The ever-encroaching Diaspora Armenian illiteracy

Vahe H Apelian

 

A few anecdotes come to my mind that may help structure my thoughts

I was an elementary student in Sourp Nshan Armenian school when we were told an Armenian writer who writes satire and makes people laugh, is visiting us. All the students and the teachers were gathered in the hall and the guest was introduced to us. I remember the event as if it was yesterday.

In the midst of his speech the guest said – France is luxurious, luxurious, then he held his breath for a  few seconds and uttered the word, “cemetery”. To this day I wonder why our teachers found the statement amusing and applauded. Since they applauded, we, elementary school students, applauded too.

It would take a long time to understand what had transpired. The visitor was Nshan Beshigtaskhlian from France and he meant to say that in France, Armenians were better off, but that there are no Armenians schools and that the young Armenians in France do not attend Armenian schools and are destined for assimilation, while in Lebanon the Armenian life was modest but it was vibrant and live with Armenians schools and all. Indeed, it was.

After Levon Shant passed away, Simon Vratsian was invited from the U.S. as the principal of Djemaran and in order to raise funds for the school he undertook a tour of the United States with Antranig Zarougian, the rising and popular young writer he was at the time. It is Zarougian who narrated in his book “The Greats and the Others”. During their tour in the United States, at a fund-raising event, someone from the audience made a remark that the Armenian Americans are treated like a milking cow. Instead of negating the assertion, Zarougian responded that it is indeed so. That they have come to make use of their milk for the literary nourishment of the young in Lebanon. Having an Armenian day school in the U.S. was regarded an impossibility, until Gabriel Injejikian made it possible.

Antranig Tzarougian, Courtesy Tsolag Hovsepian

Vicken Hovsepian, was our classmate at the Armenian Evangelical College high school. His maternal uncle Gabriel Injejikian taught at Haigazian Univeristy which was next to our school. Vicken, who was from Kessab, lived with them. In 1964, during our junior year, he brough a few of the promissory notes Gabriel had issued. The signatory of the note, promised to donate the amount he had indicated upon Gabriel Injejikian founding a day school in the U.S.  We were so enthused by the idea that all of us signed a promissory note . The idea of founding a day school in the U.S. was considered an impossible task. “Ayk” newspaper kept a daily column that read something, along the line “Is this a joke or what?”. The newspaper had included the promissory note in that column. Years later I asked Gabriel what happened to those promissory notes. He said he had them in a box and lost them. It included the first promissory note signed by Catholicos Khoren I in his red ink. 

Gabriel returned to Los Angeles and founded the Ferrahian Armenian school in 1964. During the ensuing two decades marked a spree for founding Armenian day schools in the U.S. and  a number of schools were founded, mostly in California. But after 1986 no other Armenian day schools was opened in the U.S. – save AGBU Vatche and Tamar Manougian school that was opened in Pasadena, CA in 2006 but was closed in 2020.  A few other Armenian schools in the U.S. were also closed after 1986.

Gabriel Injejikian

During the last few decades, a number of Armenian schools were also closed in the Armenian communities of Middle East, such as in Lebanon Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, Iraq. More and more Armenian boys and girls there are also attending the local schools. And those who attend Armenian Schools, Levon Sharoyan from Aleppo noted, are not paying due attention to their Armenian classes even wanting to avoid it. However,  the benefit of an Armenian school in a community is far more than for the handful students who attend it but care less about its Armenian class.  

Recently, during a conference in Armenia about the Armenian communities of the Middle Eastern countries, Syria's ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Armenia, Nora Arisian, said that the Armenian communities of the Middle East are facing a crisis for preserving Armenian identity.  She was reported to have said that although middle Eastern Armenian communities differ from others but they face similar challenges. (Horizon 12/1/2023).

Dr. Ara Sanjian who visits Lebanon every year, noted on his Facebook page on Maya 17, 2022 that out of the six Armenian parliamentarians who were recently elected to fill the six seats reserved for the Armenian community, only one of them can read and write Armenian. The rest have a passing or a barely conversational skill. For all practical purposes there is no more an Armenian bloc in the Lebanese parliament. The community seems to be politically fragmented.

 It is not the Armenian communities in the West any more. The Armenian illiteracy is ever-encroaching upon Diaspora as a whole, including the Middle Eastern communities that, a few decades ago, were considered the bastions for preserving and perpetuating the Western Armenian culture in the Diaspora. The cold war era of post genocide Armenian Diaspora, where the Armenians in the western countries assisted financially the Middle Eastern communities to preserve literacy and perpetuate the post genocide Armenian culture  and thus complemented each other into a self preserving Diaspora is a thing of long past now.

It is beyond the scope of this blog to elaborate on the negative connotation of the ever-encroaching Armenia illiteracy in the Diaspora on the preservation of the Armenian identity and on the influence, it may have on the course of Armenia.  

Against that grim reality there remains one bright reality, the ray of hope, and that is the free and independent and democratic Republic of Armenia, and the Diaspora’s relation with the homeland as the only hope for the long term preservation and perpetuation of the Armenian identity in the Diaspora.

 

Courtesy Zvart Apelian