The Gatah
Yeghiazar and his beautiful wife Srbuhi had nine children. Their enormous 14-room house in Van, with a garden full of white daffodils, was divided in two parts. In one part, the Consul of Italy and his family resided entirely free of charge. The Italian flag flying over Yeghiazar Poghosian’s house in the Armenian quarter of Aigestan safeguarded not just his family: women and children from the neighborhood found a safe haven here during clashes with the Turks. That’s how Yeghiazar Agha secured his household.
Only once a stray shell hit the house and, for some miraculous reason, didn’t explode. Men carefully removed it from the hole in the roof, which reminded them about death they escaped by a hair’s breadth. When it was time to part with the Italian flag, white daffodils, and the shell-ridden roof, the tall and beautiful Srbuhi packed her entire wardrobe. But Yeghiazar Agha, in anger, which was quite unlike him, flung the fashionable dresses to the yard and said through clenched teeth: “Don’t you realize what exodus is?” That day Srbuhi lost just her garments.
Soon she would lose some of her children, too.
When the family had to leave Van, sisters Knarik and Hermine Poghosian walked in the same convoy with their parents, grandmother, aunt and numerous neighbors. Mom and dad lagged behind because they had to take care of their other kids: one of the elder daughters was sick and in a wheelchair.
At first Knarik and Hermine walked beside their mother’s sister, hopping and leaping back and forth and quite enjoying their new adventure. Then the Armenian volunteer soldiers appeared. They helped the refugees (the elderly, the sick and women with children) to trek. One could have some rest and ride most of the distance on carts. Their aunt was a very beautiful woman raised in a strict traditionalist Armenian household: she was afraid of soldiers, hence she only seated Knarik and Hermine on the cart, and to their dismay, the girls soon found themselves too far away from their family and lost track of them in a stream of people. That’s how they ended up at a hospital in Echmiadzin in the midst of a typhus outbreak. Hermine fell ill.
For many weeks Knarik lay curled up in a ball at Hermine’s feet. Knarik was only five; Hermine would turn seven by the end of the year. After she contracted typhus, she was unconscious for nearly five weeks. She survived thanks to the fearless care of the nurses at the hospital.
There was nothing but beds all over the place. For lack of room, patients were placed on porches, terraces and even in the courtyard. Luckily, in the midst of summer it was quite warm. Miraculously, Knarik escaped infection: no force could keep her from staying at her sister’s bedside day and night.
She wanted to be beside the only human being in this new world she knew.
Over the last weeks of her sister’s illness Knarik entertained herself by observing the nearby bed, where a withered girl of about 14 was lying. There were plenty of such girls all around the place, but this one was endowed with a thick haystack of copper-red hair. Knarik couldn’t avert her gaze from this beautiful hair. The girl was one of the few lucky ones whose hair was not shaven – every single day, the nurse zealously combed out the lice. Knarik and Hermine were clean-shaven from the outset, and would every now and then grope over the bristle of their soft hair for comparison.
Hermine was slowly getting better. Death had lost interest in her. But the girls were too weak to celebrate. They realized that they needed to stick together, and just lay on the bed staring at their beautiful neighbor, eating food from iron bowls and taking the bowl back to the kitchen whenever Hermine was allowed to rise from the bed.
Her fragile body was hardly able to stand, but the doctors made her move around so that this primitive therapy would strengthen the girl. Although Knarik escaped typhus, stress, poor nutrition, longing for mom and failure to fathom the events have exhausted her, too.
The kitchen was in the opposite wing of the hospital, but for the sisters it was as remote as Van. They had to pass by the porch with numerous beds, climb down the stairs, cross the courtyard, enter the building and walk toward the noisy kitchen where invisible hands would collect the bowls from them. And then they had to travel back.
The staircase was the scariest. To overcome this obstacle Knarik came up with a trick: she would sit on the top step and slowly crawl downstairs. The steps were too high for her and even sliding down was hard, especially with a bowl in her hands. Hermine followed her sister. Day after day, the hike became easier and was gradually reduced to a funny game.
One day Hermine and Knarik finished their meal and embarked on the journey to the hospital kitchen with empty bowls. Stairs lay ahead of them, but they knew what to do: the sisters sat on the top step holding each other’s hands and the bowls and started to slide down. There were eight steps. On the fifth step they got tired and stopped. When exhausted, they would usually sit there for a long time, halfway down.
But this time, when Knarik and Hermine looked up, they saw a man and a woman. The woman looked stunned and the man’s hands were trembling. Both were staring at the girls in astonishment; the sisters were eyeing the rare guests. Suddenly Knarik was overwhelmed with memories: flowers in the garden, kids giggling, grandma’s calls, the rattle of dad’s sewing machine, and gatah.
