Long in diaspora, Armenians return home

The Associated Press
Sunday, June 8, 2008

YEREVAN, Armenia: What would prompt a young family to abandon a
comfortable life and move to a poor country where running water is
still a luxury for many, politics are messy and the threat of war
looms large?

For Aline Masrlian, 41, her husband, Gevork Sarian, and their two
children, it was their motherland calling.

"It is something special when you live in your own land," said
Masrlian, who moved here after her family had lived for generations in
Syria.

Lured by the economic opportunities in a fast changing country and the
lure of home, some people from Armenia’s vast diaspora are moving to
the land that their ancestors had long kept alive as little more than
an idea. Longtime residents, meanwhile, are no longer fleeing the
country in large numbers.

While 3.2 million people live in this landlocked Caucasus mountain
nation – the smallest of the ex-Soviet republics – an estimated 5.7
million Armenians reside abroad. The largest disappears are in Russia
(2 million), the United States (1.4 million), Georgia (460,000) and
France (450,000), according to government data.

Most of the diaspora, like Masrlian’s family, are descendants of those
who fled the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey
during World War I – a tragedy Armenia wants to be recognized as
genocide but modern Turkey insists was an inherent part of the war’s
violence.

Much later, others ran away from the economic collapse that Armenia
suffered following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, when
electricity was available only several hours a day, people had to chop
down trees for heat, and bread and butter were strictly rationed.

The devastating conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan over the disputed
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, in which over 30,000 people have died,
compounded the exodus. An estimated 500,000 people left the country in
1992-94, many heading to Russia.

However, over the past four years Armenia has registered an overall
population inflow of 33,200, the first positive trend since gaining
independence in 1991 with the Soviet collapse, said Vahan Bakhshetian,
a migration expert with the Territorial Management Ministry. While
it’s difficult to tell how many Armenians are returning permanently,
Bakhshetian said the trend offers hope.

"We are now seeing many of those who had left return," said Foreign
Ministry spokesman Vladimir Karapetian.

Among the returnees are many from the Russian diaspora. Some are lured
back by economic improvements here, while others are escaping growing
xenophobia in Russia, where attacks on dark-skinned people from the
Caucasus are frequent.

Garik Hayrapetyan of the United Nations’ Population Fund said
Armenians also are no longer leaving in large numbers, but he
cautioned that the emerging repatriation will not be sustained without
economic and political progress.

For many, the country’s biggest asset is its rich cultural
heritage. Two millennia ago, Armenia was a vast kingdom stretching
between the Black and Caspian seas. Eventually it was divided and
absorbed by bigger states, including the Ottoman empire and czarist
Russia, and later the Soviet Union.

Armenians like to brag that Noah’s Ark came to rest in their country,
on the biblical Mount Ararat – though the snowcapped mountain is now
part of Turkey, overlooking Yerevan. The country is said to be the
first state to adopt Christianity as its religion.

Still, in many ways Armenia remains an unlikely place to attract
returnees. Despite economic progress in recent years, over a quarter
of the population lives in poverty and the average monthly wage is a
meager $275.

Outside aid is crucial. Diaspora Armenians send millions of dollars
for investment and aid projects, and much of the population survives
on individual money transfers from relatives abroad. The International
Monetary Fund estimates that remittances make up 10 percent of the
country’s economy.

Those sending money are moved by the same love of country that draws
Armenians back. James Tufenkian, an Armenian-American, has invested
some $30 million in reviving the traditional carpet industry – largely
destroyed in the Soviet era – building hotels and running charity
efforts. Today, he provides jobs to over 1,000 people here.

Tufenkian, 47, said he decided to help after his first visit at the
height of Armenia’s economic decline in the early 1990s.

"I felt like I had a chance to do something to improve people’s lives,
that it was my homeland calling," Tufenkian said in a telephone
interview from New York.

Today, Yerevan is slowly transforming itself from a run-down city into
a vibrant, modern capital. The downtown boasts Western boutiques,
expensive restaurants and young people in trendy outfits.

Yet the rest of the city, perched on steep hills, is a bleak mix of
Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks and dilapidated two- and
three-story houses with laundry hanging on balconies. The air is
heavily polluted, mostly from the exhaust of the battered Soviet-era
cars that clog the city. Some districts in Yerevan continue to have
shortages of running water, which were common in the 1990s.

While Armenia is considered one of the freer countries among
post-Soviet republics, its fragile hold on democracy became apparent
earlier this year. Eight people were killed in clashes between
government forces and opposition activists protesting election
results. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also keeps tensions high.

But ask Gevork Sarian about life in Armenia, and the emigre who
returned from Syria with his wife and children talks more about
finding a homeland than about the wider political climate.

The bearded, smiling Sarian attended university in Yerevan in the
early 1980s and said he always wanted to return. The family moved back
in 1998, and he started several successful businesses, including a
lingerie store run by his wife.

Now 46, Sarian said he had felt separated from his Syrian
neighbors. "Even if they look at you in a good way, you are still a
stranger – this is the feeling of Armenian diaspora everywhere," he
said.

His 15-year-old son Ardag added that in Armenia "you feel that it is
your country."

Repatriation wasn’t as easy for Aline Masrlian, the wife in the
family. She recalled a middle-class life in the northern Syrian city
of Aleppo, with running water available 24 hours a day and the markets
full of fruits and vegetables. In Yerevan, when the family first
arrived, water was on just two hours a day, sometimes the only bread
she could find was stale, and she missed the job she had loved, as a
construction engineer.

But 10 years later, sitting in a new, spacious apartment decorated
with family photos, Aline said she has no regrets. "I decided that
this is my country."

More recent returnee Zorair Atabekian, 36, hopes for a similar
future. He came back in 2005 after five years in Canada, homesick and
hoping to go into business. Though he still earns far less selling
jewelry in Yerevan than he did running an apartment design firm in
Montreal, he said he knew his decision would eventually prove right.