Their home was a humble one and rented to them. There weren’t many
Things for us to do other than interact with our existing environment.

We flip through children’s books. She points to a duck. Shamiran quizzes her
what the picture means in Russian and German. She quickly responds, lightning
Quick, like a frog’s touching reaching out to a mosquito.

Then she asks what it means in Armenian. Regardless, I don’t understand.
Correctly, she responds once more. Her mother’s face lights up with pride for
her daughter. Indeed, she is quite proud of little Maria. Then she says some words
to Maria in Armenian and little Maria starts giggly. I’d like to know what she said.

”Are you sure you can baby-sit?” asks Shamiran cautiously. “Of course, Of course,”
I really need not tell her.

When I first arrived in Germany, I planned a year of classical guitar recitals. However,
My first host family had a piano in their den. And guitar seemed better suited to the
Corridors of Alhambra in Spain.

I don’t recall if I asked to take lessons or she offered them. I know she never charged me.
Maybe because I was also a foreigner in a sometimes dark and sinister land. And she could
Relate to me while her husband spent months away from his family at a time, working for
A floating orchestra.

She gave me free piano lessons once a week, and then feels embarrassed to ask
me to baby-sit her daughter for a few hours.

She needs to study for a music exam, which is a hard thing to do when you
have an energized little toddler running around the house and climbing over
you while your playing the piano.

I feel like I should pay Shamiran for babysitting Maria. It is the greatest
joy to play with a wooden train set with her, while her mother practices
Chopin for hours. The music, the little giggling talented toddler. You are
transformed into another world.

Shamiran and Zurik are both talented musicians from Armenia. After the
Soviet Union collapsed, they fled the country to live in Germany. They
lived near Tecklenburg, in a secluded farm along with 20 other ‘Russians’.
IT is a huge, beautiful, German country house “FACHWERK”
but even with 20 people it is crammed.

One day Zurick practiced his Cello outside. It was a lovely summer day
with a clear sky, not a common event in Germany. Natalia Stahl was passing
by with her car and then stopped. She, one that grew up in a family that
breathed music, could not drive further. She stopped in the middle of
the road, and sat enchanted listening to the rest of the piece. She is a
music teacher, musician herself, and a collector of ziphons and violins.
Inside her house, are instruments dating to the beginning of the 1800
and even further back. All she has known since she was young was music.
While other kids were reading Asterix & Oblix comics, she was playing
Bach’s first Minuets.

She took them in. She protected them. Eventually she managed to let the
German Government let them stay in the country. But only if they studied
music. So Shamiran is studying in Osnabrück at a Conservatorium, while
raising her little daughter, Maria, who was born in Germany. Her lively
husband Zurick travels around the globe with a well-known German orchestra.

I am always delighted when I catch Zurick home. I walk in with Shamiran,
wondering why she seems to be covering the view from the living room.
Zurick is reading a newspaper and smoking a pipe. He immediately turns around
-“John, John” he says. “Come here, sit down, let us drink a beer”. I go in
and sit down while my teacher frowns. Drinking a German Pils is not the
best way to start a lesson. As Zurick fetches a bottle out of the refrigerator,
she says something to him in Armenisch. He responds. I didn’t understand
a word of course, but I understood it anyway.

I sat down. He pours the beer in a glass. He picks up his pipe, lights it
again, and begins to tell his stories. He was on a cruise ship that went
from Sardinia Italy, through Saudi Arabia, around the Persian golf, to
Singapore, Thailand .. all over the globe.

He proudly tells me how the cruise costs over 20,000 DM. He shows me un-
believable pictures of the evening buffets. Huge ice sculptures and then
huge food sculptures. He tells me of the huge bowls, no buckets he says of
caviar. So much, so fast, he has never seen in his life.

As I am about to take my first sip, Shamiran maneuvers in darting for me. She grabs
me by the arm. “John, ..” she says, a touch angered “We have a piano lesson.
Remember?”

“OF course, of course..” I am sure she stood at the door the entire time, waiting
for the moment when her husband would shut his mouth.