Stepanavan Memories

The face of an old woman came to my eyes and I saw how excited she was to finally have somebody listen to her childhood story. My grandmother, Alisa Avakyan is sixty-five years old. She lived in a small town called Stepanavan, Armenia, which is near Yerevan city. My grandmother spent most of her life in Armenia, and she worked as a schoolteacher in Yerevan. She lived in Stepanavan for eighteen years, and another forty years in Yerevan, before moving to America. She mainly talked about the lifestyle in Stepanavan, and how her town was small yet very popular as a vacation spot. She also talked about how people in her town participated in many activities together like dance groups and plays. She hasn’t been to Stepanavan ever since she came to America, but she tells me everyday she longs for those days to come back so she could be young and in Armenia again.

I lived in Stepanavan, Armenia. Stepanavan was a very small town. Everybody knew each other and were all nice to each other. We were all close with each other and lived as one big family. There were many famous people living in my town who were born there. I got older so my memory isn’t that reliable, but a lot of singers and actors and even famous people who helped our country like Stepan Shahumyan and the famous writer Hovhaness Tumanyan, were born in my town. There was even the very famous actor Sos Sarkisyan. He doesn’t live in Stepanavan now, he lives in Yerevan, but he was born in Stepanavan.

In my town, it was a very important thing to have education. Stepanavan was small, but there were many people who graduated with high degrees and every year from the people who graduated from school, there were always many students who got accepted into universities. All the parents were very caring about making sure their children got the best education they can get. The students in Stepanavan walked to school. They walked, because there wasn’t a long way to walk. The school was pretty close to everybody, and the ones who lived by the ends of the town went with a bus, but most of the people walked to school. It wasn’t like there was only one school; there was another school at the end of the town. And I, myself, walked to school and graduated lower levels of school in Stepanavan, and graduated university in Yerevan.

Besides going to school, the young people practiced sports, and there were a lot of places to play sports. They played sports like volleyball, basketball, soccer, and gymnastics. There were many dance groups and theatres. Stepanavan was a very nature-filled town where the kids and the young people hung out, especially during summer, like a nice lake. There were always yearly competitions that many people participated in together. The schools and other people in the town went to competitions and there was always a winner from Stepanavan in some part of the bigger competitions.

There weren’t a lot of churches in Stepanavan, but there were many believers that went to church. Almost all of the people went to church, and they were Christians. Most of my town went to church on Saturdays and Sundays. There were some people that didn’t go, but they were still strong believers. It was their work that held them back and they couldn’t come sometimes. During the summer, many people from Georgia came to my town and vacationed and relaxed there, but there wasn’t anybody except Armenians living in Stepanavan.

There were different roles of men and women. Stepanavan was filled with farms and animals like pigs and cows, and the men worked at farms and the women helped with housework and with cooking the animals that the men killed. The women didn’t work with the animals. They mainly worked in the house and did their housework. Besides working, women were pretty entertained; it wasn’t a boring life for them. After their housework was done, the women went to theatres or sometimes concerts. There were a lot of concerts with the dance groups in our town.

In general, Armenian men have the mentality that women should do housework and stay at home. But people have grown to treat women equally as men. Nowadays, all the women do the same work as men mostly, and also have the same level of education, especially in Stepanavan, because it is in the middle of Hayastan and Georgia and it learns a lot from both Republics.

The people in my town received news by newspapers, news channels, and radios. There was a daily newspaper if you wanted it. Stepanavan had its own newspaper where I worked in my younger years, called Kayts, which had the latest news.

I lived in Stepanavan during its communist years. It was a typical communist site-we were under the control of the communists. The people in my town were following the rules that were put upon us. All in all, I don’t have any complaints about my experiences during that time, but after those times, the people started going against communism and that’s when some conflict took place. They wanted to be free, and until this day, they are still fighting for their freedom. In the beginning, my town wasn’t against communism, but later when the entire Armenia started going against the communists for going out of line, we backed up our country. Stepanavan is a small part of Armenia, but still it was a part of it, so how could we go against our heart?

During every period of time in our town’s history, there were poor people, rich people, and people in the middle class. There weren’t a lot of poor people at those times. Mostly there was a middle class and the richer side. That was always like that, it is still like that, and it will always be like that.

The earthquake in 1988 was a horrible site. It hit Stepanavan, and in an instant it changed the people’s lives drastically. There were many deaths of people in my town and also in other towns-it was horrifying. Until this day, after twenty years passed, the affect of that earthquake shows in the people’s eyes and they will never forget that. It was a very horrible thing that happened to the Armenian people. In an instant, people’s lives changed. It was horrible. It changed everybody’s lives towards the bad side. There were many deaths and many parts of Stepanavan and other historic parts in other towns got ruined, that can never be restored. People that still live in Stepanavan still have that scared and horrifying feeling when they walk by the parts where the earthquake hit the hardest, and it still haunts them. It is still like that, and it will always be like that. Many buildings were recovered and are rebuilt. But how can the people forget that moment? I still remember that day when many people I knew died right in front of my eyes. It was such a horrible thing that happened that we will remember that day for the rest of our lives. And the kids that didn’t experience that day and the ones who weren’t born to see that day are told the stories by their grandmas and grandpas, their parents, and their relatives, just like we told you about it. And that way, it won’t be forgotten. It is such an experience that it won’t and can’t be forgotten.

In Stepanavan, I mostly have memories of my school years. I also helped in my school after I graduated. I was very active in school activities. I did whatever I could’ve done to help with my school or help my teachers. I was valedictorian in my class and I was very happy to be helping with making my school better. After graduating from my school, I got accepted in to a university in Yerevan, so I lived there, got married there, and now I moved to America. There were some places me and other kids loved to hang out together and have fun. Besides preschools and kindergartens, there were also playrooms and special places that kept us busy and entertained.

I still have a feeling in my heart that I want to go back to my small town. That feeling doesn’t fade away and it will never fade away. As time passes by, that feeling doesn’t fade away, but it grows more and more. I miss everything about Stepanavan. Everything from the air, the water, the people, and the experiences I had there. Everything I saw and experienced there is irreplaceable and will stay with me for the rest of my life. I would always love to live in Stepanavan. But it was because of our living situations that we moved and came to America. We didn’t just leave our heart, our country just because it is America-no. No place in the world can compare to my town. But the living situations there changed. Life became harder and more difficult to live with. Life in general became harder. And not only for me, but other millions of people were forced to leave their country and their loved ones to go to not only America, but to other countries in the world, also. Life became harder, because there wasn’t a good leader for Armenia, there weren’t that many jobs for people to make money anymore, and many people were left without jobs and without money.

There were many small marches that went against the government at that time, and many people were killed because of that, also. There were just many things that affected our decision and many other people’s decisions to leave their country, even though they didn’t want to. It wasn’t something to be proud of, but people’s jobs were being taken away from them, so people had problems with keeping their families in good conditions.

Interviewed by Alisa Alakheryan