The City of Angels

On a sunny Saturday morning, less than a month after my settling down and getting a job in West Los Angeles,California, my good friend Rita and I were walking toward Santa Monica Boulevard on Federal Avenue, when we noticed the "grand opening" signs of a frozen yogurt store on the Boulevard that formed a T at Federal Avenue.

America had rediscovered yogurt.  It was a historical moment.  A few steps more toward the boulevard and we noticed enlarged newspaper pages on the store's window.  Another few steps and we could tell the pages were from The New York Times and there were pictures.  We decided to cross the street because we had a suspicion that the people in the pictures were Armenians.  We crossed the street and we could not believe our eyes: Mrs. Attarian and her son, my friend, David. We read the article about yogurt and how good it is for you, only because Hilda was doing the talking and not because we wanted to know about yogurt. We knew about yogurt. I grew up on yogurt and one dish, yogurt with rice and mint leaves soup, was the only thing I could eat when I was back to normal after one of my fever induced illnesses as a child.

I was in California and again the past, disguised as New York this time, was right here, on the window of the yogurt store. As if to remind me not to forget those I left behind.  No chance of that happening.  To this day, every time I peel celery I remember Digeen Hilda.  That's how we addressed Mrs. Attarian.  There was always celery on the table at the Attarians and whenever I was in Digeen Hilda's kitchen, she was peeling celery.  Thanks to her, I like celery.  Hilda was the coolest lady in the world.  The more intense her husband Jirayr was, the calmer she was.  Nothing phased her or her serene rhythm.  Please, just let her watch her baseball game.  That's all she asked for in return for all the care she gave away.  She had been a nurse in Beirut and she was also working as a nurse in New York.  Baseball was her passion and she watched every game. 

"Can you believe that?" we kept asking each other in the bus Rita and I. David was her classmate too.

Rita had emigrated to the United States right after her high school graduation, with her family.  She was born in Palestine and did not have any citizenship status but that of a refugee until she was given residence here in America. In Lebanon, Palestinians had all the freedoms except the right to become Lebanese citizens. That was the deal which was made somewhere.

Here, I felt at home.  It might have been the gentle weather or the palm trees or even the reunion with my classmate/roommate/friend, Rita.  I felt at home the first few months but soon after realized that I was not home.  I was just reminded of home.

I was reminded of the palm tree in the back of our old house in Beirut that gave dates in the fall.  Bushels of dates would hang from the top of the tree right below the big branches, hugging the trunk.  They were yellow.  Whereas the palm tree next to it had red ones.  The California palm trees, I found out, do not produce dates.   

No dates? Thus started a nostalgia I had never felt before. A melancholy that stayed with me for months. My condition was so severe that on one occasion I took two Tylenol PM tablets to be able to go to work at the William Morris Agency, one of the biggest in the country that represented the likes of Frank Sinatra.. It reminded me why I was in the United States.  Yet I couldn't even dare introduce myself as an actor.  I was working as a temporary secretary and was too humbled to reveal any connection to dramatic arts.

Instead, Rita and I decided to get the newly introduced cable for our television viewing pleasure. It came with the Z Channel and a box with white buttons. Zardoz anyone? 

I wish life was about going to work with two bus transfers, getting paid, coming home, preparing dinner, watching television and then doing the same thing all over again the next day.  I wish I was able to stay happy like that forever. There is nothing wrong with that.  I couldn't. I was thinking that in Beirut, I'd be able to go to the conservatory of music for free, get some vocal training and become a singer.

Despite all the kindness and care Rita bestowed upon me, after less than two years away from home I felt homesick.  I missed my hometown.


My friends, Nina in Philadelphia and Garo in New York had returned to Beirut having accomplished their respective missions in the United States.  I was left questioning my own sanity.

Despite the repeated "You are going to come back" from the few who had come to the U.S. from Beirut before me, I decided to return home.  They were right of course but coincidentally, I got nothing else to write about the first six months I lived in California.

Mama, papa, sisters, brother, grandpa, grandma, cousins, friends, the theater, the conservatory, the mountains, the villages, the Mediterranean and its beaches, oh, how I miss you all.

My Maternal Grandmother, Lucia in the background.  We called her "Nene", her neighbors Armineh and Berjouhi as well as my sister Hourig in the front with the neighbors' nephew, Pierre.

   

The City that Never Sleeps

I took the train and moved to New Jersey.  Only once before, in Beirut, I had traveled by train.  It was a four hour trip to Aleppo, Syria, the city that welcomed the first Armenian survivors from their long march through the desert. As I write these lines, Aleppo is being attacked and the old historic market is in flames.

Until the late 1950s, every year around Easter, Aleppo welcomed Armenians from around the neighboring countries for a week of Olympic games which culminated with the closing ceremonies and a grand parade of athletes and scouts.  Twice I had participated as a member of the girl scouts from Beirut.  Excitement, hope and inspiration marched with a new generation. 

