Adventure

If climibing the mountain was about falling in love (see my earlier write-up), whats a good description of having a gun pointed to your head?

Ans: Adventure.

On Sunday, 14th November, I was sitting in my flat at Armenia, working as well as chatting with my wife on the internet. At 4 O'Clock, in the afternoon, I told her I am shutting down because I have to go to the office. Before I actually did shut down there was a knock at the door. I opened the door to see a 25 year old man, decently dressed. He spoke to me in Armenian which I didnt understand a word of. After a few moments of trying to communicate. He motioned me to wait a moment while he went down and brought his friend. I presumed his friend knew English, so when he knocked again, I opened the door. Imagine my surprise to now find TWO men (both about the same age) who were jabbering away in Armenian. One of them while talking walked into the house. I was ok with this since I had several people walk in and walk out, to check the water meter, etc.

Once inside the house the first guy put a handgun to my head while the other closed the door. The second fellow had a menacing looking sharp tool with him. Looked like a wooden handled screw driver with a narrow and pionted head. He closed the door behind him. They began to act menacing and forced me to lie down on the living room sofa.

At this point a little diversion is in order. You may or may not know that by now I have almost a decade of martial arts training and spent a good part of my childhood wondering who I would react in precisely this kind of situation. And now I was in the situation that I was preparing for. I looked at the gun and realized that it is probably a toy gun, but he wasnt holding it still enough for me to see it. I found I was not really panic stricken at all. I evaluated the odds of taking them on, and found that the odds were not good. One out-of-shape middle aged guy against two armed (for all I know) young guys? And what was it for? Some money. I decided the trade off wasnt worth it and decided to act more afraid than I actually felt.

The first man kept the gun trained on my head while the second guy went in and picked up my belt and tied my feet with it, and for the hands he tore some clothes. Obviously they werent well prepared for the whole thing. The searched the whole house asking for "Dollar! Dollar! ", probably one of the three english words they knew. Right behind me was a clothes cupboard which had ALL my money in it. I indicated to my trousers and told them my wallet is in the pocket. They got about $100 from the wallet. When they asked me for more, I told them the only logical thing to say "Office"! I looked away from the cupboard all the time, pretending to be so scared that I couldnt look up!

They gave up searching for money, and decamped with the whatever money the could find (didnt find the majority of the money stashed right behind where they were standing), my laptop, my brand new olympus c770 digital camera :-( Before they left they pulled out the cord from the telephone. How considerate that they didnt cause any serious damage to it.

Within 1 minute of their departure I was free of my bonds and called the dean from the now fixed phone. He in turn called AUA security and together came over to see my upturned house and decide what to do. I thought the police have to be told anyway, and finally the police were called in. They told me that if they were to investigate, I would have to stay there for at least 15 days! I couldnt afford that, so I dropped the case.

The next day I was asked what I thought about the whole thing. On 18th of November, the driver of the car that was dropping me to the airport said in broken english

"You were robbed?"

I said "yes".

"You will never come back to Armenia again?"

I said "I loved Armenia and will come back again if I have the opportunity to do so. But the next time around I will be careful when I open the door!"


As I relaxed in the airline seat I looked back at my stay and said to myself "what an adventure".


Mathai