This is my grandfather, Artashes, and among a myriad of things, he knew, by memory, everything there is to know about the physical geographical map. He could go from Helsinki (Capital of Finland), lets say, to Shikoku (one of the 4 main islands of Japan), using only waterways - by memory, without looking at a map. To quickly explain: he would say, “You take this sea, then this river, you cross this strait, and that river, back into that ocean, to this river, into this lake”. I would follow the map I held in my hand to see if he really was traveling correctly. He would get it right every time.
This created so much fascination in me as a little wild, nature loving boy, that I quickly picked up that habit and it became a tradition between me and my grandfather.
In this picture, he is actually writing down the entire journey, using waterways, from some city to another.
A quick background on the photo. Many years later in America, I had a photography class back in high school and we had to do a project with an interesting human being as the subject matter. Naturally, I chose my grandfather. I went to his house, explained the situation, asked him to write down the journey so I can document it. He happily agreed to do it.
I did my photoshoot and then I had to use the technique of double exposure in the dark room to achieve this. With the negative film through the enlarger, I exposed the light of his photo on photo paper, then I exposed his handwriting, which I had printed on transparent plastic sheet, on the same paper, over his photo. Then I put the paper in the chemicals; developer until the image started appearing up to my envisioned darkness, then did a stop bath in water to clean the developer off, then I put the paper in the photographic fixer to stop the development process and fix it on paper. After that I washed in water and hung it to dry. (A quick lesson in film photography for the younger generation who have no clue how we used to print).
This was the story of this photo. The original of this photo is probably at my cousin’s house, and the rest of us have this digital copy which is not very good and the colors are not correct. But this photo of my grandfather, quickly became the family favorite, I think because it shows his wholeness as a human being; his intelligence, mannerism, handsomeness, confidence, his focus, his strictness & kindness, grandfather-ness, wisdom, extreme humility, his fears, the gestural elements of his hands and his mouth, and most importantly, his handwriting.
My grandfather is responsible for my strong knowledge of world geography. He bought me a world atlas for my 12th birthday and every night, after dinner, we’d sit down together and he’d teach me the names and locations of rivers, lakes, mountains, peninsulas, islands, continents, countries, straits, whatever else exists on the planet, and he’d make it interesting for me by attaching a story from his own life. I loved the map. I was always fascinated with the look of the world on a map, especially those raised relief topographical maps made of thin plastic in geography classrooms. We’d use a stick to show different things on the map, and the contact of the stick and the plastic map would make a subtle sound. I came to love that sound and its rhythm.
In my geography class, our teacher would ask us to get up and summarize the whole chapter by the blackboard. I loved the subject, so I always read the whole chapter and was able to summarize it orally in front of the class. I’d get an A most of the time. There was one time though that has stuck with me. I hadn’t studied the chapter at all, probably was playing football outside or hide and seek with the neighborhood kids all night long, and ironically, I got called to the blackboard.
“Grigorian”, he called my name in a strict voice. “Come up to the board and summarize the whole chapter”, he instructed.
I got up, said the title of the chapter and then just stood there like a muted idiot.
“Go ahead, what are you waiting for?”, Mr. Azarian said.
No sound from me; absolute and uncomfortable silence. You could hear the clicking of the chalk from the next classroom.
“Grigorian, did you study or not?”, he raised his voice.
That was a tricky situation. We couldn’t say no we didn’t study. We’d get severely punished with either getting our ear pulled, twisted, and hit in the back of the head or if he was in a good mood, he would “mildly” use the back of his hand to tap us on our shoulder or belly. But mild is a slight exaggeration. That tap of the hand was actually worse than pulling the ear. You see, Mr. Azarian had big hands and thick fingers. He always had one of the buttons on his jacket buttoned up and his right hand was slid under the jacket, with the thumb over it, on top of the button. With a short and abrupt gesture, he would hit you with the back of his hand and put it back in the same place as if nothing’d happened. That would hurt for hours, if not days.
Moving on… I got lucky that one time. He didn’t hit me but simply gave me an F and sent me to my sit. I sat down already thinking of a story that I’d have to make up to explain my father that big old F in my journal.
Towards the end of class, he said, “Who today can show the map?”.
The custom was that he’d ask you up to the board and whatever he named, you’d have to show on the map. It was kind of like an extra credit "game". No one raised their hand. I looked around and saw no one was budging, so I raised my hand. He grunted but said ok.
I got up very excitedly, with a huge smile of an idiot, and approached the map hanging over the blackboard. I took the stick in my hand and whatever he asked, I showed. I was on a roll, kicking some geography butt. After I was done, he said, “Great job Grigorian, I’ll replace your F with a B. Since you didn’t read at all, I won’t give you an A.”
As he was about to permanently stain his journal with a damn "B", using his ballpoint black pen, I yelled, “Mr. Azarian,! I could go from any city or island of your choosing to any other city or island on the wold map, by memory, using only waterways.”
For a moment he didn’t understand what I was saying but kind of gave in, more for curiosity’s sake I suppose, and named a city somewhere in Europe and another city in eastern Russia. I closed my eyes, imagined it for a moment, and keeping my eyes closed, started naming the first river from that city and continued taking all the waterways to eastern Russia. He was so impressed, he gave me an "A+". I became his little circus performing monkey. He would show off in front of his colleagues by giving me random names and seeing me effortlessly naming the whole journey using all the waterways. He had pride in his eyes as if he was the one who had taught me that. He had not. It was my grandfather who taught me that and many other things about geography, and life in general.
After all these years, I am still ok with maps, but not as good anymore; although I’ll bet any one you out there a 100 bucks I could kick you butts ;)
On a bit more serious note: my grandfather’s patience and the endless hours of playful teachings, our walks in nature, and me seeing him pick up trash as we walked around, made me appreciate nature, how to care for it, keep it clean and its impact on the well being of our planet. I have never forgotten those days, his voice, and his strong index finger gliding over the pages of my world atlas and leaving a permanent mark on those pages and most importantly, a permanent mark in my heart.
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