Siro by David Ignatius (short books to read txt) 📕

She walked across Marx Prospect, watched the guards at the Lenin Mausoleum in the dying afternoon sun. A Soviet couple—just married, the bride in a white wedding dress—had come to have their picture taken in front of the Mausoleum. What a pathetic way to start a marriage, thought Anna. They must be party members. She followed them out of the square, toward a subway stop. On a whim, she entered the subway station, paid her five kopecks, and rode to Komsomolskaya. She changed trains and took the circle line all the way to Culture Park, on the other side of town, and then rode the red line back toward Marx Prospect. She wasn’t looking for surveillance or trying to avoid it. She was simply trying to get a feel for a new city, the way any tourist might. Still, she had a pleasant sensation, sitting in some of the nearly empty cars, that she was not being followed. And that was enough to allow her to sleep, fitfully, the night of November 8.

Anna awoke early the next morning and took her assigned car to Vnukovo Airport, southwest of the city. She went to the Intourist desk there and confronted another stone-faced matron. No, there was no word yet when the delayed flight to Yerevan would be leaving. Yes, there was another flight for Yerevan leaving in fifty minutes, but there were no seats. It was a special flight. “Fully booked, fully booked,” the woman repeated. She suggested that Anna go to the café and have something to eat; she would come and collect her when the flight was ready. That at least sounded like a plan of action. But an hour passed, with several cups of tea and a gooey chocolate éclair but no sign of the woman. Anna returned to the small wooden door of the Intourist office.

“Not time, not time,” said the matronly clerk. Seeing Anna’s distress, she took pity on her and motioned for her to sit on the couch in the office. Two other Americans were already camped there—Dickran and Marj Kazanjian from Glendale. They were also waiting for the delayed flight to Yerevan.

“Call me Dick,” said Dickran Kazanjian. He lowered his voice. “They say this happens all the time with Aeroflot.”

“They say there’s nothing you can do except wait,” added Marj Kazanjian. She, at least, had brought along some knitting.

So they waited through the morning and early afternoon. It was eleven o’clock, then noon, then one. Dick and Marj suggested lunch, but Anna wasn’t hungry. A little after two, the Intourist lady announced that she had good news. Flight 837 would be leaving for Yerevan soon.

“What time?” asked Anna.

“Five o’clock.”

“But that’s when Flight 837 was supposed to leave yesterday,” said Anna. “Why didn’t you just tell us yesterday’s flight had been canceled?”

“Flight 837 has been delayed,” said the Intourist lady, and there was obviously no point in arguing.

Anna now began worrying in earnest about how to cope with the delay. The flight from Moscow was scheduled to take just over three hours; Yerevan was an additional hour behind Moscow, so they would arrive, at the earliest, a little after 9 p.m., Yerevan time. It would take at least an hour to get to the hotel and check in. So it would be ten o’clock before she could begin to look for Dr. Antoyan. By that time, his office would undoubtedly be closed. She had his parents’ home address, but that was all.

The flight finally left at five-twenty. It seemed to Anna to take forever. She was wedged in a middle seat, between a gentle Armenian lady in her mid-fifties and a garrulous old Armenian man who kept dispensing loud opinions to his seatmates—including Anna, who didn’t understand a word. She tried to pass the time by reading her Graham Greene novel about the leper colony, but she kept reading the same page over and over again. A Russian flight attendant came by, handing out pieces of chicken wrapped in cellophane. Anna passed up the chicken; the Armenians on either side devoured theirs and handed the greasy bones back to the stewardess.

Anna’s first sense that they were nearing Yerevan came when people began crowding over to her side of the plane. The Armenian woman had her nose up against the window, but she backed away so that Anna could see. To the left of the plane, visible in the moonlight, was a ridge of snowcapped mountains.

“Ararat?” asked Anna. The woman shook her head. Not yet. But several minutes later, Anna saw the woman peer out the window again, and then put her palms together and say a quiet prayer in Armenian. “Ararat,” she said, pointing out the window to a snowy moonlit peak, rising eerily out of a flat plain toward the heavens. Anna could see that there were tears in the corners of the woman’s eyes as she gazed on this symbol of Armenia and its tortured existence. So here I am, thought Anna. I have arrived in the nation of victims, where people grieve even on airplanes.

Anna shared a car in from the airport with the Kazanjians, who chattered away with the enthusiasm of diasporan Armenians coming home. They were all staying at the Armenia Hotel on Lenin Square in the center of town. Anna stared out the window while the Kazanjians talked about Cousin Simpad and Uncle Garabed. It was a high, dusty city; most of the buildings had been constructed of the same pinkish stone. The city had a recurring architectural motif as well—a high, rounded arch with the graceful curves of the Armenian alphabet, which looked as if it was all “U”s and “M”s.

It was ten o’clock when they reached the hotel; the Kazanjians invited Anna to join them for dinner in the hotel dining room, but she begged off. By the time she had taken her bag up to her room, a depressing little cubbyhole with mildew stains on the walls, it was