An Improbable Valentine Tale: Vartan and Sara

 A Valentine tale I have told and retold. I first posted it in Keghartdotcom. on February 6, 2015 and updated in my blog. I repost it in memory of Vartan Dickranian

Vartan and Sarah, newly wed, Melbourne, Australia, 1970

From the '50s to the early '70s my father ran an inn in Beirut called "Hotel Lux". Almost all of our guests were Armenian, many from Iraq. Earlier on the Iraqi-Armenians came for summer vacation. Later they mostly came as immigrants on their way West or to Australia. Among them was a young man whose name was Vartan. He has remained etched in my memory for decades. What I will write about happened in the late '60s.

Vartan and his family were waiting for their immigration visas to Australia. Theirs was a traditional family. For all, I knew they might have hailed from the Armenian historic town Van or its region. Vartan’s parents may have been born there or were born in Iraq to surviving Vanetsi parents, as the family spoke with a distinct Armenian accent and Vartan remained very deferential to his parents, in an old-fashioned way.

Vartan and I became acquaintances. For a while, we also lived in the same quarter of the hotel. Thus I would see him almost daily. Over time, our acquaintanceship grew into friendship. I seemed to have earned his trust as he confided to me his predicament.

He had fallen in love with an Iraqi-Assyrian girl. Her name was Sarah. Everyone in Basra, their hometown, knew that Vartan loved Sarah, as he would tell me in his distinct household accent, “Sagh Basran kidi vor Vartan Saran ge siri” (Սաղ Պասրան գիտի որ Վարդանը Սարան կը սիրի), that is to say the “living Basra knows that Vartan loves Sarah”. However, their relationship had not progressed and each had gone their separate way. Vartan had come to Beirut on his way to Australia. Sarah and her parental family had gone to England on their way to the United States. Vartan had recently gotten hold of Sarah’s address in England from a mutual friend in Iraq. He asked me to write to Sarah in English. I don't remember why in English and not in Arabic.

For many weeks I wrote her a weekly letter Vartan dictated. They were not the kind of love letters--“I love you...cannot live without you, etc.”. Vartan’s letters were mundane, about everyday happenings, and about his family's wait for their visas.  After many letters over many weeks and no reply from Sarah, I told Vartan to give up chasing her. The girl is not interested otherwise she would have replied by now, I told him. Vartan would have none of it. The weekly letters continued.

One day Vartan showed me a letter he had received. It was from Sarah’s father. I remember almost verbatim what the man had written. In a plain and an impeccable English he wrote that all the ink in the world would not bring Vartan and Sarah together and that Vartan should have "hit the iron while it was hot". Some anger was palpable in the letter. Vartan’s family might have been cool to the prospect of the young couple's marriage for reasons that might have to do with their departure from Iraq. Both families had started their preparations to leave Iraq about the same time.

Vartan remained adamant. The innocuous "love" letters continued. Through their mutual friend in Iraq, Vartan learned Sarah’s family’s destination address in America and their departure date that would take place more or less with Vartan's family's departure time to Australia. Love-struck Vartan made a pact with me. After he settled in Australia, he would forward me his letters in Armenian, which I would translate into English and send it to him. He would then mail them to Sarah in America. Improbable as it may sound, that is what we did. But eventually, the letters trickled and finally stopped.

The last envelope I recieved from Vartan contained two letters. In one Vartan addressed to Sarah’s father. While he was not overtly asking the hand of his daughter, marriage seemed to be on his mind. Much like the previous letters, this letter also was mostly about mundane matters about Vartan's and his family's life in Australia. The second letter was from Vartan’s father addressed to Sarah’s father formely asking the hand of his daughter Sarah in marriage to his son Vartan.

I did not hear from or of Vartan after his last letter, as I remained focused on my studies and career amidst simmering political unrest in Lebanon. Not long after, my life along with Beirut communal life, changed. Hotel Lux, my parents bread and butter, was destroyed in 1975 at the onset of the protracted Lebanese Civil War. I ended up immigrating to the United States a year later, in 1976. 

Decades passed but I never forgot Vartan. In 2014, during one of my periodic visits to my mother whom I had entrusted to the care of the Ararat Nursing Facility in Los Angeles, I learned that an Australian-born Iraqi-Assyrian, Dr. Nicholas Al-Jeloo, would deliver, in the Ararat-Eskijian Museum-Sheen Chapel, a lecture entitled, "Armenian and Assyrian Cooperation and Co-Habitation in Iran's Urmia Region". Whenever I heard of Assyria or Assyrians, Vartan would come to my mind and I would wonder what happened to him and to his impossible love. I decided to attend the lecture and meet the ethnic Iraqi-Assyrian lecturer from Australia. The lecture took place on Sunday, May 4, 2014, at 4 p.m.

Being hard pressed for time I could not linger after the talk to share my Assyrian-Armenian story with Dr. Al-Jeloo.  I had booked to return home that evening. I barely had time to purchase his illustrated book capturing old Assyrian villages in Iran cohabited by Armenians. Dr. Al-Jeloo signed the book and gave me his business card. I returned home to Ohio.

Months went by. One day while going over papers I had brought with me from my mother’s house, I came across a journal I had kept while on a bus trip to Eastern Europe. My parents had paid for the trip to congratulate me for being accepted to the pharmacy school of the American University of Beirut. To my great surprise, I also came across a few pages long entry about Vartan in my journal as well. It was high time I thought I contacted Dr. Al-Jeloo. I sent him an email on August 4, 2014.

