Inga & Anush - Armenian Reporter

February 21, 2009 

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Inga & Anush 

On their way to Eurovision 2009 

See page C3 

Sisters Inga and Anush Arshakyan performing at the Karen Demirchyan Sport and Concert Complex. Photo: Photolure.

Nigoghos Sarafian’s definition of wealth 

by Lory 

Bedikian 

The economy, here in the U.S. and around 

the world, has been on everyone’s mind 

for quite some time. We hear phrases 

such as “recession,” we hear about or experience 

the loss of homes to foreclosures, 

the loss of jobs, and we listen to the news 

to see if there is any hope in sight. 

Money issues may be in the forefront 

for the general population of 

this country now, but they have been 

an ongoing struggle for others across 

the globe for generations. Sometimes 

I think about the fact that suddenly 

we hear so much about the amount of 

losses and all their repercussions, but 

other populations in other countries 

are probably thinking that it’s nothing 

new to them. 

I have to admit I don’t know much 

about economics. I only know that poverty 

upsets me, and need saddens me. 

Sometimes I have to put my surroundings 

on hold and really think about my 

own riches, whether they reside in poems, 

or just in the fact that I was able to 

have three meals in one day. 

Everyone has their own definition of 

abundance and each person has their 

own way of determining what they are 

blessed with. Since money – or the lack 

of it – has been on the minds of so many 

of us, I’ve been looking for poems that 

may touch upon this subject. I found a 

few about money or suffering and much 

of what we can expect, but it was a poem 

by Nigoghos Sarafian that caught my attention. 

Sarafian writes a poem, “Wealth,” and 

although the title suggests riches in 

monetary or material terms, we see that 

the speaker has something completely 

different in mind. 

Wealth 

My wealth is a heap of unexplainable sad 

moments. 

From this yellow trash my arteries branch 

and blossom out. 

In the spring, the cherry trees rise like 

a fakir to dispense talismans with shivering 

hands. 

Moments. Between life and death are moments, 

only, 

Lory Bedikian received her MFA in Poetry from 

the University of Oregon. Her collection of 

poetry has twice been selected as a finalist in 

the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition 

and twice in the Crab Orchard Series 

in Poetry First Book Award Competition. 

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which face each other fiercely over a game 

of chess. 

Moments like sudden flashes of lightning 

that could work miracles if they could be 

held. 

I dance a thousand jigs like a marionette 

soldier. 

Without the cord, I become again the awkward 

peasant. 

I was an angel distributing children’s presents. 

Christmas passed and I turned back into a 

tree. 

My sad unexplainable moments are my 

wealth. 

And from this yellow trash heap my arteries 

stem and bloom. 

Sarafian – who was born on a ship 

traveling to Bulgaria from Istanbul – authored 

four books, lived from 1905 to 

1973, and wrote “Wealth” in 1927. Perhaps 

it is comforting to know that this 

poet, decades ago, also felt that wealth 

was not attainable and that his source of 

prosperity was in his “sad unexplainable 

moments.” 

by Shahane Martirosyan 

GLENDALE – It’s not often that lectures 

on the classics of Armenian literature 

focus on sex and sexual relations. 

Thus, it was a particularly interesting 

evening at Glendale Public Library on 

January 31, when Professor Krikor 

Beledian delivered a lecture about Levon 

Shant’s The Woman, concentrating 

on the sexual connotations present in 

the novelette. 

Professor Beledian, who teaches 

Armenian studies at the Université 

Catholique de Lyon and the Institut 

national de langues et civilisations orientales 

in Paris, is a leading figure in 

Armenian letters. 

The lecture was organized by the 

Hamazkayin Western Region Committee 

and the Glendale Public Library 

and was titled, “The Artist and 

His Model: Analysis of Levon Shant’s 

Literary Work.” The event brought together 

Armenian scholars, professors, 

and literature lovers for a very unusual 

evening. 

The Woman is about a painter living 

in Munich and a woman he meets at 

the opera. She agrees to sit for a painting. 

After the painting is completed, she 

rips it up in the painter’s bedroom and 

leaves him. He goes to look for her in 

her hometown. He never finds her. He 

patches the painting back together and 

presents it as an exhibit with the title 

“The Woman.” 