I had taken the train from Philadelphia to New York many times before.  There were two ways to go from Philadelphia to New York's Manhattan Island for people who didn't own a car.  The train, the bus or the Metroliner which could get you there in about an hour.  On Fridays there were almost no seats left in the train and the round trip ticket cost only ten dollars.  It was a happy train full of people socializing in a thank God it is Friday manner.  Hint: they were going to New York.

The living room sofa of my cousin Harry is where I lay to sleep as I had done many times before.  His wife, Mary, being an angel, made sure my stay with them was comfortable.  Grace was three years old and Alex was not one year old yet and loved to pull my long hair.  I just let him.

Some weekends were spent at the Attarians' home in Flushing, New York.  David was a classmate from Beirut and we had once been the musical entertainment at a New Year's Eve celebration at L'Escargot in Beit Mary, a village on the mountains, fifteen minutes from Beirut.  It was a deplorably memorable show.  One where I had to sing with a microphone that did not work. We had rented all the instruments, we had had one rehearsal the day before and made sure everything was working before heading for Beit Mary.  Thanks to my experience in the theater, I was able to make enough noise and gestures to fool enough people to make them say that I sang like a professional.  And that was my first gig as a singer.

"Delilah" was one of the songs I sang.  I dramatized the part about the knife in the hand.  It was easy.  I had just played Tatiana in Chekov's A Jubilee, my first part as an actress, where my character tells a story from the opera Eugene Onegin about a man who is found dead on the floor with a gun in his hand. It didn't occur to me that Delilah is a woman and Tom Jones who sings the song of the same name, is a man.  I just sang the song and the dancers joined me in the singing. 

Garo and other no papa no mama expatriates would also join us at the Attarians, David would take out the accordion, the drinks would flow and I would sing. When the party was over, the girls in the bedroom, the boys in the living room, and Mr. & Mrs. Attarian in their bedroom, we'd sleep, wake up and start all over again the next evening after doing some necessary chores. There was always room for everyone at the Attarians.

I responded to an ad in The New York Times the morning after my arrival in New Jersey.  Philadelphia had taught me that I was a valuable office worker.  The skills I brought with me from Lebanon were in demand.  I typed very fast and could answer the phone, in many languages if need be.  Although, to be fair, I couldn't pronounce "Larry" and not because I was not able to.  It was because the "a" in Larry reminded me of the "a" in the Diarbekir dialect of Western Armenian. I thought there was something wrong with that and this would embarrass me to no end.  It couldn't be.  The American "a", as in ham, is the same as the Diarbekir "a" as in "hamov," tasty.  Diarbekir was known as Dikranagerd in Armenian.

Please God, make it that the caller does not ask for Larry.  They would. I would announce through the microphone "Larry Hines, please call the Operator" and hope that no one was listening, especially Larry. That was me at lunch time in front of a huge switchboard full of wires, holes, lights, a microphone and headphones.  It was challenging and fun. It was also the end of an era because I have not come across a switchboard of that magnitude since.

To show me how far I have come, Divine Providence sent me an angel by the name of Gary this year.  Every time I call his name, I feel at home because both sides of my family used the Diarbekir dialect of Western Armenian (yes, Eastern Armenian has its own dialects too) and because now I can pronounce the American "a" without embarrassment.

Diarbekir

 The wanted ad was for a bilingual English/French secretary.  I got the job.  My workplace was in a building on 57th Street, across from Carnegie Hall.  I kept commuting to New York from New Jersey, every day of the week.

I rented a room at the YMCA on 8th Avenue to be closer to work until I could afford to rent a small place.  It came with breakfast and a lot of loud music.  Fortunately, I did not have to stay more than a month there when a colleague sublet me her studio apartment on the ground floor in the upper east side of Manhattan.  It had a kitchen, a sofa-bed, a record player and two records. 

I flipped through the trade periodicals, magazines, yellow pages, white pages, asked around and thought I found a drama school in the village where I could go to study acting or be part of an acting community.  Broadway, off Broadway and off off Broadway, I did not care.  The more "off"s before Broadway, the closer I was to theater in New York.

I did not forget that I was told not to go to school.  But I also needed some sort of legitimacy to be able to stay in the United States. I had an expired Tourist Visa and any minute now Immigration would come and get me.  When my boss in Philadelphia called my name, I would start sweating, my heart would be pounding, and I would go to his room looking down at the floor, waiting for my fate to be pronounced.  My scenario was always the same.  Immigration workers, by now privy to my whereabouts thanks to the taxes I paid from my earnings, would call the company and inquire about me, the illegal alien.  The call would be transferred to my boss and my boss will call me to his office and give me the bad news.  That never happened of course but the terror of being called into an office remained with me until I legitimized my stay 11 years later.

"You need a student visa" I was told.  I chose HB Studios in the West Village because one of its founders and now teacher, Uta Hagen, had been the first actress to play Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway. I had played that part in Beirut, in the Armenian language, two years before, when I was 23 years old.  This was the best logic I could come up with to connect to a new culture, city and environment.

For now, just a word about playing Martha in Armenian.  It was a blast until it ended its unprecedented run. 

George and Martha in Beirut on the Armenian stage.

