Iran Update, January 21, 2025 Institute for the Study of War
Day: January 21, 2025
Cozy Winter Cooking | Turkish Lunch Over Open Flames https://t.co/sxjN2NeWNv via @YouTube
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) January 21, 2025
I won’t lie — these days, my trips to Toronto often begin with a sense of dread.
The journey feels longer now than when I was younger. The once-exciting plane rides have become tests of patience, filled with cramped seats and stale air. Time zones feel harder to adjust to, and with each visit, I find myself feeling like more of a stranger to Canadian life than I ever imagined possible.
But the moment I start spending time with family and friends, that all melts away.
Every shared laugh and warm embrace reminds me why I made the journey. In Toronto, where (many) pieces of my heart still live, each reunion takes on a weight and meaning that makes the long trip fade into triviality.
One afternoon, my wife Araz and I were tucked into a corner of a restaurant with my mom, Nairy Tantig and Osig Tantig — two women who’ve been like sisters to my mother for as long as I can remember. Nairy Tantig, the gracious host, insisted on treating us all to lunch. The gentle clinking of cutlery and warm conversation flowed around us as we ate, none of us knowing that this simple meal would soon become something extraordinary.
As we were finishing up, Nairy Tantig brought out two statuettes: Saints Sahak Partev and Mesrop Mashtots. There was a gentle tremor in her voice as she began their story — that unmistakable tone that emerges only when sharing something held sacred through generations.
These statuettes had made their way from Egypt to Canada back in 1963 with her grandmother, Digin Dikranouhi Artinian. A pillar of Toronto’s Armenian community, Digin Dikranouhi was the longtime principal of Sts. Sahag and Mesrop Saturday School and helped found the ARS Summer School (which would eventually become the ARS Private School of Toronto — my alma mater and former employer). She had guarded these statuettes like holy relics. Years later, they were passed on to her daughter, our community’s beloved Armenouhi Nene. She watched over them carefully until she passed away just a few months ago.
With the statuettes, Nairy Tantig gave us her grandmother’s book, Memories of an Armenian Mother («Հայ մօր յուշեր»). She told us we’d find Digin Dikranouhi’s own words about these precious mementos in a story called “The Two Statuettes” («Երկու աձրանիկները»).
Back at my parents’ place that evening, as I turned the pages of Digin Dikranouhi’s book, her words in beautifully written Western Armenian hit differently. She wrote about the statuettes as guardians of the Armenian spirit, silent witnesses to a heritage handed down through time. Right after landing in Canada, she’d carefully tucked them among her Armenian books, like she was protecting the last embers of our culture on foreign soil.
“My hands tremble as I unwrap the delicate wrapping paper,” she wrote in Armenian, “praying they haven’t broken on their long journey from the land of pyramids — wandering Saints watching over a wandering people.”
In the fifth century, when Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet with the backing of Catholicos Sahak, they gave us more than just letters — they gave us the key to our collective memory. Growing up in Toronto, that history felt distant, almost abstract. Sure, we learned Armenian, attended Armenian school and church, and went to community events. But there was always this feeling that we were trying to grasp something just out of reach, hold onto something that kept slipping through our fingers. Like Digin Dikranouhi tucking those statuettes among her books, we all were trying to carve out little pockets of Armenian life in this “foreign land.”
For me, moving to Armenia was the end of a search I hadn’t even known I was on. Here, being Armenian isn’t something you have to work at; it’s as natural as the air you breathe (though given Yerevan’s notorious air quality, perhaps I should choose a different metaphor).
These statuettes remind us that “home” isn’t always where you start — sometimes, it’s where your heart leads you. For us and for these statuettes, that place turned out to be Armenia.
The statuettes now rest in our home’s library, surrounded by Armenian books and the everyday bits and pieces of our lives. They’re more than just decorations or keepsakes; they tell the story of a journey from Egypt to Canada and finally home to Armenia. Looking at them, I can almost see Digin Dikranouhi’s careful hands wrapping them for their journey. I feel Armenouhi Nene’s decades of loving care. I understand Nairy Tantig’s wisdom in knowing their true home was here.
These statuettes remind us that “home” isn’t always where you start — sometimes, it’s where your heart leads you. For us and for these statuettes, that place turned out to be Armenia. Every morning, when the sun rises over Yerevan and catches these statuettes in their first light, I smile, thinking about their incredible journey — from the pyramids to the land of Tim Hortons double-doubles and now to Armenia.