The scene in the book when the woman 

goes into the painter’s bedroom is 

symbolic, for it suggests that the painter 

and the model had made love. In 

Shant’s illustration, the room has a fire 

What resonates so much in this piece 

is Sarafian’s imaginative writing. Yes, 

he uses the traditional device of repetition 

when reiterating the lines regarding 

“wealth,” “moments,” and “yellow 

trash,” but his craft goes further than 

that. The “yellow trash” is a metaphor 

for the speaker’s sad moments. He 

then doubles his use of metaphors by 

telling the reader that the speaker’s 

“arteries branch and blossom out.” At 

the end of the poem, this moment is 

extended when Sarafian’s speaker tells 

us “Christmas passed and I turned 

back into a tree.” He never calls himself 

a tree before that, but merely suggests 

it with “branch” and “blossom.” 

At the close of the poem, he further 

enriches the metaphor with “stem” 

and “bloom.” 

The spiritual elements of this poem exist 

not in the use of traditional phrases 

or symbols, but in the poet’s references 

to nature and other words. For example, 

Sarafian refers to the “fakir” – in this instance 

I believe he is suggesting the Sufi 

miracle-maker who can walk on burning 

coals without a sound. Sarafian uses a 

simile to depict that “the cherry trees 

rise like / a fakir to dispense talismans.” 

Referring to “miracles” and “an angel” 

in the background, a fully made table, 

and a bed. The woman places a wreath 

on the painter’s head. All of these objects 

represent marriage and sexual 

relations between the two characters, 

Beledian argued. 

Beledian reviewed the views of other 

literary critics about the novelette: 

the great literary critic Hagop Oshagan, 

as well as Krikor Shahinian and 

Nichol Akhbarian. 

According to Beledian, Oshagan was 

not a big fan of Levon Shant’s. Oshagan 

criticized Shant’s The Woman as 

little more than a love story between 

an artist and his lover, in which the 

protagonists do not complete their 

love story. 

Krikor Shahinian found that a woman 

cannot be whole on her own; she 

needs a man to complete her. Nichol 

Akhbarian, according to Beledian, had 

a preconceived notion regarding the relations 

between men and women; for 

him, men create art and women inspire 

art. He also believed that the characters 

in the novelette were not real, but fictitious. 

Looking at the novel from the 

takes the spiritual realm of the poem 

even further. 

Sarafian’s imaginative writing resonates 

also in several other instances. 

For example, he personifies moments 

“which face each other fiercely over a 

game of chess.” The speaker becomes a 

“marionette soldier” and then an “awkward 

peasant.” Each line of the poem 

holds one of several devices: a simile, a 

metaphor, a moment of personification, 

or repetition. In its native language I’m 

sure there are particular layers of rhythm 

and sound. In other words – and excuse 

the pun – Sarafian has used a wealth of 

devices in a short, but effective poem. 

Some may say it’s discouraging to recognize 

one’s own wealth in sad moments, 

but we shouldn’t forget that out of these 

moments, the speaker of Sarafian’s poem 

becomes a healthy tree. Of course, I do 

wish for all of us to have happier moments. 

After all, it wouldn’t hurt to have 

all types of abundance, all types of wealth, 

and from all of it, to be able to flourish 

and bloom. 

f 

“Wealth” from Anthology of Armenian Poetry, translated 

by Diana Der-Hovanessian, edited by Diana Der- 

Hovanessian and Marzbed Margossian, Columbia 

University Press, 1978. Reprinted with permission. 

Krikor Beledian discusses sexual relations in Levon Shant’s The Woman 

Krikor Beledian. 

painter’s point of view, Akhbarian saw 

sex as a threat to art. 

Beledian maintained that these critics 

never addressed the woman’s cutting 

the painting as a sexual act, which 

just happens to be the climax of the 

novel. 

When the woman is in the painter’s 

room – Suren’s room – the author tries 

to convey that the woman tells the 

painter that she loves him. In return, 

Suren tells her that he loves her as a 

muse. This is when the woman rips 

the painting with a knife. During their 

conversation, the painter speaks of 

their relationship in the past tense as 

if their relationship had ended. Beledian 

also argued that if the woman 

had not cut the painting, the painting 

would not be real. When the woman 

cut it, she justified the fact that the 

painting was real. “The painting did 

not really exist until it was ripped,” 

Beledian stated. 

In a sense, for Shant, by ripping the 

painting, the woman took the painting’s 

spirit out and created a work 

of art. This scene reached into the 

woman’s personality and brought it 

out. Here the painting finds its own 

identity when the woman leaves the 

room, leaving the painter alone with 

his work. The painting’s full independence 

is achieved when it is displayed 

at the exhibition. 

At the conclusion of his lecture, Beledian 

took questions from the audience, 

which included comedian Vahe Berberian, 

president of the American University 

of Armenia Haroutune Armenian, 

and Armenian language lecturers from 

UCLA Anahid Keshishian and Hagop 

Kouloujian. 

f 

C2 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture February 21, 2009

Sisters Inga and Anush 

Arshakyan performing 

at the Karen 

Demirchyan Sport 

and Concert Complex. 

