Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Serj is Armenian.

Like most Armenians around the world,

he wasn't born in Armenia.

Armenia remains a dream, a subject of stories,

yet still, against all odds, a place.

- Armenia is a small land-locked Christian nation

surrounded by mostly non-Christian neighbors.

Azerbaijan over there, Iran down there,

and Turkey right there.

Turkey and relations with Turkey

and the Armenian people's terrible history

with that country being the central

and defining issue of Armenian identity

and a present-day political reality

103 years after what just about anyone would call genocide.

Turkey has always adamantly denied that,

saying it was simply a messy war.

Yerevan is the capital of Armenia,

a city of about one million people.

Mount Ararat looms over it,

a cultural touchstone and a constant reminder

of what was done on the other side.

- Think of Armenia, and chances are

you think instead of an Armenian,

maybe someone you know or maybe someone on TV.

These guys, for instance, famous Armenians.

We needed an Armenian.

I needed an Armenian to push me over the edge,

help me find a window,

a lens with which to look at a country

which, for some reason, I'd managed to not visit

on my travels.

Then, this guy reached out--

Serj Tankian, front man for the Armenian-American band

System of a Down.

And the whole thing started to fall into place.

Serj first visited Armenia 17 years ago.

Since then, he's performed a number of shows,

including one with System of a Down

during the centennial of the Armenian genocide.

We meet up at Dolmama,

his favorite restaurant in Yerevan,

and right away I identify a potential problem.

Well, my first question is:

I understand you're a pescatarian?

- Yeah. - How does one--

- You're like, "What the fuck are you doing?"

- This is a land-locked country

in the heart of, like, meat on a stick zone.

Well, I'm interested to see

how you navigate your way through this week.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we've got amazing trout.

And lots of great veggies.

I'm just busting your balls.

Of course you are.

- So how Armenian are you? I mean...

- That's a really good question.

You were born in--

- Yeah, I was born in Beirut, grew up in L.A.

I'm Armenian by culture. Both my parents are Armenian.

My grandparents, you know, ended up in Syria and Lebanon

because of the genocide.

And how Armenian am I?

That's a really good question, man.

The majority of Armenians that live in the Diaspora

didn't voluntarily migrate.

You know, they were-- they were forced migrations,

pogroms, you know, after the genocide.

So they ended up in the Middle East and Europe

and different parts of the world.

So, we have this kind of feeling of being kicked out,

and that longing is different than other diasporas I think

because of that.

- Diaspora Armenian communities,

wherever they are, have been held together

by deep feelings of nationalism

and injustice for what happened to them

and how the world refused to acknowledge it.

Dolmama specializes in modern versions

of Armenian classic dishes.

Khashlama, a braised lamb shank

served with rice pilaf.

It's a big little snack.

That is a leg of...

a leg of lamb, a little guy, yes.

Yeah.

Wow. It's pretty too.

- So manti is like my grandmother used to make it,

but it looks completely different than this

because this is vegetarian manti.

They're like little boats with spices and onions.

- You probably thank Genghis Khan for this.

The dumplings.

He made it happen.

He took all the manuscripts, killed a million people but--

- But he left you dumplings. - He left--yeah.

Mmm, that's awesome.

Yeah, this is what my soul needed.

Good.

- What was it like coming back the first time?

And how old were you, and what was it like?

I had a mystical connection

because I had never been to Armenia.

And we had only read about it in books per se, you know.

Modern Armenia is different

than what I had thought of, you know,

because it's thriving, it's young, you know.

It's got a lot of interesting dynamics.

And I remember the first time I flew back to L.A.

the feeling that I got getting out of the plane

is "Why am I back here?"

Like, it was a weird thing where it's this--

inescapable feeling of kind of the land

having some kind of pull

on your blood or something like that.

Genealogy, I don't know what it is.

- Do you think that Armenia looks to the West for anything?

Yes, definitely.

I think, you know, culturally

Armenia is very European.

- Culturally? But... - Culturally.

- Politically, it's very much tied into Russia.

Not just as an ex-Soviet republic,

but there's a lot of economic investment from Russia,

and Russia, obviously, based on the last two world wars

is extremely-- what's the word--

they're very afraid of their borders, let's say.

- Yes, they are acutely sensitive--

- Acutely sensitive. - To particularly this area.

- There are three million Armenians living in Armenia,

another eight million around the world.

Ever since the genocide,

it's been a long, existential struggle for survival.

Recent history is defined by three major events--

a massive earthquake in 1988,

followed by the collapse of the USSR in 1991,

and then a full-scale war with Azerbaijan in 1992.

Not to mention limited employment opportunities

and most significantly its borders,

of which approximately 80% have been closed

due to relationships with its Turkish

and Azeri neighbors.

Things have not been easy for Armenians.

On a hillside overlooking Yerevan sits

a sprawling memorial to the genocide of 1915.

On the other side of town, another memorial,

the Yerevan Cascade.

Richard Giragosian is an American-born professor

and political analyst who now lives here in Armenia.

- How many were lost during this?

- Most estimates historically

put it around 1.5 million.

That's a lot of people.

- Especially a lot of people when we look at the per capita,

when we look at the impact this had.

So, what happened?

In the early 20th Century,

what was historically western Armenia

was under the control of the Ottoman Empire,

present day Turkey.

Justifying their actions by the widely held sentiment

that Christian Armenians would align themselves

with a hostile and also Christian Russia,

then undergoing its second revolution

and threatening their borders,

the Turks rounded up Armenian intellectuals

and summarily executed them.

Military and police units were dispatched to the countryside

to drive out Armenians from their villages.

They hanged local leaders in the town squares,

burned churches, destroyed manuscripts,

then marched anyone left towards the Syrian desert,

deliberately starving them along the way.

Those who survived scattered across the globe.

They formed large and vibrant communities

that survive today.

They never forgot the past

and who and what had pushed them

from their homeland.

- Let's start with this: genocide.

Many people seem awfully and curiously reluctant

to use this word.

As American national foreign policy,

we use what, "catastrophe"?

Yeah, a "regrettable series of incidents."

- Yeah, how insulting. - Yes.

But, I mean, it seems to me,

just as a casual observer,

anytime a state actor or organization

makes a concerted and organized effort

to eradicate any ethnic or national group

that--that's genocide, right?

- Yes, what's important though, however,

is this is our defining issue.

This is the unifying issue,

and it's probably in many ways

the only defining issue, both good and bad.

- For Armenians, both Diaspora and living here?

- Yes, it's the fact that, yes,