Cher is proud to be Armenian
r-is-proud-to-be-armenian

Exclusive interview to air on US-Armenia TV this week
Published: Friday April 10, 2009

Burbank, Calif. – The year was 1993. Cher boarded "one of those big
airplanes that has no seating," a DC-8 cargo ship, to Armenia. "It was
such a rickety old plane and they had bolted these little seats in the
back for us and given us a canister of oxygen." Because of the wartime
power shortage, they had to get to Yerevan before dark, "and we hit
the runway as the sun went down."

Cher recalls her trip to Armenia and discusses her Armenian heritage
with Lusine Shahbazyan in an intimate and exclusive interview that
will air for the first time this week on US-Armenia TV.

She’s a superstar with more than four decades of staying power. She
has sold more than 100 million albums and is an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,
and Golden Globe-winning performer. She has starred in movies and on
television and has directed; she has been known for her tastes in
fashion and men. Her life and her loves have been chronicled by media
around the world, as Paul Chaderjian – who helped arrange the
interview and participated in it – wrote in these pages in a Feb. 16,
2008, cover story.

The modern-day legend remembers entering a random coffee shop in
Yerevan. "All the men were in there," she says. "Some of the men were
playing chess, but they didn’t have any coffee and they didn’t have
any tea. But they were just in there. They were playing their
chess. They were talking. They were all dressed properly, maybe a
little bit of tatters, but so dignified. And it was the first time I
thought, I’m an Armenian, I’m proud."

Prompted by Lusine, Cher also speaks of her father, Garabed
Sarkisian. He was an immigrant whose parents had survived the Armenian
Genocide. He was a farmer, sometimes a truck driver, and a man Cher
calls "charismatic, a little shady like a bad boy."

"I don’t really look like anyone in my family, except my great
grandmother and my father," says Cher, whose parents divorced when she
was two. She didn’t see her father again until she was 11. "When I was
young, every once in a while, my mother would look at me with the
strangest look on her face; and then when I saw my father, I realized
why. Because we made the same faces, and I’d never seen him. And when
I saw him, I realized why."

"I liked him a lot," she says, "but he’d been in prison."

Sarma and kufta
After her parent’s reunion, the family would often visit her father’s
relatives in Fresno. "All of my relatives were living there, in
Fresno. A huge family, and my great grandmother never learned to speak
English. My grandmother spoke English, but she called women `he.’ She
got [English] a little bit, but she didn’t get it great. But they were
great. They were really happy to see me, and my grandmother taught me
how to make sarma, kufta, and all kinds of things. I really enjoy and
love the food. Armenian food is brilliant."

The vibrant and ever-youthful Cher, 62, will appear at Caesars Palace
in Las Vegas on April 25-26 and 28-29 and in the month of May. Bob
Mackie has created more than a dozen new costumes and the 4,300-seat
Colosseum has been fitted to provide state-of-the-art lighting and
special effects to complement Cher’s chart-topping hits.