Photos: Photolure. 

Inga & Anush to represent Armenia at the 

Eurovision 2009 Song Contest with “Jan Jan” 

by Nyree 

Abrahamian 

Yerevan – Backstage at the Karen 

Demirchyan Sport and Concert Complex 

last Saturday night, it was all nerves, vocal 

exercises, and make-up. The 21 finalists 

vying for the top spot to represent Armenia 

in Moscow, at the Eurovision 2009 

Song Contest, were getting ready for the 

concert that could potentially boost their 

careers to the international scene. 

Armenia has been participating in 

Eurovision since 2006, but this was the 

first year that so many finalists were 

considered. They represented a broad 

range of genres from rock (The Bambir, 

Dorians) to Armenian hip hop (Davo), 

and everything in between. 

Early favorites among this year’s finalists 

included Shprot, a bubbly blonde pop 

singer who pulled off a risqué half-man/ 

half-woman act [see last week’s Arts & 

Culture section for a profile], Mher, who, 

hailing from Moscow, has a growing fan 

base in Armenia and in the large diaspora 

community in Russia, and Inga & 

Anush, a duo of sisters with beautiful 

voices and a funky, modern twist on traditional 

Armenian folk music. 

In the end, it was Inga & Anush who 

took it with their surprisingly popinspired 

song, “Jan Jan.” “It’s a style that 

we call folk pop,” said an ecstatic Anush 

after the show, “And you’ll notice that 

most successful artists everywhere in 

the world are being noticed and creating 

hits with fusion styles.” 

Though Inga & Anush had not revealed 

their song before Saturday night’s performance, 

word on the street (and all 

over youtube.com) was that the song 

Inga Arshakyan. 

Anush Arshakyan. 

they had selected was “Gutan,” a strong 

folk rock song with an edgy video. Inga 

even hinted at a press conference a few 

days before the concert that their main 

focus lately had been experimenting 

with folk rock. But in the end, probably 

since Eurovision is a mainly pop-based 

competition, “Jan, Jan,” the catchier option 

with a combination of English and 

Armenian lyrics, won out. “We are not 

betraying our roots. We are staying true 

to our style and growing in our musical 

experimentation,” said Anush. 

Although Inga & Anush were clearly an 

audience favorite, there were a lot of questions 

and speculation regarding how exactly 

the winner was chosen. The idea was 

that the winner would be selected through 

a combination of audience votes via text 

messaging, and a panel of judges, each 

weighted equally. But it was disappointing 

that the identity of the judges was never 

revealed, and it wasn’t quite clear how audience 

votes and the judges’ evaluations 

could be weighed on the same scale. 

Mher, whose ultra-catchy song, “I 

Love You” (bound to be a club favorite 

this summer in Armenia and Russia) 

came in second, was clearly disappointed 

but gracious after the show. Asked 

if he thought the result was fair, he responded, 

“To be honest, I don’t know 

what the breakdown was between audience 

votes and the jury. They don’t 

tell us that. And I know a lot of people 

had trouble getting their text messages 

through.... But I should hope that everything 

was conducted in a fair and 

just fashion. What’s important is that 

Inga & Anush represent us well at Eurovision. 

I like their song and I wish 

them well.” 

The Eurovision Song Contest is a tradition 

that is over 50 years old, and 

every year, its popularity seems to be 

growing around the world. It is broadcast 

not only in Europe, but everywhere 

from the United States to Hong Kong. 

Since 2006, it is even broadcast online. 

Eurovision is one of the most-watched 

non-sporting events in the world, with 

audience figures in recent years quoted 

as anything between 100 million and 

600 million internationally. Last year, 

Armenia was represented by Sirusho, 

whose song, “Qele, Qele” came in fourth 

place and was subsequently a huge hit, 

blared all through the summer on radio 

stations throughout Europe. 

Best of luck to Inga & Anush at Eurovision 

2009! Watch for it in May. f 

Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture February 21, 2009 

C3

Hakob Hakobyan: repatriate, patriot, painter 

Discovering new forms 

of expression in an 

unfamiliar time 

by Maria 

Titizian 

YEREVAN – When I asked a friend of 

mine, well versed in all things artistic and 

articulate, if there was anything I should 

know before interviewing the renowned 

artist Hakob Hakboyan, he said: “Hakob’s 

main characteristic is that he is the 

conveyor of the eternal pain of Armenia. 

The Genocide is permanently imprinted 

on his essence as a man.” 

