Through the glass the big man stands and yells at me, ‘You go to the other side and go!’
‘I need my passport!’
‘Other side.’
Now scared, I leave the building passport-less with my now crazed driver who hastily drives ahead to get yet another stamp on flimsy state paper at the next check. They reluctantly give him the stamped paper and we drive forward.
Very oddly I am in Syria.
Without a passport.
For a minute.
We turn around and go back, park, back inside, now on the other side of the mirror. They have no idea what I, or my driver, is talking about in either language. A Scandinavian man sits with all his packs on the floor. I get a bad vibe. He comes up and says he can’t get his passport back unless he has a driver to Irbid. Can I take him? Fine, but I need my passport back first.
After much haggling and Kafkaesque behavior, an officer finally approaches the window with my passport. I reach in to grab it and he pulls it back just slightly. This is very subtle, but it goes on for five minutes, back and forth, always keeping my passport just slightly out of reach, my hand through the glass hole. He questions me, says okay, and again I try to take the passport and he pulls it back just slightly. Finally I and the bad-vibe Scandinavian are outside with our passports and luggage headed back to Jordan, and my driver, now deeply upset, wants to know how much I will pay him.
‘Okay, look, I need to go to Amman now,’ I say. ‘You didn’t get me to Damascus, so I’ll give you the sixty dinars to get me to Amman now.’
The Scandinavian shrieks, ‘Why are you overpaying him?’
‘Look, man, I need to get back into Jordan, to Amman. I agreed to pay this guy; stay out of it.’
A wealthy-looking man approaches and becomes our translator, telling me that my mule says, ‘No way, way too little money.’ Now ignoring me, he then explains to my mule that the Scandinavian wants to go to Irbid.
‘How much?’
‘A few dinars,’ spews the scrawny Scandinavian.
‘No way.’
During all this I am also still haggling, only now to get to Amman. Finally the translator tells the Scandinavian it’s twenty dinars to get to Irbid, at which he starts howling with scary manic laughter, spouting off about my overpaying the driver. He wanders away screaming, ‘This is fucking crazy! Crazy! Crazy!’
We agree that I will go to Amman for a hundred dinars in total. I still haven’t paid this guy a dime and it’s been almost a full day and Amman is hours away. My translator explains that America stopped allowing Syrians with proper visas into the US and so this is their tit for tat. They officially say you can get in, get a visa, but you can’t. There seems to be a lot of tit for tat in this part of the world. Karmically, 150 bucks for a full day of a taxi, a driver and all this madness doesn’t feel so bad to me.
We head back into Jordan, through the first of the four checkpoints, where they now want to know where my Syrian stamp is. ‘I didn’t get one,’ I explain. ‘They wouldn’t give me one.’
At each check my mule bribes and sweet-talks the customs officials. At one point things get heated and they physically take the taxi apart.
Finally we are back in Jordan. A mere hundred yards from the last checkpoint, we pull over and he passes me off to his son and his very rickety taxi, telling me in sign language that he is tired and the taxi we’ve been in all day isn’t allowed into Amman. He wants the money. Uncomfortably I give in and give it to him and then his son asks over and over how to get to Amman. The old man, seemingly broken down by the day, relents and hands his son his keys and walks dejectedly to the smaller taxi. We are back together again. Through sign language he tells me he is sorry and that his friend at the Syrian border screwed him. He mock spits at him over and over. He seems sad, exhausted, very angry, embarrassed. I feel bad for him. He invites me to come to his home and eat and sleep and ‘We go to Amman tomorrow?’
‘I just can’t do it,’ I say.
He deflates and we begin the very long drive. After a few hours in the desert, we enter the sprawling city. Our drive through Amman to the airport takes about two hours. The nontourist version of the city is massive and rough, fires all over; a layer of smog and dirt make the sky dark. The place appears mean, forbidding, sad and endless. Most of the square concrete buildings seem to be missing many of their windows. Mix the worst part of industrial Queens and the area where they work on cars in Tijuana and that is what my two-hour drive through Amman offers. I don’t see one green part, no trees, almost no color anywhere. Men share tea sitting in the middle of the road on mats using a kettle that looks like Aladdin’s lamp.
