The City of Movies

As I put the DVD in the player, I suddenly and spontaneously felt gratitude about all that I have and I call my life.  As if I had stepped out of being an actor in my life and had become an observer, an audience member or a critique.  The latter, the critique makes life difficult most of the time but not today.  I think the critique was sound asleep and probably snoring. 

As the video started I thought about the influence big screen pictures have had in inspiring and shaping the dreams of many, to do good and to be the best we can be. Art had led me to think that I could have a life that is as good as they come.

Thankfully, my life showed signs of being as good as they come.  I was in the theater.

On stage, I felt good.  I felt so good that I started thinking that I can only be good on stage.  I sort of had a life outside, on the sides, like a bench warmer, watching the game but not being in it.  Well, here was a group, a team, my team, our team and I was in a play, playing.   

I was also a secretary and I didn't have a concrete plan about my future and an answer to my dad's "what are your plans for the future?" 

Years later, a dear friend told me that she wants to live her life as if it was art.  It made a big impression on me.  Yes, why not?  Why should art be a commodity, bought and sold?  Why can't I have a life that has a good script, a happy script, an uplifting and inspiring script and is not for sale. 

While the video was showing previews, I was still thinking about what she said and how I took that to be my cue to start living as hard as I could.  With abandon, without fear.  

The DVD contained a track where Martin Scorsese was calling our attention to the thousands of old films that are in need of restoration at the present time in the vaults of various studios, and emphasized the importance of preserving this culture for future generations.  

Now I can watch the movie.

Reel Interrupted

Last weekend I watched a DVD I had rented from the public library. From its back cover, I found out it was about a theatrical company.  Slings & Arrows was the name.  Turns out, it is a series in six parts, made in Canada with Canadian actors and the story takes place in Ontario.  A very enjoyable six part series.

It revolves around Hamlet and those who have played it and will play it.  The parallels of the story with the real life of the actors, is at times exhilarating, and at other times dramatic or funny. It is a script rich in pathos that honors the artistry of authenticityand of personal truth. It does not let go until the final applause, which made watching these episodes a real treat.  Just like in good theater.  

Watching the episodes took me back to when I came very close to being integrated into the Lebanese theater. Actors from different theater companies were chosen to be in a movie about a theater company in Beirut that was going to tour all over Lebanon by way of its mountain villages.  We did one day of interior shooting and one day of exterior shooting when all hell broke loose outside, in the real world… We never continued the film.  

I was extremely excited to be part of it because it was a first for me and also, all the famous Lebanese stage and screen actors (warning: names being dropped) like Nidal Ashkar, Roger Assaf, Sarah Salem, Mounir Maasri and Liz Sarkissian (end of name dropping here) were to be in the film.  

Auditions were held in the same apartment where most of the interior scenes were to be shot.  One of the improvisations I did with the director, who was imported from France to direct the film and whose name, sadly, I cannot drop for having forgotten it, was, I found out later, from the Costa-Gavras film “Z”.  It was the scene when Irene Papas, having lost her husband, played by Yves Montand, walks into their bedroom and goes through his pillow, closet and even cologne as we see every emotionplaying on her face in close-up.  

Mr. Assaf, who was one of the producers and the lead actor of the film, knocked on the door of our room which seemed to be someone's bedroom. He asked if everything was alright.  He said he was wondering why it was taking so long.  The director told him about my audition being so interesting that he did not want to stop me.

He said this in French, and I speak and understand French very well thank you, whereas the film was to be in Arabic. More about that later. 

I got the part. Secretary of the theater company.  I did not have to do any character studies and/or research for the part.  I had already been playing that role in life for a good four years now.

On the first day of shooting, the director wanted to start with my scene.  "ACTION." Seated behind a desk, in front of a huge typewriter, I am typing, then I look at my watch and realize it is late and continue typing. "CUT."    

For Take 2, they ask me to cuss after looking at my watch. "Say something" they kept telling me. Although I had heard every unsavory Arabic expression, I had never used one.   Someone gave me a moderate strength sentence to say.

"F... this job!" I said finally.

I looked at the director. He had a huge smile on his face and said "tu es une artiste", you are an artist.

What just happened?  What?  What?

   

Little triumphs like this one come to remind me that I am not a one hit wonder contrary to popular belief.  I had not yet played Martha in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and therefore, people had not yet started comparing everything I did afterwards to it. In fact, at the same time, I was preparing to play Elizabeth in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.  Quite the opposite.

It is one thing to be recognized in the community one grows up in, i.e. the Armenian community, it is another when, excuse me, a French director picks one person among so many from that same community despite that person's poor knowledge of the Arabic language.  

So poor in fact that I had managed to turn this handicap into a stand-up act at shorthand class a few years earlier. Every time I was in class (we sometimes skipped shorthand class for a little "école buissonnière"), the teacher would ask me to get up and speak.  My first performances as an actress took place on the stage of the shorthand class at Mouthany Institute.  What a contrast between this class and any of the classes in high school.  What an honor, what an opportunity, what a joy to have the shorthand class laugh out loud while I kept doing a monologue in Arabic with a Speedy Gonzales accent.  What an honor. I did not know if the teacher was laughing at me or with me.  But he would turn so red in the face with laughter that I thought he was going to turn blue and faint.

I had never practiced for this.  It was new to me too.  I had no idea where it was coming from except that I had spontaneously adopted a cartoon character's accent to make up for my lack of efficiency in the language of my place of birth.   

In the next scene, Mounir Maasri approaching me from behind, looks at what I have typed and takes it upon himself and his method of acting to read out loud, during shooting, what I had typed.  "Garble, garble, garble" he read and I burst out laughing half embarrassed and half surprised.  That typing in Arabic thing should have been practiced before the shoot.  How was I to know that they were going to give me an Arabic typewriter to type on?  This was Lebanon. It was a miracle there was a French director here, filming a movie in Arabic, so don't push it, ok? We did this scene many times until I could contain myself and pretend that indeed, I had made a typo.

It was nerves too.  I am sure I would not have laughed if I had known how to type in Arabic.  My bursts of laughter would not have been from nervousness if I had had some practice so that I could have made the mistake on purpose and been right there when Mr. Maasri was reading it.  

