You Appreciate Your Own Country in a Foreign Land
HETQ ONLINE – [August 8, 2005]
“There are between 40 and 50 thousand Armenians in Greece , 16-17
thousand of which are Greek-Armenians born here. The rest are people
who have come from Armenia over the last ten or fifteen years.” This
we were told by Hovsep Parazian, the editor-in-chief of Azat Or,
the official newspaper of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(ARF/Dashnaktsutiun), when we met with him in Athens . No one knows
exactly how many Armenians there are among the one million immigrants
in Greece today. “Many people come and move to the islands to work;
they aren’t registered anywhere,” said David Aivazian, editor of the
newspaper that the Hayastan Social-Cultural Center of Athens puts out.
The Armenian community in Greece is not united; like Diasporan
communities elsewhere, it is divided along party lines, Church
affiliation (subordinated to Echmiadzin or Antelias), and
Hayastantsi-Hunastantsi identification.
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“The problem that our compatriots who have recently arrived have
is that they haven’t been able to find their place within Armenian
circles, clubs, and unions. In the Diaspora everything is partisan
– you either belong to one of the parties or you’re isolated. The
Antelias See implemented a policy of not accepting newcomers,
especially regarding children – they would not accept children into
their schools. A large number of children couldn’t go to Armenian
schools, so they went to Greek schools. The boarding schools run
by the Dashnaktsutiun party or the Ramkavar party had the potential
to accommodate the children from Armenia but they didn’t do so. And
this is how the children from Armenia are becoming Greek. The party
bureaucrats say that by not helping them, they encourage people who
have come from Armenia to go back. But the problem is that if they
can’t settle here [in Athens ], the newcomers go to the islands,
where no one can keep track of them. And if they left Armenia it
means that they had problems there, doesn’t it?” Aivazian said.
I’m in Armenia
There are three places in the city where you can encounter Armenians –
Ramkavars get together at the offices of the Ramkavar-Azatakan Party,
Dashnaks at the offices of the ARF, and people who have no without
party affiliation at the Hayastan Social-Cultural Center .
The ARF is the strongest group here, and no doubt aware of its
position, has little contact with the Ramkavars or non-partisan
Armenians. “They don’t even invite us to their events, or their
holiday celebrations,” said the regulars at the Hayastan Center .
The Ramkavars have a three-storey office building in one of the
central districts of Athens , which also houses the editorial offices
of their party organ Nor Ashkhar. According to Armenians from Armenia
, the building’s large playground, its state-of-the-art gym, and
its well-equipped music club, are almost always empty, and newly
arrived young people are not invited to use them. Two members of the
party, Comrade Sargis and Comrade Hakob, complained to us about the
indifference of Armenian youths toward the party, and political and
national problems. The Ramkavars were aware that generational change,
revitalizing its ranks with young, people, particularly from Armenia,
was a big problem for the party, but they also admitted that they
were doing little to address it.
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For Minas Minasyan, who came from Armenia to Athens with his family in
1996, the Hayastan Center represents the only possibility of remaining
Armenian and maintaining contact with Armenia. “They didn’t admit my
son into the Armenian school; they said they had no room.
But there were places in both the Dashnak school and the Ramkavar
school. I was forced to send him to a Greek school,” he said. His
son, Karapet, has adapted to this society and has no intention of
returning to Armenia . “I might move to the US from here to devote
myself to professional music, but I doubt I’ll go to Armenia -or if
I do, I’ll go as a tourist,” Karo said.
Minasyan and David Aivazyan founded the Hayastan Social-Cultural
Center in 2000. “I had just come from Iran ,” Aivazyan recalled. The
main problem that our newly arrived compatriots had was that they
had no place within Armenian circles, clubs, unions. Wham they first
arrive, they don’t have residence permits or jobs, they don’t know
the language, they’re isolated and hanging in the air. We saw their
problems; they were in a crazy situation. At the same time, there were
students from Armenia who had come through the interstate students’
exchange agreement who faced similar problems. Nobody met them when
they arrived, they didn’t know how to get to the university. We met
with some of these boys who are now back in Armenia . They tried
several times to establish contacts with some Armenian circles here,
to found a students’ union of local Armenians, but they didn’t succeed,
since they were told from the very beginning that they had to join
a political party.