Earlier the Scandinavian told me that he had been in Amman for two days and hated it and had to get out; he warned me to stay away. Finally, we are at the airport. I say goodbye to my mule, who seems relieved to have the whole ordeal over. We hug. I think in the end he was just an honest guy who was trying to make a buck but had a bad day due to his Syrian friend and sure didn’t make much money for ten hours of driving, stress, haggling and actual danger attempting to bribe officials so as to get an American across one of the most nefarious border crossings on earth.
After a few hours of sleep at the awful Golden Tulip, the airport’s only hotel, I’m back inside the airport. I haggle with a manager from Turkish Airlines to let me buy a ticket. The PA calls my flight to Istanbul. The Jordanian customs officer is very agitated. I don’t have a stamp from Syria. Again the hatred of Israel. Lots of officials appear, military, they detain and question me for about a half hour. At one point I’m surrounded by cops, and officials, and officers all struggling to understand why I don’t even have a piece of paper with a stamp from Syria. Finally after I basically beg them to let me just leave their country, they release me.
Sitting on the airplane flying to Istanbul, the woman sitting next to me tells me, ‘Oh, Syria is magical.’
And I say with full sincerity, ‘I was there once, but didn’t get to see much.’
‘Oh, you must go back!’
In this very moment sitting on the plane above Syria, I realize that I have my perspective back. That the bruises and cuts and mud covering my ego have disappeared and that the power and beauty of travel, even very challenging travel, have reconnected me to life.
Through Jordan and Syria and travel I have found my perspective. I can’t wait to go back.
Discovering Armenia, Recovering Myself
ANDREA MARTIN
Andrea Martin is a mother of two fabulous sons, as well as a stage, television and film actress. She earned two Emmy Awards for writing on Second City Television (SCTV), and has a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress in the Broadway musical, My Favorite Year. She is also the recipient of three additional Tony Award nominations. Her film credits include My Big Fat Greek Wedding, for which she received a People’s Choice Award for Best Ensemble. She has written and performed two one-woman shows, Nude Nude Totally Nude and Andrea Martin: Final Days! Everything Must Go!! She is currently writing a book for HarperCollins Canada.
For the longest time I wished I were Jewish. First of all, I looked the part. You know, big nose, dark eyes, pushy. Second of all, the Jews I hung out with – Mark Finks (my first boyfriend), Dr Alan Heifetz (my pediatrician) and Janet Shur (my superconfident best friend) – had a good time being Jewish. They owned who they were. They had so much self-esteem.
Unlike me. My parents – Sybil and John Martin – had gone to great lengths to assimilate and bury our ethnic identity, which was Armenian, distant cousin to Cher, Mike Connors, Charles Aznavour, and Clarabell the Clown. And you know who else? Arlene Francis from What’s My Line? ‘Is it larger than a breadbox? HAW HAW HAW.’ My grandfather’s name was Papazian, but when he came to the US in 1920, he saw the name ‘Martin’ on the side of a truck. So he took the name. He also took the truck.
As late as 1991, when I decided to write my first one-woman show, I didn’t know where to find Armenia on a map. I thought it was a distant la
nd that shipped frozen baklava to the corner deli. In fact, food was the only thing I associated with being Armenian. How was I going to write a one-woman show if I didn’t know my roots? Who was this one woman who was about to reveal everything about herself? Up until that point, in my career, I had been playing characters, hiding in glasses, hats, wigs. Could I be on stage as myself without all my props and feel that I was enough? There was only one way to find out. I booked a flight to Armenia.
‘Jesus Christ, Andrea! Why do you want to go there?’ my father asked, as he grew more impatient and agitated by our conversation.
‘Because I want to find out what it means to be Armenian, Daddy.’
‘You won’t find it out over there. The people are poor. The country is dirty. They have nothing.’ He was getting angry. ‘Besides, your family came from Turkey and they’re all dead.’
