When because of the truce brokered in Bishkek I got kicked out from the Press-Center by the SC of RMK, my diploma of Teacher of English from the Nezhin Pedagogical Institute helped me out once again. It substantiated my job application to Stepanakert Pedagogical Institute gift-wrapped already in the spangle-twinkling title of State University.

Rector named Arvat did not turn down my request in consequence of his erroneous assumption that I was another white collar from the Supreme Council (during the war folks got used to view me that way) after a part-time job and, probably, backed by a hairy pow powerful enough to pull the ropes.

Thus I became a teacher of English at the Department of Foreign Languages by the Artsakh State University because the local nomenclature had nothing better to busy their screwed up heads with and were out for dumping the word “Karabakh” altogether. They kicked up an exited campaign, up to a referendum, to substitute it with the word "Artsakh" of dubious meaning yet without Turkic roots in it. The blithering ignoramuses all of a sudden turned linguistically aware... The people went on to name their homeland Karabakh while the class of eaters, the cadres, stuck appellation of 'Artsakh' on any-effing-thing...

The presence of Rector Arvat at the aforesaid educational institution provoked some deep rooted uneasiness in me, a sort of strangely mismatching déjà vu.

I had already had Rector Arvat, back at the Nezhin pedagogical institute, although by that one 'Arvat' was his family name and not the given one. And the geezer (the previous Arvat) took his origin by Odessa Jews. Well, yes, it made no difference still two Arvats and both rectors were certainly more than enough for me alone. Some temporal-cognitive shift, sort of.

However, Arvat (a Stepanakert Armenian) soon got substituted with another rector (they were shifting there like knaves shuffled by an experienced deck sharper) who, fortunately, incurred no allusions to my previous life which brought alleviation, in part.

No use of hiding the fact that the turnover of the rectors at the ArSU went through the roof. It’s enough to note that in the course of just one employee's career (namely, my 14 years there) the Artsakh State University saw somersaults of 8 to 9 of those high-ranking educational officials, which almost averages to the duration of a conscripts’ hitch in the Soviet Army, per clown. None of them (with merely one exception) exposed sufficient savvy as to in what way a pedagogical college is distinct from a university.

Once, I even had to explain for a current one (not my fault though: who ever called that rector to show up at a monthly sitting of the Department of English (because any other foreign language remained in embryonic form of an optional subject)) that a university, in difference to a college, is engaged in scientific research as well.

The amount of the offered information clearly exceeded his cognitive capacity, and the unfathomable extent of the overflowing data plunked the usurper into the prostration of so violent a nature that the Head of the English Department and the concerted efforts of other Anglo-ladies present at the monthly affair hardly managed to reanimate the poor fellow by the plenteous application of tea and jam.

Well, yes, they did manage to bring him back to life. Yet, the Head of the English Department had never forgiven me the accident. Not for the abundant loss of the Departmental jam stock yet because of her underlying instinct of self-preservation.

It was exactly that monthliness that effed me up immoderately and made me a plumb loco deep in myself. Because menfolks at the State University could then be counted on fingers of one hand – Rafic at the Department of Russian, Volodya at the Biological, Karen at the Physics and Mathematics, and Yuri at the Department of Geography… Well, maybe a pair of laboratory assistants somewhere but those rectors my hand does not rise to tally up to the ranks of this glorious cohort...

Ah! Yes! Uncle Kolya the electrician! He kept a spacious, but very cluttered workshop under the main stairs where he repaired just anything: from umbrellas to household appliances, which even a normal woman would not understand, let alone those college bluestocking ladies.

Later, Armen Yuryevich appeared at the Department of Armenian, and justified, in part, the title of University, because he did undertake a research task compiling the Dictionary of the Karabakh Dialect.

The work was accomplished at the level of the Russian Dictionary by Dahl, no kidding. The resulting magnum opus will surely outlive us.

