landlord woes

I am the proud new owner of a new, used toilet that has no seat and still doesn’t flush. How lucky am I? I bought the three-dollar toilet seat in Yeghgeghnadzor and installed it myself a few days later. You would think they were scarce or expensive or something with the lack of them in this country. I had already had enough of the "hovercraft" as one of my brilliant sitemates so aptly put it. But this was only the beginning of my weekly excitement….

Last week I was graced by a visit from my landlord, who has some "business." An hour or two is what she said on the phone. I agreed, and was home at 2pm, a little weary of what my landlord wanted to do in my apartment for 2 hours. After wandering around for a few minutes noting out loud every change I had made to the place since her last visit (and there were a lot), she pulled two candles out of her purse. Large, tall candles. She also removed two pictures—one of her and one of her husband, who is in Russia, and pulled an old plate out of one of my cupboards. She placed the pictures on my table, the plate on top of the pictures and then the lit the candles and stood them on the plate. Then, she explained that the candles must burn all the way down to the plate for good luck and success. Did I mention that these were big candles?

I resigned myself to an afternoon with my landlord and sat down to do some work while she read a book (For the record, the first Armenian I have ever seen read for pleasure, but that is probably because I don’t have a television). The quiet lasted a few minutes until she started wandering around again. She wanted to see the new toilet, so we went to the bathroom and after glancing at the new toilet (of which I had paid for the installation and advanced her the money for the toilet itself, and the new wall, which I also paid for), she promptly began freaking out about how it was an old toilet. Well, yes, its old. That’s what happens when you tell me that a new toilet is 50 dollars and then say that you will pay up to 20 dollars. I actually had nothing to do with the arrangements, as James’ landlord did most of that and explained to me the terms of the deal. Now my landlord is saying she didn’t agree to that. This, for the record, is why I went to her house four times in one day to try and confirm the situation before going out of town. She doesn’t have a phone, which is so convenient. I never did get a hold of her and finally decided that it would be fine—Varton had it under control

After being reminded that she had, in fact, agreed to the old toilet, she says "well, Varton said maybe you would help me." Lets rewind to me paying to have it installed and paying for the new wall and advancing her the money for the toilet. Not to mention all of the other things I have installed, replaced, fixed, cleaned and paid for in this apartment. Oh yeah, and I am paying rent at more than double what any Armenian would pay. If only I could help... I tried to talk to her about it for a while, but she just kept saying "no, I understand, you don’t understand." So, I gave up and called James. He talked to her and then later talked to Varton, who nearly spit out the food in his mouth when he heard the story. At least I have some supporters.

This blew over within an hour, at which point I realized that we were nowhere near being done with the good luck candles. In fact, my landlord ended up sitting in my apartment for seven hours. Seven. Can we say awkward? After four hours of just me and her, I called James to help cut the awkwardness and give me something to do. We decided to make some dinner and watch a movie. We started dinner around 7pm, made French onion soup and blue cheese pasta, while checking on the candles waiting for them to finish. About halfway through, we were joined by the landlord’s daughter, who also came to watch the candles burn. At 8 we finished making dinner, but couldn’t eat because I still had Armenians and candles in my living room. We reheated dinner 3 separate times (false alarms) before the candles finally burned out and we were left alone. Towards the end, the landlord began to see some humor in the situation (thank god) and we were talking a bit about Armenia, this apartment etc. We were joking about the candles never going out, when I said "after the candles go out the plate will start burning, and then table, and then floor," as a joke, of course. My landlord took me very seriously… "no, we can’t do that. That’s what the plate is for, so only the candles will burn." You think? Oh well, I am just a dumb American.