Riding up the elevator to the 10th 

floor of his apartment building in Yerevan, 

I tried to form images in my head of 

this Western Armenian painter who had 

come of his own volition to Soviet Armenia 

in the 1960s. Would he be candid 

Was he bitter Did his art suffer because 

of his desire to move to an elusive notion 

of homeland Did his nationality, 

his history dictate his path in life as an 

artist Did it make him a better artist 

He opened the door to his spacious 

apartment/studio and welcomed me in, 

quickly escorting me through a maze of 

rooms and corridors to his sitting room. 

Once we settled in and had spoken for a 

few minutes, I realized that after 47 

years he had not lost his Western 

Armenian; in fact he had retained 

most of it and only a few Eastern Armenian 

expressions and pronunciations 

made their way into his speech. 

Not only was he candid and unassuming, 

but he allowed me to travel 

with him back to his childhood, unlocking 

some of the pain and confusion 

of his early existence, which 

undoubtedly led him to become one 

of the greatest Armenian painters 

of our time. 

This is the story of Hakob Hakobyan. 

Fate, loss, destiny 

Hakob Hakobyan was born in Alexandria, 

Egypt, in 1923, 

the second of three 

children. His parents 

were from Aintab. I 

assumed that here his 

story would take the 

traditional narrative: 

parents forced on to 

deportations, barely escaping, make their 

way to Egypt. But fate had saved them 

from the tragedy that befell so many. “We 

were lucky. Only some members of our 

family were forced on deportation routes 

and then killed. The rest had left before 

the Genocide,” he said. 

At the time of the 1896 massacres, 

Hakobyan’s father, 15 years old at the 

Hakob Hakobyan in his studio in Yerevan. Photos: Grigor Hakobyan for the Armenian Reporter. 

time, was sent to the United States by 

his family to live with his married sister. 

“We don’t know much about our father 

because we lost him at a very young age,” 

Hakobyan said. All they know is that 

he stayed in the United States for 18 

years before moving to Egypt sometime 

in 1913. “In the meantime, my mother’s 

father had moved to Alexandria also before 

the Genocide. My grandfather then 

returned to Aintab to bring the rest of 

his family, but they were killed before he 

got there. My mother and father then 

were spared of the Genocide.” 

After losing his father at the 

age of seven, Hakobyan was 

sent Melkonian Educational 

Institution in Cyprus to continue 

his education. “I guess they 

sent me away to school so that 

I wouldn’t be left on the streets, 

and to receive an education. I 

wasn’t able to continue my education 

because of the war. That’s 

how my life progressed – with 

different waves. I really never 

had a plan,” he explained. 

The joy of revelation 

One day Hakobyan’s father took 

him in his lap and drew a rabbit 

on a piece of paper. 

“For me it was 

like witnessing 

a 

miracle. I 

had never 

seen 

a n y o n e 

draw before. My father asked me if I 

could draw one. I tried and I was able to 

draw the rabbit. After that I always drew,” 

he said plaintively. He admits to loving 

the attention he would get every time 

he drew. “As a child when I would draw 

people would compliment my drawings. 

I guess in a way it was very psychological. 

When people compliment you, you then 

want to receive those compliments, so 

you draw.” 

His first art teachers who had a great 

influence on the young student while at 

Melkonian were Arakel Badrig and Onnik 

Avedisian. However his tenure at 

Melkonian was short-lived and he was 

forced to return to Egypt in 1941 because 

of the Second World War. 

“Life was difficult. I was forced 

to work. It’s 

very dangerous 

to 

stop something 

halfway 

through,” he 

said, referring to 

his education, which he 

never was able to return to. “I always 

lived in uncertainty. Everything was 

in disarray, unorganized. Even my 

painting was unorganized,” he admited. 

But his love of 

reading Armenian 

literature and history 

sustained him 

through those difficult 

years. 

In 1952 he traveled to Paris. It was during 

his time there until 1954 that he decided 

not to abandon painting. “It was 

a very high ideal – to paint and support 

my family through my painting.” 

The journey “home” 

The yearning to move to Armenia started 

at a very young age for Hakobyan. “It 

was my destiny to move here,” he said. 

He hadn’t been able to come during the 

great repatriation of 1946–48 when over 

100,000 Armenians from all over the 

world repatriated to Soviet Armenia. Even 

after hearing all the stories of how the repatriates 

had suffered, his desire to come 

to Armenia remained the guiding light of 

his life. 

He was finally able to repatriate in 

1962 with his wife Mari and their two 

young daughters, aged five and 11. 

He said that even after living here for 

more than 40 years, 

people still ask him 

why he came. “I always 

wanted to come to 

Armenia,” he put it simply. 

