I was always curious about why people smell the way they do but the thing about my mother’s smell was that she always smelled of food; she also always looked sad. When I asked her why she was always sad, she replied:

“I am not sad. I am just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About you.”

“But I am right here.”

“I know you are. Come and hug me.”

“I don’t want to. You smell of garlic.”

“I was making dinner for you. Your favorite pasta.”

“Okay, then I will hug you but only for a second.”

I loved my mom and I still do, but I never liked her smell. I never liked garlic pasta either, but every time she cooked it and watched me eat, she had an exciting look in her eyes that allowed them to shine so brightly that her cheeks would turn bright red. These were the only times I knew for sure she was not sad.

Sleep is a beautiful experience, especially when you are tired. If you have been awake for a while hearing gunshots, and bombs, and threats, and cries, and other things that humans do to each other for no reason, you would get so tired that you would learn to sleep in such environments. So, I slept like a baby dreaming about going home to my wife when Alan woke me up.

“David! David, wake up.”

“What’s going on?”

I really wanted to punch him for waking me up when I had finally fallen asleep, but I was 19, and that was old enough for getting a punch back for not having a good excuse for a punch which meant that if I punched Alan, he would punch me back. But Alan is a good kid from a good family. He is only 18, but he is braver than all the other kids his age who run away every time a bomb comes to our side. But Alan is a good kid and as a good kid, he would, of course, punch me back if I punched him. He also smelled of dirt and sweat which is the smell of every soldier, but he had bright blue eyes, like the peaceful skies which we, Armenians, have never seen because we are a small nation nobody knows about. Except our enemies do. When they attack, we have to fight.

“They are coming. We must evacuate.”

“And leave the posts? No! What about the commander? What is he saying?” I jumped out of my sleeping bag. I was no longer half-asleep. But I was still looking at Alan’s sweat until I realized I was sweating like that too. If my mom saw me now, she would cry. When I was a kid, I once came back home covered in mud from head to toe. She asked what I had been doing, and I told her how we had a mud-ball fight with the kids from the other neighborhood, which was like a snowball fight but with mud. It was fun, but mom got so angry she started crying. Not because I was dirty but because she thought I should not hang out with the kids from the other neighborhoods as they were older and more dangerous, but also because we were poor and had no water for me to bathe. We had to wait until late night for my father to come back from work so that he could carry some water to our house, and that my mom could bathe me in it. But if she saw me covered in mud now, she would probably cry too. “He died.”

I was surprised. The commander is, or I should probably say “was,” a bad person. He would slap me every time I spoke up, and he would make me do more push-ups than everybody else. But the fact that he, who was undefeated, scary and big, but dead, meant we were all going to die as well. Except I smelled like sweat and dirt and I was covered in mud so if my mom saw my corpse like this, she would cry harder than if I was cleaner.

“Alan, we can’t just leave. Let’s go check. Maybe some of them survived.” I secretly hoped Alan would push some thoughts in my head to tell me not to do it and that we should save ourselves. But he didn’t because he was a good kid that obeyed the orders better than I did.

“Lead the way, David.”

Have you ever heard of cluster munition? I had not, but Alan told me all about it when we saw a bright white bomb hit the forest. My eyes hurt for a second, so I closed them and shouted, but Alan told me it would be okay. He also taught me that those bombs are banned and that they are not only going to kill us but the environment too. I didn’t like that I was older and didn’t know this stuff, but Alan was now my little, nerdy brother, and he was braver, so I had to believe in him.

“So, Alan, what do we do with these? I thought we could hide in the forests.” Alan thought for a second but then replied.

“I don’t know.”

That was the first time I felt scared during this war because I always thought Alan knew everything, and that he could get us out of every situation. But when he said he didn’t know, I got scared.

“Alan, how dangerous are those cluster bombs? I mean, will they hurt too much if they hit us?”

