“It looks like you’ve done your research, as usual.”
“We’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve been checking out a few web sites about human trafficking, and the stories are amazing. There is an establishment called The Progeny Foundation that helps children who have become victims of human trafficking. I know someone there. I ran into him a long time ago in Europe, and we kept in touch. He is watching this region for the Foundation now. He’s the one who told me about the four destinations where they take the young women. He says boys are equally at risk.”
Gagik’s long whistle returns.
“Let’s go talk to the Galians,” says Laurian. “The mother is too sick and unwilling to talk. But if we could get Martha and Avo to a quiet place, we might learn a lot.”
“Yes, let’s go,” says Gagik. “We should at least be able to learn why Samvel Galian ended up in Sevajayr, and how Ayvazian convinced the mother to let Lara go.”
As they leave the restaurant, Agassi calls.
“A second woman has been seen,” he says. “They took her out.”
“You’re sure it was a different woman?”
“Yes, absolutely. This one has much shorter hair, and a narrower, thinner face. We have one picture showing her face, not a very good one but enough to show that it is a different woman.”
“What do you mean when you say they took her out?”
“They took her away an hour ago. Edik jan, they had to carry her from the house to the car.”
“Hayk has these pictures?”
“Yes, we just saw them on your camera. We didn’t see them bring this woman in, so she must have been there. And they were very careful when they took her out. One guard got out of the house first, checking to make sure no one was watching. Then he opened the back door of the car. The second guard got out of the house carrying the woman and threw her into the back seat. One of Hayk’s shots shows her face as he is tossing her into the car. The whole thing took a few seconds, Hayk says.”
“What was the woman wearing?” asks Laurian on an impulse. He is not sure if his question has any significance.
“Jeans and a heavy brown sweater,” says Agassi. “And, Edik, she had socks on but no shoes. That is clear form one of the pictures.”
“Okay. Well done, Agassi. I’ll check the pictures when I get back. Let me know which direction the car takes after Getap.”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot. We already got word just a minute ago. It is headed towards Yerevan.”
“Thanks. I’ll call later.” Laurian hangs up. They leave the restaurant and get into Laurian’s car, leaving Gagik’s in the parking lot.
“They’re shipping her out of the country,” mutters Laurian aloud when they are on the main road to Aparan.
“What did you say?” asks Gagik. “They’re shipping who, where?”
“Either by train to Georgia and then Turkey, or maybe on a flight to Moscow.” Laurian is still talking to himself, even though he is aware of Gagik’s question.
“Edik jan, what in the hell are you talking about?”
“It would be more difficult to fly a drugged woman; and she probably will not cooperate if awake. So chances are they’re taking the train to Tbilisi.”
“Edik! Wake up! Talk to me! What is this all about?”
“They just took a woman out of one of the houses in Sevajayr. She was carried to the car by one of the guards. She could not walk on her own; do you understand? Why do you think that was? She was obviously drugged, because they did not know how she’d behave, which leads me to believe that they’re transporting her against her will. Now, tell me, if you were transporting a woman against her will out of the country, what would be safer, by commercial flight or by train?”
“Edik, you’re way ahead of me here. But I’ll play along. Okay, fine, if I were to transport a person out of the country against his or her will, then the train would be safer than a commercial flight. So what? Where are you going with this?”
“I have no idea where this leads,” says Laurian desperately. “Maybe nowhere. I’m just trying to make logical deductions at this stage. They may or may not lead to anything.”
“Edik jan, don’t overanalyze everything. At the most basic level, they are moving a woman against her will out of the country, right? Didn’t you know this already? Why is this shocking news to you? Where is the great revelation here? Which part of this is news?”
“So you’re saying it is okay?”
“Edik, listen to me! You’re not listening, my friend. Who said anything about any of it being okay? I just ask, is this news?”
“When I confirm it, it is.”
“No, when you confirm it, you just confirm it. It is news before that. In fact, when you confirm it, it is no longer news. Do you see? Confirmation of news does not make news, it ends it. Confirmation of something you already know is just for your idle and vain gratification, my dear old friend.”
Laurian, the veteran investigative reporter and journalist, never imagined that he could be challenged to this extent by Khev Gago, on purely professional grounds. Gagik had a point, and an incredibly important one. Confirmation of what I already know is not new knowledge. Of course it would be different if I had doubts; then confirmation would be very important new knowledge. But do I have doubts? Is that what this is about? Do I want to have doubts, perhaps because deep inside I do not want to believe any of this? Is that what’s bothering you, Laurian? You don’t want to accept that in your beautiful, idealized, romanticized country such crimes can be committed? Wake up, Laurian. Listen to Khev Gago. Listen to Khev Gago…
He maneuvers around the potholes of downtown Aparan. Do not react, do not judge, understand reality, deal with it. Accept it as reality, even if you do not accept it in principle. You cannot deal with anything if you do not accept it as fact first. Things are the way they are. Just, fair, good, are not factual standards. They have nothing to do with what is. They are concepts that blur your sense of reality; they distract you and weaken your understanding of what you’re dealing with. Learn from Saro and Khev Gago, Laurian. Don’t let anything come between you and the reality you’re facing. Strip your mind of the ridiculous emotions; don’t feel sorrow, or anger, or joy. Just think of what you are facing. Then think of what you can do about it. That’s how these people are; and just because they do not display your moral indignation, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have moral standards. Has it occurred to you that they have learned long before you that moral indignation solves nothing?