The next day, the first stills of the movie reached the newspapers with me behind the typewriter and Mr. Maasri standing behind me pointing to the page in the typewriter.  

I don't know how, but this Arabic language newspaper reached my (God bless his soul) maternal aunt's husband's hands. As I was returning to work after lunch, I saw him walk towards me waiving the newspaper.  He opened it and showed me the picture.  He was furious. "What’s this?” he hollered.  “Are you going to become an artist?"

There's that "artist" word again. What a coincidence.  It was only yesterday when its positive version was bestowed upon me. Life is indeed too short.

"I am going to talk to your mother about this; this is disgraceful," he threatened.  

Cut to only two years later, after I played in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” This same man (God bless his soul), my maternal aunt's husband, hugged me and kissed me every time he saw me.  "Here, here, take a picture of me with Arpie."  

What just happened?  What?  What?

All the actors I mentioned above are still in Beirut where, somewhere, there is a reel interrupted while I am still typing here, in real Arizona.

Kentucky Derby, Fried Chicken and a Meatman

Three years ago, in April of 2010, I put some boxes and my personal computer in my car and drove cross-country to Arizona to set up house here.  My itinerary was to go west from New Jersey and then south.  After reaching Ohio via Pennsylvania, I changed my mind and started going south.  Lo and behold, right in downtown Cincinnati there is a sign that says Welcome to Kentucky and I find myself crossing a bridge.  Continuing south a sign on the highway for food and gas included Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I took the exit to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Maybe since the City of Brotherly Love herein-before, I had not had any.  I am in Kentucky and I can use some food.  What a great experience that was.  A whole buffet with vegetables and desserts.  And it was good. I always thank the Universe after a meal. 

Why am I going to Arizona?  I don't know, but I know I have to.  Unlike New York where everybody walks, Arizona is almost pedestrian free although, if needed, the light will tell you when to cross the street.

Everybody walked in Beirut too.  The streets were narrow and not too long from one block to the other.  It was not unusual to encounter people we know somewhere in the city.  Three women I knew and admired were walking towards me in the middle of the street.  I was on the sidewalk.  One of them said "You are still here?  What are you doing here?  Go! Go!"  Where do you want me to go? I asked.  "Wherever you want.  New York, Paris, London...go!"  They meant to pursue my acting career.

I got scared. Those were big cities.  Will Toronto do?  Because I have an invitation from there attached to a marriage proposal.  No?  How about Paris where I have many cousins?  No?  Philadelphia?  Who goes to Philadelphia to study acting?  Me!

In my first post on this blog, The City of Brotherly Love,  I talk about that. I also talk about Kentucky Fried Chicken in there.

Kentucky is also the Blue Grass State.  The grass is so green that it looks blue.  Going south on I-75 that's all one sees. It almost brought tears to my eyes.  Blue, blue grass of home goes the song I remembered.

I knew Kentucky was also famous for the Derby. There were a lot of boxes in my car but not a hat box. Besides, I was a month early. And which city does the Derby take place in I wondered?  Some cross-country traveler I am.

I reached Louisville, Kentucky right before sunset and decided to park and discover.  I took just any exit in downtown and ended up by the shore of the Ohio River.  A walkway, a boardwalk, a park, restaurants and people everywhere.  There is a bridge towards the west and the sun is setting.  Oh my, such a lovely sight comes but once in a lifetime I thought.  After all, I was going west.  Go west girl! I have told that to myself many times. 

The Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky

How does a girl from Beirut end up unannounced and herself surprised on the shores of the Ohio River in Louisville?  Just going with the flow.  An unplanned journey of this magnitude took all of my energy and courage to complete in a week.  The Manager at my bank was shocked that I was taking this trip by myself.  "Aren't you afraid?"  she asked.  I had not had time to be afraid.  Afraid of what?

The only time I sort of got a bit worried was in a city in Oklahoma when I checked into a deserted motel at the end of a long day driving.  I was so tired that I slept.  Other than that, as I reached Flagstaff, Arizona, my legs were weak and I didn't know if I was going to make it to Phoenix which was another two hour drive going downhill on a winding highway at 65 miles per hour.  Not a good set up at the end of a long trip.  It was the hardest finish I ever had in my entire life.  I sometimes slowed down considerably just to feel safe.  I was very scared because I was very tired.

I finally spotted a Jeep that was going slow in the rightest lane and followed it for a good half hour before my final destination.  There is no hurry.  Or was it too late to say that?  Am I too fast or just crazy?  It is a good crazy when we know we are.

"You keep making big decisions in your life because when you were growing up, you were not allowed to make the little ones."  How true those words sounded when they were uttered by a dear friend over the phone a couple of months after I had settled in Phoenix.

From Beirut to Philadelphia, then New York, California, Beirut, California, New Jersey, New York, California, Rhode Island, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Arizona.  These were not short trips, or vacations.  These were resettlements.  These were sudden decisions to move with boxes, personal items and suitcases, leaving behind or giving away all furniture.

It is amazing how in a short time, one can amass things, some necessary, some with the intention of a future use but most oh so replaceable.


By the time I reached Hollywood via New York and West Los Angeles in 1977, I thought I was ready to tackle a career in acting.  I went to a weekly acting school and prepared a portfolio with headshots, resumes and pieces of newspaper clippings.  My first audition that every student in the school also went to, was advertised in one of the periodicals for actors, maybe Casting Call, maybe Drama Logue.  I asked my friend Tony to accompany me to the audition.

While Tony was waiting in another room, this man with the last name of Meatman which should have been a warning but this is clueless me we are talking about, was "interviewing" me.

- So, what do you say if I told you that in order to get this job you have to sleep with someone?

It sounded like I was dreaming.  Did I hear this right?

- Excuse me?

- You heard me, he said and repeated.  What do you say if I told you that in order to get this job you have to sleep with someone?

Yes, I had heard about casting couches but I had thought that only happened to others.  I was not the casting couch type I thought, whatever that was. I am?  Who knew? It was hard to come to terms in my head with that fact.  It was a lucrative offering at the time with good pay and traveling said the ad.  The ad also said that it was for industrial films where we were to demonstrate products.

In my disbelief and disappointment as I could have used a job, I bought time to sort of try to change the course of events.
- I wouldn't mind that at all, I replied, but who do you have in mind?