Alan started laughing, which I liked. I never had a little brother but if I had one, I would love him to be exactly like Alan. I want my future child to be like Alan as well. My pregnant wife is waiting for me, so I must stay strong to get back to her. If I ever get a son, I promise, I will name him Alan so that he will grow up to be like him. If I ever have a daughter I will name her Maria, after my mom, because I love her so much, but I don’t want my daughter to be sad all the time. But we are Armenians. If you look closely into our eyes, you will see they look sad. Maybe evolution did this to us. But I am not good at Biology. In fact, I am not good at anything. I am just a car mechanic that got married at 18.

“David, just one thing. We need to avoid those bombs. They will just kill us.” “Okay, okay, I got it.”

“What do we do then?”

I really hoped Alan thought of something by now because my only knowledge of getting out of a wartime situation came from video games. I am jealous of all kids our age who don’t have to be stranded in a mountain overlooking a forest that is being burnt by internationally banned cluster bombs but when you are born an Armenian, sometimes you have more stuff to deal with than others.

“I think I got it!”

Alan seemed excited as he was looking through his binoculars.

“There is a village on the other side of that river. It’s their village though, but they have evacuated. We might even find food there.”

“Let’s go.”

Our little adventure, besides being a life-or-death situation, also felt like a survival video game. Our whole battalion was dead. And our commander too. So, we had to find a way out without being killed. I didn’t mind the bombs or the lack of food or water. But I did mind how we both smelled and how our feet were getting worse and worse. We had to stop a couple of times to take out our boots and dry our socks, but it was useless. The weather was so cold that Alan and I got frostbites. We couldn’t even walk so we were kind of holding onto each other as we were walking through the mountain to get to the river. We were both silent, but I was dreaming of us being back home and getting drunk in a pub. I was dreaming that we both would get so drunk that we had to hang onto each other, just like we were doing now, when we would go back home from the pub. Who knows, maybe one day, if we survive this war, we could go to a pub, get drunk, and remember these days…My mom wouldn’t cry anymore if she saw me so drunk because now, I have a wife, and she takes that role. Unlike my mom, my wife always smells good, even when she cooks.

I fell in love with my wife when I first saw her in the parking lot of a café where I would buy lunch. She was wearing a blue dress covered in flowers. She smelled so nice that I stood up and went to her without even realizing that I smelled of oil and dust as I was on my car mechanic duties. But to my surprise, she laughed and agreed to go on a date with me. We got married two months later.

We finally reached the village. All I wanted to do was to run to any nearby house to search for food, but Alan stopped me.

“Man, are you crazy? There might be people there. We got to stay quiet.”

If that man survived this place, he would probably win a Nobel prize for being so smart. He told me that he had received a gold medal in an international Mathematics Olympiad last year. When he told me this, I replied that he will definitely get a Nobel prize in Mathematics for discovering something, but he laughed again and said there is no Nobel prize in Mathematics. This is weird because the smartest people are doing Mathematics, and they are probably creating these bombs that are now killing us. So, if Alan could discover a shield that could protect us, he could get a Nobel prize. But now that we were in a life-or-death situation all the time and we could be dead any moment, I was getting angry that a smart kid like Alan had to die with a simple bomb instead of going onto more Olympiads and winning more gold. But we are Armenians, so we don’t mind being killed for protecting our families.

“Okay, it’s clear. Let’s go quietly though. We must stay patient.”

Alan finally allowed us to enter the first nearby house. It was all empty and ruined by the gunshots and bombs. There was no food to be found anywhere. When I was about to pass out, I wondered if my mom was still cooking the garlic pasta dinner. I wondered if she was starving herself because she was thinking that I was starving too, or maybe, she was eating to stay strong to be able to pray for my safe return. So, I didn’t pass out because I felt like she was praying for me to stay strong, and for some weird reason, I smelled my mom. I looked at the ground and saw cloves of garlic. I screamed so loud from the happiness that Alan got angry at me. We ate the garlic. It tasted like the tastiest meal I have ever eaten. I was so hungry that even my least favorite food tasted good. My mom, it was her… She sent these to us.

