It's in Russian so I will attempt to translate it to English with the help of Google:
Caught this story on a smoke break with colleagues. They decided to eat Khinkali, and since the best prepared khinkali is on Tumanyan Street, not far from the Liberty Square, they went there for a meal. They sat down, and while eating they noticed that in a flow of men coming in and going out in remarkably similar black clothing. Two, four, then a few more of them came in, and then grabbed four men eating at a neighboring table, dragged them into the street, loaded in a van and took them away.
Here, my friends, what happens when you eat khinkali in such turbulent times. Be careful not to enter a restaurant without an urgent necessity.
How about this for a chilled afternoon of people watching. I’m on the corner of Sayat Nova and Nalbandian enjoying the firsts few rays of sun we’ve had in a while and listening to the far off voices of the endless speeches at Opera Square.
ReplyDeleteComing out of the corner store I’m faced with the following. A total hunk of junk mark 06 Soviet car parked right in the middle of the pavement (no surprise there!), no licence plates, door slammed by a guy, probably early 20s. Looks pretty average ie standard issue stripy sweater, shiny black pants and black pointy shoes. Of course I’ve grown quite used to the sight of yet another wasted Armenian rabiz youth however my thoughts are brought back to reality by the sun reflecting off something metal just above his left hip. I gasp in surprise when I realise that he’s wearing a holster with a gun in plain view in daylight on one of the busiest streets in the city and seems to have nothing to hide judging by his relaxed manner. At this stage I’m only about 10 feet away from him and can’t hide my obvious shock at the bulging black piece of metal that so casually hangs from his side. He seems to notice my jaw hitting the pavement and starts to look nervous straight away. I’m so stunned that I start hysterically jabbering to A who keeps trying to get me to keep it down but I’m still in total shock and no can do!
Obviously flustered by my over the top reaction, Early 20’s Potential Bad Guy straight away jumps back in the car and screeches out onto oncoming traffic not noticing the police car stopped at the lights just ahead.
So up to this point I’m telling A that we have to do something, I have no idea what but we can’t just ignore it, here’s a young guy with a gun in a car with no licence plates in the middle of the street just a block away from the protestors who are already on edge because they’re expecting something to happen at any time but he keeps insisting that he’s probably a cop or part of the plain clothed security forces and we should just keep walking, enjoying the sun and forget what we saw. Just as I start thinking that maybe he’s right, after all what do I know about how undercover cops look, when Potential Bad Guy notices the police car ahead and screeches yet again to a halt in the middle of the busy street proving my theory that he has as much to do with the police or any other body of authority as my 80 year old grandmother! The fact that during this whole time he never breaks eye contact with me (even while manoeuvring his old heap o’ junk) kind of starts to freak me out.
So lucky for him but something tells me unlucky for the rest of us, the police car moves off when the light changes either not noticing or completely ignoring the screeching tires. Potential Bad Guy very slowly (still keeping eye contact) starts to move off. Doesn’t get far though, about a 100 yards ahead at the traffic lights he turns right (onto a one way street of oncoming traffic!) still not breaking eye contact, parks at the Zebra crossing and keeps looking over kind of like he’s waiting for us to get to the end of the pavement. So by this stage I’m starting to really freak out because I’m can’t seem to figure out which one of us is in trouble, me for being a completely uncontrollable drama queen and attracting unwanted and unnecessary attention from someone more suspicious than a ticking briefcase or him for getting caught out. His stares still giving me the chills as A spills Coke all over his coat. When I look up after a couple of minutes of fussing and trying to dab the stains off the fabric with wads of tissue he’s gone…………
What a cock and bull story...
ReplyDelete