I was thinking even Tony, sitting outside, unaware, can fit the bill but not this Meatman.  I was telling him off since it was obvious to me who he meant by "someone".

Tony had heard everything.  He took me to a bar for a glass of beer which I drank while crying and realizing that the signs were there from the start.  I just did not want to see them.

I had sent my resume to the address in the publication and had gotten a call back.
- Why do you think you were chosen for an interview?  He asked.
- I don't know, I said.  Because I am multi-lingual?
- 34B?
- Excuse me?
- 34B?  You wear 34B?
I did.  What has that got to do with anything?  Oh, maybe they are looking for a certain size I thought.    
- Yes, I do.
- Can you come for an interview?
- Yes I can.

After I told this part of the story to Tony, and for the next year, he kept bringing it up to sort of make light of it as it had really affected my morale.  "How is the Meatman?" or "34B?" he would repeat until he got me laughing about it.

I did not get the job.

- You are very inhibited Miss! he told me as we parted.  I threw myself in Tony's arms crying as we left this obscure building in an obscure area of downtown Los Angeles.

Today I found out where the Kentucky Derby takes place.  Louisville. 

The City of Practices

My parents on the left, Sally's parents on the right

Deep into rehearsals, I was asked why do I wear a corset?  I don't know, by habit?  To hide? Someone said it will make your derriere smaller? Every girl and woman wore one at the time?

You don't have to.  You will move more freely without it.  It made sense.  I stopped wearing it right there and then and have only wore a corset once since.  Ironically, it was to perform my show in Beirut when I returned for the first time in 29 years. And 35 years after not wearing one.  I had put on a lot of weight in America and a friend suggested that what I had decided to wear on stage required a corset.


I performed my autobiographical tragicomedy.  It was not stand up comedy.  It had a beginning, a middle and an end.  No one taught me how to write, what to write, and for whom.  I had to choose an audience to write for because I was inspired by three other friends of mine who were doing monologues one after the other.

I stretched myself, found my audience of one and started writing.  I was the audience.  A monologue is a monologue is a monologue.  During writing I added the number of audience members according to the story.  I started reading parts of it to whoever will listen.  I was done listening, even to myself. I needed to talk. I wrote and rewrote.  I edited, changed the chronology, and finally found the thread that connected the whole.


Transformation? Metamorphosis?  Being able to find a solution to the pain that comes from the past?  How about laughter, self-deprecation and imagination?  Not all realities are imagined. Some need therapy.  Others, need someone crazy enough to try to make sense of it all.


I was so inhibited that when I first walked like Marilyn Monroe on the roof of that building where we rehearsed, as part of an exercise; when I allowed my body to let my hips sway left and right while walking, tears of "I have just lost my virginity" (I am not kidding) rolled down my face. Diana was so sweet and understanding about it. In fact she was sweet and understanding with everyone.  Being our senior, from England and a graduate in dramatic arts, we confided in her, she gave us advice, comfort and her expertise. Whereas her husband, Varoujan, was focused on directing.  At the end, we were both laughing while Missag Abajian, may he rest in peace, the eldest in our company, offered me a cigarette. He always offered me a cigarette whenever I finished doing a scene or an exercise and came back to sit with the audience.  Out came the lighter too and he lit my cigarette.  He treated me like I was special.  I credited this to him being a friend of one of my uncles but I was proven wrong later.  It was refreshing and odd at the same time. I never got used to it because I did not understand it.  I never took anything for granted. So far, my encounters with the opposite sex had been at least predictable, transparent and adventurous.  Missag Abajian was showing me the attention I thought were only reserved to the "elite".   

 A huge wall of resistance and misinformation multiplied by traumatized and ignorant sexual understanding (sic), had prompted me to wear a corset and a jacket in summers humid and hot.  But now the pendulum had swung to the other extreme of not being in touch with my body at all.  Not caring about looks so much.  Living in my head, practicing in my head, again, after so many years, although I had ample room to practice out loud. 

It does not matter why I had been wearing a corset until I started acting.  Maybe news of the suffragettes had not reached Lebanon yet.  It does not matter.  It matters that I was wearing one after so many years where it made me not wear it in the first place.

Sometimes, when we didn't have a car, as we would have otherwise alternately used the family car, Varoujan and Diana gave us a ride home and Varouj turned back to us and asked "why do you both talk in monotone like that? Like there is no life left in you?"  Hmm, we were tired?  It was 11 p.m. at night and you can say we had had a full day?  We were secretaries by day and actresses at night?  We are not complaining, but we are tired.

The actress was not paid but the secretary was.  The actress loved what she was doing, the secretary, not. 


I was the first one to arrive at the theater on opening night.  Tchaikovsky's music from the opera Oniegin was playing as the audience came in and four clowns, including my sister Hourig, ushered and entertained them until curtain time.  I remember thinking that I will never forget this music and how I feel this moment: I have an acute case of anxiety but am fully aware of the significance of these moments.  I was extremely excited.  

My butterflies carried me on stage.  They helped me not panic but focus and enjoy every second.  I did.  It was like falling in love.  It was a honeymoon, a party, a celebration and a dance all in one.  I felt at home. I felt I was in a sanctuary, my sanctuary.

There, I said it.  Nowhere else have I felt at home whether I am happy, sad, successful or a flop but on stage.  Whether acting, singing, talking or dancing, there I am and that is how I feel.




 

 

 

The City of Bourj Hammoud

I picked up the telephone and said "hello." 

It was my cousin Sally.  She wanted to know if I had seen the wanted ad for actors in the newspaper.  I had seen it.  Never before in a newspaper there had been such a thing.   The Levon Shant Theater Company in Bourj Hammoud needed actors. There was a man's name and a telephone number to call.  I knew the name from having seen the man act on stage with the famous Kasbar Ipekian group.  Varoujan Hadeshian.

"What do you say Arpie, do you want to go?" Sally asked hopefully.

"What?  What?    Wait a minute.  How is that possible?  First of all, our parents would never allow it.  Yes, we are twenty years old, only a month apart in age, our fathers are brothers and there would have to be some negotiations to secure permission.

Becoming a girl scout?  Yes.
Playing Basketball? Yes.
But theater? Doubtful!

"But it sounds so inviting, so wonderful, so life giving, so...yes, let's go."