“Let’s stay here for the night. Let’s maybe find bunkers. They ought to have some.” My feet hurt so much that if we could stay here for the night, maybe they could get some rest.

“Alan, what can we do with these frostbites? I didn’t know frost bites could be so bad. They freaking hurt.”

“If they get worse, we will be in trouble.”

“Worse than this? We can’t even walk.”

“Yeah, I hear they cut the feet off when they can’t heal the frostbites.”

“Better than being dead or having so much pain in them.”

“You would lose your job. You are a car mechanic. You need your legs.” “What about you, Alan? You don’t need them?”

“No, I am smart. I will find another way.”

We both smiled and fell asleep without even realizing that we didn’t look for bunkers and were smelling like dust, sweat, and garlic combined. If I had approached my wife the first time I saw her smelling like this, I wonder if she would have agreed to go on a date with me.

“David! David, wake up!”

Alan woke me up again from my half-asleep, half-awake state. I was dreaming about going back to the day I introduced my wife to mom. They bonded so quickly and even started making fun of the black stains on all my clothes. I did not bother to tell them how they got dirty from the cars I was repairing and instead admired their smiles. I loved seeing them smile. I wonder if my mom moved to live with my wife while she is pregnant. I hope they find their smiles again if I disappear. While the picture of the smiles was still in my head, I really wanted to punch Alan again, but as usual, it would be useless since he would punch me back. “I heard footsteps. We need to hide.”

I felt my entire body shaking in an instant. If those were soldiers from their side, which they probably were since we were in their village, we were dead meat.

“I think they are civilians. But be on the lookout. They carry guns too.”

I noticed a little door on the ground and told Alan about it. He opened the door, and we saw a ladder leading to a mini bunker. We went to hide there and found a jar of honey. I was so hungry that I opened it in an instant and started sticking my dirty fingers into the jar and licking them. Alan did the same.

“We are disgusting. You know that, right?”

I knew it, but it felt heavenly to the extent that we even forgot that the reason we went down this ladder was that there were people coming into the house. We hid behind some random boxes that were full of wood for fire and some old books in Azerbaijani and Russian. I even recognized one of them and pointed it to Alan, but he made fun of me for knowing the title but for never having read it. I promised that I would read more books if we survived. He wondered how I was going to be a father if I was so naïve. I told him that my mom would help us.

Alan and I put the jar of honey on the ground the second we heard the door on the ceiling open. Someone turned on their flashlight and came down the ladder. It was an old man, probably in his 70s. He opened a box hidden in the corner of the bunker and took out a pack of cigarettes. When he was about to go up the ladder, I accidentally hit the jar of honey and made a noise. The grandpa turned around. I saw his eyes. He was definitely not Armenian because his eyes didn’t look sad. He had a long white beard, big hands, big feet, and a big face, but he was a tiny man. Alan pointed the gun at him and asked to introduce himself. The old man didn’t look scared. He

was probably too old to leave his house, so he stayed to die here. But we wouldn’t kill an innocent man. Although, we did eat his honey and garlic without permission. “What’s taking so long? Are you smoking again?”

A voice of a grandmother was heard from the house. She kept on shouting at this old man that I even got surprised that he didn’t have sad or scared eyes. I asked Alan to put down the gun and moved closer to the man. I told him we are soldiers, but we don’t harm civilians. He was silent for a moment then he asked if we wanted cigarettes. We kept smoking in silence while his wife was shouting. When we finished and went upstairs and met the woman who was shouting, we looked more shocked than she did when we met. I was surprised that such a tiny woman could make such loud noises.

“And who are you?”

“We are soldiers. Armenians.”

“How old are you?”

“18 and 19.”

“Are you hungry? I made soup. Come eat while it’s hot.”

We sat down and ate the soup in silence. The grandmother did not have sad eyes either, but she was Azerbaijani and looked scary but not because she was Azerbaijani but because she reminded me of my mom when she gets angry. She was probably shouting for at least ten minutes to get the grandpa upstairs so that the soup does not get cold because when we ate it, it had already gone cold.

