Writing: Sweet Shushik - A favorite Peace Corps memory

Going through my writing again from the Peace Corps, I ran across the following memory of Shushik, a sweet lady I got to know through a series of visits in Martuni, about an hour south of where I lived. My guess is that she has since passed. May God bless her. My visits with her were a highlight of my experience.

Shushik at home

79-year-old Shushik Avetisyan, by her decision, lives by herself. She has never married (says it was better that way) and has lived in her humble, one-room stone home in Martuni most of her adult life. A singer, dancer, storyteller and riddle-maker, she spent her adult life – most of which fell under Soviet rule – learning how to do odd jobs. Her favorite was a job in the state gas office.
Now she spends her days mostly alone in her home — with occasional visits from local relatives and old friends – sleeping sometimes more than 12 hours a night, and unable to leave. But to her, that’s just being old, and everybody must endure it.

I met Shushik through my friend Seth – he used to deliver food to her daily through Martuni’s Mission Armenia soup kitchen. Every time we would visit, her petite face, overrun by wrinkles, would light up, giving her a sweet, childlike look. She smiled often and, it seemed to me, looked on us as she would small children. She would repeat herself often and slowly. She was patient with our mistakes or lack of understanding.

One day at the start of May, soon after the last snowfall, we found Shushik sitting on a rock right outside the door to her house. She had a large round flat metal pan on which she was pulling rocks from a grain she would probably cook later for supper. She was sitting in the warm sunshine and blocked from a cool wind by the abandoned building at her back. Gardens ready for planting spread out before us. A big smile filled her face when she saw us.

We sat down on rocks beside her. After asking how we were, she asked if we were getting enough to eat. And then she asked if we needed money. “Pogh tam? Can I give you some money?” she asked. I must have looked at her incredulously, this woman who has but one room that resembles more a garage than a home, but I replied in my simple Armenian, “Che, che. Lav enk. No, we don’t need any money. We’re fine.”

The first thing I noted in my first visit almost a year before was her living space; I was appalled anyone would let her live alone there and expected a depressed, dying lady inside. Her home was easy to dismiss as an abandoned building or storage space – it sits off one of Martuni’s main roads down a short dirt path next to the larger, gutted building I later learned was her family’s first house. Shushik, her brother and parents moved from the now-abandoned building in 1951. (She also had two sisters, who were already married.)

Me and Shushik on one of my last visits.

A heavy wooden door, which Shushik’s petite body struggles to open, opens into an entry room of sorts, where she stores canned food, wood and a gas stove she doesn’t often use.

The main room is through another wooden door, not quite as heavy as the first. The room can be no more than 8 by 12 feet. It has a pockmarked concrete floor. A woodstove sits off the center of the room, and its pipes funnel smoke up and out of the house, though one has a small hole and leaks a narrow stream of smoke. Her smoke-blackened ceiling is wooden, resembling a pyramid. At its point is a dirt-fogged window, from which melting winter snow and spring rain sometimes drip.

Wood is stacked to the ceiling on one wall and under a table on which she prepares food. She has three beds on two of the other walls and shelves on the side with the door.

In a cubby hole in the wall above one of her beds sits an old red radio, her lifeline to the outside world. Every time we visit she is able to tell about the world, national and local news – a voice is constantly coming from the dark cubby. I imagine she lies awake much of the night with those voices, which keep her company.

This is where my writing stopped in my original notes. Obviously our experiences with her went beyond her living space. But it was always amazing to me that despite her conditions - barely enough to live on - she always saw the bright side of things and had a very practical approach to life. For example, she couldn't move to an apartment because how could she get up the stairs? Where she was was much better.

I did have a bunch of songs/poems that she would sing to us when we would visit. They were of course roughly translated by me, so may or may not be perfect. But she had such a sweet heart, and this shows by what she liked to sing. Here are a few short excerpts:

 People must do good
 So that always it will be remembered in the world
 However you can, do good
 So that your memories stay in the world

and ...

Love is good
Love everyone
Even a bad person
Will feel sorry for what he has done

 I guess you can't argue with that.