I suspect if they could talk, these statuettes would tell me to stop being so sentimental and to just dust them once in a while. But I like to think Digin Dikranouhi and Armenouhi Nene can rest easier now, knowing their precious saints have finally found their place — in a library full of Armenian books, in the heart of an independent homeland.
This essay was originally published in Western Armenian («Երկու արձանիկներու տունդարձը») in Torontohye’s Dec. 2024 issue.
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Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “It is not enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many and have the immense patience to wait until they return.”
This is perhaps truer of refugees than any other member of society. Through the passage of time and new political realities, silence is no longer tied to survival, and memories of harrowing events gradually interlace with daily life.
1947 marks the year that my paternal grandparents migrated to Cyprus. As natives of the age-old Armenian community of Jerusalem (referred to as kaghakatsi), they were among the thousands of Armenians who fled the Holy Land in the first Arab-Israeli war.
In Cyprus, they settled in Famagusta, a prominent port city in the northern part of the island, where my grandfather worked for the British administration. Through the 1950s, repeated armed struggles between the island’s Greek and Turkish communities took place, instilling greater insecurity about the future. These clashes eventually culminated in the Turkish military’s invasion of 1974, which resulted in massive internal displacement. In a searing feeling of déjà vu, my family packed what they could carry, stored their valuables at the bank and took refuge at the British Sovereign Base of Dhekelia before evacuating the embattled island.
It was not until recently, when the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) unilaterally decided to partially reopen my father’s hometown in Varosha (Maraş in Turkish) — a fenced-off suburb in Famagusta, left in perpetual stillness for five decades — that stories from the war began resurfacing at our dinner table in Brussels. Gradually, a desire to return took root and led us to visit the abandoned sites in the summer of 2024.
Famagusta first entered our journey by virtue of a black-and-white photo displayed in a flower shop in Larnaca. “How long have you lived here?” my aunt asked the florist. “I am from Famagusta. I moved here when the war started and stayed ever since,” she said. Then, she put down her cellophane and pointed to the picture: “This was my house. As you can see, we had a beautiful orange tree garden.”
Intrigued, I stepped closer. “Did you ever go back?” I asked. “No, but my children did. There are Turks living there now. They cut down all the trees and turned my property into student flats. I have no desire to see it like this,” she said. Her story made me see just how profoundly the past is felt in the present.
The words ‘ghost’ and ‘town’ are often used together to describe what Varosha has come to — a city dismembered from its rhythms, habits and former inhabitants. Since 2020, the district referred to in the media as a ‘bargaining chip for future peace negotiations’ between the TRNC and the Republic of Cyprus has become a hub for ‘dark tourism.’ Like any tourist attraction, opening times and rules for visitation are carved onto a large board by the gated entrance adjoined with an open-air coffeehouse. One need only cross over to experience the macabre.
Under the midday heat, we walked along crooked sidewalks. Relics of sandstone houses, chalky boutiques and cafés stood behind ropes on poles while people zipped by on electric scooters and snapped selfies. Every few meters, a red panel indicating the risk of building collapse came into view. These inscriptions, along with the presence of Turkish guards and the U.N. Peacekeeping Force, affected my posture. A part of me just wanted to be reckless and go beyond the ropes, so I put extra effort into straightening my back to compensate for my illicit thoughts.
The timeless orchards in the backyard, the three-piastre tahinopita from the nearby bakery and the people whose daily presence provided a sense of unshakable continuity — those are the things that hovered, beyond the grid of restoration.
Further down Demokratia street — formerly the main commercial avenue — was the family home, sitting two floors above what used to be a lively café. I stood behind my aunt and my father as they stared into the broken windows. This scene provided a frame for all the missing pieces. It had the earthy smell of a lost paradise. The timeless orchards in the backyard, the three-piastre tahinopita from the nearby bakery and the people whose daily presence provided a sense of unshakable continuity — those are the things that hovered, beyond the grid of restoration.
By the time we left, the air was heavy with neglect and made my head spin. Everything from my father’s recollections to the letter-severed store signs felt disjointed, further blurring the line between reality and imagination. I was transfixed and lost. There are no winners in war, I thought.
“You know, 50 years is a lot. Back then, things were so simple and beautiful and slow-paced. No queuing, no rush hours. It was a different kind of setup,” my aunt whispered. Her words struck a chord with me, as they vitally capture the nucleus of diasporic existence: the wistful longing for a lost era. This, perhaps, is what draws us back to the ruins of war — to face and grieve reality, to grasp the meaning of our existence and, admittedly in my case, to cause something to survive in a newspaper that I imagine my grandparents would have enjoyed reading.
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