I Had the Feeling That I Left My ‘Land of Nairi’ Unattended Among Strangers: Anna Hakobyan

On November 1, I started re-reading Charetn's novel "Land of Nairi" for the first time since my university years. I took the book with me on my trip to Reykjavik, Iceland, reading it on the plane, at Frankfurt airport, and in my hotel room in Reykjavik. However, upon my return, I forgot the book on the Icelandair flight from Reykjavik to Frankfurt. Anna Hakobyan, the wife of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, shared this on her Facebook page.

“At the airport, I realized that I had forgotten the book in the mesh pocket of the seat in front of me. I took it very hard. I felt like I had left my ‘Land of Nairi’ unattended among strangers. I asked our ambassador to contact the airport staff to try to retrieve my book, but the fate of lost items at the airport isn’t resolved that easily, especially in a country like Germany, where everything has its order: one needs to fill out a form, it has to be entered into the corresponding body, and so on and so forth. I wanted to ask if I could go back, enter the same airplane, and retrieve my book from the mesh pocket, but I knew people would just laugh at me if I said something like that out loud. Meanwhile, I was suffering. The feeling that the ‘Land of Nairi,’ which I had held close to my chest at the edge of the world, was forgotten among strangers, did not subside. At that point, I had only managed to read about 30-35 pages.

As soon as I arrived in Yerevan, I bought another copy of the book from a bookstore, which this time traveled with me from Proshyan Street to Republic Square and back.

As I continued to read more pages of Charetn's 'Land of Nairi,' the heavy feeling resulting from forgetting my book on the Icelandair flight began to change. With every page, it became heavier. Eventually, it transformed into a sharp feeling of shame. Shame, sorrow, despair, betrayal, pity, anger, but most importantly a grand battle—a battle with my own self. This was the mix of feelings that overwhelmed me at the end of the book. It was somewhat akin to a situation where a person discovers an unwanted secret about themselves from their parents at an adult age, which turns their soul upside down. One is forced to re-recognize and, what is most difficult, to accept oneself. Of course, the first and greatest battle is with the parents, grandmothers, and grandfathers who have lied to you for years, or made hesitant gestures, yet didn't tell you the truth directly and didn’t teach you how to live with it, face it, and solve it.

I kept saying to myself, 'My God, at least I wish I had left 'Land of Nairi' in the previous country I traveled to, anywhere but not Icelandair’s plane from Reykjavik to Frankfurt. Not on Icelandic soil, not even in their air.' According to the 2022 census, Iceland has a population of 376,248 citizens. In 1960, only 179,000 people lived in Iceland. More than 11% of today’s population are immigrants. The delimited and demarcated territory of Iceland is 102,775 km² (2.7% water). The GDP per capita in Iceland is $83,750 (to give a perspective on what kind of living standard this provides, it’s worth mentioning that in Armenia it is $4,595). In terms of GDP, this country ranks ahead of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.

The history of Iceland begins in 874 when Norwegian pirate Ingolf Arnarson settled permanently on the island, founding the first major settlement—Reykjavik—which remains the capital of the country to this day. The Icelanders were not surrounded by benevolent neighbors. Their land was eyed by the Scots, Norwegians, Danes, and Irish. In 1262, Iceland was part of Finland, and in 1537, it was under Denmark. In 1918, Iceland was still a sovereign state within the Kingdom of Denmark. Following a referendum in 1944, the Icelanders declared their country a republic and expelled the US peacekeeping forces, which had been deployed 20 years prior to protect the Icelanders.

Throughout these years, Iceland was a poor, very poor country. Among the 20th century's largest wars, historians note the three unrecognized wars between Iceland and Great Britain from 1958 to 1976—known as the Cod Wars—where the 170,000 population fought against Britain, a nation of 50 million, to prevent fishing in their waters. With each war, they expanded the areas in which they did not allow the English to fish and suffered significant human losses. In 1976, they severed relations with England, and ultimately, under US pressure, England conceded, and relations were normalized.

The Icelanders are not surprised by sorrow and suffering either. God did not look sweetly upon them in the 19th century, nor in the 18th, 17th, or even the 16th centuries. In 1550, Danish King Christian III executed the spiritual leader of the Catholic Icelanders along with his two sons, forcing the people to adopt Lutheranism. In the summer of 1627, pirates conducted several raids on the country, during which hundreds of inhabitants were taken as slaves to North Africa. Between 1707 and 1708, a smallpox epidemic killed one-quarter to one-third of the entire population of Iceland. In 1783, the Laki volcano erupted, leading to years that remain in the Icelanders' memory as the