I wrote to Dr. Al-Jeloo a summary of Vartan's story and added: “I never got a wedding invitation. If nature was kind enough to their enduring love, they should be now grandparents or grandparents to be. I wanted to share their story with you. Unlike the Assyrian Queen Shamiram not giving up on handsome Armenian king Ara, the love of her life; this time around it was every day Vartan not giving up on the love of his life, Sarah.” More than two months passed and I did not hear from him. I figured I had come to a dead end and that I should close the book on my memories of my days with Vartan on the veranda of Hotel Lux dictating to me his letters to Sarah.

On October 19, 2014, I received an email from Suzan Dickranian. Her name did not ring a bell. The email was titled “Greetings from Melbourne, Australia!” I did not give much thought as to who she could be and why an email from Melbourne. When I opened the email I was stunned to read that she is the daughter of Vartan Dickranian, the lovelorn Vartan of Hotel Lux. The bygone years had somehow erased the family name from my memory and at that moment it had not dawned on me to make the connection.

A few days earlier, Suzan wrote, her mother had met Dr. Al-Jeloo following a lecture he had delivered about the Assyrian Genocide. Upon learning her name, Dr. Nicholos had asked her whether she is married to an Armenian. She had responded in the affirmative. He had then quizzed her whether her husband’s name is Vartan. Astonished by the question, she had confirmed that her husband’s name is indeed Vartan.

Suzan then wrote what her father had dictated: “I (Vartan) was then brought over and introduced to Dr. Nicholas, who explained that he had received an email from you, which included a story about an Armenian man he met in Beirut, who was in love with an Assyrian girl. It soon became clear that, by coincidence, I was the man you were talking about!

"I am happy to tell you that I DID end up marrying the Assyrian girl I was in love with!...and the following is our story.

"I arrived in Melbourne, Australia in 1968. Two of my brothers were already here before I arrived with my parents. Unfortunately, my father died in 1969; nine months after we arrived. Prior to his death, he wrote a letter to Sarah’s father in America, asking for her hand in marriage on my behalf. Sarah’s father accepted this proposal and, as a result, Sarah arrived in Melbourne in 1970. However, my father had unfortunately passed away by this time.

"Sarah and I were married just ten days after her arrival, in October of 1970. We had a small wedding with only twenty people.

"In 1972 we had our first child; our daughter Suzan.  We lived in a small apartment, to begin with. We eventually bought a house in 1975, which we are still happily living in, to this day. In 1977, we had another child; our son Armen.

Suzan grew up and married an Armenian man in 2001.  Armen is now engaged (also to an Armenian) and will be getting married in November this year.” The email also contained a copy of a passport size picture whose inscription on the back in my own writing in Armenian, reads:  "To Dear Vartan, Vahe". The picture is dated February 1969. All these years Vartan had kept a passport-size picture of mine I had forgotten having given to him as a keepsake. 

I was saddened to read about Vartan’s father's early death. From what I remembered, he had run a pastry shop in Basra. He probably found his world had completely changed in Australia. I am sure theirs was also a close-knit community in Basra whose circumstances couldn't be duplicated in Australia. Even though the presence of his children would have softened the impact of the change, nonetheless Basra and Melbourne would have been worlds apart for the aging patriarch. However, he had carried on his responsibilities to the end with dignity. After assuring himself that the family was settled well enough to assume the responsibility of providing a comfortable haven for a daughter-in-law to be, he had consented to Vartan’s marriage and had personally written to Sarah’s father asking for his daughter’s hand for his son Vartan.

Probably there is no student who has attended Armenian school who wouldn't know about Assyrian Queen Shamiram’s infatuation with the most handsome king in Armenian history, King Ara the Beautiful. Loyal to his wife Queen Nvart and indifferent to mighty Shamiram’s advances, Ara had committed the political blunder of his life by rejecting the Assyrian queen's infatuation. An enraged Shamiram had attacked Armenia with orders to her soldiers not to harm Ara. But King Ara was killed in the ensuing battle. Distraught, she had his body placed  on a hill hoping that the gods would lick his wounds and bring him back to life but in vain. Ara's and Shamiram's story became part of Armenian folklore, if not history.

Over time the Armenians adopted Christianity as their state religion but they did not forget about their handsome king Ara who was loyal to his wife to his political detriment and built a chapel on that very hilltop where pagan gods were once supposed to descend. They had become Christian but had kept the memory of the happening in pagan times. The village that sprang around the hill came to be called AraLezk--a compound word made of the king's name Ara and the Armenian verb to lick. The village now has grown into a town and, as is the regrettable Turkish tradition, its name has been obliterated per a comment I read in Keghart.com in response to my inquiry about Aralezk.

The ancient Armenian village Aralezk. The chapel is visible on the hill.
Presently known as Kalacik.

This time around it was not a royal affair but a devoted commoner named after one of the most esteemed names in Armenian history, Vartan (Mamigonian). The historic Vartan's name had bolstered his clan's reputation placing it second only to his family, named after the Armenian king of kings, Dikran the Great.

Last year Suzie broke the news of the passing away of her father Vartan whose path and mine crossed at one time in Beirut and left an indelible impression upon me; not only will I not forget, but will continue cherishing it. 

Vartan and Sarah thus formed their own "dynasty". I am sure their descendants will carry on the legacy of the improbable but enduring love of the family’s patriarch and matriarch. As in Vartan's and Sarah’s lives, upheavals are inevitable in their descendants’ lives as well. They also will face trials and tribulations but they will be able to overcome the odds as long as they remain committed to each other much like Vartan and Sarah were. For true love endures.

Vartan and Sarah Dickranian in Singapore in 2011. 

Courtesy their daughter Suzie Dickranian