The Toronto Star –
Jan. 17, 2005. 06:41 AM
A man of letters – and passion
Edited Armenian paper before moving to Canada
Architect also wrote book about William Saroyan
CATHERINE DUNPHY
OBITUARY WRITER
Two careers, two countries, one passion.
Call it pride, if you will, of place or of history but certainly of a
people. Bedros Zobyan was an architect and crusading newspaper editor
born and raised in the Turkish city of Istanbul who used both of his
careers to nurture and nudge his fellow Armenians closer to their
heritage and culture.
Five years ago, long after he and his wife and daughter had immigrated
in 1967 to live quietly in Don Mills, as well as after retiring from
the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce where he designed everything
from buildings to bank machines, Zobyan once again took up his pen.
He wrote a book about the three-week trip he took in May 1964 with
William Saroyan to find the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and
playwright’s Armenian ancestral home.
Towards Bitlis with William Saroyan was published by an Armenian
publisher in 2003. The cover features a photo of Saroyan sitting on a
rock in the rugged Anatolian countryside alongside a signpost stating:
Bitlis 10.
The pair went from Istanbul via Ankara to Samsun on the Black
Sea. They stopped at Lake of Van (considered to be as sacred a place
as Ararat to Armenians). Venturing into remote villages where
Armenians had lived before the genocide of 1915, they found Armenian
children being raised in primitive conditions by Turkish and Kurdish
families.
In Bitlis, Saroyan located the foundations of his family’s home, with
some help from villagers hoping this rich American was going to lead
them all straight to a hidden cache of gold. (He didn’t.)
Although Zobyan told his family that Saroyan took notes during their
trip, the author never directly wrote about it, although he did write
a play called The Istanbul Trilogy. Zobyan, however, wrote up a series
about the trip for his newspaper called: “60,000 Kilometres in 16 Days
with William Saroyan.”
For years people told him he should write a book based on those
articles. And when he finally did start writing, he became immersed in
the work.
“While he was working on the book, nothing else existed,” said his
wife, Seta.
It took three years. A perfectionist, he typed, copy-edited and
typeset the book, along with choosing and laying out the photos, then
sent it to the publisher in Istanbul. When the publisher sent back the
galleys, Zobyan proofed every comma.
“Every day I came home from school and my grandfather would be
typing. Every day,” said Amara Possian, 15. “My grandma too, both of
them always had red pens.”
American Armenians had arranged a special book launch for October 2003
in California, but Zobyan was too ill to attend. When he died at 82 of
pancreatic cancer this past December, he had received dozens of
letters from Armenians around the world thanking him for writing the
book.
It is considered much more than a travel book.
“It’s part of our history,” says his friend, Arta Yuzbasian, an
Armenian artist living in Toronto. “It was very well received within
the Armenian diaspora, especially in the U.S.”
A dignified and diffident man, Zobyan was well respected within the
Armenian community in Toronto.
“People looked up to him,” said Berc Luleciyan. a deacon at the Holy
Trinity Armenian Church, who attended high school with Zobyan in
Istanbul.
In 1958, Zobyan was commissioned by the patriarch of St. Gregory the
Illuminator Church to build a new church in the old authentic Armenian
style on the site in Istanbul of the old church that had been
expropriated to make way for a highway. He rescued and reincorporated
the ceramic tiles from the original chapel, marble stones, and reused
the carved stone cross belonging to the 500-year-old church.
It was – and continues to be – the only one of Istanbul’s 28 Armenian
churches that displays the austere, powerful lines and massive
stonework that marks Armenian church architecture. The church’s
Catholics wrote him commending his work.
“My father built the most important church in Istanbul,” said his
daughter, Hasmig Possian, 53.
But he was having more fun as a journalist working at the Marmara, a
daily started in 1940 by Seta Zobyan’s father, a well-known foreign
correspondent. The young couple took over the paper in 1950. One of
two Armenian dailies in Istanbul, it had a circulation of 5,000 but a
considerably larger reach in terms of influence.
Zobyan lobbied in its pages to save the church he would go on to
rebuild; his scoop on the guilty verdict of the court martial trials
of the Democratic Party president and its prime minister landed him in
prison for two days. Seta Zobyan pulled every string she had to get
her husband released.
“Without bribery he would have been in jail months and months,” she
said.
They lived a good life for a time, attending balls, receptions for
visiting royalty, the ballet and concerts. “I translated for Petula
Clark when she was getting a leather coat made,” his daughter
recalled. She also danced with Eric Burdon, lead singer of the
Animals, when she was 14 and her father took her on his press pass to
a club.
But after the military coup of 1960, many Armenians left Turkey,
including many of their families. In 1965 they sent their daughter to
Toronto, to St. Clements School, where they believed she would be safe
and get a better education.
Two years later, they immigrated, but it wasn’t until 1970 that they
sold the paper.
“That still hurts,” said Seta Zobyan.
Neither practised journalism in Canada: Bedros Zobyan went to work for
the large architectural firm of Page and Steele building the Commerce
Court towers, and Seta Zobyan found a job in market research. She now
works part-time as a court translator and interpreter.
In the 1970s they visited Saroyan at his home in Fresno, Calif. He had
two houses, one in which he lived and one in which he wrote. After
Saroyan died of cancer in 1981, his homes became the site of a museum
dedicated to his works and his Armenian heritage.
Zobyan made sure the museum received copies of his book; he’d hoped to
translate it into English for Armenians living in California and
Europe.
“I will translate it,” Seta Zobyan said. “That was his wish and I will
try and make it come true.”