I vaguely remember being in a bomb shelter in Beirut when I was five years old. We were visiting my aunt and uncle and three cousins. My brother was just a baby. I was scared for my baby brother. I didn’t want him to die. I had been an only child for almost five years …
I’ve only been a flower girl at a wedding once. I didn’t know the bride or groom. I was about seven years old, visiting my family in Anjar, in the mountains of #Lebanon. My mother told me that my cousin and I were going to be flower girls at a wedding in two hours. We …
I was eleven years old. I heard my mother screaming in the kitchen. We heard rumors that my uncle had been killed. We were in Saudi Arabia and my mother was trying to reach her sister in Lebanon to find out why these rumors were spreading. We had a phone on the wall in the …
When I first lived in Saudi Arabia, we lived in a one-bedroom home in the ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company) compound. Our compound was like a piece of suburban America dropped in the middle of the Arabian desert with a fence around it. We had one movie theater where I saw Oliver Twist and Grease. …
Less than a year after they started their courtship, my mother, an Armenian from Jerusalem, and my father, an Armenian from Musa Dagh, got married in St. Paul’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Anjar #Lebanon. My brother and I were both christened in the same church. More than thirty years later, I delivered the eulogy at …
When my mother left the Armenian Quarter in #Jerusalem to study at Haigazian College in #Beirut, she had to surrender her #Jordanian passport at the border, as she boarded a bus alone. I picture her at 22, with her small suitcase, looking over her shoulder one last time at her parents and her home, knowing …
My father’s mother died when he was 10 years old. The cause of death is unclear and mysterious. I was told that she was pregnant with her third child when an airplane flew very low over her head and scared her into a shock that she didn’t recover from and died. Shortly thereafter, my grandfather …
My mother was born to Armenian parents in Jerusalem. She grew up in the Armenian Quarter. She left Jerusalem shortly after the six-day war in 1967 to attend Haigazian college in Beirut. My mother is responsible for my love of cooking. Feeding my family and friends is my love language. She is also responsible for …
Starting in 1918, when the Sanjak of Alexandretta came under French control, the population of the #Armenian villages of Musa Dagh returned to their homes (after being rescued by Allied warships and taken to Port Said, Egypt). My father was born on June 27, 1939. A few days later, on June 29, following an agreement …
I am Armenian. I was not born in Armenia. I’ve never been to Armenia. Nobody in my family was born in Armenia. But, I am Armenian because I was born to Armenian parents who raised me as an Armenian American. I speak the Armenian language. I make Armenian food. I dance to Armenian music. I …