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Illustration by Drew Shannon
Hello. You don’t know me. I most likely don’t know you. But it’s nice to meet you.
I am Arty Sarkisian. I can feel your confusion. It’s Arty. My name. Don’t worry. If we were to meet in person, I would say it again just so that you would have the chance to learn how to pronounce it. You will probably still refer to me as “you,” trying to make it sound natural. It wouldn’t, but I don’t mind.
If you are working at Starbucks, don’t worry! Spell my name however you want. You can go with Artie, Ardy, Andy, Carty or just pretend you forgot to write it down. I don’t mind. I know my name. And I know I ordered a medium cappuccino. Just be comfortable, okay?
I came to Canada a little more than a year ago and the first thing I heard when I landed at the Montreal airport was, “Do you get it?” That was from a customs officer who was looking at my Russian passport. That red booklet with golden letters – the least fashionable passport nowadays.
Maybe he meant that I should be ashamed of my country’s actions (which I was). Or maybe he wanted to see whether I “get” what a great honour it was for me to be in Canada.
I did get it. And I still do. I really do.
Then, he flipped over the pages and said: “Artem? Artem Sarkisian? How the hell do you pronounсe that?” Yes, my real name is Artem. And yes, it’s one heck of a name, too.
Arten, Artim, Arthen, Tim. “I’m sorry?” “Pardon me?” “Say that again?” Those are all the ways you can pronounce my unfortunate combination of first-name syllables.
In reality, it sounds nothing like what you think it would. It sounds almost like “Artyom.” I know you still mispronounced it, but don’t worry, it’s not you – it’s the name.
In Russian, it can mean “healthy” and it is said that this name comes from Artemis, an ancient Greek Goddess of hunt. (Ironic because I am anything in the world but a hunter was never particularly “blooming” as a kid.)
However, when you are an immigrant in front of a customs officer, you don’t have the time to talk about linguistics with this God-like figure. And it’s hard to be breezy when this person underlines the hellishness of your name. You know that you have everything they need and that you have done nothing wrong, but you are still nervous that they might keep you out of the heaven called “arrivals.”
By coming to Canada, I really felt like I was coming to heaven. Although I was leaving my parents behind: my mother who couldn’t stop crying; my father who was holding her so that she wouldn’t run after her “last child,” I still believed that I was coming to a country as pure and friendly as purity and friendliness could get. I believed I was coming home.
But once I was handed the passport and the study permit; once I got my luggage – a suitcase with my whole life packed in it – once was taking my first steps on Canadian soil, I had to face the reality – there is no place for Artems here.
Artems are Russians. Russians are evil. And I don’t want to be evil. So, as I was wheeling my blue suitcase with yellow ribbons out of the airport, I was thinking, how should I look and sound less Russian?
This is not my first time. I am an experienced chameleon when it comes to looking less like an immigrant.
My parents emigrated from Armenia to Russia in the 1990s, right before the fall of the Soviet Union, and I was born in the newly established Russian Federation. But still, the name that is too Russian for Canada was never Russian enough for Russia.
Growing up, I would always try to trick Russian people with my impeccable knowledge of Russian history and Russian swear words, but they would still look at the “-ian” part of my surname and know my foreignness.
I am both “the Russian guy” and “that Armenian fella.”
I was seven when my first English teacher in Saint Petersburg called me Arty, trying to translate my untranslatable name into English. When I asked her, why was it so different from Artem, she smiled and said, “Well, it’s cute and fun like you are, my dear.”
Of course, she was lying. I might have been cute, but I was never fun. And yet I adopted this idea of Arty, despite its alleged cuteness and joyfulness.
I desperately want to fit in. Fit in this society. Your society. I am hoping some day “you” will become “us.” And “Artem Sarkisian – the Russian guy” will become “Arty Sarkisian – that Canadian dude with a weird accent.”
Perhaps you think I should be different for the sake of being different? Well, I have been doing that full-time for my whole life. I’d like to quit. I don’t want to be asked whether I get “it” as if I am responsible for all the “its” made by the Russian government. I am not one of them. And never will be.
Perhaps you think I should love the name I was given and be proud of it? “That’s the only way one can find peace,” the fearless John Smiths and Mary Greens usually add.
“I can’t love the name that is so evidently not for me,” I usually answer.
As lovely as it may sound, let me be someone else.
I am Arty. Not Marty or Carty. Not “What’s that?” or “Say again?”
You can call me all that for sure. But I’m still Arty. Just Arty.
Arty Sarkisian lives in Ottawa.