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There was a time we used to say Armenia is an open-air museum. Do you remember those times? May I remind you of them? Those were the times when books had value and there were even bookstores. Man was reading and respecting the book, he was searching for ideas and finding them. Those were the times when Man was the Book.

Then the “symbolism” period arrived, when the bookstores, aside from several accessories and exhibits under the Sun, began to die out and became just “symbols”. With less than five bookstores, Armenia became the World Book Capital. Those who complain about disappearing monuments and destroyed buildings, receive a question as an answer, “How can you think of buildings and monuments, when Man himself is being destroyed and disappears from Earth?”

This is a rather good question. Man is a builder and a creator. When valued, Man is useful. With his creations destroyed, Man himself is destroyed. The memory of who he was is lost, and he gets used to it and his heart becomes blunt. A useless Man cannot stand tall.

What remained in Yerevan? Whatever remained became mended facades. Yerevan – a museum of façade exhibitions. Onward we march to “Old Yerevan” Expo-museum-expensium.

Due to few numbers, everything eventually becomes a museum exhibit: World Nature Museum, World City Museum, World Book Museum, World Man Museum. Museum of Tamanian and Urban Development. What a joke!

The nature, books, professionals, people become exhibits - just exhibits, and now what? They should fight to become a little more than that. They can’t be more, they’re just exhibits. Everything is useless without display. Word display, charity display, display of a fight for Women’s rights.

In a hundred years, we’ll be closer to the country-museum model transforming Armenians into exhibits, won’t we? We certainly will, as we are making reports and statistics out of our lives.

Yet we wanted to live in a country, not a museum. An Armenian living in a museum wasn’t exactly our dream; it was the dream of our enemy who wish for our destruction.

Anahit Voskanyan