[b]Yerevan, Armenia[/b]

Abbasian's mother had managed to find a small cafe tucked away from the busy streets as the celebrations got underway. Inside, only a few people milled about quietly, reflecting on something or another. Two soldiers ate in silence at the back, one with a large bandage over his chest. The mood was more subdued than the parades outside. Only a teenaged girl ran the desk, with everyone else having taken the day off. She wiped down surfaces absentmindedly, listening to a quiet, crackling radio ecstatically narrate the parades in the streets of Yerevan. Abbasian followed his mother in, ducking under the short clearance of the door and stepping behind her as she went. Quickly, she ushered Abbasian and his sister to a nearby table, and proceeded to let the waitress know that they were there. Seconds later, Abbasian pulled a chair for his mother, sitting her down properly before taking his own seat. There, they looked at each other in silence before Abbasian's mother sighed. "It's good to see everyone home," she announced, looking at the two soldiers discussing something in the rear.

"Me, too. I'm going to get out of the Army and I'm going to work on the ranch and I'm going to be as happy as can be," proclaimed the son with a smirk.

"Get out of the Army?" his sister asked suddenly. "But you could be a general! They have all those fancy bits of ribbon and medals."

"Not quite," chuckled Abbasian. "See, I'd have to stay in for a long time until I was as old as mother. Older, even."

"Then why don't you, Haroud?" inquired the young girl, playing with her butter knife.

"Because truthfully," Abbasian whispered, leaning in closer to his sister's ear. "The Army is kind of silly."

She giggled softly. "Why? I thought it was full of big tough men. They aren't silly. They're serious."

"Well," the soldier explained, "it turns out that when you get a bunch of big, tough men to fight lots of battles, they need to be kept track of. Some of them aren't smart enough to stay in the same town for more than a day without someone telling them they can't."

"Our dog used to escape a lot!" offered Abbasian's sister. "But now he's old..."

"Well, I won't say that they're dogs, but Army men are prone to running off. We even get tags like a dog gets on their collar, to let everyone know who we are." Abbasian reached beneath his telnyashka to pull out his dogtags. He quickly slipped them over his head and placed them in his sister's hand.

"So they can return you when you're naughty and you run away?" giggled his sister.

"Exactly!" exclaimed Abbasian. "And because some soldiers are silly like that, they make me write a bunch of papers for everything so they know what I'm doing all the time. I had to write my name on six different papers to get some clothes!"

"But you can just buy some at the store." Abbasian's sister put down her knife, and looked over to her mother. She was chuckling, too, watching her son try to explain bureaucracy.

"Not in the Army. We get them for free. Sorta. It's hard to explain."

By this time, the waitress had arrived with a menu. Her black hair spilled over her shoulders as she beamed a smile at the young soldier who was home. Abbasian had found service workers to be kind to the men and women of the armed forces. It was, as the government said, their patriotic duty to support them. She asked for a round of drinks to start, with Abbasian ordering coffee, his mother tea, and his sister some fruit juice. A few minutes later the drinks arrived, and Abbasian went to cautiously sip at his coffee. It turned out that it was way better than anything he had drank in Erzurum's theater. The flavor actually surprised him, and he stopped immediately for fear of being overwhelmed. It was too strong for his taste. His mother laughed at him. "Haroud, are you not used to true Armenian coffee?"

"Not anymore," admitted Abbasian as he stirred the coffee with his spoon. "They stuff they gave us in our rations was bland. Only good for a quick buzz."

"And this?"

"Well, this is very, very strong. Wow. I can't wait to actually eat something that isn't canned stew either."

"Pick anything you want. I have money."
"Well, it looks like today is a feast day," cried Abbasian, rubbing his hands together. Any excuse to have food was a good one. Especially his first meal after deployment. So for that, he chose a dish of msov byoreks. The little pastries were filled with minced meats and lightly spiced: something to excite his senses after months of bland rations. A few minutes later when the bowl arrived, he dug in with the ferocity of a man starved for several weeks - someone who, in essence, he was. His mother ate a modest salad while his sister didn't order anything because she had eaten a street vendor's schwarma earlier. Instead, she occasionally stole some of Abbasian's byoreks with a cheeky smile. Abbasian didn't mind, even if the same offense often led to battles involving lead pipes with his buddies on the front. Their lunch was quick and sweet, with the family sharing various stories and laughs. Abbasian's mother paid the bill as she promised, before the trio got up to leave. Abbasian's sister got all of the complementary mints, eating them with glee as she skipped behind her brother. When they exited into the alley that housed the cafe, they were surprised to see celebrators lined up on the road to their right. Figuring that it was worth an investigation, Abbasian dragged his mother towards the crowds.

They pierced through the mob of people dressed in their finest clothes, past a few sailors wearing their floppy berets, and eventually made it to the police barricade at the edge of a sidewalk. A policeman, stray bits of confetti stuck in his dark green uniform, smiled as he patrolled the line. Offering a quick hello, Abbasian turned to watch a pickup truck drive past with two giant Armenian flags streaming from the bed. The students who held them cheered and pumped their fists in the air, throwing out candies to the various children gathered around. Then, beyond the corner, Abbasian saw what he instinctively recognized as a Polish IFV peek out from a turn. It was an armored detachment seeking to join the main parade heading to Republican Square. Watching the metal beast lumber slowly towards them, Abbasian recognized a familiar blonde man straddling the barrel. Upon closer inspection, he wore only his telnyashka to reveal bulging muscles underneath. It was Igor Zokarski. Abbasian, beginning to wave, stopped himself. "Igor! Igor! Igor Zokarski!" he shouted.

