For those who haven't read it yet, Marianna Grigoryan's Eurasianet story about the disastrous apricot harvest in Armenia this year, is well worth checking out. The story is dramatic enough, but I asked Marianna if she could explain a bit more about the apricot's place in Armenian culture. Below is a short q&a with Marianna about her story:
Why did you decide to write this story?
The apricot is something special for Armenians and during the harvest in June and July it brings to the motherland many Diaspora Armenians who come to taste the sunny Armenian apricot.
As in late March it was announced that the apricot trees were damaged very much, I was following what will be in June and July. When I went to the market in early June, I was surprised very much: my daughter Sophie, who is 6-years-old asked me to buy some apricots and when I asked the seller how much it costs I was shocked! The most expensive fruit in Yerevan was Apricot! The prices were incredible. I asked the seller is this serious or a joke to have so fantastic a price on Armenian Apricot?
One woman near me who was also shopping compared the price of the apricots with bananas and complained to me that the bananas are coming to Armenia from so far are still cheaper than the apricots grown in Armenia. "You can keep your apricots in a museum," she told the seller. Other people near me who came to buy some fruits joined the conversation and told me that this year no one will buy the apricot. Everyone was angry about the prices and the situation. What a bad year they said. Every year something else happens.
After that I got a call from a friend in the United States and she told me that she had planned to bring her children to Armenia to see relatives and to taste apricot but she canceled her trip after she heard that this year is not good for fruits. Then my mother told me that a friend of hers who has an apricot garden is in an awful situation as the trees don’t even have a leaf on them. "She did not know how the family will survive without apricot," my mother said. This made me think about export and the situation of the people who owned apricot orchards.
What was the image that stayed in your mind the most about the farmers?
The farmers are hopeless and broken, as many of them borrowed a loan to invest into the apricot harvest and they lost everything. The image that stayed most in my mind was the spoiled apricot – little and with brown little things on it – and the voice of the farmer who was ready to cry.
Why is the apricot so special and not another fruit, like grape or fig or apple?
The apricot is called Prunus Aemenicus and everyone in Armenia thinks that the motherland of the apricot is Armenia. Apricot is shown everywhere, even in Armenia's advertisements abroad as a tourism destination. It is believed that the apricots growing in Armenia have a quite different, wonderful, sweet and "sunnier" taste than those in other countries as Armenia's sun is just right for Apricots. As a symbol of national pride the image of apricots is included in Armenian souvenirs. Armenians also take pride of our grapes – their quality has made Armenian Cognac famous – but Apricots are quite different!
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