One week back, and some of the glow of the trip has inevitably worn off, but I am finding myself already making plans to return in the spring. I am missing the food, the temperate weather, the ease of being within walking distance of everything I need, and the pleasure of easy commutes to cities and interesting places out of town.
There is an EngageArmenia event tonight, where I will see Arina Zohrabian (Executive Director of AVC) and others from the Hovnanian Foundation present/promote ways diaspora Armenians can get more involved. It will be a nice bridge for me between Armenia and Toronto to see my Armenia friends in this city! I know they will do a great job inspiring young and old to participate.
In the meantime, I am asking myself a few questions. Yes, Armenia felt like home, especially because people are warm, friendly, and welcoming. Culturally, things are very familiar: food, music, dance, language, mannerisms and physical appearance of the inhabitants are all very much what I have grown up with in the diaspora (and even more so: I can eat foods that I don’t find in Toronto, access cultural events more easily, etc.) But …
I cannot help wondering if it would feel as much like home if the weather was uninviting, if the commute was unbearable, or if there was no hot water for a shower. What if I didn’t like the food? Or if it was dark 20 hours of the day? Or if it was forbiddingly expensive? In other words, how much does the quality of life affect my feeling of being “home”?
In the end, of course it matters! However, if I compare Armenia to other countries with a similar quality of life, those countries do not feel like home to me in the way that Armenia does. They simply feel like a very enjoyable place to be for a while. What sets Armenia apart for me is an intangible sense of belonging: these are “my” people.
I write the above somewhat bemused, because I have never considered myself a “tribal” sort of person. I have always resisted insular cultural groups and have wanted to assimilate and integrate. Some of that was about coming of age, becoming independent, and wanting to learn about the world. Part of that was about the naive idealism of one people/one world. (Of course, I still believe in the latter, but there is an appreciation for the complexities involved in the possibility of such a world.) Now, at this point in my life, I feel that I can have both: I can feel at home with “my” people in Armenia, and also feel at home with “my” people in Canada.
Perhaps this is the struggle of all diasporans as we learn to live in a country that is not our “native” land: we want to be part of a whole, but part of us is always missing. The Canadian anthem’s lyrics “our home and native land” are factually true for more than 2/3 of the country’s population (27 million citizens out of more than 40 million are born in Canada), but the challenges, tensions, and traumas of immigration are absorbed by family members for generations.
Even though I have spent my whole life living in Canada from the time I was one and a half years old, I have always felt like an immigrant: I completely absorbed and identified with my parents’ immigrant experience. At the same time, I had no lived experience in the country I was born in (Turkey); that was something I got second-hand from my parents’ nostalgic (and sometimes bitter) recollections and stories. My nationalist sentiments have always been limited to gratitude for living in a country (Canada) with values aligned with my own, and hope for an Armenia that can survive and prosper in the future. I have lived in a somewhat liminal world, without fully understanding the nature and scope of that liminality.
My trip to Armenia has become a way for me to understand the difference between being indigenous to a land and being an immigrant. The stress and challenge of having to create community as an immigrant, as opposed to having one’s community a given and inherent part of where one lives cannot be underestimated. This is an issue that all immigrants and all diasporans must face. We all resolve the problem of belonging in different ways, especially since communities are also subdivided into more communities.
I am finding that my trip has helped me find a way to weave the neglected aspects of my culture and ethnicity into a more integrated self. This, in turn, has helped me to understand others better as well: so many of us share unique but similar stories, from the many countries and lands that we have called home. And this, in turn, impacts on who and how I am in the world!