Zokarski, waving and throwing flowers and confetti, failed to notice. "Who's that?" asked Abbasian's mother from behind.

"A buddy," answered Abbasian. Suddenly, a thought crossed his mind. Would the policeman mind if he were to jump the fence? "Igor!" he repeated.

As the tank drew closer, Zokarski noticed the jumping man in front of him. At first thinking that he was a celebrator, he primed his throwing arm to deliver some confetti in his general direction. But then he saw the familiar face - the crooked nose and pale lips that could only belong to Haroud Abbasian. Eyes widened in ecstatic surprise, he shouted back: "Haroud! Holy shit, brother!"

The tank approached, driver being showered with flowers from bystanders. He waved and paid no attention to Abbasian. Zokarski, meanwhile, leaned down from the barrel: "Jump on! Join us!"

"I have my family!" Abbasian replied, looking back to his mother.

"Is your mom [i]desantniki[/i]?" laughed Zokarski. "I'm sure she can learn!"

"If you had enough space for everyone's mothers you'd be full!"

"Shut up and hop on!"

Now the tank was directly in front of Abbasian, and crawling away. Looking back to his mother and sister, Abbasian urged them to come with him. The silent protest from his mother was instantly subdued as the son grabbed her lightly to persuade. He had hopped the barricade by then, picking up his little sister in his arms - now he began to tear off towards Zokarski's tank with his mother in tow. "This is crazy!" she shouted, picking up her skirt to run.

"Grab on!" Abbasian ordered, ignoring her protests. In the back, one of the wildly grinning soldiers reached out to take Abbasian's sister. The tank moved slowly enough that it was possible to grab onto the handrails and hoist up. His mother, on the other hand, needed some help. Using hand signals, Abbasian convinced a soldier to open the rear doors. They flung open to reveal two men with their arms outstretched. "Come on!" they laughed maniacally. "We have you!"

Abbasian's mother, still unsure, leaped into the tank's cabin. The doors closed behind her, and seconds later her head poked through an open roof hatch where she was helped up to sit on the side with the rest of the soldiers. Abbasian, still jogging behind the tank, managed to grab a hold to the handrail and pull himself up to meet with Zokarski himself. They wordlessly exchanged machismo backslaps and handshakes before Abbasian decided to pose heroically on the turret. One of the soldiers produced a sword, inexplicably, from the cabin, and handed it to Abbasian. He held it high, like a conquering general. Behind them, the policeman who had been patrolling the barricade paid no attention. Now the parade element was en route, ready for the full thing. Abbasian, as he quickly found, would be right at the center of it.

[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

Private First Class George Yaglian's military service was similarly almost over, but not quite. He gathered all of his things off of a green leather seat on the Yerevan-Sevan train route, and hopped off onto the steamy platform. It was a few weeks past the celebrations, and Sevan could be seen glittering even from the train station. New buildings, built to accommodate the new workers who were streaming in by the hundreds to work on the infrastructure such as the Hrazdan River Dam and the planned Azerbaijani oil pipeline, had arisen within the city limits. On the mountainous coast far in the distance, the lights from the affluent seaside resorts and mansions twinkled delicately. The vibrant city had always been known for its excellent tourism, but now Sevan was beginning to take on a new meaning. New jobs, new vibrancy, flooded into the city by the day. Workers and soldiers, looking for a place to spend their money, had funded the growth of a fledgling casino industry. Over the years, neon lights had popped up around the seaside district, and quickly the place became known for gambling and sin rather than restful relaxation. All manner of vices could be indulged in, from drugs to prostitutes to binge drinking. But with the influx of all these new people came the melting pot of culture.

Yaglian was enamored by the musical sensations coming out of the city. He held a certain romanticism about the town - the city that indeed never slept. Despite the fact that the quasi-legal drugs had brought the mob to power in the city, Yaglian thought of it highly for some reason. Armenians, Artsakh and Nakhchivan Azeris, Georgians, Caucasians, Russians, Greeks, Syrians, and even Turks all populated the rapidly growing city. Their cultures mixed and flowed, bringing enemies together and melding them into something new. Yaglian had tried as hard as he could to get his change of station to Joint Base Sevan Lake, where he would be guarding hangars on special duty with Air Force security. Not only a change of job from the boring frontier of Georgia, but an opportunity to make it big. This was where anyone could make themselves: Yaglian had brought his voice and his saxophone, and he was seeking others to be with him for the journey ahead. Maybe he wouldn't end up reenlisting at the end of his term, because he'd be a celebrity. But one could only hope, and Yaglian sometimes thought that he was simply being naive. Those thoughts, however, were usually drowned out by imaginary crowds cheering for him. So he stepped out of the station with all of his worldly possessions in his duffel bag to hail a cab to the base. The weekend would allow him to get situated in the barracks before Monday's shift.

Music was Yaglian's destiny, or so he told himself. It was the one thing he knew how to do in life. As he stared out of the windows of the cab, totally in awe of the flashing lights and music from city-wide loudspeakers, he wondered if lady luck would smile upon him. He sure hoped it would.