In 1997 I visited Ukraine as the stipulated stretch of my keeping Ulysses, the work by James Joyce farmed out to me by my Teacher, was over.

A year later in the seasonal summertime session of writing articles for the local newspaper Azat Artsakh, the travel turned into a serial of seven chapters named The Way of Return. Some shitty name, undeniably, but then the job of a writing beast of burden was paid for with beggarly kopecks.

My grabbing any job at all was motivated by the chronic absence of the needful. In fact, we were paupers with a house of their own, not dying of famine but having no money for an in-city bus. A healthy life-style, if you think deep enough, on the whole…

As a teacher at the State University, I got 15 000 AMD a month (except for the 3-month unpaid summertime). The zeroes looked cool yet remained just zeroes as long as the plum-looking sum equaled 15 rubles in the Soviet Union. Hence my return to the position of a translator in The Soviet Karabakh paper renamed already into Free Artsakh, and loss of the sight over its smudgy signal prints.

Cooperation with the independent monthly Demo, published on grants from the Great Britain, lasted much shorter (I was fired for being insufficiently democratic).

Producing Internet sites from scratch (there were no handy templates and platforms yet). The ordered site remained my one and only side product in that line, as a matter of fact. The hotel owner understood the profitability of his enterprise’s presence in the Net when ordering the site and pretty soon he had to construct a couple of additional two story buildings for his business. The rest of the public was either as needy as me or seeing the Internet as a means of private entertainment.

Tutoring at the branch of the Modern University for Humanities headquartered in Moscow (later on MUfH was renamed into the Modern Academy), specialized on selling their diplomas printed in line with the internationally accepted forms. It was kinda education by correspondence, the students studied from their hometowns for passing the tests online. The job they gave me at the branch yielded additional 15 rubles for each non-summer month.

It's only that school graduates stubbornly bypassed me and looked for private lessons of English elsewhere.

And I fully got it – what’s the use of being prepared by me if they had no chance of seeing my face among the exterminators when enrolling the ArSU?

But I still cannot get it – why paying to a private tutor when anyone is welcome to the all-out fleecing? If only for vanity’s sake? To flash up before their herd-mates the phrase ‘London is the capital of Great Britain’?

Naively open coverage of the events in the internal political life of the RMK at the pivotal period of the millennia switch put an end to a couple of months of my remote collaboration with a Russian-language newspaper in Yerevan.

Why?

Because of the base shiny metal…

At times you start, like, thinking: Where do them those lucky ones come from? At all, huh?

The question's asked not to emphasize or show off my personal qualities over again, but from the pure curiosity.

Seems like in their previous life they, those fortune's favorites, behaved with proper circumspection and managed to avoid denting their karma. Right?

Let's consider me, for instance…

Although, on the second thought, let’s not. I'd better be set aside, mine is a special case. The prodigy is a prodigy and accepting the one in million for a standard would be an incorrect approach in a discourse on fundamental matters, wouldn't it?

So, to put it accurately: Where all them ordinary lucky ones come from, eh?.

A rather interesting question. Worth of applying my scientifically shrewd mind to. When at leisure…

The presence of gold in the Karabakh toombs (‘toomb’ is a mountain of not standardized length and/or height, which does not turn yet into a monstrosity propping glaciers and eternal snow deposits upon its top) was brought to my attention soon after I arrived for settling quietly in the village of Seidishen.

The tip leaked Gypsies or rather it was proposed by Rafic Shakarian, the Biology teacher at the village school. He pointed at the two pedestrians in the road bend on the nearby slope who schlepped an obviously bulky load, but still of not too big weight to tell on their hang loose gaits.

A man and a woman under a burden of something indiscernible at such a distance.

"See those Gypsies?" asked Rafic. "Peddling their goods to villages."

"What goods?" not over enthusiastically offered I my cue for the conversation.

"Sieves," was his answer, "they manufacture and use these utensils for trade."

Contrary to the expectations, the peddlers ignored the possible market in our village, and continued their trek along the road snaking up in between the toombs.

Such disregard of trading basics instilled a certain suspicion: They didn’t sell the goods here, consequently, they needed the cargo themselves, but what for?

In the series of deductive associations that followed, a picture of a gold digger pops up: The sieve in his hands goes jerkily on—shikh-shakh-shikh!

And then the sudden radiance of revelation: Gypsies and gold are inseparable!