Although who for? Meager 6 million people use Armenian nowadays, of which half populate the Diaspora who use the Istanbul Dialect of Western Armenians, the remaining 3 million live, speak, and write in the Republic of Armenia applying the Eastern Dialect of the language, but neither of them have as worthy a Dictionary where each entry brims with the poetry of life in folk sayings some of which still make me neigh all stops pulled.

It’s only that the compiler exploited juvenile labor demanding from the students to stick down, whenever visiting their villages, everything heard from their granny-grandpa-uncle-ants. Anything at all: proverbs, swearing, jokes…

And the students were only happy to do the job. I saw heaps of their sheets and scraps on his Departmental Desk because that way they felt themselves students and not the sheep for whose sake the tuition fee was shorn off their respective parents.

Still, on the other hand, it’s reassuring that no matter how hard a teacher would tyrannize you, they could not jump higher their own ass because the university should systematically fulfill the plan of harvesting with no reduction of the fleeced cash allowed. So you’d sure pass a test, and get your ‘three’ at the exam, and screw their bullying.

True, at times you could stumble at those who’re eager to learn indeed. I met such unique ones at the reading hall…

O! The ArSU Reading Hall is certainly a pearl. The Diaspora had dumped there whatever books you want. Some treasure hoard starting from the two last reprints of The Britannica and so on alphabetically…

Not the chow for the present critters? But then, maybe, for those growing yet, for some of the following, future generations. Some huge 'maybe' though...

And that rector, recuperated by means of jam and tea, never forgave me for the attempt at shuttering the foundations of his inert ideas and, full of vindictive villainy, he ordered the Head of the Computer Room—O my! That's real sweetie! a generous gift from some overseas millionaire—to keep me out of the gift Hall on the basis of hypothetical probability of my sending spy reports to Baku by the Internet.

She had to only follow her orders, and I had to await the idiot’s demobilization...

My relationships with the colleagues were characterized by evenness, always. Although the Head of the Department, with her hypertrophied instincts, could not conceal her fury that at their monthly jamborees I kept yawning, repeatedly and even with a distinct howl.

But that was unintentional reaction due to physiologically irresistible stimuli. I tried to restrain my jaw, faith! I did! – even with my both hands, to upkeep good manners... To no avail though. You just can't kick against physiology...

To curb the volume of her orations, it took only one adjustment. After another of her accusatory declarations as regards me, I took out the flash drive (alike to WALKMAN yet of smaller dimensions) which I used for listening Tina Turner on my way to the university when the bus driver turned his music too loud. However, this time I pretended it was a Dictaphone and said to the flash drive: “Recorded on February 2, at 13.38”

She got fuc… fully, that is... flabbergasted being unable to recollect what exactly got shot off her mouth a moment before.

It's after that recording was I banned from the Computer Paradise...

Vice-rector Styopa also, once, in the presence of students in the corridor, began to reprimand me employing an unrestrained tone of voice:

“You’re kept here only because of being a foreigner!”

But those are slanderous rumors that I retorted:

“What can you know of foreigners? Wanna get mine to play with?” Because tongue-tiedness somehow disappears, at times...

The only rector that I did like, from aside, was Episkoposian, who immediately after the war arrived from Moscow and even moved his household furniture down here.

Under him, Anna Alexandrovna, the Library Manager, forgetful of her advanced age, shed off the heed to decency rules endemic in backwaters, and began to wrap her throat with a chiffon scarf in the romantic manner of the singer Maya Kristalinskaya, especially on days when she went to the rector's appointment.

Of course, given the difference in their age and similarity of marital status, her dress code did not lead to the slightest office affair, and everything looked pure romance and touching to watch...

And what was his idea of spending vacations? In the hole!

Near the village of Mektishen he dug up a skeleton with strange decorations, which, by all scientific beliefs, were impossible to share that hole with the stiff.

He’d better ask me, when we constructed the gas pipeline nearby Chldran, before the war it was, the back hoe dug up a hell of a lot of bones of all sorts there.