Gagik is deep in thought too. The crazy revolutionary has lived through his share of disillusionment with what independence would bring. Is this a new battle cry calling him to war? A post-independence challenge that he had never imagined would haunt him? So all that you really achieve after winning one battle is the chance to fight the next one? Is that it, Khev Gago? Is there really such a thing as victory or defeat? We’re too stubborn to acknowledge defeat even when it hits us in the face. Defeat is not and has never been an option. Victory, on the other hand, is always an option, but always inconclusive. As soon as you win one battle, you realize that all you’ve really won is the right to fight another. Victory is inconclusive… illusive and unreal in many ways; all that victory has been for us so far is the absence of absolute defeat; but the absence of defeat and true victory are different things, aren’t they?
They can see the houses of Saralandj in the distance, nestled at the foot of a mountain, with the patchy forests clearly visible beyond the cluster of small stone homes. It looks like an enclave where things just end; there is nothing else that one expects to see, as the road enters the village but does not continue past it, as if decapitated by a sudden truncation caused either by geography or by some inexplicable fate.
“We may have to park the car a bit before we reach the house and walk the distance,” says Laurian. “Let’s see if the puddles have dried up.”
“Now you can understand why the Soviets did not allow any tourists here,” says G
agik. “Frankly, I don’t blame them. What business would tourists have up here during the Cold War?”
“And now? You don’t question the business that I have here?” asks Laurian with a chuckle. “Frankly, the authorities today might have a more justifiable reason to stop my visit than the Soviets did in their day.”
“First of all, Paron Edik, you’re not a tourist. I don’t think anyone in Armenia sees you as a tourist, even though most remain baffled by your foreign ways. Second, what you’re doing here isn’t necessarily opposing what you call the authorities. You need to be more nuanced when you talk about the authorities in this country, my friend. There are layers of them, and many shades, some visible and some not, some honest and some not, so don’t go lumping them all in one category like that.”
“Fine, but at the end of the day, they all support and feed off each other, right? Who protects the likes of Ayvazian? Who lets them get away with all the crimes they commit? Certainly not you and me! The Ayvazians of this world are protected by those highly nuanced ‘authorities,’ and I don’t care how many layers you may see there. At the end of the day, the system not only protects them, but also purges those who question and challenge them.”
“I know this will sound terrible, but it is much more complicated than that,” says Gagik. “What you’ve told me about what Ayvazian is doing is not only much bigger than him, but it is bigger than the ‘authorities’ in this country. This is huge, and gets into the regional human trafficking trade. I bet if you ask your friend at that foundation you were talking about earlier, he’ll corroborate what I’m telling you. I’ve started to doubt that our authority figures here have a lot of real power. They are pawns in a bigger game. They have their masters.”
“Gago, maybe they have their masters. But they know precisely what they’re doing. They also know the cost in terms of human suffering of their actions and the actions of those they protect. And still they do it. But listen, we’ll tackle this issue again some other time. Let’s focus on the Galians right now.”
There is a young boy walking toward the village on the road. As they approach, Laurian stops to offer him a ride. He is barely ten or eleven, and is carrying a bag that looks heavy.
“Barev,” says Laurian through the rolled down window of the Prado, “can we give you a lift?”
“Barev,” says the boy, staring Laurian in the face. “Paron Edik, duk ek? Mr. Edik, is that you?”
Laurian is surprised; he does not recognize the boy.
“We haven’t met,” says the boy, as if answering Laurian’s unspoken question. “I am Aram Galian. My brother has told me about you.”
“Aram! Barev, ari, get in,” says Laurian. “We’re headed toward your house anyway. Are you going home?”
“Yes,” says Aram. He gets in the back seat of the car.
“Out of school already?” asks Gagik. It seems too early for the kids to be out of school.
“Yes,” says Aram. “Today one of our teachers was sick so they let my class go early.”
“Aram jan, are you the youngest or the second youngest?” asks Laurian.
“I’m the youngest. I am almost eleven years old.”
Laurian knows that the youngest son is supposed to be the most promising at school.
“How is school?” asks Laurian.
“Very good, I have all fives. But sometimes it gets boring.”
“Boring?”
“Yes; the teachers repeat everything. Too easy.”
“How is your mother?” asks Gagik.
“The same. She stays in bed most of the time.”
Laurian slows down as they enter the village. An old sheep dog is sleeping against the wall of a house, forcing Laurian to bear so far left that he almost scrapes the car on the fence of the house across the street. The dog opens one lazy eye, gives them a bored look, and goes back to sleep. These mountain sheep dogs, called Gampr in Armenian, can be vicious and serve as a shepherd’s best protection against wolves. This one would have chased them barking all the way out of the village in its younger days.
