The teenager did go to find the middle-aged rabbi, who came to the small house without hesitating, the pair speaking no words as they walked back. Rabbi Rothstein had not seen Hamak’s mother in many years, but he cried with her and comforted her as they prayed the Vidui. Hamak stood in disbelief as the rabbi of Sheik Mordecai Synagogue, the only synagogue in Yerevan, and his mother prayed in a language the teenager had never heard spoken before that moment. In that instant, he knew that every word his mother told him was the truth and he knew this truth would change his pathway in life.
His mother died the next day and received a funeral and burial under the auspices of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Hamak watched the priest place an icon of Saint Gregory into the dead hands of his mother as her body lay in an open coffin. As he watched, Hamak decided that he must know more about what it means to be Jewish. He kept his word to his mother and never said a word to his father, but his curiosity grew into obsession. He would look for books on Judaism only to realize that the communist regime that controlled his country had long since cleansed the libraries of Jewish literature or culture.
His obsession grew as his thirst for knowledge went unsatisfied. Finally, almost three years after his mother’s death, as the Soviet Union was entering its final death throes, he turned to the only source he could find. On a dark winter evening he knocked on the door of the home of Rabbi Solomon Rothstein. The rabbi recognized him and remembered every moment of the morning visit to his mother’s deathbed three years earlier. Hamak spent two hours with the rabbi that night, consuming knowledge as fast as the rabbi and his wife could speak. That was the start of a growing friendship defined by unannounced visits from the young Armenian every few months or so.
That same year Hamak entered Yerevan Polytechnic Institute as an electrical engineering major. The cost of attendance was free, but he found himself in almost nightly arguments with his father, who wanted him to work as a truck driver and contribute money to the family. The economy was collapsing as it was throughout the old Soviet empire. His father was drinking and each day the prospects for earning money seemed to dim. Hamak’s younger brother, then 14-years-old, increasingly turned to Hamak for emotional support. During the day Hamak was at school where he was free and thrived in the intellectual environment that was exploding as the heavy hand of the Soviet state was crumbling. On campus, various groups openly debated concepts like Democracy, private property ownership and free speech. Revolution was occurring and Hamak was in the middle of it all.
But every night, he would return to the realities of family life, reminding him always of the darkness and despair of the final weeks of his mother’s life. Father’s demands were intensifying, the stress of his financial situation aging him in front of his sons. Hamak finally agreed to drive a truck on weekends and some nights to help make money. He started in late October of his first year in University. This certainly helped with finances, stopping the worst of the bleeding, but the family was treading water at best. Hamak told his father that they would be okay in the end. Everything was in disarray in Armenia, but as far as Hamak could tell they were still in a better position than most. His father seemed to gain no solace from this argument. At least, Hamak told himself, he enjoyed driving a small straight truck around the streets of the city. From the start, he made his reputation by always being on time. At the tail end of seven decades of communist rule, showing up on time was a trait that made you famous.
In February, as the latest winter snowfall melted into a black mess, Hamak was studying at home for a midterm exam in calculus the following day. His father came home late that night. He had been drinking with his friends, arguing over the relative merits of communism, European socialism or American capitalism. He was already angry as he walked in the door. Seeing Hamak home instead of out earning money set him off and the pair spent the next five minutes yelling at each other before the father headed into his small bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Hamak drank a beer to calm himself before returning to his books. He had to be ready for his test at 11 the next morning. He finally went to the room he shared with his brother at three in the morning to get a few hours of sleep. When he awoke, it was 8:32. Hamak headed for the home’s single bathroom. As he passed his father’s bedroom it struck him that the door was still closed. His father never left the door closed and should have been long gone.
Hamak, standing in his underwear, knocked on the door. No response. He knocked again. “Father?” Nothing. He opened the door. During the night his father had died of a heart attack. Hamak and his younger brother were now alone and Hamak was now the head of the family. He dropped out of University that week and began his full-time career as a truck driver, always being sure to guard his reputation for being on time.
As the years passed by, Hamak brought his brother into the business, which grew enough to support them both — first alone and then later as they each married and began families of their own. When his little brother turned 21, Hamak revealed the family secret. But unlike Hamak, the brother never became curious or obsessed. As he told Hamak at the time, “I am Christian. I will stay a Christian.”
For his part, Hamak had continued to learn about his secret faith. He visited his friend Rabbi Rothstein, always at night and always unannounced, until the night of September 11, 2001, when he came home to find his wife watching the news, something she never did. The attacks on New York and the Pentagon affected him in a way he could not anticipate. Living in a Christian country surrounded by Islam — and identifying more and more with his Jewish identity — Hamak had watched the rise of fundamental Islam with concern like most Armenians. His business had grown by developing connections in Iran and applying his reputation to the growing trade flowing through Yerevan. He found the Persians to be friendly and accepting, at least as long as they believed him to be a Christian. But when he made his occasional trips into Tehran he ran into the other side of Iran, the zealots who believed that everyone must convert to Islam and lead a pious Muslim life. These Persians scared him but he had to make a living and Iran was the key to his living. He would keep his mind focused on his job and let the rest of the world worry about radical Islam.
But for the second time in his life, he could feel his path changing as he watched the video of the World Trade Center towers collapsing. He knew immediately that radical Islamic terrorists were to blame, even if he had not previously heard of Osama bin Laden. And he knew immediately that he could not keep his head buried in his work as the world collapsed around him. He thought endlessly about the Jews of Europe during the 1930s who did nothing as the dark clouds of death enveloped them. He was a Jew. He had never called himself that prior to that day, but as the footage was repeated over and over, he screamed it to himself. I am a Jew.
The next evening he knocked one more time on the door of his rabbi, his mentor. What he told Solomon Rothstein that night was simple. He wanted to fight the terrorists. He wanted to fight for Israel. He was well placed to help his people. Rothstein told him to visit again in a week. A week later Rothstein told him to come back the night of October 10. When Hamak showed up that night, his rabbi simply gave him a note with the name and address of a coffee bistro downtown. Rothstein said simply, “Be there by nine tonight. There are booths in the back. Sit in one of those. Shalom.” Rothstein smiled and shook the hand of the man he had come to love as a son.
Two hours later, Hamak’s new life as an agent for Israel began when a man sat down across from him in the booth and introduced himself as a businessman in need of a logistics provider. This was not what the Armenian was expecting, but he found himself being sized up by a man wearing a nice business suit. For half an hour the man quizzed him about his business and his travels through Iran. He asked him about his contacts in the Persian nation and whether the Armenian could deliver “sensitive” cargo to the Iranian military. Hamak told him that he had only done business with civilian businessmen in Iran and had no contacts in the military other than the border guards and customs officers he had come to know over the years. The man asked Hamak what he thought of Iranians. Hamak was honest. Finally the man asked Hamak about his mother. What was her name? When Hamak responded, the man said “No, I want to know her maiden name.” Hamak gave the man what he wanted. The man stood. “Are you in your office tomorrow morning?” Hamak nodded. “Good. I will visit. I want to see your operation.” Hamak did not stand up, but he reached across the table top to shake the man’s hand.