The fundamental desire for him 

was to live in the homeland and not 

in odarutyun. “There is and was only one 

Armenia. There wasn’t a capitalist Armenia 

or a Bolshevik Armenia. There was 

only one Armenia. 

At 

that time 

it happened to be under a communist 

system. Armenia is a much older thing 

than that regime it was under for 70 years 

– that regime disintegrated and disappeared 

but Armenia remained,” he said. 

Though he is softspoken, with kindly 

eyes, his tone shifted when he started 

talking about the Soviet regime 

and its lasting impact on 

the people of Armenia. 

“Whoever hasn’t lived 

under the Soviet regime 

can never understand 

what kind of a monstrous regime it was. 

A regime like that has never existed 

in the history of mankind. It was a regime 

that wiped out millions of people. 

Very few heroic people tried to struggle 

against it. They paid the price with their 

lives or were exiled. Look at how they 

killed Charents,” he said, as he became 

more animated. 

He admited that he wasn’t treated as 

badly as some, yet he could never escape 

the “nightmare” because of what he saw 

the Soviets do to other people. When he 

spoke about 1946, he didn’t mince his 

words. “The great repatriation was a disaster. 

Repatriation was the final, terrible 

blow to the Western Armenians. What 

the Turks had left unfinished, the Soviet 

Continued on page C5 m 


n Continued from page C4 

Union completed. Those 100,000 people 

weren’t accepted as Armenians, but as 

foreigners. After arriving they figured 

that out, but it was too late,” he told me. 

When I tried to broach the subject 

one more time, gently reminding him 

that the repatriates who came in the 40s 

must have contributed, at the very least 

through their way of life, through their 

cuisine and customs, something to the 

fabric of society , he said, “What good is 

it when you bring people in 1946–48 and 

then you exile them to Siberia in 1949 

If you didn’t want these people, if you 

brought them by mistake, why not just 

send them back where they came from 

Why do you exile them” 

There was more to his anger than appeared 

on the surface. He understood 

what the loss of homeland meant. More 

than that, he understood the hunger for 

returning. For him it was about their 

collective fate, their collective suffering, 

the Genocide that always hung over 

their heads. These feelings are portrayed 

in his paintings from that time period. 

With all that this artist has seen in his 

life, the one thing he doesn’t have is regret. 

“It was my destiny to move here, however. 

I have never regretted coming. I have never 

thought about leaving or living somewhere 

else. I always wanted to live in my 

country among my people,” he told me. 

His thoughts about repatriation today 

are ambiguous but of one conviction 

he is sure. “Repatriation today Don’t 

you think it would be better for them 

to find ways of hampering people from 

leaving the country” he asked. “The Diaspora 

Ministry should concern itself 

with finding ways of keeping people in 

the country, then trying to bring back 

those who left.” 

Starting over in Gyumri 

When the Hakobyan family repatriated 

to Armenia, they were settled in Gyumri, 

Armenia’s second largest city. They lived 

there for five years. Hakob was 40 years 

old. He was known in some artistic circles 

in Armenia already because he had 

donated 10 of his best paintings a few 

years earlier to the National Art Gallery. 

Life in Gyumri was difficult. “They 

didn’t even ‘give’ me a studio to paint,” he 

said. “Instead of all the accolades, if they 

had allowed me to have a small room to 

turn into a studio instead of working in a 

corner of my tiny apartment, that would 

have served me better.” He had brought 

some canvas with him when he moved, 

and after that was finished, he bought 

what he could find, which was of very 

poor quality. “A lot of my early paintings 

have been ruined because of that poor 

quality of canvas.” He still finds it ironic 

that they would only have poor quality 

canvas upon which paintings that were 

sometimes worth thousands of dollars 

would be painted. “Nothing made sense,” 

he said, shaking his head. 

“That’s how our life was in Gyumri. I 

don’t want to complain that I had to 

work under those conditions. For me the 

most important thing was to be able to 

paint in Armenia. I didn’t want to take a 

break. I didn’t want people think that I 

couldn’t succeed here,” he explained. 

After his first solo exhibition, he slowly 

began to establish himself as a painter 

in the homeland. Although even art was 

stifled under the Soviet regime, Hakobyan 

stressed that it wasn’t always possible to 


suffocate every human inspiration. “Look 

at Minas Avedissian. You can’t always take 

the art out of the man,” he told me, referring 

to a fellow artist. 

What would his life’s journey been 

had he not moved to Armenia “If I had 

stayed in Egypt, I might have become 

a different artist,” he said. The painter 

was also astute. He knew never to complain 

or demand in order to survive in 

the system. “I had no confrontations, 

but I retained my freedom in my sphere 

– through my art.” 

