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

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