Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
1.
“NO” WAS THE only word my grandmother, Lida Khatchatrian, knew in
English. She declined to learn any others. The only relation she wanted
to the English language was one of radical unintelligibility. After
immigrating at 70, my grandmother launched a 16-year performance of
linguistic refusal. It was staged for a private audience of émigré
intimates. No recordings were made.
We relocated from Yerevan to Glendale in 1991, like so many. By 2017,
approximately 40 percent of the city’s residents were of Armenian
descent, marking it as the largest diasporic population of Armenians in
the West. In Glendale, it was still possible to live in Armenian
dialects. On East Acacia Avenue, we gathered with neighbors to hear the
Soviet Socialist Republic collapsing at the end of a long-distance
telephone call we could not afford.
I am telling you this because I recognize that there are no views
outside of embodied viewers and historically contingent practices of
looking.
When I was 15, we moved to a street in the Glendale foothills from which you could see the mountains. It was called Valley View.