Thoughts about the nation 

“I have lived half my life outside of Armenia, 

then I lived under Soviet rule for 

27 years and 17 years in independence,” 

he said. He feels that we have suffered 

as a nation because of our size. “If we 

had been 30 million instead of 3 million, 

do you think that the Turks could have 

slaughtered us like sheep Therefore being 

a small nation is a sin,” he stressed. 

For Hakobyan there is an important 

distinction to be made. “Independence 

was given to us; we didn’t win it. For 

600 years we never had independence. 

Did we ever think about independence 

Therefore we never wanted it and now 

we don’t know what to do with it. We 

still want odars to come and govern us,” 

he told me. And about victories “Yes, 

we won in Karabakh. But look at what 

the price was – thousands dead, hundreds 

of thousands of displaced people, 

more than a million left the country. 

If this is victory, then bravo, we won,” 

he said, his voice straining. So there is 

some bitterness in this man’s spirit. 

And what about the state of the country 

today “After 600 years of slavery and 

survival, we have learned how to survive, 

but in the process we have become individualistic. 

We think only of taking care 

of ourselves. That is why we can’t move 

forward today. It’s all about the individual. 

There are no unifying elements.” 

He shifted in his chair and continued. 

“My dear, we don’t have normal relations 

with our neighbors. Two of them are our 

enemies; the neighbor to the north we 

want to turn into an enemy; the one 

to the south is the enemy of the rest of 

the world, and the other one [Russia], 

with whom we have no natural borders 

and who is our former ‘owner,’ is in our 

country protecting our borders.” 

His disenchantment causes waves of 

sadness to rush over him. He is frustrated 

because he is the first to admit that 

we are a nation of gifted people. “The Armenian 

has limitless abilities. Before the 

Soviets, the Armenian was another sort 

of person, a totally different person,” he 

said. “We had genius; we had the farmer, 

but they turned him into a kolkhoznik; 

we had the artisan but they turned him 

into a laborer; and the entrepreneur was 

sentenced to exile or death. That is what 

the Soviet regime bequeathed us.” 

Studio visit 

Finding that our conversation had exhausted 

him, I suggested we move to his 

studio to look at his new creations. His 

demeanor changed, and the sadness and 

frustration subsided as he stepped into 

his oasis. 

As he walked around his studio, he 

told me that he works every day for a 

few hours. Today he produces about 

20–25 pieces annually. “I don’t have the 

same enthusiasm as I did, but creating 

something new still exists in me,” he 

said, pointing to shelves of newly created 

metal sculptures. 

Over the past year, Hakobyan has 

started creating sculptures out of scrap 

metal parts. “Every weekend I go to the 

Vernissage and buy these metal parts. After 

creating the sculpture I incorporate 

in into my paintings. I have made about 

Left: A collection of 

Hakobyan’s metal 

sculptures. Below: The 

story of Aryuts Mher 

is depicted in this stillto-be-named 

painting. 

100 sculptures this past year,” he said. 

A sculpture that appears to be two 

fish suspended on metal rods, proves, 

on closer inspection, to be two pincers 

used in jewelery making. “You are seeing 

this for the first time. I haven’t shown 

them yet,” he smiled. I feel privileged as 

I walk around the room, looking at the 

sculptures. When I asked him where he 

got the idea to create sculptures out of 

old metal parts, he said, “I don’t know. 

It just came to me.” Even at 87 years 

of age, this august painter still has fervent 

inspiration and creative drive. His 

paintings are still evolving. He has begun 

introducing not only his sculptures 

to his canvas, but also mannequins and 

gloves. If everything goes according to 

his plans, he intends to have an exhibition 

in April in Yerevan. He stops for a 

moment and then smiles: “It’s like an interesting 

game. When I put these metal 

pieces together, I feel as though I’ve become 

a child once again.” Perhaps this is 

the best time in Hakob Hakobyan’s life 

as he tries to recapture his lost childhood 

with new creations in an unfamiliar 

time. 

f 

C5

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CUBE 

Giving Armenians back some of their history 

Pascal Carmont, Les 

Amiras: Seigneurs de 

l’Arménie ottoman (The 

Amiras: Lords of Ottoman 

Armenia). Paris: Salvator, 

1999. 187 pages. 

reviewed by 

Christopher 

Atamian 

From the small town of Agn (today’s Kemaliye) 

in Anatolia’s Erzincan province, a 

remarkable group of enterprising and ambitious 

Armenians rose to the forefront of 

the Ottoman Empire in the 17th, 18th, and 

19th centuries. They are referred to simply 

as amiras (a variant of emirs) and these 

men who came from modest provincial 

backgrounds accomplished great things in 

almost every human sphere. Published in 

Paris under the French title Les Amiras, Seigneurs 

de l’Arménie ottomane, this fascinating 

book by Pascal Carmont fills an important 

gap in Armenian studies, namely the 

economic and social history of a large segment 

of Constantinopolitan society leading 

up to and until the end of the nineteenth 

century. Carmont’s narration comes to an 

end with the Hamidian massacres and the 

rumblings of discontent within the empire 

that would eventually take the monstrous 

form of an all-out genocide. 