But on the second summer they pulled him out of the hole and clarified: if his furniture was dear to him, he’d better fuck out of here.

Meek and weak, moved Episkoposian to Yerevan, might very well to this day gathers he his flock there to lecture on strange Karabakh artifacts, and in summer, some place in the Ararat Valley he, may be, exhumes spare parts jettisoned of Noah's Ark, because Armenia is a mighty ancient land…

Besides, in the eyes of the university administration, I had decrying connections with foreign citizens.

Not those who’d appear for a day or so to pass another grant or a present, but of the kind they didn’t get it what they needed about here at all.

Take, for instance, Nick Wagner and our friendship for about twenty years...

A break it was and he walked the corridor along the second floor in the New Building. No rubbing his shoulders nor elbows with anyone. But his being an American was too obvious because nobody would sport the beard like his in the present whereabouts.

"Hey!" sez I pacing in the counter direction and kept going.

So he U-turned, caught up and said: “Who are you?”

Well, it’s not my custom to make secrets of nothing: “The last of the Mahicans,” sez I, taking into account my uniqueness at the Department, as well as my status along this second floor plus divers other sadly associated factors.

Since that moment we’ve been friends because he also had read works by Fenimore Cooper, although they’re absent from the American school curricula...

Nick himself was working then in Yerevan, at the American-Armenian University or, maybe, vice versa. However, he felt attraction to the less spoiled, by the civilization, nature. That’s why he came to Stepanakert, though without knowing the language.

So I escorted him to meet the current placeholder. Nick wrote an application at the personnel department and went back to Yerevan to give his lessons at the AAU there.

A month past, he comes again to say there was no answer.

Again, as an interpreter, went I with him to the personnel department.

"Why d’you grill the man? One whole month there’s no answer!"

"Not true! The answer was there."

"Where?"

"Right there in my safe."

O YOB… O MOTH FUC EFF BLIAD SCRE…

No, even for me it's hard to deteermine the right word, at times…

In short, there was a refusal in that safe on the grounds that his Californian pronunciation plus degree from the University of Nevada were not congruous with the aspirations of the ArSU English Department staff who wished instruct the students in British English. So was their ambitious design and inclination.

Yet, Nick turned out a slippery customer and moved to Karabakh all the same. Became an instructor at a private university. Yes, there are birdies of that feather too (2), not only the state was born to fleece.

Besides, he got some means, his Dad was a popular barber and Mom a scion of refugees from the Western Armenia. But she did not undertake to teach her three sons Armenian…

And I can understand him, in Yerevan I also would not survive...

Well, as for Mike Newman, then yes, everything’s in full view, an unconcealably epitomic spy for you, I have to admit.

A Briton himself, he lived in Paris, and had worked thru Russian language courses to a level with a charming accent. Not enough? How about his visits to Karabakh? No every year, yet periodically, although instead of books he wrote poetry and even sang his own songs playing a guitar, simultaneously. Not bad, by the bye.

No need for a diagnosis from the KGB here – some undeniable spy.

Thanks to him, I saw the meaning of that dry British humor, you know. It’s when I kinda flashed my Britannica fostered erudition:

(britannica.com/biography/Saint-John-Henry-Newman).

"Mike," sez I, "are you aware, if we pick up the subject of possibility of weird coincidence, you've got a namesake who's also a Newman! That one who later became a cardinal. How about that?"

Not a single feature twitched in the face of the handsomely attractive manly man, James Bond (nothing like that ugly Quasimorbid from the latest series), and Mike Newman (ahem!) very calmly, with a perfect coolness remarked:

"I forgive him".

The dagger-and-cloak men are indulgent enough to absolve the sinful clergy…

In that relation, when Nick and I am getting together to celebrate another Saturday, he always brings up one and the same subject, both frivolous and futile:

"The educational system in Karabakh failed!"

And I comfort my friend in the well-established way:

"Not just here, Nick. Not just here. It’s a fucking global fiasco…"

* * *