I slept terrible in the tent because I’d neglected to bring any kind of bedding. I’d lain there, still sweaty from the hike on the lumpy nylon of the tent with the dirt and sand sticking to me, rolling back and forth in imitation of sleep throughout the night. It was impossible to tell how much I’d actually slept, if at all.
But the night passed, and when the sun came up, I was glad to knock the tent down and get moving again. Up on the Selim Pass, there are few cars, fewer trees, and I walked most of the morning with the sound of my shoes scuffing the road for company. About 9am, a mountain storm swept in and broke over me. In a few seconds, I was soaked through to my underwear. I stopped and rung everything out as well as I good and continued walking. The return of the sun brought a depressing humidity as well as chafing where my backpack pressed against my wet shirt, where my heels rubbed against my shoes, and where my thighs met each other.
By mid-afternoon, I came down into regional center of Martuni and recalled the first time I’d made this trek and seen this town. It had been late autumn. Someone had given me a lift over the pass because the weather had been bad and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. When we dropped down into the town, it was windy from the lake, cold, and bad-dental-work-gray. The main road had been crisscrossed with dead dogs: two on the right, one on the left, another on the right, three on the left. All recently shot, their fur still soft, standing, ruffling in the wind, in particular a German Shepard—a rare breed to see here—not dirty, the gathering hail in the brown and black fur the only indication he wasn’t asleep.
Jay had still been here then. We’d been in the same training village. When I’d mentioned the dogs, he’d said only, “yeah, they do that sometimes here.” I wondered who would eventually come to pick them up and I was cheered to walk back over the snowy pass the next day toward home.
That had been something like 18 months ago. When I came back to Martuni, still carrying the mountain rain in the folds and seams of my clothing. I was much more comfortable; I knew to talk to the curious group of boys so they wouldn’t harass me. I kept in mind now that some of the people I’d meet selling fruit or greens in the market were refugees who might not be interested in me because they were still thinking of a home they couldn’t go back to, because all this around them still felt temporary and, therefore, uninteresting, my banter included.
The first building in the market area was large and empty. I surprised myself by tagging the dust in the window—something I hadn’t done in the years since I’d left the US. It wouldn’t mean anything to anyone, but it was fun to do, satisfying to discover something of that era was still there because a lot of it was gone, too. Maybe for the better.
Even without a sleeping bag, my damp backpack was still quite unwieldy, especially in a place where men are never seen carrying things. The overstuffed market bags are entirely kept up with women’s hands. Maybe in transport, a man will step up and carelessly help a woman by stuffing such a bag into an overhead compartment, but even then, their disgust at handling this feminine object is obvious and here I am with a giant bag on my back and a bandana around my forehead.
I bought some bread and sunflower halva in the market and made a meal of it before starting on my way toward K’var. I would have to stop somewhere and camp before I made it there. I’d spent too much time up the mountain, and even the long summer day was nearing late afternoon. I’d never walked the road between Martuni and K’var before, so I didn’t know if there’d be anywhere to camp; I was hoping for something down by the lake, maybe even in sight of the lake where I could hear the sound of the wind on the water even if I couldn’t sleep again.
I’d only just left the outer villages surrounding Martuni when I passed a group of men killing time in front of a gas station.
There were probably seven or eight of them, alternately squatting, standing, smoking, and spitting sunflower seeds. I was on the other side of the street, but they waved me over vigorously.
“Ari stegh. Ari, axpers; Ur es e tun?” They commanded and questioned at once in an annoying imperious tone like all the world was theirs to shout and wave their hands about at.
I tried to ignore them, but their shouts came louder, almost reaching a shouting point. I could pretend not to understand, but I turned, unable to resist the temptation to disabuse them of their orderly way of seeing the world.
“Yes, I’m walking. I’ve been walking since yesterday morning. I enjoy walking. This is a beautiful land. That’s why I walk it. No I’m not married. I don’t want to shave. I’m going to the next town. I know it’s far; I told you, I’ve been walking for two days now. I’ve come from Yeghegnadzor. Yes, I’m from the US. No Swine Flu hasn’t wiped out the country-or at least I’ve heard nothing of the sort. Etc. etc.”
I yelled most of this prepared speech from a distance, hoping they would dismiss me with a wave as so many others had done. Usually when the men learned where you were going and got to ask why you weren’t married, they were satisfied to leave you alone, but either this group was really bored or they were actually interested in my answers; they kept asking me questions, I had to cross the street and talk with them face-to-face.
I was annoyed, but found I was glad to drop my pack and light a cigarette. In every group, there’s always the antagonizing one, the one who asks about women with a leer and then, once on the subject, won’t let up, but just as the conversation seemed about to go that way, it swooped back to more tasteful subjects. I began to feel lulled by the pace of the questions, the smoke, the men’s interest. Having to pick the pack back up and continue down the road into the gloom was losing its appeal the longer I sat there talking. Still, when the men told me they all worked at the station and slept in a workers’ quarters there and invited me to stay there with them, I hesitated. I was not yet their guest, but once I accepted the offer to stay, they would be responsible for me in a way that could feel very overwhelming and obliterate my agency, my plans. But I was exhausted. The moment’s reprieve had evaporated any interest I had in going on further and I was done being alone.
How can I describe the feeling of intolerance for solitude? I’d spent the better part of two years wandering the hills, following two-tracks, lying on monastery floors, sliding down dusty scree by myself and, I’d experienced this feeling several times, when you make for human company and conversation like it was water. It was like a waking up to a need for people that, growing up in a much denser society, I’d never experienced before. The greatest thing about it was that it enabled you to spend the night talking to one person and feel as though the conversation were replenishing something vital—that people themselves were necessary for your own wellbeing.
I had a lot of great talks this way. Perhaps this is how people were, or more specifically I was, meant to live. Long distances, long times in solitude punctuated with bursts of conviviality.
The men showed me to their bunk. The alcohol came out, but after the first shot, no more was pressed upon me. I tried to continue talking but I was overcome with languor and my eyelids slacked in a way that even my excitable hosts couldn’t ignore and they showed me my bunk. There was no blanket, but it was still an improvement on the dirty, sweaty tent floor. I dropped off almost right away, still surrounded by the talk and the smoke of the men.
It wasn’t a dream, more of a reaction, a response. Hands were reaching from the darkness for my throat. I batted the apparition away and woke up in solid darkness with no idea where I could be. A blanket had been draped over me, but even as I realized my nightmare for what it was and began feel the weight leech from my body that signaled the return to sleep, one of the men came up from the darkness, holding another blanket; he draped it over me with unconscious kindness. “Jon jan”, he said quietly as if wishing me a pleasant sleep, or simply admiring me as another human being, lime himself, deserving kindness.
I slept late into the morning. The men finally woke me up to tell me they’d found me a ride to K’var. I put my stuff together in a daze, got in someone’s car and rode away thinking only to wave to my kind hosts after we’d gone around a bend in the road and they were out of sight. In my bag, they’d snuck a few apples which I ate on my way down the road, thinking of what they’d shown me that a lifetime spent accumulating possessions and prestige would never reveal.
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