Armenians have always been told 

that they played a key role in the Ottoman 

Empire, that they were along with 

its Greek merchants and diplomats the 

Cover of Pascal Carmont’s book. 

empire’s most brilliant subjects, but the 

supporting narratives historical and 

otherwise, have never existed to tell this 

fascinating story in detail. The will to 

annihilation of successive Turkish governments 

has seen to it that this history 

remained buried for close to a century, 

as it continues in large part to be buried 

today. Carmont’s book, calls the reader’s 

attention to real people and events in a 

world that we thought had been erased. 

The author’s first accomplishment then 

is to give Armenians back some of their 

past, to help repair the rent fabric of a 

post-catastrophic people’s history. 

Who then were these amiras, these 

so-called Lords of Ottoman Armenia, 

who served the sultans so faithfully 

for over 200 years Among these great 

families were the Balians, who became 

court architects and built such masterpieces 

as the Dolmabahçe Palace, the 

Yildiz Mosque, and the Imperial College 

of Medicine, which today houses 

the famed Galatasaray Lisesi. Another 

family, the Manasse, served as the royal 

Ottoman portraitists and miniaturists 

for several generations. Their work was 

so admired that leading Ottoman officials 

commissioned portraits in strict 

contravention of Muslim law and hid 

these away in inner rooms and chapels 

buried deep within their palaces. The 

Momdjians and the Karakehia banking 

families (from which sprang Nubar Pasha 

among others) controlled much of 

the empire’s finances. The Duzian family 

held the position of superintendent 

of the Ottoman Mint and the Arpiarian 

family controlled the empire’s silver 

mines. The Dadians, known as Barutshi 

Bashuh or Grand Masters of the Powder 

came to control the Ottoman munitions 

and artillery, not a shabby position in 

an empire of the size and scope of the 

Ottomans. Other famous families included 

the Duz and Noradoughian clans. 

The latter provided the entire Ottoman 

army with its daily bread supply. 

The amiras, Carmont tells us, lived in 

great palaces and yalis bordering the Bosphorus. 

They also built sumptuous houses 

in inner Constantinople, always careful as 

Christians in a Muslim empire to superimpose 

modest-looking outer walls and 

entrances so as to not attract the jealousy 

of their Turkish neighbors. How successful 

were the amiras Very. They enjoyed 

the confidence of great sultans, including 

Mahmoud II. They rode in official processions 

and were accorded privileges and 

rewards unknown to anyone else in the 

empire. In less than a century, they overtook 

and supplanted the Jews who had 

emigrated from Spain and Portugal during 

the Inquisition as the Ottoman court’s 

financial advisers and bankers. 

The amiras were also put in charge of tax 

collection in the empire. As Armenians, 

they often tried to lessen the abuses in 

this arena that were visited upon their 

compatriots in Anatolia at the hands of 

Turkish officials and Kurdish landowners. 

Some of the amiras were corrupt, of 

course, but most as described here were 

industrious, God-fearing, and honest to 

a fault, at least until the end of the 19th 

century when things started to fall apart, 

as they are wont to in any empire or ruling 

class. The amiras also became the 

leaders of the Armenian community, the 

link between the Sultan’s palace and the 

rather powerful Armenian Patriarchate. 

They built many of Constantinople’s Armenian 

churches, schools, and hospitals, 

and regulated many of the community’s 

disputes and affairs. They also intervened 

whenever possible with their Ottoman 

overlords when Armenians were 

in trouble both in the capital and in the 

provinces, though sometimes they could 

do nothing to help them. 