I found out that in order to get a student visa, I had to pay full tuition.  The actors and actresses passing through the registrar's office, frankly, seemed to me like giants compared to little me.  I immediately realized that the education I needed was about life and not about acting. 

As if on cue,  word got around about my being a hard working girl and another French company, the now famous Hotel Sofitel's representative rented half a room in our office and used my secretarial services too.  I started working for two companies for the price of one.  I would not be able to afford a school yet. 

Naturally, I was very depressed.  I was so depressed that I cannot find words to describe how depressed I was.  It seemed that there was no way I could even pronounce the word Broadway without lots of money.   


"We have sunshine, an easier life, palm trees and cars, plus the movie industry is here Arpie, why don't you come to California?"

"Dear New York, I have seen your drinking establishments more than any other place in the city.  I will come back to drink some more but right now, I am going to California to sober up a bit."  

The City of Brotherly Love

Another reason I changed my name on Facebook to Roberta Pennington is Pennsylvania.  That's where I hung my hat when I arrived from Beirut in the summer of 1973.  I landed at JFK on Czechoslovakian Airlines, very affordable at the time, with the comforting flight identification of "OK" followed by some numbers.  When we got on the plane in Prague, the stopover from Beirut, the aircraft personnel requested from some of us to go sit in first class until the plane takes off because the rear of the plane is too heavy for take off.

If this happened now, I might think I am the culprit, having put on a good 30 pounds since then.

Nina and her boyfriend received my telegram from Beirut with the flight number OK123 but could not figure out what airline the OK represented.  They drove to JFK with hopes that any employee at any airline would be able to tell them what the OK stood for.  How were they to think Czechoslovakian Airlines?  Where is the OK in that?

It took a good hour for us to find each other by accident. The drive home was uneventful, not counting my non-stop chatter about the latest from Beirut.

As soon as I found a job, I also found a drama school I could afford.  Hedgerow Playhouse was situated on the outskirts of Philadelphia in a small town called Rose Valley.  I didn't have a car so to get to school, Nina would drive me to the train station, I would take the train to Rose Valley and from there, a cab, to school.    

That's where I got my college degree in dramatic arts.  Oh, it was not a big ceremony.  Just my classmates, my teacher and all the other teachers of the school.  Afterwards, they, the teachers, asked me why I had attended their school.  What did I expect to learn?  I immediately went into innocent mode and said "I don't know. Shouldn't you be the ones telling me what I need to learn?"  What I really was asking by being in that school is for direction.  They did not give me any maps when I got here.

Later, one of the teachers, an elderly gentleman, approached me, kissed my hand and like a brother, said "Don't go to school.  Go to New York but don't go to school.  Go to auditions. Go to New York and go to auditions."

I was happy that the critics in Beirut were thus exonerated.

My close friends who were also my fellow actors in the theater, had one by one left for America.  It was the continuation of a trend started years before when my best friend of the day (or year) would leave for America with their family. 

After a few years of acting, Ara left for America to study Theater Arts; Garo, to do business and to live like Zorba and Nina, to pursue her Master's Degree in Education.  I felt their absence without bringing it to my consciousness.  So I was sad without knowing why.  My whole world had turned upside down.  It was not easy to be me without them.  Of course there are many people in Lebanon, but no four people had been together and shared the ups and downs of when we were actors for a few years.  It was hard to loose them.  They had moved on.  Not that I was not trying.  I was the first fugitive of the group.  I almost moved to Canada to get married with someone I had only known for one month.

Nina kept writing for me to go live with them in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, which, it turned out, is a suburb of Philadelphia, where I could work and study acting at the same time.  I was being arm wrestled to pursue acting when I was not even sure I wanted to.  A diploma is one thing, finding a job is another.  That's probably the more important skill.

It was only the third or fourth time I was in class when this ceremony took place. So what I had done for a month was audition for the school.  I was good to go to New York but they had already told me that I can't take part in their productions because of my accent.  I was to wait for a part like in The Rose Tattoo.

It is so easy to make a big decision when that entails the great city of New York.  I had already an invitation from cousins to stay with them in New Jersey.  This was also my breakaway from the constant fights Nina and her boyfriend entertained me with.    

I had to leave Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, where I had waited for the bus every morning at ten minutes to eight and it had arrived two minutes later; had been greeted by the same smiling face of the driver accompanied by a "good morning" that never failed to make my day.  That was the best part of my stay in Pennsylvania.  

It was a start.

He was the happiest man in Philadelphia.  He later told me that he was of Armenian descent.  Sadly, I don't remember his name.   

My job was two bus lines away from home.  And the return home was a ride, courtesy of Brother Tony, a colleague.  No, I was not working in a monastery but in the city of brotherly love.

The day after my graduation, I asked him to drop me off a bloc away from my home. Brother Tony was perplexed as to why and I was too embarrassed to tell him.  I wish it was because I saw a movie theater or a drinking place or a nice store.  It was for Kentucky Fried Chicken.  

I could have written a great ad for KFC at the time if I knew what was good for me.  Coming to America was like being in a huge shopping center with thousands of shops and finding out that unless you stop the growling in your stomach you will not even know where to look for what, how, when and why. 

Next stop, New York.