Bourj Hammoud is a suburb of Beirut, heavily populated by Armenians.  Within Bourj Hammoud there are areas which are named after cities, rivers and villages of Western Armenia, now Turkey, where the people that now lived in Bourj Hammoud came from. Like New Jersey or New York, they are named New Marash, New Adana.  But instead of New, the English word, they are called Nor Marash and Nor Adana.

Surprisingly, I had never been to Bourj Hamoud but knew some people from there who were students at my high school.

Miraculously, we were allowed to go. 

We called the number in the newspaper and were told to bring something in Armenian to read.

It was a hot June evening when the two of us, cousins, drove to Bourj Hammoud as if we were going to the gates of heaven.

During the day we both worked as secretaries and did not exactly have a life outside of that. Yes, there was the occasional movie theater, or play we went to see and that was it.  We found the building and went up the stairs to the third floor.  The door was wide open, so we entered.  There was a large room lit with florescent lights and a bearded man sat behind a table with a woman by his side.  He introduced himself as the director Varoujan Hadeshian, his wife Diana, sitting next to him, and we introduced ourselves.

We read a few lines each and were told that if we wanted we could go up to the roof for exercises that the group did.  Did we want to?  Of course we did. It was the first exercise in years.  Since leaving school we had both acquired secretarial hips from the long hours in front of a typewriter.

This, baby, was exciting, invigorating and inspiring.  Voice, body, extremities, breathing and emotions were exercised.  There was stretching, whistling, hissing and improvisations.

Sally and I were chosen to play in different short plays of Anton Chekov and I was put on a diet to lose some weight. 

Instead of public transportation, I started walking to and from work, a fifteen-minute walk each way, while holding my stomach in.  It is amazing how a life with purpose can inspire.  I loved the walking during which time I repeated my lines.  When there was no work to be done in the office, and there were days like that, I would just close my eyes and rehearse with words and movement, over and over again, in my head.

My mom, Anahid, made my costume at home following Diana's drawing.  It was a dark pink velvet dress with black trimmings.

The above sentence was written three weeks after the previous one during which I traveled to New Jersey to see mom who passed away a couple of hours later.  I returned to Arizona a week later and it is only now that I finally get to write.  And I start with mom? I think it is good timing. Rest in peace sweet mom.

Ridden with anxiety, I made my first steps on stage by running to my "husband" and exclaiming his name, followed by a darling, "Andryusha, sireliiiiiis" in Armenian.  I was playing Tatiana in Chekhov's A Jubilee, which was quite a stretch for me. This woman was vivacious, talkative, elegant, rich and young, married to the bank manager, in love with life and oblivious to what went on around her.

It was so much fun to finally be able to personify that character even for a brief moment in my life. It was an auspicious beginning, and led to many more challenging parts.  I had not allowed myself to decide anything about my future yet but no other path seemed remotely interesting.






 

The City of Secretary - Part II

Don't get me wrong.  It was not all gloom and doom at dad's office. In fact, dad's office was the most interesting and colorful from all the offices I have worked in since.  And I have worked at:

Thos. Cook & Sons, Merck Pharmaceuticals, American Lebanese Shipping Company, Electrolux, Singer Sewing Company, Lipschutz Organization, Conseil 2000, William Morris Agency, Occidental Petroleum, City of Beverly Hills, Northrop Corp., Motown Corporation, State Bar of California, Avazian & Avazian, Saro Trading Company, Ivy Ligue Cleaners, Partridge, Snow & Hahn, St. Illuminator's Armenian Apostolic Church, Edart GTI, Circle Tree OA to name a few.  In order of appearance they were in Lebanon, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Hohokus, NJ, Providence, Rhode Island, New York, NY, River Vale, NJ and Mesa, Arizona.

Arizona, where I am now, has a reputation of being a huge retirement center.  Older people come here to retire.  So the story goes.  It is not exclusively retirement communities galore though, although they are plenty.  People here are still free to retire or not to retire.  It is apparent, upon close scrutiny, that in Arizona, there are more people who have not retired than there are people who have.

I might have retired from a certain habit, misconception, addiction or have let a character trait retire, but I have not retired.  Neither are the people who have retired for goodness' sake.  They still have to wake up and go about their businesses.


The little radio, right behind my chair, up on the filing cabinet, was my most loyal companion.  It took close to a minute for it to warm up but once it did, Radio Liban, the Lebanese radio station with its variety of programs with no commercials was on almost constantly. When the girls would visit after school, we would have a mini-party.  It was a party when we could be somewhere, anywhere, with friends, music and...Pepsi Cola, preferably without the presence of adults.


Dad kept a pack of cigarettes in his desk drawer for visitors although he himself never smoked. They were called Philadelphia and they were made in Jordan.  I would offer them to my visitors and we would sit there, smoking, drinking Pepsi Cola, listening to music, being funny and laughing. 

These parties were rare and could only happen when dad was not there.  If he was there, the visits were, at the most, cordial.  Dad would ask us what we wanted to drink and he would telephone "downstairs" and place an order for delivery.  Coffee, sandwiches, juices, yogurt drink, Pepsi Cola and Orange Crush, the latter being my favorite.

I was afraid that he would find out that the cigarettes in the pack were getting low.  If he knew, he never mentioned it.  He did say "there is too much smoke in this room" once, as he opened the window upon entering the office where I was smoking a minute ago.

For decor, the wooden cabinet and some walls were covered by calenders with pretty geishas that the Japanese companies would send.  Behind us, there was another, smaller room where all the product samples were, labeled and ready to be promoted.

Dad's visitors, local and international saw the same kind of hospitality from him that my friends saw from me.  When the telephone "downstairs" kept ringing busy, we had to go to the top of the stairs and holler down "ALI!"  Ali would make himself seen.  "TWO COFFEES PLEASE. WASSAT."  Wassat was the Arabic word for a medium quantity of sugar.

Apart from the two grocery shops in my neighborhood which were owned by Arabs, my life so far had been confined within the perimeters of the Armenian school, community, clubs and neighborhood.  It had not left room for integration into a Lebanese world.  Now that I was smack in the middle of it, here come also the Indians, the Swedes, the Japanese, Pakistanis and others.