“I am sorry we broke your honey jar and ate all your garlic.”

“It’s okay. Now we are having lentil soup without garlic. It still tastes good.”

I wanted to scream that instead of good, it tasted heavenly because it was our first proper meal in almost a month, and we were sitting at a table. While I was eating, I wondered why we were even fighting in a war with these people, and then I remembered the cluster bombs and wondered if they had ever heard of them.

“Why haven’t you left?” Alan asked the grandparents when we finished eating. They looked at each other for a second until the grandma replied that this house was all they got. We asked if there were other people or soldiers, and she said no. Alan stared at me in a way, hinting that he didn’t trust her, but I trusted her the second I saw her because her fingers looked black like my mother’s when she makes jam with black olives.

“How can we find the Armenian borders? Our posts were taken by Azeris. We were on a break when it happened. The whole battalion was down. We are lost.”

I asked the grandma this while staring at her hands. She went to another room and came back only five minutes after. While she was gone, the grandpa took out the pack of cigarettes from before and started smoking. He pointed it to Alan and me. Alan took one, but I refused because I thought grandma probably doesn’t like it when people smoke. When she came back, grandpa hid his cigarette. Grandma brought a map. She pointed to the village where we were staying. I also noticed the mountain and the river we had to cross to get here. It did not look like much of a distance while looking at the map, but when we were walking the path, it felt endless.

Alan took the map and said thank you for the meal. We stood up to leave the house when the grandma shouted for us to wait. We stood silent for a second, and then she came back with knitted, warm socks. The grandmother gave those to us and went to clean the table.

Alan and I thanked them again, and we left. When we were walking down the path to get to the Armenian side, we heard more cluster bombs. It sounded like an explosion of a regular

bomb followed by mini bombs. Our ears were ringing, which was surprising because I thought I had already gotten used to loud noise. When we turned around, we saw the whole village burning. I wondered if the grandparents survived. If they died, they died in the hands of their own soldiers and weapons; but when they cooked us a meal, they became our grandparents. I fainted from anger because they killed my grandparents. Why would they fire cluster bombs on their own civilians?

“To blame the Armenian side for it.”

Alan had all the answers, and I hated that he was right. I also hated the war and the taste of the lentil soup still in my mouth as we continued walking.

“David, what do you want to do when we survive?”

I was surprised that he said “when” instead of “if” and I laughed.

“Don’t laugh. We might actually make it.”

“If we do, I will start reading more books and get a little smarter. What about you?” “I don’t know. I just want to take a hot shower and sleep in a warm bed.”

We continued our endless path. When our frostbites were killing us, I asked Alan to just sit down. We sat down and took our boots off. We both wore the knitted socks the grandma had given to us. Our feet felt so warm and soft and nice. I looked at Alan and felt thankful to have someone like him as my friend during this wartime. I wondered if we ever would have become friends if we didn’t go to the war together.

I went to water the bushes and left Alan alone, but when I came back, running barefoot on my socks, I saw Alan from a distance waving at me. I wondered whether my mother would be

waving at me when I came back. I wondered if I would have a daughter or a son and whether they would look like my beautiful wife. I wondered if my mother was still sitting near the phone, knitting little sweaters for the baby that was due at the end of the winter. I wondered if she cried every night because I didn’t call her. I wondered how my pregnant wife was doing. She was probably waiting for me to come back and be a dad. I was wondering all these while looking at Alan’s bright eyes, and I saw something, more like a wind or perhaps a bomb if that’s what they look like up close, falling right on him. He was gone in an instant. How can a human being disappear like that? I couldn’t move and I was not sure whether because I was also hurt by the bomb or because I lost my only friend in the world. I fell on the ground and wished I was home, hugging my mother and smelling the garlic on her hair. But I was dead, lying on the ground for being a soldier, an Armenian, destined to have sad eyes.

AUTHOR:

Astghik Baghinyan

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Armenian Eyes