Trafika Europe 4 - Armenian Rhapsody

my pockets, I don’t have a lot – two thousand drams, here, take it and buy medicine. She doesn’t take it. She tremblingly puts the five hundred drams in my palm. I hug my little rheumy lady. I hug her tight. It’s not the stench of urine, but the smell that emanates from all old people. I cry. She cries too. Because of the smell, I start to sniff as I cry. I’m a bad person, bad, my dear, I’m very bad, I’m so sorry. I feel like dying. I sit in Saryan Park for an hour or two. I don’t want to go to work. The vibration on my phone grabs my attention. It’s my director. I don’t answer. He stubbornly keeps calling. I switch my phone off. I have to get home, it’s time for my old lady’s walk. I am seated on a bench on the sidewalk between our two buildings. She had come out at this time yesterday, she had walked along this path. A group of elderly people walks by. Five or six people. They walk with difficulty. All of them. They barely raise their legs, almost not raising them at all, shuffling along as they walk. I guess the muscles start to grow weak if you don’t raise your legs enough when you walk, and then they stop working. Later, you can’t raise your legs any more. As soon as I reach my bench, they start to shout, push each other around and laugh loudly. One of them has a handful of half-ripe apricots and empties it in my lap. “You’re young, you have teeth. Eat up,” he says and quickly shuffles off to join his heavy-walking flock. “You just poured half your pension into his lap, old man, apricots

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