There is something irritating about seeing a Zhiguli from 1999 on the modern streets of Yerevan. Probably because the air quality in this town is already in shambles. Or because the car is moving like a tired grandma desperately trying to compete with the youngins. Seeing such a car makes me feel like the streets of Yerevan are filled with old souls who can’t find peace after their timely, progress-induced death. And they haunt the city. And it irritates me.
It’s a relic that was once an artifact of youth. My dad’s eyes glisten in the yellow and dim light of our tiny kitchen as he reminisces about it.
“All I ever wanted was a ‘99 Zhiguli. I was a Yerord Mastsi1, after all.”
Photos from my family archive tell me that Dad’s eyes didn’t always glisten like that. There was a time when his face wasn’t covered in dermatitis after years of Moscow’s harsh tap water. There was a time when he wore funky and baggy tracksuits instead of grey turtlenecks and fitted jeans. Most importantly, there was a time when he, too, like all of his life companions, drove a white ‘99 Zhiguli instead of his khaki-toned 4×4 Raf Toyota.
Growing up, I heard many stories of my Dad’s childhood in Yerord Mas, one of Yerevan’s southern districts. I learned that my Grandpa once had to destroy my Dad’s bedroom door with an axe because he wouldn’t wake up for 20 hours. I learned that there used to be a huge fountain on Garegin Nzhdeh Square, and it was never intended to be just a big hole in the ground. I learned, unwillingly, might I add, that my Dad was a school bully, and all the teachers were afraid of him after one incident when he threw a chair at someone.
None of these stories came from my Dad’s mouth until I reached adulthood, but I had my sources. Dad’s friends, my aunts – his two elder sisters, even Raf, my elder brother, who somehow got much more intel on my Dad than I ever did. Thanks to them, little me came to the conclusion that my Dad had undergone a metamorphosis of some sort. Something like a New Year Wonder. Otherwise, how was the main character of his childhood someone not even remotely similar to the Dad I knew?
The Dad I knew and know now is the smartest, most respectful, and rarely angry man. The puzzle just did not make any sense.
Dad was known as Sirun2 Edo when he first took the Yerevan-Moscow flight in 1999. He was already dating my Mom at the time, and she was a film director’s daughter, always shining and unaware of the Yerevan outskirts. Unaware of anything outside her childhood district of Kentron3, if we’re being honest. My maternal Grandfather made sure of that. He was the president of the Armenian Cinematographic Union and a deputy of the National Assembly, so his princess, his youngest daughter, my Mom, grew up in appropriate class circles. This is also why my Mom and Dad only met later in their twenties, at the Abovian Pedagogical University, when my Dad asked my Mom, passing by a coffee vending, what time it was. Although Mom always talks about their love story like an instant click, Dad often reminisces about how hard the aftermath was, trying to impress her, her dad, her mom, and her elder brother… not so much on that brother’s part, though.
“Do you think I was always like this? No! All I knew was qucha4, not Kino Moskva5..” And sure enough, it was that part of him that lured him to the cultural center of post-Soviet, Moscow. His friend’s beloved Zhiguli was stolen, and all of Yerord Mas’ connections were raised to track the car and bring it back. This part of the story is always rushed and concealed away during family gatherings or tea parties, and I like to imagine what my Dad felt in the face of an opportunity to go to Moscow, where the car ended up. The Zhiguli mattered, of course. His friend’s dignity did, too. But I know my Dad, and I’m certain that he couldn’t care about a car when OM and Ptyuch6 were waiting to be discovered by the blessedly unaware Yerevantsi youths, such as himself. Anastasiia Fedorova once wrote for the DAZED magazine that “Ptyuch manifested the birth of Russian rave with a swirling blend of acid colors.” OM and Ptyuch were the first wave of cultural shock therapy Moscow experienced, manifesting in the centres of DJ stations where people would blast pop hits from all over the world. And there was no such thing as a rave in the Armenia of the 1990s, are you kidding? He wanted to go, see as much as he could, and tell my Mom, the biggest fan of American pop, as much as he could.
That trip only lives today as a memory because of two eerily similar photos. The one this essay is about, and the other version, where five Yerord Mastsis swapped outfits on a different day. They had only so many presentable outfits; the wild 1990s didn’t just bring the raves, they brought ruble devaluation, and poverty was absolute on everyone’s tongue. That tracksuit Dad is wearing in the photo, as if it were taken right out of an MC Hammer music video, lived a long life, and was passed down to Raf, my elder brother, who eventually discarded the legacy. It had a freer spirit to it than whatever tight black skinny jeans my brother liked in the 2010s, and he regrets ever throwing the tracksuit away. There’s an unspoken sentiment – with that tracksuit, we practically threw our Dad’s careless youth away.
Although maybe not as careless as we like to imagine. From that trip, Dad brought back the tracksuit, the Zhiguli for his friend, and business plans for him and Mom. And in a matter of two years, they moved countries, leaving their parents and siblings behind. They spent a good chunk of a year living in the Four Seasons Hotel at Okhotniy Ryad, less than a kilometre from Red Square. Although that hotel was named “Moskva” back then, it is forever ‘Seasons’ in their recount of those times.
“‘Moskva’ just sounds awfully too much like a relic of the Soviet. Where we lived, it was young Russia,” is what my Mom says each time we drive by that area. So many things were on the line, and how they risked it all – I can never imagine. But I imagine how impressed Dad was with the Muscovites of 1999. I imagine how much fun it was at first. Chasing raves, clubs, financial stability, and independence. Chasing freedom. It was after that first year when the reality of things started kicking in. My paternal grandparents passed away within a year, before seeing me or my brother be born, and my maternal Grandfather passed away a couple of years later. They were all taken down by cancer. Left with little to no support, away from any relatives, and in a small rented apartment on Vernadskogo Avenue, my parents regretted their decisions. And with heavier hearts, they still regret it. It is for their sake that I am writing this at my university on Baghramyan Avenue in Yerevan. I send them photos of Ararat daily. And during my short trips to Moscow, I look through the family archives, where I found the gem of a photo, that trip that this memoir is about. And my Dad has never driven a Zhiguli after that. From Mitsubishi to Toyota, he traded his adolescent dreams for a safer car for his family. Moscow gave him so much, yet took away too much. Oftentimes, he sits in the same tiny kitchen of our apartment and says: “Moscow never sleeps, it’s what they say.”
1 Yerord Mas (երորդ մաս) – a district of Yerevan, located at the southwestern part of the city. Commonly considered as a culturally backward district.
2 Sirun (սիրուն) – meaning ‘pretty’ (arm.)
3 Kentron (Կենտրոն) – the central district of Yerevan.
4 Qucha (քուչա) (colloquialism) – meaning ‘neighbourhood’ (arm.)
5 Kino Moscow/Cinema Moscow – a cinema in the center of Yerevan, opened in 1936.
6 OM and Ptyuch (ОМ и Птюч – rus.) – magazines serialized in Moscow during the 1990s. They were central to pop culture at the time.
