AECP Visits
Nursing Homes

Introduced by the EyeCare Project, Enida and Vilik recently met for the first time in a coffee shop in Yerevan.  Over coffee and croissants they reminisced about their lives in the theater and their recent eye surgeries on the AECP Mobile Eye Hospital. 

Born in 1928—Enida in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Vilik in Yerevan—since early childhood they were attracted to the performing arts.  Enida played the piano and Vilik the violin. Realizing that music was not their calling—neither liked to practice—they gave up their instruments and turned to the theater at age15.

 “It is rare when a person understands his or her calling at such a young age,” reflects Enida. Her career as an actress began in Baku, Azerbaijan, after she saw a recruitment notice for a local theater and decided to try out.  “For me, it became quite clear rather soon that theatre is my soul, my true environment.”

Enida built her career performing in cities and small towns in the Azerbaijan and Georgia regions.  An ingénue—“a dramatic ingénue,” she says, that’s what I was known as in the theater.  Following a performance in Sevile a play by Azeri playwright Jabar Jabarly, people would applaud and shout “Sevil! Sevil!” whenever they saw her on the stage, whatever the play. 

Vilik’s call to the theater and his realization that it would be his lifelong pursuit was almost as immediate.  Following his very first visit to the theater, a performance of Othello with the great Armenian actor Vahram Papazyan, Vilik says, “My life changed.” 

As if it was yesterday, Vilik remembers the hush that came over the theater—the “intense silence” in anticipation of Papazyan’s entrance onto the stage.  But it was Papazyan “living through his role” that had the greatest impact on Vilik.  Following the performance he couldn’t sleep.  “I was awake all night thinking about myself, my life, about Papazyan, about the role of the theatre in a person’s life.  By dawn I knew that I was different.” 

Compelled to take pen to paper to memorialize his impressions of the performance, Vilik wrote the first review of his career.  The article was immediately printed in a local paper—without editing.  It was the beginning of his lifelong affair with the theater—“The beginning of my career as a theatre critic,” says Vilik.  His articles were a success among readers and often young actors would approach him asking just for a mention of their name in his articles.”

Sadly, because of the political and social climate of the day, both Enida and Vilik were deprived of the opportunity to pursue their theatrical careers as they may have been able to do at a different time and in a different place. The theater changed with the political and social climate.  Art and creativity were stifled and stage performances were either politically neutral—the classics, or praised the current Soviet regime.  While they both continued working in the theater, circumstances didn’t allow for much creativity and opportunities were few.

Fast-forward to 2005.  Enida and Vilik are both living in Yerevan—Enida at the Haghtananak Nursing Home and Vilik at the Nork Nursing Home—their eyesight failing.

The AECP screening team visited the nursing homes and following diagnosis—Enida with cataracts and macular degeneration and Vilik also with cataracts—the doctors performed surgery.

 “I will see life with new eyes, in new light,” exclaimed Enida as she waved her arms dramatically.  Continuing, she said, “Wonderful, wonderful is everything the doctors do.”

Vilik, who had a cataract extraction with a lens implant, commented as though he may have been writing a review of the experience. “I view the eyes as one of the body’s most vital organs and question what kind of life one would have if they could not see.” Vilik goes on to say, “He who cannot see is deprived of perceiving the fantastic beauty that nature has bestowed upon us.  He is deprived of the possibility of seeing people’s faces.” 

We left Enida and Vilik in the coffee shop on that beautiful spring day as they continued to share their stories about the theater—a burgeoning late-in-life romance?  Brought together by the EyeCare Project.