Ijevan and Ijevanians

Ashot Bleyan's Diary notes on August 4

Nicole’s birthplace, the place of his childhood and adolescence, Vova Pashinyan’s two-storeyed modest house has a splendid position. I counted; this house hosted 16-17 people during the night of August 2-3. Our teachers and Mariam-Ashot’s friends have spent here nights of country study trips with a group of up to 20 people….Grandmother Yerjanik’s name (happy in Armenian) always suits her. Both at Nicole’s place in Yerevan and here in Ijevan makes others happy without showing off, always acting in the background.

On Sunday morning, when I have handed in my diary note and enjoyed Yerjanik's coffee, I still have one hour at my disposal; Armenians wake up late everywhere; I am walking about the block called Internal Selmag in Nicole’s Father home neighborhood. This is old Ijevan with samples of modest houses having their history with narrow passages that I am so crazy about. It's a pity that very few houses have been renewed and each of them needs to be taken care of with a professional design. That is seen everywhere. The restoration work is done in an easy way which deprives the town of its history, style and appropriate urban development: instead of tiles they use tin of random color and shape, instead of famous Ijevanian wall brickwork they use concrete blocks with sand putty plaster, instead of noble wooden balconies and ledges they have done whatever they have been able to do. The only place that can make me happy is the paved part of the street leading to Saint Savior Church. Saint Savior Church is open; there is nobody in it, it isn't 8 a.m. yet....The New Testament is open. I like to read Grabar aloud to myself. The most famous tree in Ijevan is in this churchyard. According to the notice on it it has been living since 1890. This is a unique attitude to the tree. It is one of the signs of Ijevan.

Ijevan has got new signs which have been left by the Sebastatsies with the Creator's Mobile School programme in the autumn of 2013; the painter-designers of the Art High School of the Educomplex under the guidence of Lusine Manukyan, Arman Grigoryan and Heriknaz Galstyan lived and worked in Ijevan for one month. Here is the 27-meter-long wall in Independence Avenue designed by them which has turned to be the only archway passage in Ijevan....The mayor of Ijevan should consult Arman Grigoryan and take his professional advice for future similar design works.

We are strolling about the famous park in Ijevan where there is a demonstration of sculptures. The River Aghstev flows through it. The park has unique and exceptional opportunities to be maintained as an internationally well-known open-attractive public area. Here we are in front of the sculpture by Heriknaz Galstyan, sculptor teacher coordinator of the Art Festival Ijevan 2013 . I am getting excited: good health to You, my dear, I wish you to realize new projects... Heriknaz will get upset about it when she learns that this program of the Ministry of Economy of Armenia won't get a continuation in 2014. Moreover, the UNO development program was actively interested in it... I wish the mayor of Ijevan organized a gathering-discussion and called us. We would certainly come.... General De Goll used to say: “Restrictions make us choose the way of common sense”. In our case this way is not the suspension-cassation of the prospective project, but to renew the project with good taste involving new beneficiaries. Who is this project for if the leading personage is not an Ijevanian: old and young, wealthy and poor, well-known or unknown, present or absent.                           

There is a cosy cafe' at the end of the park, and Nicole and I are sitting at a round table. Nicole has lived in Yerevan for a very long time but it is important that he should use his name and fame and take more time to solve some problems of developing and renewing the urban environment of Ijevan. 

It’s a fact there is no such a park in Yerevan, and the park is empty at noon on on Sunday August 3. Where are the holiday makers in Ijevan, and why don’t we meet them? The organization of spending family holidays as a small enterprise develops very slowly. There expensive luxiorous holiday homes everywhere. Why can't the rural lodgings in Tavush,  Ijevan, Dilijan be modest and affordable organizers of holidays for the families from Yerevan? For me, for example, such way of organizing our family holiday is more preferable irrespective of my financial possibilities. I am thankful to the Pashinyans for organizing our family holiday so much impressively and dearly that when Davit woke up wanted to go to Ijevan again. He started to look for Ebby everywere in our flat. He went out into the yard and said he wanted to pick up red tomatoes: “Daddy, I want to go to Ijevan with you… Switch on… I want to speak to Ebby.”

For a short time I became an involuntary participant in a wedding party in Ijevan. For me it is a sight of the most vicious mass punishment... I am sorry, I don't know any other more degenerative, pointless, ugly and artificial thing: this noise of 500 people; can it be called music? Is it the ritual of Komitas’s nation? This just anti-culture. Is this our lifestyle culture?... Our wedding parties, our public cemeteries, our public gardens with such music and feasts… My Armenia has become a country of anti-cultural areas… with a zone of tense borderline.

How many kilometers is from Ijevan to Kurtan? I wish I had time to join our expedition camp, but I am supposed to be in the Mother School, on the sport grounds being built with the assistance of the Ministry of Defense.

“I don’t want to go to the nursery school”, Davit has been repeating since yesterday…., “I want to go out for a walk with father. I want to see the forest.”...