My friend Kid from Alex, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, tells me that he is reading my blog posts on Egypt, looking forward to hearing what I have to say about the Armenian community there. . . I can't wait for you to write about the Marashtzis you met there, about the coffee houses, the churches, the hospitality, he said with a twinkle in his eye.
Now that I think back, I believe it was all for the best that Egypt was the one place we never did meet Armenians. If we had, they would have insisted on our staying with them, on their caring for us, and we would have brought them nothing but trouble!
In actuality, Kid from Alex, I did find the following note at the back of my journal (lost in the turmoil of our visit to Egypt) -- relatives of Nevdone Pasha Pahlevi, one of my best friends in college, and of his mother Diko (my mom's good friend) , and his father Ellis (a friend whom my father had known way before Ellis was married).
My journal note reminded me to be sure to look up
Mrs. Pourbaix, friend of Diko Kupelian, 14 Sh. Ibrahimieh, Lokkani, Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt
Alexandria - seashore - cousin to Mrs. Kupelian (Diko Esserian)
Mrs. Bahar Der Avedisian (widow), 14 Sidi/Bicher, Alexandria, Egypt
Nevdone Pasha Pahlevi -- Did you know these people? My mother must have talked to your mother when my trip was in the planning stages, trying to ensure my safety, but I didn't remember that your mother was from Egypt! Was she? And anyway, it's a good thing I never contacted your relatives, or they may have been under the same threat that Gail and I posed to our Coptic friends in Alexandria! [Blog Readers -- to learn more about Nevdone Pasha Pahlevi, please go to my blog entitled Vaht to Do entered on January 4, 2011.]
All our lives, my father used to comfort us and be comforted when he would regularly remind us that no matter where in the world we found ourselves, we could always open the phone book, look for an 'ian' at the end of a name, call that phone #, and be welcomed into the home of that Armenian family as if we were long lost relatives (which we well might have been)! My brother had had that experience on his travels, but not Gail and I. (Gail, by the way, would add an ian to the end of her Welsh last name during our trip through the Middle East whenever it suited her, just for this reason!) We had been in Egypt, after all, we could not read Arabic, and I had only a dim idea at the time that there were Armenian communities there -- only the Armenian writing we saw on a church in Alexandria, a church which did not seem to be in operation (as we sped past in our taxi on a weekday), called to mind the possibility of Armenians in Egypt. [I had completely forgotten about the names my mother had insisted that I write in the back of my journal!] Indeed, God saved our Armenian compatriots from certain harm by keeping Gail and me from their doorsteps!
N.B. Today I learned from the internet that the Egyptian-Armenian Community and the Armenian Apostolic Church of Egypt has constructed a monument to the victims of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1922) in the courtyard of the Saints Peter and Paul Armenian Church, 12 Baidawi Street, Alexandria, Egypt. Had I been more persistent, and made the effort to stop the taxi and read the Armenian writing on the front of the church, I could have visited and photographed this Armenian place of worship that bears the name of my father Peter and his brother Paul. They would have been so pleased.
The Armenian Church that you saw in Alexandria with the Armenian writing while riding in a taxi must have been the Armenian Evangelical Church. The Armenian Apostolic Church that has your uncle's and father's name St. Paul and St. Peter is within the Armenian quarters, on a private road and did not have public traffic going through.
ReplyDeleteToo bad you did not visit the Armenian community in Alex or Cairo, (especially in Alex) where people are so warm and hospitable, A young girl far away from USA, they would have found you a Neshanadz …… you should have followed you father advice…. just pick up the phonebook and look for "ian" or "yan".
ReplyDeleteDiko's parents took her and her older sister, Araksie, to Egypt when she was a young child (?). They returned a few years later when she was 16! They had spent those years (?) in Alexandria. My grandfather went there (now get this) to work as a pastry chef for General Allenby's Brit. army. Diko attended a French school there. In 1921 she went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with her mother, taking a room at the Armenian monastery and playing the mandolin and undertaking various spiritual meditations (?) I'm not sure what that was all about or what she did, but she had a haaj cross tatooed on her arm with the date to prove it. That's all I know. They had various friends in Alexandria including the Moogalians ( Does this mean "mouse people"?, I don't know.)
ReplyDeleteMy mother had a whole bunch of photographs of people from Egypt -- like, a woman caressing a fawn -- but I think she chucked them. I haven't seen them in decades. The characters in them were like straight out of a Cecile B DeMille movie.
ReplyDeleteMother was born in Allston and the family later lived in Watertown. They went to Egypt because grandfather (Hovhaness Esserian) got a job in a pastry kitchen making pies for the British soldiers in Egypt. He had previously had one eye blinded in a machining accident in this country, in a factory workshop. Twelve years later they returned to Watertown where they lived on Dexter Ave and E. Boylston Street. Mom learned a little bit of Arabic and French from her living and schooling in "Masr", which she promptly forgot. (Remember the cry, MASR MASRHANI {Egypt for Egyptians!}? At no time did I hear it during this round of demonstrations, though it would have been appropriate. It was once used as a cry of independence from Britain)
ReplyDeleteAs for that brief visit to Jerusalem, I'm not sure how she wrangled that one. What on earth were she and my grandmother doing there with the monks, and how did they get to use the monastery as a hostel? What a sketch!
CORRECTION: My grandparents went to Egypt in 1911 with three children, my mom at 5, auntie Araxie at 6, and their younger brother, Armen, at 4. My Auntie Arshag, the youngest of four, was born on the way in Cyprus I believe in 1911 or 12. The pilgrimage my grandma (Nene) and Dicko made to Jerusalem was in 1921 when Dicko was 14!! The family returned in 1924 to Ellis Island, and the youngest child Arshag had to immigrate anew while the others were already born here. I'm trying to get the name of the ship. I uses to know it but forgot. I have to go to EllisIsland.org to get it again. . .
I just managed to log on to EllisIsland.org and found (again) that the family arrived on the British Red Star line, "LAPLAND", on January 9, 1924 that set sail from Cherbourg, France. No wonder my mom was sea sick all the way across; the winter seas are rough!! The immigration document lists my aunt Araxie as "Alexis", my grandmother as "Steala" (her name was Arousiag, they called her Stella), my mother as Dicko (short for Dickranouhi),
aunt Arshag as "Azshak", and my grandfather as Hovannannes (instead of Hovhaness, which was his real name). They were so careless and sketchy in writing these things down, must have been in a hurry and it must have been colder than a witch's left boob. The site shows a photocopy of the document and a picture of the "Lapland" with its two smokestacks!
I also have a picture of mom in an Armenian choral group in Egypt. They were in Egypt for twelve not 9 years.