I am certainly not the first foreigner to find myself in Yerevan in mid-July marveling over the spectacle that is Vardavar. During this strange summer festival of pagan origin, Armenian residents enjoy full license to drench each other with water in public. It is a sort of country-wide water fight, where children, adults, and even the elderly arm themselves with buckets, hoses, and squirt guns, finding creative ways to deliver a refreshing splash to a (usually unsuspecting) passerby. Although I was warned of Vardavar beforehand, I didn’t really know what to expect when the day finally came. With a degree of unease, I ventured out towards the city center with only a small bucket recycled from a fermented milk container to defend myself.
At 11am the streets were still eerily quiet. There was no trace of Vardavar anywhere, and the populace mostly went about their business. Yet I nonetheless attracted many a suspicious gaze, which I hoped to alleviate by holding my bucket upside-down to show I was unarmed. It was not until I had walked about 15 minutes and was within a few blocks from Republic Square that I first began to see casualties of combat: some families walking back completely drenched.
By the time I had made it to Khachkar Square, a public park just next to the city center, Vardavar had begun in earnest. After deftly maneuvering past a group of kids with squirt guns, I fell victim to a drive-by as a car pulled up to the sidewalk and its passengers opened fire upon me from the window. Not yet discouraged, I ventured on towards Republic Square, finding that it had descended into an all-out brawl consisting of several thousand participants. I fought mostly along the water’s edge, taking care that I didn’t become one of those unfortunate souls who were tossed directly into the fountain. Eventually I conceded that I was too poorly equipped to continue, and made my way back to my apartment to put on some dry clothes. This time, however, my neighborhood was the site of intense combat. Just before reaching my home, I was ambushed by an old lady on the balcony, who scored a direct hit on me with an expertly timed pour-of-the-bucket.
I received an invite from a local friend to join them for a get-together at their place. At last, the tables were turned. I was immediately issued a squirt gun as I entered the apartment, and we all took position on the balcony. A sort of unspoken law of warfare emerged—we only doused those who were themselves armed, and left the elderly and small children untouched. But aside from that small sliver of responsibility, I felt transported back to the devious schoolyard antics of my childhood.
Vardavar has its fair share of detractors—many of the local Armenians I spoke with informed me that they opt to stock up on supplies the day before, so they don’t have to brave the water outside. And after the sun set and the weather cooled down, I found I had less of a sense of humor about getting ambushed. I don’t think that after six weeks in Yerevan I’m very much qualified to speculate on what Vardavar says about the character of Armenia and its people. But I can say that there’s something rather intimate about being splashed with water by a stranger, and the whole experience felt quite foreign to me. Halloween is perhaps the closest equivalent to the festival in America. But Halloween celebrations are confined to single neighborhoods—it is a collection of countless simultaneous mini-celebrations rather than a single country-wide ritual. Moreover, the “trick” part of “trick-or-treat” is now mostly relegated to the domain of a few rambunctious teenagers, whose actions are generally reproached by members of polite society. With Vardavar the whole country of Armenia seems to move past the trappings of politeness. It is a day in which citizens treat each other with brazen impropriety without consequence, and then promptly move forward with no bad blood between them. More than any medieval fortress or picturesque mountain monastery, it is that peculiar sense of community that I’ve found to be Armenia’s greatest draw.
Title VIII Research and Training Fellow
Fulbright-Hays Fellowship Recipient
Advanced Russian Language and Area Studies Program
Yerevan, Armenia, Summer 2023