Coins in the Fountain
Back then, I didn’t know that those round playgrounds with levelled stairs and benches were called Platea in Greek – the modern amphitheater-piazzas. In the morning, Greek elderlies go there, enjoying the high sun, trying to feel its taste once more before their suns are lost in oblivion, the kids are playing with a ball, the same gortsnagorts game that the Armenian kids were playing in front of my eyes at Komaygi. There were these kids, playing gortsnagorts, a couple of kids cycling and some drawing on the ground with colorful chalks. In a perfectly normal moment, a kid suddenly crouches focused on something on the ground. He then raises with a coin in his hand, as shiny as his own delighted face. He puts the coin in his pocket, so no one sees his treasure, he hides it immediately hunting for more shiny things. A minute in, there is another coin! This time it’s 100 drams instead of 10, what a catch! And another one!
An elderly man is following the child accidentally dropping shiny coins from his pocket.
“…Երեկ էր այն օրը, երբ պապս ազնիվ
Մանկությանս ջրհոր կոպեկ էր նետում,
Ջարդում էինք անիվը ճակատագրի՝
Երջանկության մի պատառ էինք պոկում։”
Norayr Manvelyan (b. 2000, Yerevan, Armenia) is a short-story writer in Armenian. His speakers are always self-critical as they are narrating the curious stories and the peculiar characters. Manvelyan’s inspirations are the people he has met on his life path and the experiences he shared with or the stories of which he has witnessed and heard about. Sincerity and music are cornerstones of the author’s prose work and especially poetry work. As an ultimate way of self-expression and introspection, Manvelyan gets exposed, almost naked against the whiteness of the paper, and dives into the depths of paper-ocean. “Writing is a perfectly rational process unless your pen is in your hand, then the pen takes you on a journey, and leads your hand in the unknown ways.” The poet believes in Love, the driving, creative and universal language that all the people have intrinsic knowledge of and can speak against all odds, Indifference, War and Hatred, and Beauty, the trace of Love in the physical and metaphysical reality we are living in.
With Love and Beauty.