Anyone who has ever communicated with Gypsies will get it at once – they don’t mind holes in their pants, the full of gold smile is what matters! Even more so about Gypsy women.

But where to get it for the whole tribe?

Ha! Be there an inconspicuous adit among the picturesque toombs plus a sufficient stock of sieves and the problem finds its solution!

Further developments verified my deductive conclusion, although not immediately…

. . . . .

As a result of the war for Karabakh independence, its king and god became the Commander-in-Chief handled Izho, but it’s safer to name him just “Komandushchi”. Because he had the coolest Jeep of the period, jet-black and glossy, never riding without a couple of white "Nivas" in his VIP motorcade – one to precede, the other to cover the behind of the luxury SUV.

Besides the guidance and governance of the Army of Self-Defense, he also tried a hand in the spheres of business and trade – any question in that walk of life was to be resolved thru visits to his Headquarters for an appointment.

True, the attempt at taking the entire economy into his own hands failed. The heads of factories and services got convoked, twice, before he realized the scarcity of his language means. It somehow did not come out to explain them what’s needed to be done so as to steer that damn economy. They just couldn’t understand what he was about and when they tweeted something back it didn’t work either, but already in the opposite direction. Too many oddly unfamiliar words.

So, he gave up those experiments and returned to his normal General’s life: family, house, the two official concubines plus applicants coming to the appointment ready for anything, basically.

“I’ve been sucked by such of who you wouldn’t even expect,” shared he some twenty years later. (The mentality of young ignoramuses has no expiration limits.)

And if you dare tell him, "It’s you who’s been sucking," he’d feel offended yet he did suck off several tens of thousands of the able-bodied population.

Try to explain:

“In your wake, the humjob nits from 30-odd ministries were queuing to suck too”, he wouldn’t get it…

Told by Sevak (younger brother of Sam, the Internet provider)

“I was just standing there, at the crossroads by the Chess Club, when Izho comes uphill with his bodyguards. The “Nivas” keep honking like at a wedding for all and everyone to give way.

And there's in my hand a beer can, still not finished yet, but the hand somehow completely of its own hurled that can into his Jeep.

Those from the “Nivas” jumped out, my arms in a clench behind my back, took to the Headquarters. Beat the shit out of me.

He enters, "I know you. You not a bad phedai was. What the fuck?"

As if I knew. All by itself somehow. A kinda eclipse. Well, they kept me in the Shushi prison for a month then let go...

- - - - -

Sevak did not turn on the afterburner, he stayed in Stepanakert, it's his city too.

And I didn’t even try to rhapsodize about the collective subconscious and shit, which was not his profile, he’s more into php stuff…

The other lucky one was older than Izho and his star started to smile on him earlier, so he chanced to become the secretary of the CPSU organization at the largest enterprise in the city.

And when the SCES putsch in Moscow cracked, he made a speech at the next rally for Karabakh independence in Stepanakert and burned his party card there, in public.

The well-chosen gesture and reliable connections (in the USSR, secretaries of the Party organizations were parts to the KGB structure, and not only at the rat level, they participated in the organs' meetings on the occasion of new directives arrived from the Center) go a long way.

Well, and now, who (can you guess?) is the ready-made president for the not recognized but independent RMK?

Yes. Unanimously.

And then all went along the lines in the proverb from the Dictionary of Karabakh Dialect of Armenian: “You can’t boil two (sheep) heads in one pot”.

A kinda rivalry burst forth between the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Especially after their joint visit to Moscow.

The Russian television showed then the Commander-in-Chief: a handsome, young, mustachioed Caucasian man in a General’s headgear, however, mum like a newlywed daughter-in-law meeting her mother-in-law in the morning after the first night, because he does not know the language.

But then, of course, the younger fraction in the Moscow Armenian Diaspora helped him to regain his hanging loose, took to the capital’s specialty spots with lots of minnies without bikinis and stuff, for three days at a stretch.

Meanwhile the former Communist restores his connections, exercises his command of Russian, finds chaperons to the necessary offices...

The two lucky ones came back together but the younger one started to bruise the elder fave’s phiz—because of unclear suspicions and personal disillusionment. Once, and again. And...

Which threatens to develop an addiction and become as routine as visiting a sauna on Thursdays…

However, another break of luck and—voilà!—the older lucky one got transferred into Armenia to the position of the Prime Minister of that unquestionably recognized Republic…

Now, it’s not thinkable for any newly independent (albeit unrecognized) state to go on without the President, right?