There was a radio program I never missed called Liban Jeunesse, Youth Lebanon.  Cecile Gedeon presented French songs that the listeners would ask for.  I don't know what prompted me one day to take the pen and write to her (look up boredom) but I got a call back from her.  She said that she could use my help if I wanted to help her.  I went to visit her.  When my parents found out they wanted to meet her.  She was kind enough to come to our house and meet my parents.

It was such a breath of fresh air to be involved in something, anything to do with the arts.  I went once or twice a week, in the afternoons to answer letters, file, and...type.  Once I took the calls for the Liban Jeunesse program when Cecile was under the weather.  She was also a member of a theater group which did skits in French at the famous Casino du Liban every night.  They were the Theatre de Dix Heures, the Ten O'clock Theater.  When Cecile got sick and could not perform, they looked for a replacement and found a girl who came and rehearsed at Cecile's flat.  While I was having difficulties sitting still because I knew I could do a far better job than this girl, I also could rationalize because she was French and therefore better at her own language while I was...well, let's not talk about that. After she left, I got up and did her lines word for word in front of Cecile with much joy and energy.  She said "Mon Dieu! You are better than Claudette."  I knew that but I thanked her anyhow.

This is when I realized that looking at poor me, people cannot possibly guess what I have repressed deep within myself. When Cecile heard me do her lines, she invited me to go to the radio station with her.  That afternoon, I presented the songs on the program, in French, forgot one, told the listeners so and continued unperturbed. Cecile was able to exhale.  

This exposure to Lebanese culture gave me a little confidence but we are not home yet. 

Before long, my attention shifted elsewhere when I started working at Thos. Cook and Son.  There were boys and girls in a big room, in a circular sitting, working. I could type and throw glances at the handsome young man sitting across from me.  There was also a cute guy on the second floor, the Accounting Department.  You can say I dated them by talking to them from time to time.

This company's employees were the nexus of the ethnic tapestry that was Lebanon at the time.  The ethnic diversity was mind blowing.  For that, Thos Cook & Sons takes the second prize for the most enjoyable working environment in my life.

To make a long story short, after the six day war and the partial closing of Thos. Cook & Sons, I returned to dad's office and found a part time job in a pharmaceutical company.

In the afternoons, I was still helping dad.

One afternoon, the phone rang. 

The City of Secretary

Yesterday, while driving my car on Chandler Boulevard on my way to the library, I heard a talk on NPR radio about General MacArthur and how he had been instrumental in averting a nuclear war during WWII.

 

His name was familiar to me, although I did not know what he was famous for until yesterday. I listened to the talk, riveted, while another tape from the past was simultaneously playing in my head.

 

I am sitting behind a typewriter in my dad's office in Beirut.  My desk has a drawer in which there are items a secretary will need, like an eraser, and a book.  The book is about General MacArthur. I don't know who it belongs to.  I am assuming the previous secretary left it there and am very impressed as I have never read it.  Even when there was nothing to do and I was looking for something to read, I would pick it up, look at it, turn some pages and then put it down because, it was in English, and therefore hard for me to understand, and I didn’t want to expand extra energy on someone I had never heard of. He was a military man as depicted on the cover, and secondly, at the time, I mainly read French novels, magazines and the close captioning of American films. I am 17 years old.

 

My classmates are continuing their high school years while I am sitting in a small office on the second floor of a building in the center of Beirut, where, if you opened the window, you would encounter strange odors from the restaurant in the adjacent building.  It wasn’t terribly offensive but it wasn’t one that would whet the appetite either.  It was just strong and unknown.  Sometimes dad, having had enough, would shut the window with attitude.

 

Our desks are two feet away from each other, side by side, and when he is in the office, we work.  We had no schedule.  It was very zen.   Sometimes we started work as most people were closing their shops. I would be ready to go home when dad will show up from the market and start writing letters that I had to type.  Since I was his daughter and had failed in high school, he gave himself the permission to make me work on his schedule.

 

As if on cue, yesterday, while watching a video of Sir Ken Robinson giving a talk on TED TV, I finally realized that I had not failed at school.

 

Mornings were the same way.  Whenever we got there was just fine.  When he traveled, often for as long as a month, I actually ran the office. And I managed not to run it down.

 

Two days after receiving my report card, dad had brought a huge iron typewriter home accompanied by a book on how to learn to type.  On a French keyboard, the second row from the top, the sequence of letters was A Z E R T Y U I O P.

 

After a week of practicing where to put which finger and how hard to push the keys on a steel-iron typewriter in order to hit the paper with the impression of a letter, dad took me to his office.  Both of his previous secretaries had left to better pastures and I was now to be the secretary, for starters. 

 

On our way to Beirut from the mountain village of Broummana, where we were vacationing that summer, dad told me of his plans for me.  I was to go to secretarial school in the afternoons at the Mouthany Institute (Mteiny in Arabic) in the building across from ours.  After that, I was to learn his business and travel to Europe on his stead to meet suppliers of the different products he imported for customers in Beirut, and thus got a commission as payment for his impeccably written letters.  He was the intermediary between supplier and buyer, and I typed letters that went to every corner of the world, with two carbon copies; one for the general file, and one for the manufacturer's file.

 

He wrote those letters in long hand on every piece of paper he could find.  He was the recycler par excellence. The back of envelopes were used for drafting letters as well as the back of a letters I had typed with revision marks on it.  Once or twice I got a paper bag with his handwritten draft to type from.

 

If he was not out to see customers, he was writing.  He wrote even at home.  He could type too and later, when they came up with lighter typewriters, he carried one with him while traveling.  He had bypassed secretaries well before the personal computer.  Seeing him type, it never crossed my mind that I was looking at the future.

 

Our office was the last one in a long corridor on the second floor.  Other units were occupied by a medical doctor, an architectural drawings duplicator, a men's tailor, and an attorney who had three offices and three secretaries who would step out into the corridor during breaks and chat, their voice echoing throughout the corridor that had no carpet.  They typed in Arabic.  I knew how hard that was. In Arabic, the character is written differently in the beginning, in the middle and at the end of a word, and thus the keyboard is very busy to say the least. I thought I had it hard typing in French and English!  These girls were typing pleadings and complaints and who knows what else in Arabic. 

