A Little Bit of Humor: The Vulture and the Lamb
By Jirair Tutunjian
Armenian Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan is sitting in the ornate waiting room of Recep Erdogan’s presidential palace. He scratches his recently beardless face while waiting for Erdogan to call him in. Finally, after a wait of 45 minutes, two stone-faced, slit-eyed palace guards right out of Ruritania, order him to follow them. A heavy gate, which is carved with the heads of a dozen vicious looking wolves, opens and Pashinyan hurries forty meters to Erdogan’s vast desk.
Erdogan: What is it? What do you want now?
Pashinyan: I want to tell you…
Erdogan: As you can see, I am busy. What is it this time? Speak up, man.
Pashinyan: You know more than most of my loyalty to you.
Erdogan: Yes, yes…come to the point.
Pashinyan: You know I have done everything you ordered me to do. I even dismissed the so-called Armenian Genocide as a pointless trope.
Erdogan: Yes, as I said, I am a busy man. I run a country of 85 million. I have links with the East and the West. I run the Jihadists, the Muslim Brotherhood, the three-million Turks of Germany. What do you want now?
Pashinyan: I have done everything you ordered me to do. But despite my obedience and loyalty, President Ilham Aliyev keeps pushing me…and making more demands.
Erdogan: What for example?
Pashinyan: He wants me to change the name of Armenia to West Azerbaijan.
Erdogan: What’s wrong with that? It’s just a name. It means nothing. What’s a name? You don’t call your country Armenia. You call it Hayastan. But it’s the same place. You call the mountain, Ararat. We call it Agri Dagh. It’s the same mountain. Your name is Nikol…a Greek name. But that doesn’t make you less of an Armenian.
Pashinyan: He also wants to settle 200,000 Azerbaijanis in Armenia. It would change the character of the country I rule. Besides, 300,000 Armenians were kicked out of Azerbaijan. Do you think he would admit them to Baku, Sumgait? Then there is the case of 120,000 from Nagorno-Karabakh who were driven out of their lands.
Erdogan: Mister Pashinyan, be careful what you say. The Armenians of N-G were terrorist occupiers—like the Zionists. Just as we kicked them out, we will kick out the Zionists from Palestine.
Pashinyan: Mr. Aliyev is demanding that we shutter Medzamor…our vital nuclear energy facility.
Erdogan: You fret too much…You are a bundle of nerves. You have to relax. By the way, try not to shout when someone disagrees with you. You have an awful voice which breaks into an undignified feminine falsetto. Most unbecoming. You sound like a peasant woman.
Pashinyan: Thank you for the tip. There’s so much I can learn from you.
Erdogan: (sips tea but doesn’t offer the thick beverage to Pashinyan. The telephone rings.)
Erdogan: Hello ….Oh, it’s you, Emine. What a pleasure to hear your voice….You say Mehriban Aliyeva, Azerbaijan’s First Lady phoned you. What did she want? Ummmmmmm. She wants to come over……..She wants to undergo cosmetic surgery in Istanbul? Bismillah. This must be her 30th facelift. All right…we will talk when I get home.
Pashinyan: Mehriban Aliyeva, the First Lady of Azerbaijan, is a stunning-looking lady. So gracious, too.
Erdogan: She’s has had more cuts than the enemies of Sultan Abdul Hamid. Try to come to the point.
Pashinyan: You know that whenever I say or do anything which can seem that I am taking my orders from you and from Ilham, my popularity hits rock bottom. In other words, if I concede to every one of your wishes and that of my good friend Ilham, I will lose next year’s parliamentary elections. The new man will not be as friendly with you and with Ilham.
Erdogan: Let me tell you something….priceless advice which will guarantee that you win next year’s parliamentary elections.
Pashinyan: I am all ears.
Erdogan: Tell your voters that if they don’t vote for your party, Turkish-Azeri forces will march into Ermenistan.
Pashinyan: That’s a brilliant strategy. No wonder you have been the head of Turkey for twenty years. Teshekur edarim boyuk ghardash. Every time we talk, I learn so much from you. May I go now?
Erdogan is already on the phone and talking to his wife. He refers to Pashinyan as a “useful idiot.” He asks his wife: “How did Armenians, who value hard work and smarts, wind up with this servile nincompoop?”
