Meeting with a Political Prisoner

Reflections after a talk with Shant
  What I am going to present is not a report made by a monitor. The feelings and thoughts that I had after my meeting with Shant cannot fit in any acting or non-acting rules. This is just a reproduction of only human experiences in a free, unconstrained and humane way.

- Shant, we haven’t known each other before, but we met as friends and like-minded persons. Do you remember your quote: “I was delighted seeing a free man in slavery and I felt disgust seeing a slave in freedom.” That day when I met you in the cell of Vardashen detention facility, I had the feeling of freedom.
  - Wasn’t it interesting that we were sitting and talking in your cell, which was open. We were speaking freely, loudly, it was not in secret, everybody was hearing. We had nothing to hide from others. During the 30-40 minutes, you were thinking and speaking only about Armenia, its fate and our problems. And in all your words there was always freedom as the only future.

- You remembered your translation of the book “The Grand Chessboard” by Brzezinski. I could see your feeling of dignity even about that book. I have never thought that one could have understood the book of the great political scientist in that. way – as a challenge. You said you had a great respect towards him and that he was really a powerful political scientist. Unfortunately, I haven’t read the article you talked about, which as far as I remember is titled “Before the Grand Chessboard with Brzezinski.”
  - And why so, because, as you said, you couldn’t put up with the idea that Armenia could have been considered as a chessboard or just one square of a chessboard. Your idea that Brzezinski would have been happy to know about such a suggestion was wonderful. It sounded so humane and at the same time so powerful that no thinker can be indifferent to that.
  - You are right when you mention that Russian forces seized the power in Armenia through their sergeant s. There could be no objection to it. But someone having and expressing such ideas is so vulnerable by sergeants, because their thinking level of amoeba can cause them a feeling of danger with subconscious, self-defending instinct.
  - What accurate and subtle things you reminded about the foundation of king Pap and Cylician kingdom that are similar to our time.
  - Shant, do you remember we have talked about Davit Bek and the 20 soldiers of Gevorg Marzpetuni? Only 20 people, twenty out of thousands stood for freedom and independence. This is not a consolation but it is regularity.
  - Shant who could think of sending a telegram of condolences to the American people when Reagan died. And why, that’s because president Reagan called Soviet Union Empire of Evil. What regularity! The very empire arrested your father as a political dissident, now the inheritors of the Empire of Evil arrested you in YOUR ARMENIA. There is no other meanness. However, my only explanation is that the ones who isolated you are mentally ill, their psychological state must be examined, they surely are ailing with the Stalin’s illness – paranoid.
  - It was surprising that during our meeting we have never talked about children, families, women, friends or things about earning one’s living or other things. But what you were saying concerned all of them but in the prism of dignity.
  - And these wretched are trying to make you, the free man, silent, deprive you of the chance to speak to a hundreds of people, to talk and to share with thoughts. This is the biggest damage that these poor men are trying to do.
  - You were thinking about the movement, the ones who were free on condition. Yes, the civil consciousness is really powerful, Shant. The feeling of freedom and dignity is more than ever conscious and not sensual or instant.
  - Shant, the wheat grain became the size of a rosehip and Little Mher wants to come out of the cave, but some whelps are holding the stone closing the cave entrance and don’t want him to come out. But, listen, we are more powerful, we will open the cave door and Little Mher will come out.
  - My friend, I am keeping the piece of bread you treated me, we will share it and enjoy, hold on!
  Artur Sakunts, member of the public monitoring group at the detention facilities.
  The meeting was held on March 11. These memoirs were written at night