 

To my astonishment, my sister Hourig tells me that when she replaced me at my dad's office a few years later, she was paid a weekly salary.  I asked her what had changed?  She told me that she had asked for it.  Whereas moi, would ask for bus fare, movie fare, this and that fare when I needed it, and would have to put up with his words of wisdom informing me that I should start thinking about my future before he would actually hand me any money.

 

What does he mean by future I would ask myself.  

 

It was a sobering moment of self recognition when my sister revealed how strong she had been in taking care of herself while working with dad.  In contrast, I was suicidal.  I just didn't know what method to use to end it all because I was aware that somewhere I had lost my mind, my logic, my sense of self and my zest for life.  

Boys were attracted to my physique but would soon find out that there was nobody home, although the lights seemed to be on.

 

Is it synchronicity when I am writing about this period of my life and I see Sir Ken Robinson give a talk on TED about how schools kill creativity? I shed tears after watching the video in the library and sent an email to my family and close friends saying that I had not failed in school.  My school was not ready for me. They all knew of course. So did I.  But hearing it confirmed by a professional made a difference. 

 

Here is the link to that video: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

In January of 1967, when I was 20 years old, dad, seeing how disinterested I was in his business and how interested I was about music, books and film, allowed me to go work in another company, Thos. Cook and Sons, where I worked until the start of the six day war in June.  My department closed.  We could not send tourists to Jerusalem anymore.  They let us go. 

 

I was back in my dad's office until further notice.  

 

The City of Awards

When she was very young, my sister Hourig, who is three years younger than me, had very long hair which she parted in the middle and braided.  They came down to her waist.  Very few girls had braided hair at the time. She cut them when she was about eleven or twelve years old because, she told me, one of the teachers would play with her braids as he was teaching.  She sat in the front row and this made it easier for him to approach her desk and wrap the braids around his fingers, pull them, and/or, holding both braids from their ends, dance with them.  When she told me which teacher was doing this, I had a hard time believing because that same teacher was anything but playful from the point of view of my classroom.   

Me and Hourig on our balcony in Beirut

Braided hair was part of the Armenian folkloric costume that was only worn on stage but I remember three girls that had them naturally.  One of them was my sister. 

At the time when we spent our summer vacations in the coolness of mountain villages, we, all seven of us, hopped like gypsies from one village to another each year and in 1959 we ended up in the heavily populated with Armenian vacationers village of Bois de Boulogne we called Bologna for short.

It had a cinema, a downtown circle, stores and lots of pine trees.  There was an outdoors café/restaurant which was only open in summers.  It had a dance floor and on most weekends there were live orchestras and singers entertaining the revelers. 

Thursday afternoons the café would open for children. There was no entrance fee but we had to buy something like lemonade or a CocaCola.  My mom allowed us to go once.  My two sisters, my brother and I went and sat around a table waiting impatiently for the music to start.

It started.  My younger sister and my brother danced with each other, so Hourig and I danced together.  Rock ‘N Roll.  I was doing the honors of leading and would twirl her around, hold her hands and slide her between my legs and to the back while wearing “Cowboys”.  I don't know why but the pants that came down to just below the knees, those that are called Capri now, were called Cowboys when I was in elementary school and once a year we went to a day long excursion/picnic.  We wore Cowboys that day.   

Hourig, with her long braided Armenian hair, and I did not see the oddity in dancing the Rock ‘N Roll, me at 11 and she at 8 years old. I wish there were older people present to see the children dancing.  We had a ball.  Appropriately called Children’s Ball, adults stayed away.  It was relatively safe to do that.  There was only one young man who sat there to make sure it stayed that way, safe.  He was the only older person appointed to this task by one of the Armenian youth clubs to watch over us.  He was no more than 16 or 17 years old.  The one waiter serving was also an older man and then there was the DJ which we never saw.  He too was probably older than us.

Bal Des Enfants by Arpie

A couple of years before Bologna, in 1957, we were in the village of Alay, where the eldest of the neighborhood kids who was only a year older than me but oh so mature and know it all, organized a variety show for all the neighbors to attend to bid goodbye to the summer.  The neighborhood consisted of a total of maybe 5-6 two story dwellings next to each other in a remote hillside inhabited by Armenians from Zeytoun, in Turkey.  They rented parts of their buildings to other Armenians from the city for the summer.   

The show was to take place on a Sunday afternoon when close relatives, who had chosen to stay in the city that had beaches, would come and visit to enjoy some cool fresh air.

We rehearsed every day in an empty garage of one neighbor which remained open always.  Once a week, we made a Tabbouleh salad together.  Each kid would bring one or half an item from home and each had a task in the making of the Tabbouleh.  It was always succulent.  Fresh and finely chopped local tomatoes, parsley, green onions, lemons, a few teaspoons of olive oil, salt, pepper mixed with very fine bulghur (cracked wheat).

We had dances, musical comedy, sketches, and I was asked to write and read the welcoming remarks.  Mom helped me write it and I took the page with me.

My uncle and his wife felt very lucky that they picked that Sunday to visit us from Beirut.  We had not advertised as far away as the city, just to our families.  We had set the equivalent of 25 cents at the time, as an entrance fee. Each person brought a few chairs from their home, the equivalent of the number of people attending from that household and we started the show.

We tied a rope high up towards the back of the garage from one end to the other; hung a bed sheet from it and changed our wardrobe behind it.  The garage itself was the stage.  People sat outside the garage. 

As I was to come out on stage, one of the girls stopped in front of me arguing that she should be the one reading the welcome message.  She pulled the page from my hands and started toward the stage.  I went around, grabbed the paper from her and ran to the stage.

She inadvertently had given me the courage to be on stage and feel that I belonged there at the moment.  I could feel my excitement grow inside me with each word and phrase.  I had no problem reading what was written.  

Everything went smoothly until the short romantic song in the form of a dialogue I was doing with Nora N.   

I was a boy.  I wore borrowed man pants and as I was kneeling down and singing, I heard the audience become agitated when they should not have been.  There were whispers, little spurts of laughter, something was not right.  I looked up and saw my mom pointing to the front of my pants.  I had forgotten to pull up the zipper and my very white undergarment was showing.  No problem.  I zipped it up and continued with my song, inwardly on the one hand totally devastated by this mistake and on the other trying not to laugh with the audience.

Looking Forward by Arpie

Later, with the money collected, we all went to the center of the village where we knew there was an excellent Falafel shop.  We each ordered a sandwich and a Pepsi Cola.