“Whose dog was that?” asks Laurian to Aram, trying to make lighter conversation.
“He has been with the village for a long time; right now the Dalians take care of it. He cannot go to Yayla any longer. Can’t keep up with the animals, and can’t fight wolves anymore. His name is Zrah. Uncle Dalian says Zrah has killed over a dozen wolves.” Aram is doing his best to sound like an adult.
“Zrah is a great name for a dog like that,” says Laurian. The word means ‘armor’ in Armenian. “I can imagine the fights between these dogs and a pack of hungry wolves. Must be pretty fierce.”
“There are always more wolves than dogs,” says Aram, assuming the confident tone of an expert. “There would be at most three or four dogs at the Yayla, guarding the whole herd of the village. But wolves come in bigger packs. Five or six, sometimes even more. So the dogs need to be very good. Zrah could probably handle more than three wolves by himself.”
“Have you seen a wolf attack?”
“No,” says Aram. “I went to the yayla only once, when we took food to the shepherds with my mother. Avo was sleeping there that summer. He had a small tent in one side of the camp. We stayed one night with Avo and returned the next day. He had seen a wolf attack and he told us about it. But I never saw one.”
The road winds out of the cluster of homes that define the village, and they see the Galian house in the distance.
“How deep are these holes that always seem to be full of muddy water?” asks Laurian. “Can we take a chance driving over them?”
“Maybe it is safer to walk the last stretch,” says Gagik. “I don’t trust these next few potholes. What do you think, Aram?”
“Only the old tractor has passed over these potholes,” says Aram. “Its back wheels are much larger that your car’s and they don’t get buried too deep.”
“Why don’t they just fill these in?” asks Laurian.
“Oh, they do. They filled them with rocks and pebbles at the beginning of the summer. But it gets like this within a few months. The holes are right at the curve, and people say that is what causes the damage; my father used to say that there could be an underground water stream that keeps moving the rocks from the bottom. But no one knows. They just fill it in every few months.”
They walk up the several steps to the front door of the Galians, and Aram leads them in. There is no one in the house other than Silva Galian, who is asleep in her bed. Aram checks on his mother. She seems sound asleep.
“Where are your brothers and sisters now?” asks Laurian in a low voice.
“Avo is at the stables. The rest are at school. The stables are not far, so we can walk there if you want.”
“And your oldest sister, Martha?” asks Laurian.
“She’s probably home. She comes here later in the afternoon every day for several hours to take care of Mama.”
Laurian wants to talk both to Martha and to Avo. He decides it would be best to wait until Martha arrives to talk to her, so the best thing to do for now is go to the stables to see Avo.
The stables aren’t far. They walk out of the house and before reaching the village turn right on a narrow dirt trail, which is covered by overgrowth of vegetation. But it leads up to open fields and they see two long, single story buildings in the distance. The earth is moist and soft, though it has not rained for several days. Even though the Galians keep their sheep in the ‘basement’ of their home all winter, they also own these barns where they house the villagers’ cattle and horses for a nominal fee. The barns also serve as the main veterinary center of the village. It is an important communal responsibility that the Galians take very seriously, dating back to the days of the grandfather.
They find Avo stacking the bound bales of hay in one huge pile in a corner of one of the buildings. Next to the pile is an even larger pile of bound grass bales, harvested in July and August, to be used as feed all winter. The place looks well organized and clean
, with half of the long rectangular hall used for storing feed, and the second half for housing cattle. He is surprised to see them approach. He comes out and waits for them to reach the barn. They sit on a pile of haystacks at the entrance of the building, and Avo lights a cigarette. Laurian doesn’t remember seeing him smoke, but he realizes that they met in his mother’s room, and maybe Avo didn’t want to smoke near her.
“I hope we’re not interrupting your work,” says Gagik. “I’m Gagik Grigorian. I was a close friend of your father. We actually met a long time ago, when you were a baby. You might not remember.”
“Barev,” says Avo. “We’re just getting ready for winter.”
“It looks like a lot of hard work,” says Laurian, shaking his hand.
“Once I have all the hay and grass stored safely, we’ll be fine. We’re lucky this year, since we have more than enough to last all winter. It hasn’t always been like this.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Avo,” says Laurian. “Any news about your mother?”
“Nothing new. She sleeps most of the day.”
“That’s what I told them,” says Aram.
Avo smiles at him and ruffles his hair. “What are you doing out of school so early?”
“Tikin Fermanian was ill. They let us go.”
“Avo, since we’ve interrupted your work already and you’re taking a break, I want to ask you a few questions. I hope you don’t mind,” says Laurian. “Something has been troubling me about how your sister Lara found her job. Do you mind if we talk about that a bit?”
“What would you like to know?”
“How did the Ayvazians find her? How did your parents agree to let her go?”
“I have no idea how they found her,” says Avo, lighting up another cigarette. “The first time they came I was not at home.”
“They came more than once?” Gagik asks, curious about the circumstances as well.
A Place Far Away Page 21