Intersections: ‘Los’ can mean Glendale, but Detroit is home

On the plane, I took two books with me to read. The first was “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” by the patron saint of California and one of my personal heroes, Joan Didion. The second was “An Armenian Sketchbook,” by Vasily Grossman, a Jewish-Russian writer and journalist who visited Armenia in the 1960s and wrote a deeply personal memoir about his time there.

When I pulled them out of my backpack, I realized that my decision to bring these two particular books wasn’t an accident. When put together, it looked like they define me — at least on the surface.

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When Joan Didion writes about California, about all its places and people, I feel like they’re all living inside me.

When Grossman describes how the heart and soul of Armenia is not found in its churches or its buildings, but the sprawling courtyards surrounded by Soviet-era apartment blocks, where laundry and gossip are hung out to dry, he is describing my thoughts, every time I walk the streets in a country that is called “homeland” but feels more “land” than “home.”

I met many strangers in Armenia, as I always do, because this is a place where social conventions of not talking to people you don’t know do not apply. And each time they asked me where I was from, and to make life easier for both of us, my answer was always Los Angeles.

“I can tell from your accent you’re not from here,” an elderly man said one afternoon. It was a statement I had heard over and over again, on every single trip to this part of the world.

He was playing backgammon with a group of other elderly men, all with ancient faces and stories soon set to disappear. I was working on a story and asked to record the sound of their game, the dice hitting the wooden board, the conversation they were having in some secret language tied to the game.

“Los,” I said back. In Armenia, that’s all you need to say — no “Angeles,” no explanation of where exactly in this “Los” you’re referring to, just uttering one word is enough. Sometimes, no one even asks if you mean “Glendale.” As far as anyone knows, “Los” already means Glendale.

It was easier to say “Los,” than to say “Glendale.” It was easier to say “Los” than to explain I wasn’t actually born in the United States, and it was much easier to say “Los” than to say that I was now in Detroit.

Being in Detroit is difficult to explain to people in the United States, but attempting to explain it to people in Armenia sounds like a deep, black hole I did not feel like venturing down.

But now, after three months living in what is regularly considered the most infamous city in America, Los Angeles feels a little more faraway. Detroit feels real. This is a city that never lets you forget that you’re in Detroit, the way L.A. can make you forget you’re anywhere but your own little bubble.

Living in Detroit means embracing its urban revolution, but also its urban problems. Living in Detroit means meeting the most genuine people I’ve ever come across, but also being wary of the new people and cars I see in my neighborhood.

Living in Detroit is more than the one-dimensional image you’ve seen of it on nighttime broadcasts, but you have to be here to actually believe it and let it seep in.

I am now in a stage where I am accepting my reality — that this is not somewhere I have gone to for a few months and am now leaving, this is a place that is slowly creeping into the lexicon of cities that makeup my patchwork existence — and that’s completely OK.

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LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.