by Elise Nakhnikian
"Hollywood" may be a code word for glamour worldwide, but to L.A. natives it means something else. At the intersection of Hollywood and Western, two of the area's main streets, the Los Angeles Police Department has logged more than a crime a day for the past two years, most of them drug deals, assaults, thefts or shootings. Gang graffiti reappears as fast as neighborhood groups can paint it out, and burned-out buildings stand witness to the rage and alienation that erupted into rioting last spring.
Roughly two-thirds of the people who live in these charmless buildings are Latinos, mostly from El Salvador. Most of the rest are Armenians, largely refugees, immigrants, and parolees from the former Soviet Union. Armenians from countries that allowed them to accumulate some money and bring it with them to L.A. may settle into more affluent communities like Glendale or Pasadena-or anywhere else, for that matter. But for those who come with next to nothing, Hollywood is the only part of the city where they can find both relatively cheap rents and a large Armenian community.
Being part of an Armenian community is even more important to most Soviet Armenians than to those from the diaspora, who were exposed to both the Western and Middle Eastern cultures. "We used to have connections with Europe and Arabs and many kinds of people," says Ani Azar, a Hollywood Armenian who emigrated from Kuwait. "But Armenians who came from Armenia, they're used to communicating with each other only. The only other people they knew were the Russians, and they had this hatred of the Russians."
For the most part, Hollywood's Armenians shop at Armenian stores, use Armenian doctors and dentists, listen to Armenian radio, and make Armenian friends. When they interact with their Salvadoran neighbors, the encounter is often a standoff rather than an understanding, with mutual mistrust threatening to boil over into violent confrontation. Zabelle Alahydoian, former Executive Director of the Armenian Evangelical Social Service (AESS) center in Hollywood, tells of a boy referred to her by one of Hollywood's junior high schools because he wouldn't go to school. When she talked to him, she says, she learned that he stayed home because he was afraid of his Hispanic classmates. That same fear is one of the reasons behind the Armenian gangs - made up almost entirely of boys from Soviet Armenia-that have cropped up in Hollywood and Glendale over the last couple of years. A member of a gang called Armenian Power explained its existence to a reporter from Armenian International Magazine by claiming, "About eight years ago (Latinos) were pushing Armenians around. It was prejudice. So we started to get organized."
Even with other Armenians Hollywood's newcomers don't always feel at home . Azar now has friends from Soviet Armenia, but she says it took a while to make them. "There's a language barrier. They speak Eastern Armenian, and the majority of Armenians speak Western Armenian. I didn't understand them at the beginning." And those who can understand often choose not to listen. When Lilit Chakhalyan came to Hollywood in 1987, she was a homesick 17-year-old who spoke no English and needed a friend. This was before the great Soviet influx of 1988, so there weren't many Armenian students in her high school that first year, but "there were some who were in America for ten or fifteen years," she recalls. "They wouldn't talk to me; they wouldn't come to my house. I would try to talk to them-I tried to speak to them in Armenian, but they would speak only English. And as soon as I made one mistake in English they would say 'You're making a mistake.' I really needed the support, but I couldn't get it."
"I don't think the existing community accepts (the Soviet newcomers) very well," says Alahydoian. "They don't want to be identified with them. They say they're freeloaders, they cheat, they lie, and they smell."
Lilit and her family are used to countering those assumptions. During one morning's conversation, Lilit's mother, Mari, volunteered two different reasons why she cannot work for a living, offered an apology that "instead of doing good for this government, I'm getting AFDC (Aid for Dependent Children)," and brought out her "homework" for my approval, a notebook full of English words and sentences she had neatly copied out. Mari, who first studied English as a Second Language (ESL) at AESS and now does so through her church, understands most of the English she hears but speaks the language only shyly and haltingly. She says she hopes to take math classes soon and eventually get certified to work here as an engineer. Looking into her kind face as she outlines her plans in broken English, it's hard to imagine who would hire this gray-haired foreign woman for a white-collar job, especially in a recession.
The Chakhalyans-Mari, her husband Rafik, 22-year-old Lilit, and 15-year-old Aram-share a one bedroom apartment just off Hollywood and Western in a part of east Hollywood known as Little Armenia. They came to L.A., says Lilit, primarily to seek medical help for Rafik, who had developed "a very odd illness" that no doctor in Armenia could explain. None of the doctors he has seen here have been able to diagnose that illness either, though he has been told that one of his problems is a skin irritation Mari calls "hydrodermatitis."
Whatever Rafik's medical problem may be, his "small attacks, headaches" keep him from working, says Lilit, although "in Armenia he had a very high position-he worked for the agricultural ministry." When she hears this, Mari interrupts to speak passionately in Armenian, and Lilit translates: "Most Armenians who come to America had high positions in Armenia and they would be very happy to continue to work and to be helpful to America, but the problem is the language. Armenian people like to work-they're not ashamed of doing any kind of dirty job. Even though I was an engineer and I had many workers under me in Armenia, I'm willing to do anything here. But I'm afraid to speak English."
For now, the family must survive on AFDC and what Lilit can bring in. Learning English well enough to communicate with non-Armenians wasn't easy, but Lilit got her start at AESS, where she worked during her first two years in L.A. "They encouraged me to call people, to speak with American people," she says. "I was surprised, because my English wasn't that good, but they started teaching us how to not be afraid to make those phone calls, how to help other people." Now, she says, the neighbors in the Chakhalyans' almost entirely Armenian occupied apartment building have a nickname for her. " They call me 9-1-1. If they have a phone call in English, if they need someone to take their grandmother to the hospital, if they need help paying bills or filling out papers, they come to me." Lilit is studying child development and child psychology at Los Angeles Community College where she works as a peer counselor, helping Russian and Armenian students "choose classes and putting them on the right track."
Transforming herself in just five years from a lonely newcomer who didn't speak the language to a self-assured coed who gets paid to help others took a lot of hard work. "It's very difficult to be in ESL 2 and 3 and be taking economics and government," she says of her high school days. "If I didn't understand some word, I'd translate it into Russian. Then I'd go back and read it all together. Sometimes I would record what the teacher would say and listen to it over and over until I understood it. And if I didn't understand, I would go to my teacher and say I didn't understand." Most of the Armenian students at her high school, she says were less diligent. "They wanted to take the easy teachers; they thought only of being with their friends."
Alahydoian agrees that too few of Hollywood's Armenian students take their schoolwork seriously. Growing up in a ghetto, torn between a dominant culture that doesn't understand them and parents who don't understand the dominant culture, they too often feel hopeless, impotent, and defensive. "Cheating in school is common. Truancy is high," says Alahydoian. For such kids, "youth activity is very important, so they can identify with a group," Alahydoian says. "They have to get some self-esteem-building activities so they are not always ready to defend themselves, like they are being accused of."
But Alahydoian has high hopes overall for the new generation, because she is convinced that families like the Chakhalyans are more the rule than the exception in Hollywood. "The highest value I see among Soviet Armenians is that family and honor are very important." she says. "Pride." And the pride that makes Mari Chakhalyan apologize because she's not helping her new country will ensure that her children, and their children, will.