Obviously, I knew nothing about my past. I went to the library and checked out everything ever written by, for and about Armenians. My dad was right. Historic Armenia was once a huge and prospering land that stretched between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to eastern Turkey. But all that remained of Armenia today, after years of invasions by the Romans, Persians, Arabs, Mongolians and Turks, was this small communist-ruled republic. Armenia: population 3 million. A tiny republic occupying 29,000 kilometers on the southwest tip of the Soviet Union. Surrounded by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey.
But wait. It was the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity. That was impressive. I kept reading with growing awe and fascination. Armenia, where Noah landed his ark. Armenia, where the alphabet was invented. A proud race of survivors who had lived 3000 years. Survivor. I liked that word. It made me feel courageous. A brave crusader, right up there with Tigran the Great. Maybe I had been selected by some divine power to put Armenia back on the map. If Cher (Sarkisian!) wasn’t going to jump on the bandwagon, then maybe I should. Fonda had Vietnam, Sting had the rain forest, but Armenia was still up for grabs. I closed my eyes. I saw my face on a stamp.
I prepared for my trip. I contacted Armenians who then gave me more names of Armenians to contact. Where had they been hiding all this time? Every Armenian I met wanted to help. I had more names that ended in ‘ian’ in my address book than were listed in Fresno’s city directory. My bag was packed with ‘souvenirs’ I was told to bring. Bic lighters, bubblegum, decks of cards, costume jewelry, scarves, coffee, toilet paper, Handi Wipes, children’s clothes, toys and eight-by-ten glossy pictures of myself. The last item was important, they said. ‘You are a famous Armenian. People will be proud.’
By the time I boarded the plane, I looked like Margaret Mead about to document the aborigines. I was carrying a video recorder, a mini-cassette player, and a 35-millimeter camera. I was excited. I was hopeful. I knew that when my feet touched Armenian soil, I’d be home.
Here and now I would like to rewrite Thomas Wolfe: ‘You can’t go home a first time.’ When my feet did touch land, nineteen hours later, all horrifyingly spent on the Devil’s own airline, Aeroflot, I was just thankful to be alive. Flies buzzed inside the plane, pieces of ceiling dangled overhead, seat belts didn’t fasten, and a stewardess slept throughout the trip. Just before we took off, two pilots staggered up and down the aisle. I was sure they were looking for the cockpit. But not one of the 300 Armenian passengers I was traveling with complained. In fact, they seemed happy. Men stood in aisles, chain-smoking, laughing. Women sat in heavy coats, guarding their bags. People sang. They were returning home to their loved ones. And I was an American girl, recording the event. I had never been around so many Armenians before. We had similar features, same color skin. But we seemed worlds apart.
It took four hours to get through customs. Armed Russian soldiers stood behind glass partitions. On the trip from the airport to the hotel, I saw lambs being slaughtered at the side of the road, barefoot children sleeping in makeshift houses, and decaying buildings left unfinished in hundred-degree heat. And everywhere I looked there were rocks. I knew that Armenia was called ‘the land of stones,’ and that only ten per cent of the country was covered by forests, but it seemed so barren and bleak. And backwards. Peasant women in shapeless, worn clothes sat on the ground selling yogurt and melons. Men pushed underfed cattle down the middle of the road. Traffic was at a standstill. And nothing seemed funny to me. A one-woman show? Every comedic bone in my body was broken. I didn’t know what I had expected, but this certainly wasn’t it. All my life I had felt like an outsider. Too ethnic for Maine. Too ethnic for Hollywood. And now I was too Waspy for Armenia. The Annette Bening of the Caucasus.
When we arrived in Yerevan, I clung desperately to my fading ideals. The city, one of the oldest in the world, seemed to be big and thriving and I’d always thought of myself as a big city girl. I hoped I might feel more at home. I got to the hotel and called some of the names on the lists I’d been given.
Greta, a fifty-year-old sister of a friend of a friend I had met in LA, was the first to arrive. She came with gifts of peaches and bread, and her dictionary, thank God. My only way of communicating was through mime. I’d spent a year studying with Jacques Lecoq in Paris, but aside from walking in place, I wasn’t much good at making myself understood through visuals alone. Greta was unmarried, a physicist, and lived with her brother, his wife, their one-year-old child and her mother in a small walk-up flat in the city. She seemed so happy to see me. She hugged me and said, ‘My English is poor, but I like very much to try.’
