8.2 State Identity

Meanwhile, Samvel Salazar summoned Cherry to his brightly lit orange office room, brighter than daylight on hydroelectric power generated in the region. She came with a bag in which she carried Tyler’s film cartridges and photographs.

“You’ve been very close to him. Perhaps, you can tell me what he was up to?” enquired Salazar.

“He left these with me for safekeeping,” said the woman, “he brought them on the night a man from visa office visited. Photographs and film reels. I believe these are confidential stuff.”

“Let me see!”

Cherry extracted the prints, some three hundred odd cards, explaining what she understood. She showed him the photos of Jair Sivils and Jaco Ferre, images of the TAM file, photographs taken of the address book, except one awkward picture of Hajnal Gábris.

“Mister Friesen took with him some prints of the addresses in Georgia,” she told him.

“I cannot read these letters without a magnifying glass,” he struggled to take a better look wearing reading glasses, “they are too small.”

“And this is the girl he met at Nyolc Hotel,” she passed one of the decent photographs, “in Budapest.”

“Oh yes, he mentioned it.”

Suddenly, the phone rang and Salazar picked it. A call that came from 104 Nalbandyan or the KGB Headquarters in Yerevan. Colonel George Badmantis shattered the earpiece talking in an amicable voice, “Good evening! Mister Salazar, it has been two years since you performed at the Opera Theatre.”

“That’s right, Colonel,” replied Samvel Salazar, “I performed for a special delegation from Moscow. I guess no more delegations are arriving these days.”

“We do, we do,” boomed the colonel, “I’m having a report about your American friend gone missing on his way to Georgia.”

“No,” he returned clenching his fist, “I arranged him to visit Debetashen to the Debet riverside.”

“Aha! I stand corrected. Have you informed anyone in the United States or the embassy?”

“No, I’m just about to call the embassy.”

“Don’t you think we need more time?” asked the colonel, “At least until the morning. Now it’s ten-thirty in the evening. What was he doing in Armenia?”

“He told me he’s a writer.”

“Well, there’s more to it, Salazar. There is always more to it particularly if he is a writer. I think we need to talk. Come and see me tomorrow at my office.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday.”

“I will find time for you. Ten o’clock.”

“Ten o’clock then!” He replaced the handset and turned to Cherry, “Did you hear that?”

“Loud and clear,” she responded.

“I think it may be a mistake I took a look at those photographs. You keep them somewhere safe.”

“Are you going to call the embassy?”

“I can’t,” he said clenching his fists, “they must be listening to my telephone conversation. You can go to Zamanak and tell Katrina to call the embassy. I’ll give you the number. And now I must clean my desk.”

“What if it weren’t Russians?” asked Cherry.

“That is my fear,” said Salazar, “he might not be found. If it were the Russians, they would acknowledge it and put him on trial for espionage.”

Katrina was able to speak to a senior staff by the name of Bobby Strauss at 21 Novinsky Bul’var though it was late in the night and passed the details of his address in Connecticut and phone number as Tyler Friesen wrote on his registration card, passport number, visa, etc.

“Last seen this afternoon at the railway station and picked by the Blue Beret at gunpoint, I was told,” she conveyed on the phone.

“Who told you that?” asked Strauss.

“Grigor the driver who took him to the station.”

“Did he leave any belongings?”

“A suitcase and his clothes taken by the police,” she said, “I don’t know what is in them.”

“Very well! Keep me informed. You can reach me at this number at any time.”

Next morning, Salazar rushed his breakfast and climbed the passenger seat of Grigor’s Volga. He was very nervous, “Expect the unexpected.”

They cruised for an hour and arrived in Yerevan at nine-forty. As the car rolled on Abovyan Street, Grigor and Salazar witnessed a strange commotion taking place on the roads. People running towards Lenin Square in the city centre. They turned to Nalbandyan Street and failed to advance an inch. This place was swarming with armed KGB and militsiya police. Salazar got out and negotiated with a commanding officer, “I’m called to attend the KGB office and I am expected by the Chairman Colonel George Badmantis.”

“Nobody is going in there,” returned the officer.

“What is going on?”

“Underground groups of anti-state nationalism, a bunch of dissidents and secessionists organising mass rallies for an unauthorised demonstration on this day to mark the 50^th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide.”

“Well, I guess it is my lucky day,” he told Grigor, “Pull the car out of the street and we wait here.”

Despite the armed forces out on the streets, the demonstrators began to march through the main streets of downtown Yerevan shouting slogans like, ‘Return our lands’, ‘Our land, our lands’, ‘Freedom to Armenia’.

Protesters marched to lay a wreath at the tomb of Gomidas Vartabed, the great composer who became so disturbed of the slaughter during the Armenian Genocide and turned insane. He died in Paris in 1935 and his ashes buried in the Komitas Pantheon.

In the evening, a large group of people breached into the Opera Theatre and disrupted the events to bring it to an end. Armed forces were unable to stop this crowd estimated around a hundred thousand.

Grigor and Salazar left the city early morning on Sunday and the KGB never called afterwards.

The unparallel rally in Yerevan led to changes in political, social and cultural landscape of Soviet Armenia. The government had to take note of increasing concerns and rising voices of the people and the intellectual class. They had all been raised in families that kept the stories of the 1910s alive in their literature and memories. They held a deep belief in rebuilding the Armenian homeland. Moscow was quick to realise resorting to violence against a population and silencing dissent altogether could prove problematic. There were other demonstrations following the first-of-its-kind Yerevan rally on 24^th April 1965. As a result, a new model of coexistence between Moscow and Soviet Republics was shaped in the 60s.