The writer with her campers from the Stepanakert Camp at the Lisbon 5 Event
BY HASMIK BURUSHYAN
I knew our minutes here were going to be spent like this. The ruminations of the past carved out my expectation that way. I just underestimated how full it was going to make my heart feel; my heart is lovingly overwhelmed because of the many marks left by the people of Armenia and Artsakh.
The plane was filled with all kinds of passengers. Amongst them, was a batch of seventeen who were impatient to get their feet on familiar land. The steady feeling that I got from this observation was that some of us were filling the shelves of our ears with tunes while thinking about the wonders of this trip. Some were trying to tame the restlessness with narrative film. Some of us were in a concrete slumber that had the possibility of serving us scattered scenes of what could be. And, some of us were fallen in a race of thoughts. We did not know that the next few weeks would put our hearts in an endless game of hopscotch.
Camp in Gyumri was everything I wanted it to be. I can say that when I first walked into the school, in which its backyard was covered with children, I was surrounded by walls of jitters and angst. But, the children toppled those walls at that very moment. After a few bashful greetings, I started the beginnings of friendships with these children and they immediately started picking fruits for me.
I became a counselor for the red group. I made it my goal to learn the names of each camper and to make sure that they were not just faces with names for me but to be campers that I made connections with. By the third day, with as much volume as I can pronounce, I energetically yelled out the names of each camper that passed by me and patted their excitement with a somewhat personalized handshake. The energy of the children of Gyumri was unbeatable. When we would move from room to room, the campers screeched “ԿԱÕ
