by Elise Nakhnikian
A silent man with tired blue-gray eyes stands in the corridor outside the Armenian Evangelical Social Services (AESS) center in Hollywood, his shoulders slumped as if to occupy as little space as possible. Except when he takes a drag from his cigarette or taps an ash into the tray beside him, he has the eerie stillness of an animal frozen in onrushing headlights. Zabelle Alahydoian, Executive Director of AESS, points him out as she hurries to her next appointment. He's from Baku, she explains. He landed at the airport three days before with no family or friends to greet him. AESS workers are doing their best to find him a place to stay, but they haven't succeeded yet; meanwhile, he's been sleeping at the airport. If only, she says, the center could rent an apartment where people like this could be housed until something is found for them.
It was hardly the first time that morning Alahydoian had wished aloud for something AESS needs but can't afford: L.A.'s Armenian social service workers are perennially long on dreams and short on cash. Yet, despite those limitations, these dedicated volunteers and social workers usually find a way to help their clients. In addition to AESS, four Armenian Relief Society (ARS) Social Service centers - one each in Hollywood, Glendale, Pasadena, and Montebello - provide a crucial link between newcomers and the new world. All told, the centers serve about a hundred people every weekday, primarily by teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), translating documents, mediating disputes with landlords and police, and making sure their clients get housing, schooling, welfare and social security benefits, health care, and other necessities.
AESS, which receives a county grant that funds ESL classes for Armenian refugees, offers more ESL classes than ARS, which concentrates more on one-on-one social work and specialized services. Dr. Levon Jernazian, an Armenian-speaking clinical psychologist, donates his services to ARS three days a week for short-term counseling (Alahydoian, who has a master's degree in clinical psychology, does the same for AESS when she can fit it in). And ARS clients who want divorces or who are victims of domestic violence are referred to social worker Parik Nazarian, who specializes in filing the necessary legal papers-and offering sound advice born of having handled many such cases.
But there are far more similarities than differences between ARS and AESS. Both are nonprofit agencies whose services are free to any eligible client. Both are staffed by people who speak Armenian and English as well as Arabic, Russian, or Farsi. Both try to drum into their clients certain basic rules: shopping carts may not be taken home from the grocery store, clothes should not be hung out to dry on the front lawn, cars must not be parked in a neighbor's yard, music and conversation should be kept low at night, and so on. The main goal for both agencies is, as Alahydoian puts it, "to help people who are in need, who don't speak the language, who don't have work, and who don't have immediate family who can help them." And the emphasis, she says, is on ESL classes and acculturation and employment workshops, "because the idea is to encourage independence."
Independence isn't easy to foster in some Soviet Armenians, says Sona Zinzalian, Director of ARS's main office in Glendale. "They expect a lot from the American government and from us," says Zinzalian. "They think America is full of dollars." One couple, for instance, returned to ARS a few months after its social workers helped them find an apartment and get on welfare. "They wanted five thousand dollars-they had packed all their furniture from Armenia, it had come over and was in New York and they wanted to transfer it here," Zinzalian recalls. Such people usually show no interest in getting off welfare rolls and onto payrolls, she adds, though many work off the record for cash, which they use to supplement their government checks. "They don't believe in the system. They make their own system."
Alahydoian reluctantly agrees. "Out of, say, a hundred people that I see, maybe ten believe that unless they do something in an underhanded way they will not survive. They work under the table: they buy things and they sell them at a profit. For them, the value is success, wealth, having things. In Armenia the person who did clean work, wore Soviet-made clothes, and didn't have a car was not respected. They have to learn to respect this system. We have to teach that."
Although they urge their clients to adopt American values, ARS and AESS workers are well aware of how hard that can be. Parik Nazarian believes the main factor behind most of the divorce and wife-beating cases she handles is "culture shock and adjustment problems. The role of the family members is changing. There's more freedom for women-they go to school, they drive, they write checks, the welfare is under their name. And men cannot find a proper job: they're frustrated. If they were a perfectly good couple, they can adjust. But if they had some problems before, they pick on each other." Levon Jernazian sees another reaction from many men frustrated by their change of status: they complain of mysterious, undiagnosable maladies. Jernazian believes these are "somatoform disorders" caused by psychological, not physical, problems the men are experiencing. "They're losing power - they don't know the language, they don't have the skills, they don't know what to do. So there we go: somatoform disorder. 'There! That's the reason I'm not working! You see?' Denial mechanism."
Because they have insights like these, ARS and AESS workers are sometimes called on to interpret not only Armenian language but Armenian behavior. Alahydoian helped sort out the confusion in a Hollywood school after an Armenian student attacked a non-Armenian in the hallway when the other boy made a circle with his thumb and forefinger to signify "okay." To Armenians, she explained, that signifies a challenge, so the boy who attacked thought he was responding to a threat. And yes, she told school officials, the reaction was out of proportion to the act, but "Armenians have this pride that has gone to the level of unhealthy sometimes. It's overcoming the inferiority complex, since historically we have always been the underdogs."
Just knowing that someone in this strange new world understands and wants to help them is an enormous comfort to people like Mari Chakhalyan, an AESS client who came to L.A. from Soviet Armenia five years ago with her family. "Armenian Evangelical gave us hope that everything will be fine for us." she says. "They showed us a way that we couldn't find. They don't think of it as a job; they think they have to help us because we need help." As she thinks of her AESS social worker Chakhalyan smiles, placing her right fist over her heart. "Anahit, my daughter," she says.
