drive away from the airport. A mix of that excitement and fear that is the driving edge of life, the forefront of both self discovery and exploration of the big grand world.

I flew to Paris first. I had never been to Europe, and as someone who loves the mystery of the past I have always had such a great curiosity about a world older than the one I have known on the west coast of America. For this, Paris was a perfect first stopping point. American cities have never grabbed me, in fact I grew up telling my parents that I simply didn’t like cities, and although my intrigue in them grew I never truly lost that sentiment. 

Paris felt different. I had never been in such a cohesive city, where you can walk for miles in any direction and find yourself in the same city, the same energy, the same space. And yet every street brings with it something new, something astonishing. The sheer volume of the architecture was mind blowing and unrelenting. Around every corner there was yet another amazing cathedral, museum, or building of government that conveyed the weight of the hundreds of years of the city’s history.

Now all that being said, the blunder of being an English speaker was an altogether entirely unforgivable offense to the Parisians. I know everyone knows this but if I’d known the extent, boy would I have learned some French before I left. When I say I have never felt less welcome anywhere, I mean it! Truly! Waiters scoffed at my orders and rolled their eyes, and shop owners made efforts not to meet my gaze. Smiles were thrown in the trash at the sound of my lazy American tongue and yet through it all I was undisturbed in my excitement. 

It was in Paris that I met up with my fathers family; my aunt Susan, my cousin Elena, and my fathers cousin Alichan (my first cousin, once removed [I’m becoming a pseudo-genealogist through all of this]). Together we explored the ins and outs of the city, together we were everything but spat on with disdain, and after a few days, we made our way together, south by train to a small town outside of Marseille, called Aix en Provence. It was here that I had my first true experience of the culture I had been seeking.

I will go back, for a little historical context, but I will try to make it brief.

Before the first world war a political group called The Young Turks took control of the Ottoman Empire. I’ll spare you the details if you don’t know them, but what followed was the coining of the term genocide, and it was perpetrated against the Armenian people. My grandfather’s family (Armenian) fled their home town (now in southern Turkey) and began a life in Aleppo, Syria, moving again years later to Beirut, Lebanon. 

With large French influences in Beirut, and a high rate of commerce, the city was once referred to as the Paris of the middle east. It was here in Beirut that my grandfather and his family found grounding, at least for a while. My grandfather was the youngest boy in his family, and thus did not have the responsibility of staying behind with the family business that his older brother had. With this freedom, at the age of seventeen he began to make his way to America, but not without stopping first in Marseille, making my visit there the first full circle moment of the trip. 

After coming to America my Grandfather worked hard to bring a lot of his family over the ocean, with the exception of his oldest sibling, his brother Souren. This began the integration process into being American and living American lives. My own father was raised in this integration, one that kept bits of its culture and context, but was also ruled by a fear of the past and an urge to move on, into a new world and atmosphere. By the time I came around, most of the Armenian culture in my family’s life was carried by family recipes and was held in relation to food. I think this is where my curiosity peaked, in the remnants of a culture that felt like a whisper in the background of my very being. Something I had only missed by a margin, but still lives within me. 

So here I found myself, two generations later, in southern France, in the footsteps of a man I only met in the first two years of my life and have no true memory of. A man to whom I was probably more of an overwhelming ball of crying noise than a person. 

Having never really known my grandfather, I had come to create my own image of him in my head. This image was loose, and based mainly on the bits and pieces my father mentioned from time to time, but the painting was faint and lacked a saturation that kept me wondering, and so I chased it.

We were all in Aix en Provence for a family wedding. It was an Armenian wedding, steeped in Armenian orthodox christian traditions; swinging incense, chants, and the standing up and sitting back down that is known well by the Catholics. The wedding itself was held in a large church easily older than America, let alone any American churches. The pastor spoke only in Armenian and I found myself laughing along to jokes I didn’t understand even remotely. That’s a silly human instinct, but laughter is laughter, and it’s easy to join.

Afterwards, the reception was held in a chateau outside the town. There, in the french countryside we danced the night away to the sounds of Armenian music. There was a band with a Duduke, an Armenian instrument that is somewhat of a cross between a recorder and a clarinet. The groom broke out his Dhol, a traditional Armenian drum and blew the crowd away, and the band played and sang songs that everyone knew. I don’t know how to explain the feeling I had all night that night. It was like witnessing a cultural event, but for the first time in my life, I had a stake in it. It wasn’t just me joining into someone else’s cultural celebration, but my chance to learn about my own cultural background, and to explore what it meant to be a part of everything I was witnessing. I was simultaneously an outsider, and an insider, apart and integrating and it was more profound than anyone could have prepared me for. I spent the night dancing with the family I had never met, whom my father had told me about from his childhood. I learned from them the cultural dances that I had never learned or even seen in my bubble at home.

This was not only the first time I had ever been truly immersed in Armenian culture, but also the first time I had heard people I did not know reminisce on their memories of my grandfather. I came to learn of his playful side, and of the smirk that accompanied his mischievous inclinations. I also learned of the appreciation they had for him, how hard he worked for the family, not just his children, but his sisters and brother as well. These kinds of learnings only come through this kind of familial connection. It was like learning about myself, through learning about someone I had never truly known, and it was magic! Magic! 

After the wedding we parted ways with Alichan, and the the three of us continued together. The trains of southern Europe took us further south, and we crossed back into some level of familiarity. I could once again understand the announcements on the train through my broken Spanish, and I could smell the salt off the water as I stepped out of the train station in Barcelona. Barcelona? Out of nowhere, I know, and while the cultural and self learnings paused for a few days, I took the time to write, not this, but for myself. 

The Mediterranean, as it turns out, is everything you could hope and expect it to be. I got to sail out of the marina and watch regattas and relax on the beach and slackline in the park, and for a moment I was just exploring, without weight. The architecture out-did Paris in my humble opinion, and although the city did not have the same cohesively, it was almost more mesmerizing. I mean we think we know something about infrastructure, us Americans.. pshaaaahhh. From public transportation to churches to the simple apartment buildings, I’d never seen anything like it.

This almost weightless moment gave me real contemplation time, time to process what had happened, as well as prepare for the next step, flying into Armenia.

This first chapter was a huge one for me, it was steeped in cultural learnings, personal ones, and a beautiful mix of familial connections. I knew it would be important but I had no idea what I would learn, about myself and my family and our history together and apart. I have attached photos of the wedding, of the family, and of the architecture I have spoken of so fondly. I hope this gives you a good idea as to the importance and the learnings of this first exploration, the prologue to this journey I am on. And hopefully, maybe, it instilled an intrigue to continue to tag along with me, as I fly from Barcelona to Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, and the home of this culture I have begun to dive into.