“So we got together with our compatriots working here and decided to
create this center to assist newly arrived Armenians. At that time,
many young women were coming here and marrying Greeks just to get the
necessary papers. The students built this center, voluntarily, without
any pay. The main assistance was provided by those Greek-Armenians
who are cut from the local politicized and partisan community. Many
of them don’t even speak Armenian, but are constantly making donations
to the center.”
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In 2000, the center began publishing its newspaper, Hayastan, which
mainly provides information about Armenia and has a circulation of
about 1,500. The center offers Armenian, Greek and English language
courses for children free of charge, with the help of students and
teachers who have come from Armenia to live permanently in Greece
They run an Armenian Sunday school as well. Parents and teachers
organize. performances and holiday festivities for the children.
Marietta , a teacher from Vanadzor came to Athens nine years ago;
she subsequently brought her only daughter, and then, two years ago,
she brought her father and mother to live with her as well. She teaches
Armenian language and history at the Hayastan Center on Sundays. On
weekdays Armenians from Armenia gather at the center at 8 p.m. to learn
about each other’s “Armenian and Greek” worries and problems, and to
exchange news and information from the homeland. Every conversation
here turns to Armenia.
“Now when people phone each other and ask: `Where are you?’ the
answer is. `In Armenia ‘ We’ve created a little Armenia here. And
we have one principle – we won’t allow the center to be politicized,
to become partisan,” David Aivazyan said.
One day, we’ll all go home
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“It’s hard for an artist to leave his country at 40 and to create
an environment in a new place. It’s like uprooting a tree,” said
Armen Gizgizyan, a painter. He, his wife, and their two children left
Armenia to live in Athens temporarily in 2001. “At first we decided to
come here for six months, to save some four or five thousand dollars
and go home. At that time, 2001, $ 5,000 was quite a sum. I could
at least solve my family problems, and I wouldn’t have to sell my
paints or melt high-voltage cable for 2,000 drams (about $4) a day
to buy a little bread, and to go to the Vernissage on weekends to
sell some paintings. If I had earned $200 a month in Yerevan at that
time I would have stayed there. Now I earn 1,500 Euros a month here,
though I still don’t live normally; I pay my bills every month and
send a little bit of money to Armenia.
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“I dream about stabilizing my financial situation and going back,
because I’m getting tired… I’m tired of being alone. There’s no on
here of my color to relate to, to curse your fate, to just sit with,
without talking. Because I grew up in another environment, it’s like
cutting a person from his roots and bringing him here. Now you can
say: no one brought you here by force, you came yourself. There are
so many tens of thousands of Armenians with a status like mine.
People look at them and say, they are traitors, they left their
fatherland. But I assure you that many of the people who are living
in a foreign land deserved to be called Armenian much more than the
people doing the talking,” Gizgizyan said.
“True, an Armenian is first of all a person who lives in the
homeland, but you appreciate your own country when you’re in a
foreign land. Perhaps the people of Armenia should be taken to another
place to live for a few years to understand what their homeland is,
then be brought back in order to live with each other with love and
without grievance.”
All the Armenians from Armenia we met in Athens dreamed of returning to
Armenia, but few of them saw it as a real possibility. “The problem is
that the children are growing up here and it’s hard to imagine their
future in Armenia. If I take my son there, how is he going to fit in
with the kids there? My children don’t even understand Armenian jokes
now. In Yerevan they would say, who is this fool? This is one of my
biggest problems, one that really upsets me, that my child will be
like a Diasporan in Armenia. I’m from Yerevan, and my child will be
a stranger in Armenia.”
Liana Sayadyan, Edik Baghdasaryan
Athens-Yerevan