She apologized for not having a car. But there was a shortage of fuel and automobiles were scarce, she said. She then took me by the hand and escorted me through the city, all the while speaking slowly, and searching for words in her little book. ‘You should see Armenia before the earthquake. Before the massacres in Baku and Karabakh. Here are many refugees. We are overcrowded. We live with blockades and corruption. Since perestroika, we don’t know what to believe. And now you see, problems everywhere. But Armenia is beautiful county. You will find new energy here.’ She showed me stone monuments of Armenian battles, bronze statues of Armenian heroes, and massive pink buildings made from tufa, the national stone. ‘It is a wonderful rock,’ she said proudly, ‘our country’s main source of wealth.’
I could see that the city had once been beautiful. But now in striking contrast to these magnificently crafted ‘symbols’ jutting into the sky were the shocking realities of Armenian everyday life. No food in the markets, just the occasional slab of fat in an unrefrigerated case. Empty cafés. No medicine. A few dreary, cheaply made clothes and shoes for sale. The opera, theater and museums were closed. ‘It is too hot in August,’ Greta said, ‘to watch anything inside.’ People stood idly on the streets, shaking their heads, many with blank stares. I recognized the faces. They looked no different from the faces of my ancestors, who had fled their homeland 100 years ago. Little had changed. There were few tangible reminders of a flourishing civilization that once had given birth to the most distinguished artists, musicians and intellectuals in the world. How could anyone live here, I thought. Life seemed so impossible.
For the next ten days I submerged myself in the country. Armenians gave me food when they didn’t have any, drove me in cars that they had to borrow. Everyone welcomed me. They showed me how proud they were to be Armenian and how important it was for me to feel that way too. I was shown ancient pagan temples, monasteries from the twelfth century, and churches hand-carved out of stone. There were 4000 churches still standing in Armenia today, I was told. I was overwhelmed by each Armenian’s knowledge of their history, and grateful and exhausted by their hospitality. ‘I want to be alone,’ I soon found out, was not part of the Armenian vocabulary.
We spent evenings talking and philosophizing about the Turks, communism, seventy years of an evil regime, and the future of the country. They wanted an independent Armenia, and were fighting for it. The newly elected President was on their side. It might take years. But they were prepared. They had no other choice.
I grew to
love these people and their undying spirit. And I began to find my humor again, and to understand theirs. ‘Do you know what makes an Armenian laugh?’ Samvel Shahinian asked me during a dinner he had prepared for me one night. He was an artist and theoretician, and his beautiful and gracious wife, Gulnara, was the director of Foreign Affairs in Yerevan.
‘What?’ I asked, hoping that the door to our mutual comedy psyches might finally be unlocked. He held his hand up, and moved his little finger back and forth. I laughed.
‘See?’ he said. ‘Anything.’
I asked him how Armenians could find humor in the terrible conditions in which they were forced to live and he replied, ‘Because, you see, things cannot get much worse.’ I began to see, in each and every Armenian, courage, the kind of courage I had never known, that despite the terrible hardships and living conditions, they still woke up with their dreams. I asked why they didn’t leave and come to America, where they could have a better life. And they answered simply, with a quiet dignity and resolve, ‘If we go, there will be no Armenia.’
I thought about how safe and connected I felt surrounded by people who shared my history, whose ancestors were mine. I saw my grandmother’s face. When I was growing up, Nanny lived with us in a room next to mine, a room she rarely left. She’d sit for hours, crocheting and staring out the window. I suppose she was remembering, but she never spoke of her past. My mother told me that Nanny had been brought to America when she was fifteen, in an arranged marriage, and had had five children with a man twenty years older, a man she never loved. She had lost her father and brothers in the Armenian Genocide, and had to leave her mother behind. She could never return to her homeland. I remember wanting to make Nanny happy, to hug her and make all her pain go away. But I couldn’t. I was a child and I didn’t understand. So I ran from her sadness. I couldn’t even look at the sadness in myself. Turned it into a career of comedy. Kept it as far away as I could. I cut off my roots before they even had a chance to grow.
Lights, Camera...Travel! Page 5
