Forever Lasting Memories

            With the scent of nature in her nostrils and the beautiful scene of nature at her sight, Margarit Gulumyan remembers her old childhood town. Walking towards the window of her small house, Margarit takes a glance out and sees something totally alien compared to her childhood town. At her sight lays a new town, tears fill her eyes at the memory of the past. Currently, she is enjoying her life in Glendale California, with her daughters family. At an age over 70 she remembers the first 18 years of her life in Kapan. Kapan is a small town located in the South-West region of Armenia as the capital of the Syunik Region. Margarit lived at Kapan from her birth till the age of 18 with her two brothers, three sisters and mother. She expresses her feelings towards her town in these words, Kapan for me isn’t just any town. It’s my town, it possesses such unforgettable memories that no words can describe and such a tremendous beauty that no other town can ever portray.

            I lived in Kapan for eighteen years of my life, it’s my hometown and I really love it. Whenever I remember of Kapan the first thing I remember is the beauty of the nature that my town holds. I really enjoyed living in Kapan due to its beauty of nature. The nature of the town was all over the place and had beautiful forests. There were all types of wild animals in the town and forests, such as: wolves, bears, rabbits and a lot more. If you went to the forests you could see all the beauty of the nature. I just can’t imagine how beautiful my childhood town really was.

With the school we went to a lot of field trips visiting forests and other beautiful places. Getting to school was really easy and fun. We all went to school with great excitement and love. We always walked because at my time there wasn’t any cars  and we were forced to walk. The school was two to three miles away and the trip took at least  twenty minutes. We were always pleased, happy and with our friends. We also had great teachers who taught very well in the school. We learned all the things we needed to learn and the teachers worked to get us, the students, to try harder and learn better. They were very strict and had a lot of demands, if anyone struggled they forced them to do better. At my time there was about twenty people in my class. At those times we didn’t use the modern ink pens you guys have now; we used to dip feathers in ink and write with the tip. For heating in the cold, we didn’t have any heaters or anything. We would simply burn wood and have firewood for our source of heat. Thanks to our nature we had a lot of trees and people would cut them and use the wood as fire wood. For school supplies we would buy our own books, no one would give us anything. Whoever was capable of purchasing the books they would buy it. For example, if I wasn’t capable of buying it, I would go to my friend. I would get the books and after studying return it to them. There was an opportunity to learn and the people had a good chance. The people who wanted to learn they did, just like today.

            Big part of the people of Kapan were almost like relatives. We always were in contact with everyone. We all liked everyone because we were a small town and because the people were little. We were all friends, just like one big family. The people all knew each other most of the time. If someone didn’t know another person they simply just said I am  the relative of this certain person and everything was all clear. If I knew that person’s relative than this new friend was a relative himself. If something happened with one person we would all know regardless of the occasion. We would all talk and share things among ourselves. We sat, talked, discussed things and asked for advice with dealing with stuff. We always tried to come to a solution as a one.

            Kapan had a lot of visitors. People would go and people would come whenever they wanted. We had a lot of visitors due to our fields and camping availability. Everyone loved our calm and cool nature. People would mostly come from bigger cities and less from small town and villages. Small towns and villages also had their own nature and relaxation places. We would get the most visitors from Yerevan and Bach, the cities which were really hot in the summer. We had great nature and air, that’s why we had a lot of people that love visiting us. We would welcome these visitors with a lot of love, it was like our relatives and families were coming. If we saw visitors on our way we would say “Hello” and talk a little. Azerbaijan and Turks would live with us, we were so close with them that you can’t imagine. People kicked out of Yerevan or from other cites would always flee to Kapan. They would come work and live there with us. If a person lived in Kapan, for example Russians or other people, they all learned and adjusted to be like Armenians. If we went to a wedding they would eat, drink, sing, and dance the same way as us. If we went to a funeral they would come and show the same respect. We always had some occasions to gather, sometimes once a month and other times once a week; however, it was impossible that it didn’t occur.

            Kapan is the capital of the Syunik Region in the bottom of Armenia. There were a lot of mountains surrounding us and we were in the middle, it felt like Kapan was dug in a hole. Kapan also had a lot of gold and mining. The affect of the mines were that people didn’t have a lot of places to work and everyone would mine. They took it with pride, it was a true honor to them. Kapan’s name exhaled from its mining and gold it produced. My father worked in the mines. It was a really hard job and they dug in the ground and went through tunnels underground. Just like in the movies they brought the gold up from the underground.

            We had  a pretty strong belief and religion as well. Everyone had their own beliefs. We had xach karer and sirpavayer  (a place with big crosses made up of craved stone, which people would go there to light candles and pray) people would go to these places instead of churches to pray. Recently churches are more common; however, at our time we didn’t have a lot of them.

            After my eighteen years in Kapan I got married and went to Yerevan. Even though I was in Yerevan, every year I would go to Kapan to visit due to the love of my town. I wasn’t capable to stay away from Kapan and really missed it. I wanted to go to see the beauty of my town and how the people were doing. Even though I have lived in other big and beautiful cities such as Yerevan; however, for my whole life until my death I will always remember the town I was born and my city of Kapan.