The choice fell on Arcadic. Yes, yes! That same Arcadic from The Soviet Karabakh newspaper, because before the war he and the secretary of the Party organization were playing basketball together in the same gym, in the company of one future oligarch.

What else are men supposed to do in such a backwater, eh?

But all that remained in the past, and now a sharp break, a pass under the shield, the clear shoot and – the Prime Minister becomes the President of Armenia!

By the Armenian Constitution, that position requires living in the country for at least 10 years, in advance. However, as sagely remarks the Dahl's Dictionary: "Law is a drawbar, wherever you pull, it goes there."

(The mighty language of a great people, but it’s nowhere seen nowadays, enslaved and spread to rot full ahead…

I’m disclosing it as a Khokhol, to me, as an outsider, it’s crystal clear, especially from the heights of Transcaucasia…)

When the following Prime Minister of Armenia and a number of the National Assembly deputies (not all, selectively) were shot and killed by a group of terrorists (Prime Minister Vazgen asked for it himself by shouting from the rooftops that without a modern, well-equipped and trained army Armenia cannot survive... And for how long can you try the tolerance of Big Brother?) right on the stage of the assembly hall of the National Assembly of Armenia—but who could have ever guessed those were the terrorists marching along the corridor when the whole group were clad in raincoats to hide their Kalashnikovs?)—then it was the lucky President who personally persuaded the executioners to lay down their arms.

Yes, just one talk on the phone and they surrendered. The mission accomplished.

Mobile communication is a great power if you know how to use it correctly.

And if Moscow removes discomforting pieces off the board, why not to insert, along the way, into the list of the marked for pending execution the name of a nasty guy for squaring the personal, back from Stepanakert, scores with Leonard Petrosian, who was later elected to the National Assembly of Armenia? He fell the victim to an assault-rifle round, although standing quite far from the main target, the Prime Minister Vazguen Sarkissian…

(No intention to show me off as a gray cardinal having access to the most secret dossiers in the steely safes of the Center, I’m just selling for what it was bought in the city, where everybody knows everything about everyone else plus what is there three meters deeper, specifically, under you.

We are such gossips in the outback, you know.)

Now, it only remained to clean up the rear in Karabakh, where the Commander-in-Chief opposed the President and vice versa, out of habit.

The confrontation boiled to the point when in the dead of the wet March night, the Presidential black Mercedes was shot at and stopped, the driver’s carotid artery wounded, the vehicle’s door slammed open and there sounded the ruthless round from a Kalashnikov muzzle at the President’s legs…

The next morning, the organs of the KG... damnation! it's got ingrained... the National Security Agency, I mean, are arresting the Commander-in-Chief and his brother (the Mayor of the city of Stepanakert).

Izho’s closest bodyguard (the same one by whose hands fell the invincible field commander handled Fragment fighting in the forest, when he looked around and said, “Hey! But where is this one shooting from?”

A bullet entered his conveniently set up forehead removing any questions, and the killer dropped his assault-rifle and shouted, “Vai! How come? Kill me bros!"

His life was spared, and a month later he became the senior bodyguard of Izho) testified now that it was he who shot and wounded the President on the order by the Commander-in-Chief.

The hirer is sentenced to 7 years in prison. Ain't we a civilized country despite the nonrecognition?

It’s only that the editor of the Russian-language newspaper in Yerevan whose Karabakh correspondent I was at that time, didn’t take into account Arcadic's proficiency in Russian and printed my “material” about all this crap, for which mistake the President of the RMK, still on his crutches, got to the daredevil (via ground communication wires from pole to pole) and made him wet his pants by scaring the daylight out of the editor with such mother-of-Kuzka, that the poor guy got through to Modern University for Humanities branch in Stepanakert (by the ground wires) to warn me that we were not any acquaintance both before and any more.

In his haste, he missed to warn that I would not be paid for the article, yet I forgive him, even though he is not a cardinal and miles from being my namesake…

Base Metals company of indistinct affiliation pops up in Karabakh, creates a large plant for processing a big toomb near the village of Drmbon, crushing it for years on end and turning into a deep pit in order to extract (by the official version) copper ore.

Some undisguised maiming of the mountainous wildlife…

A group of Gypsies, but not those who were around before the war (shift workers?) returned from evacuation to live in Stepanakert…

Hence, Watson, deductively, it’s better for them not to walk with sieves so that Base Metals do not track down the treasured adit…

* * *