The day before their large family was about to leave their home forever Srbuhi prepared enough gatah for a two-day trip. She beat the dough, mixed butter and sugar for the filling, and shed tears incessantly. The gatah she baked was delicious, warm and sweet-scented. When Knarik looked at the woman, who stood frozen in the middle of the yard and cried, she recalled the scent of gatah and was the first to recognize her mother. The girl turned to her sister and whispered in her ear: “Tell mom to give me gatah…”
In a few months Knarik passed away of illness in Yerevan. She never got her gatah.
The surviving sister, Hermine, told this story to our family.
The Peacock
Four children who miraculously survived evacuation died of Spanish influenza in Yerevan after hundreds of kilometers of trekking on foot. Yeghiazar Agha buried them alone. His wife was half-mad with grief and only came to her senses many days later.
Thanks to his skills, Yegiazar Agha quickly rose to his feet and gathered the remaining fragments of our family in Yerevan. He was said to be an unsurpassed tailor. The clothes he mended looked not only new, but also fashionable. Of all his clients, Alexander Spendiarov and Romanos Melikian left the deepest imprint on his daughters’ memory: these famous composers used to bring laughter and candy to the household.
In 1916 my great-grandfather Yegiazar Agha returned to Van for the short period when Armenians and Russian troops controlled the city. What urged him to embark on this weird and risky journey? Longing and hope, illusory expectations to regain all that was lost: relatives, friends, Motherland and, lastly, property?
What was on the mind of the elderly man, who lost most of his family in a few months?
There is no way of telling.
Yeghiazar Poghosian
Nevertheless, a few new items appeared in his rented room near St. Peter-and-Paul’s church in the center of Yerevan. The Russian troops were deployed in Van, and Yeghiazar’s house was occupied by a Russian general. The latter looked incredulously at the unexpected visitor who claimed he was the owner of the house. However, his doubts were dispelled when Yeghiazar led the general to the pantry located between the ceiling and the floor of two stories. It would be hard to find and open it without prior knowledge of its whereabouts. It contained intact cutlery: innumerable cups, plates, dishware and God knows what else, most of it packed in joyfully colored corrugated containers.
Tableware was intended for large family events. On such occasions, partitions on the second floor were removed and rooms merged into a spacious hall. The last party thrown by Yeghiazar was on occasion of his son Vazrik’s birth. There were plenty of people, food and laughter. But now Yeghiazar Agha couldn’t imagine other occasions for feasts and gave away the contents of the pantry, the garden, and the house itself to the general. The donation was short-lived.
From what was now the general’s house Yeghiazar Agha collected but a few items he chose for reasons known only to him.
Our family has always cherished these visitants from the past.
Even after 50 years, six coffee cups made of the finest porcelain and decorated with purple-pink flowers enchanted me with their exceptional status of absolute immunity in the glass cupboard at our Yerevan apartment. The cups were elegantly placed on an unusual ceramic tray with wrought metallic handles. The unreachable corners of the china cabinet also harbored a few dark cobalt-blue dessert plates with fancy landscapes. On the flipside, “Chezmajean, London” was written in Armenian and Latin letters. No one ever could lay hands on this chinaware.
Only one heirloom rescued by my great-grandfather was in use, perhaps owing to its intrinsic decorative functionality. It was the Peacock, or to be more exact, a rug depicting a most beautiful peacock encircled with roses. The rug was extraordinarily bright: a huge velvet square dating back to the early 20th century. By the end of the 20th century it hardly had any value. But not for me. Based on the stories of my three grandmothers, I pictured Van exactly like this fabulous garden with a peacock. In my imagination, each story would become magical, bright, flowery and velvety, and filled my heart with warmth…
Through my childhood and adolescence, the Peacock was hanging over my bed. He was my friend, safeguarding me from childish traumas, he listened to my stories of love, protected me from parental rage and helped to forever memorize all the family members from the tale of Van: Yeghiazar, Srbuhi, Shushanik, Knarik, Hermine, Karmile, Adrine, Amile, Vazrik, Sirarpi...
I don’t know how much time had elapsed after Yeghiazar returned from Van, or if these events are interrelated in any way, but soon after the re-emergence of the Peacock, cups and plates in the tiny room, the family of 50-year old Yegiazar and 34-year old Srbuhi was blessed with a daughter, Sirarpi. She only heard tales of Van, but till her last day she was sure that she was part of these tales, and as a child she would pester her sisters and father with insistent questions: “Tell me I was there, wasn’t I? Tell me that I remember all that, don’t I?”
Sirarpi's birth certificate. She was the first one to be born in Yerevan after the escape of the family.
My Granny never saw either Van or the daffodil house. I never met my great grandfather Yeghiazar, but his modest tombstone reads: “from grandchildren.”
I am sure that on their way, my family met different people who helped them. I just hope that these people and their descendants will get similar help, support, and love from any other person in the world when they need it most.