My previous encounter with a viewing public was in kindergarten; in Sa Chi Nini, the musical.  My cousin, Sally, and I were singing in Geisha costumes, she about her lover, and me about my brother and acting the parts with movements and choreography. 

Now and then, out of nowhere, someone will tell me that they remember Sa Chi Nini. When, a year ago, my long lost friend Taline brought up the subject after so many years, I  asked her why she still remembers Sa Chi Nini. She said it was the novelty.  It was different from anything that had been done before. 

After the wedding, we all went to a banquet hall to have dinner and party.  This was a couple of years ago, in New Jersey. 

Everybody is dancing. 

Someone taps on my shoulder.  I turn around.  Hourig, my sister is inviting me to dance.  This time the roles are reversed.  She is leading me. 

Before I had had time to get emotional about it, we danced.  We danced the Rock 'N Roll without any one of us attempting the slide, and then we danced an Armenian dance in our fashionable gowns, without veils, without long braided hair.

Now?  Now I know the East Coast Swing, the Arizona Two-Step, and the West Coast Swing and the idea just took hold of me to ask Gary to take me again to Toby Keith’s this weekend.  You know, to dance.

Courtesy of Alec Ekmekji

--

The City of Exercises

The tear drop from his right eye had reached the side of his upper lip.  Any minute now he would reach in his pocket and take out the big white handkerchief all squeezed into a big ball and wipe the tear away, I thought.  And waited.  His head was still shaking lightly from the effort and there were little signs of perspiration on his forehead.  From time to time he would change the position of his hands on the cane.  Right hand on the cane, left hand on top of right hand.  Then he would venture back into the depths of his memory to find the right words to say out loud so I can write them down in the notebook he had given me.  His poems.  And I waited.  A deep long breath signified that he was having problems today.  He would then ask me to read what I had written down so far, and I would gladly do so.  And wait.  I was not sure where he went when he was silent.  From looking at his expressions, it seemed to me that sometimes his mind went somewhere other than where words and verses are found.  I was not sure though. I never urged, prompted or suggested my presence to him when he was thinking.  Time did not count when I was copying down his poems as he was creating them in his mind.  Painstakingly, lovingly, and with humor. I waited.  I couldn’t think of anything else I rather do at that moment. 

Dede was very thin and fit.  His face reflected the years he had lived.  The anguish.  Every millimeter on his face was active. If eyebrows could talk, his would.  They were white and thick and when he had not shaved his head or face for a couple of days, it showed more on his red face, the tiny white hairs sticking out all over.  His eyes were set deep.  They were blue but couldn’t see much.  Only shadows.  His ears were big but couldn’t hear much.  Only loud noises.  We all had to speak out very loud for him to hear.  Thus, conversations were concise and to the point. Only very important questions or answers would make the topic.   The process of his guessing the identity of a visitor was a source of great excitement for him.

I took great pleasure in talking to him because that is when I could hear my own voice clearly. Joyfully and perfectly pronounced words would come out of my mouth and project far, far into the future, the present, to ask "where is it now?" or, sorry, but I have to say it "can you hear me now?".


His poetry, poems of praise and in jest about the latest most popular member of the extended family were kept in a notebook.  A new baby, someone getting engaged or married, a relative paying a visit from another city or country.  I had noticed that the country’s distance was in direct proportion with the amount of time it took to complete the poem.  For example, if the relative came from France, our poem writing session would take less than 15 minutes. His high spirits helped accelerate the speed of creation.  I had to also re-read it more times over and over again for his enjoyment and mine.  He would say “astonishing thing” each time I finished the reading.  Others took too long.  Some remained unfinished.  From time to time he would ask me if I was getting tired.  God forbid.  I wasn’t.  But he apparently was.  Couldn’t understand why he was stuck.  No one told him about writer’s block I suppose.  Then he would bend towards little me and with a very contained laughter would tell me the following secret: “We will continue some other day.”

He finally took the handkerchief and wiped the tear off his face, wiped his forehead and while he was at it, his head too. 

He was my maternal grandfather.  We called him Dédé.  His favorite sentence, zarmanali pan - astonishing thing, also describes him.  He was quite an astonishing man.  We were always overjoyed to see Dede in the street, walking with his cane as if he was 20 years old.  Not blind and not deaf.  He had the demeanor of an individual without physical affliction.  He had mastered the use of the cane to such a degree that it was hard to tell if he was indeed using it to direct his steps or to give him some decorum.  Dédé was so familiar with the neighborhood that it was the cane which had started following him. 

When I saw him walking in the street, I would run to him and make him guess my identity.  He had eight grandchildren all of whom called him “Dede”.  He narrowed the probabilities down by process of elimination. He could tell if the voice was a male’s or a female’s and he could see our heights.  When I reached the height of my mother, it became more difficult for him to recognize me.  I had to identify myself and hear his “astonishing thing”.  We all loved to give him our arm and walk with him.     

Solitaire

One summer, at our summer house up in the cool mountain village of Alay his silhouette appeared on the other side of the train tracks.  My heart stopped.  How had he managed to travel fifteen miles from his home in the city?  The reason we were playing around the train tracks at that moment was because a train was due to arrive any minute now and upon passing we were going to rush to the tracks to see the results of our daily experiments.  How does a coin look after the wheels of the train had flattened it?  How does a paper look when subjected to the same fate?  How about the seed of a peach?

I rushed across the tracks and held him in place as the train passed.  I looked at his face.  He was doing his best to contain his laughter and saying zarmanali pan - astonishing thing.  After the train passed my sisters and brother ran to meet us on this side of the tracks and everyone was jumping from joy.  Dede was laughing.  He had realized his good fortune at that moment.  He was also happy to see us.  We surrounded him and his cane and we started walking home to present our miracle of a Dede to our mother.  On the way, we must have been making so much noise that neighbors came out of their houses to see what was going on.  We explained to everyone what had just happened and some people joined the procession home. 