There are many fascinating aspects to 

Carmont’s story, not the least of which 

has to do with the history of Agn’s Armenians 

and how such a small town 

(estimates put its current population at 

10,000) could have produced so many 

brilliant and enterprising young men as 

to seem positively surreal. (It should be 

noted in passing that some amira families 

were not from Agn, though the vast 

majority did originate there.) Obviously 

a network must have existed between 

these Agntsis whereby they helped each 

other come to Constantinople and get 

started in business and in the arts. Yet 

this does not explain the radiance of their 

reign. Carmont offers no convincing hypothesis 

in this regard. Was it a result of 

their education or perhaps of a few charismatic 

leaders An abnormally gifted 

gene pool Were the factors endemic or 

did they come from outside the community 

itself As an interesting aside, Agn 

was also the birthplace of Papken Siuni, 

Continued on page C7 m 


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Giving Armenians back some of their history 

n Continued from page C6 

who led the occupation of the Ottoman 

Bank on September 15, 1896. In retaliation, 

two thousand Agntsis were slaughtered 

by Turkish authorities. 

Very little serious scholarship has 

been undertaken into this absolutely 

remarkable period of Armenian and Ottoman 

history. Pascal Carmont is not a 

scholar, nor does he pretend to be. A 

decorated diplomat who served as the 

French consul in Johannesburg, São 

Paolo, and Alexandria (until 1992), he is 

himself a descendant of an amira family. 

He recounts many of the episodes 

in this book from memory. Some of 

them possess a lovely désuet quality, a 

charming fictionalized historical style 

that has long since fallen into disfavor 

in Western scholarship and literary circles. 

As a child, for example, his mother 

prepped him to learn how to curtsy for 

an upcoming Parisian tea at the Persian 

Malcolm Khan’s house. Elsewhere, he 

describes the Dadian clan thus: “Their 

eccentricities knew no bounds. During 

the forty days of Lent, family members 

didn’t fast but gave up smoking instead 

and wore black gloves. Madame de 

Hubtsch, a very important member of 

Constantinopolitan society, used to tell 

the Dadians: ‘You are so very peculiar. I 

simply adore you, but you are peculiar 

nonetheless’” (p. 130, translation mine). 

Much of Carmont’s book reads like a 

distant family memoir or perhaps many 

distant family memoirs rolled into one. 

And although the author does provide a 

five-page bibliography, he uses no footnotes 

or endnotes whatsoever; nor does 

he provide alternative explanations for 

some of his admittedly tendentious presentations. 

One wonders, for example, 

whether such-and-such Amira was really 

as charming as Carmont relates or if certain 

accounts were embellished as they 

were passed down orally from one friend 

or family member to another. Carmont’s 

deference to anything aristocratic or imperial 

seems precious to a contemporary 

reader and perhaps interferes at times 

with his sense of objectivity. 

Despite the lack of endnotes and the 

Fragonardization of his prose, we owe 

Carmont a great debt, for Les Amiras 

chronicles names, places, and events that 

might otherwise have been lost forever. 

One wonders what records and details 

about the amiras lie fallow in Ottoman 

archives. To date only three examples of 

scholarly work exist on the subject of the 

amiras. The first is Levon Tutunjian’s Harutiun 

Amira Pesdjian yev ir zhamaknere: 

anor tznndian 200-amiakin artiv 1771–1971 

(Harutiun Amira Bezdjian and his times, 

on the occasion of his 200th anniversary), 

published in Cairo in 1971. The second is 

the English-language Columbia University 

1980 doctoral dissertation by Hagop 

Barsoumian, titled The Armenian Amira 

Class of Istanbul, published by the American 

University in Yerevan in 2007. The 

third is an article by Barsoumian titled 

“The Dual Role of the Armenian Amira 

Class within the Ottoman Government 

and the Armenian Millet (1750–1850),” in 

Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 

ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis 

(New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982). 

In time the amiras fell from power. Carmont 

suggests that a combination of growing 

decadence on the part of some the amiras 

(as with any other ruling class, they too 

eventually shone a little less brightly and 

perhaps worked a little less diligently) as 

well as a changing political climate within 

the Turkish elite, accompanied by a rising 

tide of anti-Armenian and anti-Christian 

sentiment, eventually brought a glorious 

period of Armenian history to an end. 

Much needs to be elaborated. The possibilities 

seem endless, including a sociological 

examination of the relations between 

Turk and Armenian, between subjugator 

and subjugated, perhaps taking into account 

what Marc Nichanian has recently 

written about the notion of sacrifice in the 

empire. A mercantile history of the period 

should also be undertaken, including 

trade routes and economic history. One 

might also look into the effect of progressive 

ideas emanating from Europe and the 

growing emancipation of women in Ottoman 

society; the role of the amiras leading 

up to the Tanzimat period of reform; the 

relationship between the Armenian and 

the Greek and Jewish communities; and 

much else. But first, perhaps an English 

translation of Carmont’s book is in order. 

We await future research into the amiras 

with bated scholarly breath. 

f 


C7

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