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.