My mother’s face, upon seeing him, seemed to say “My dad’s being here could be a hallucination, but my children are with him.”  Her gaze would go from him to us and back.  We sat him down, gave him water, coffee, a cigarette, and the questioning started.  How did he manage to accomplish this trip?  How did he know where to get off the bus?  Did my grandmother allow him to take such a trip?  We later found out that she didn’t but he came anyway.  I must say that even for a person whose eyesight and hearing are normal, it would be impossible to find our house without at least a guide or lengthy directions.  We were not in the center of the village but on an adjacent hilltop.  He himself could not believe how he had managed to travel 15 miles and find us.

Dede did not live too far from us in the city.  Just a few short blocks.  So visits were frequent.  I also read the newspaper for him.  Out loud.  He would first ask for the headlines and, depending upon his interest of the subject, would make me read first a few lines, then the whole text.  If he wasn’t interested or was annoyed about a subject, he would say “pass”.  At 8 years of age I knew everyone’s name in the world.  Eisenhower,  Khruchev, Dag Hammersheold, DeGaulle, the Arab leaders plus the Lebanese ones.  It bored me to death to read about politics but I knew who was who in the world.  I also tried to make it interesting for me by changing my intonation and respecting all punctuation marks.  The front page of the newspaper was always about politics and after reading one headline to Dede I would pray the good Lord for the word “pass”.

On warmer days, we would sit on the big balcony and I would read the news knowing full well that everyone within a bloc was hearing it.  I took a secret pleasure in doing this.  I think I even read it louder to have a larger audience.  I loved to think that besides Dede, I had another audience listening to the news and admiring my perfect diction.


"Can you please read a little bit from that?" he would ask, not sure if he is really interested.  Invariably, it would turn out to be so boring that he would say "that's enough."


I still love to read out loud to whoever wants to listen and I have a suspicion these reading out loud sessions with my Dede were the formative years before my entrance into the world of theater and the stage in general.  Is it any wonder that from all the columns I read to him, one in particular has remained in my memory because Dede made me read it three times.  Marilyn Monroe Gives Exercises For Healthy Eyes.  One of them was about looking as far away as possible and then looking as close as possible and continuing to do so ten times, as fast as possible.

Dede did not even know who Marilyn Monroe was, let alone what she looked like and I was not going to take chances and tell him.  But there he was doing those exercises and trying to contain his joy for the small ray of hope coming his way as I was thinking that of all the news and stories, this small paragraph made the biggest difference in his life.   

Zarmanali Pan.




 
    




 

The City of Many Wonders

It has snowed in Beirut today.  There was a flood two days ago.  Both very unusual for Beirut.  I am kept wondering.  Climate change or bad engineering?  I cannot decide but my thoughts took me back to when there were heavy rains as we were growing up.  The water used to run under the sidewalk.  The sidewalk might have been as wide as two feet or three and the water that was running, was that wide. There were no floods.  But then again, it could be climate change. 

"WHAT?" I wrote on Facebook to a friend who had posted pictures of the flooded city.  I wanted to write another "WHAT?" but that would have taken me to the What-What area of Beirut where I used to live.  And I went.

Here I am at Beirut Airport.  All my family is here with "Welcome Home Arpie" banners.  I have been away only for a year and half but so much has changed including the scary ride home.  Have rules changed since I was gone or did I also used to drive like this?  We get so used to order that what seems disorderly conduct is nothing but a necessity.  When in traffic, find the shortest way to get to destination even if that means going the wrong way and getting angry at the incoming car's driver for not letting you pass.

Many things had changed since I was gone including at home.  My medzmama (grandmama), Sara, who lived with us, had passed away so had my Uncle Arshag.    My two sisters were now married and a few months later, in August of that year, Sanan, my niece was born.  We were so happy. to welcome her into this world as the first grandchild and niece. 

Jubilation in time of war. We had already escaped to our summer home in Broummana at the start of the civil war in the city.  And viewing Beirut from atop a mountain at night had taken a turn.  The gunfires and rocketfires looked like fireworks.  It gives a new meaning to Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover.

In the meantime and as there were intermissions between gunfires, I found a job at Singer Sewing Company.  My boss, a Scottish-American man, was always gone and I did not have much work to do until he returned.  We all got paid for the days worked and not worked, including, once, for a whole month.

The theater group I had left behind had had many productions and was starting to rehearse for Barefoot in the Park.  We couldn't even start but some years later, they did produce it.

As the war went on, we stayed up in the mountains except when it was safe to return to the city to work, but come October, people started realizing that this was not the civil war of 1958 which lasted only through summer.  And I realized that I could not stay home all day reading books forever.  In fact, the little bookstore of the village had run out of books.  I read everything I could get my hands on; science fiction, romance, French books, English books, magazines, newspapers, literature and trash.

It was nice living up there in peace, away from the areas where civil war was raging.  It was quality time spent with family and friends all over different villages which we drove to.  My restlessness, unanswered, took form of a mild depression, followed by an apathetic attitude towards the war from lack of understanding its meaning.

Back to Los Angeles maybe?

But before I go back there, I invite you to read my previous attempt at writing about my return to Beirut.

Intercepted by a presidential election in the United States, a weather storm on the east coast, a civil war in Syria where everything that country held sacred is being shred to pieces; and Beirut, where, a week ago,  a car bomb turned a residential neighborhood into a war zone.  The latter, just as I was to start writing about my return to Beirut in 1975. 

In the month of May 1975, everybody thought that what had happened on April 13, 1975 was another incident we all can leave behind and life will continue as before.  Only a week after my arrival in Beirut, working as a translator in Hotel Phoenicia's International Business Fair, I heard tanks passing by the street outside.  An hour later, I was running a fever and had to excuse myself and go home.  Never to return.  That was the start of the civil war that would last fifteen years.  The hotel was one of the first casualties of the rockets.

My past and my present are not leaving each other alone though.  They are fighting for supremacy.  We all know that the present is where it is at but when someone throws a bomb in the present, we become aware.  This is not the tree that fell in the forest and all of us are still asking if it made a sound.  It is here, in this room, on my computer.  I am seeing the pictures and feeling the pain.

What attitude one must have to fight such an onslaught on senses in order to keep their mental balance and continue the daily routine uninterrupted?  Should we not hear the news?  Should I put my head in the sand and hope that things change miraculously when I come up for air?

For the sake of argument, let us admit that the news we are reading are already old news.  The present news, those that are happening now, we will hear about them later.  Therefore, in actuality there are no news.  And if there are no news, wasn't that called good news once?