I first came to Abastan as a guest for three days, and then for about a week. From the very first day, I fell in love with the factory — its tall windows with clattering shutters, the enormous machines bathed in sunlight, and the wind that sent a flock of tags flying over sacks filled with linens sewn sometime in the 19… -something-year. It felt like time had stopped, not just in the city, but especially in the factory, where bales of tank tops and panties adorned with roses and ruffles still lay untouched — perhaps even outnumbering the residents of Tumanyan today, though I can’t say for sure.
In places where time has either stopped or at least slowed relative to ours, objects are accidentally imbued with greater significance — even if they are nothing more than a discarded handkerchief or a candy wrapper. Their prolonged untouchability turns them into artifacts, as if they have absorbed the passing time itself.
Among the files I found, I preserved a few such artifacts. Now they are shielded from dust in transparent sleeves — likely from a different era already — stacked neatly by the door of an office, once waiting for important papers and signed documents. Severed from their original meaning after so many years, they are now protected from wear. They are no longer underwear but birds, ships, and many other shapes that have taken form on their own — shaped by strangers' footsteps, by the wind, by chance.
