In 1996, when Shant Bozoian left Syria to live in Armenia, his decision surprised not only his relatives living in Kamishly, but also his acquaintances in Armenia
"They were asking me in Syria what I was looking for in Armenia, which had no electricity and no water (at least it was so perceived, though not accurate by 1996)," 58-year-old Bozoian says. And on the other end of his journey, people in Armenia questioned why he would want to move there, when so many were trying to get out of the struggling country.
"They said I'd return to Syria as soon as my money ran out," he recalls.
Bozoian moved to Armenia a year after first visiting. In 1997, his wife, Seda, and their two sons and daughter joined him.
In Kamishly—a city of about 300,000—the family lived comfortably among the community of about 8,500 Armenians. By appearances, there were no reasons why the family might wish to "escape."
Despite business success, Bozoian said he was never at ease in Syria, simply because it wasn't his native home. Armenia has proved not as rewarding, financially, but Bozoian says the move has afforded a sort of spiritual comfort.
"If I had stayed in Syria (where the family worked in agriculture), of course my income would have been much greater. However, I prefer making less money, but living in my homeland. No matter how rich one is abroad, he is a second-class citizen there," he says.
Bozoian bought a piece of land in the Yerevan suburb of Jrvezh and built a house there. Now his sons—Andranik and Harut—run the family construction materials business Bozoian started in Yerevan, while they are also finishing degree programs at the Armenian Agricultural Academy. Daughter Vardineh is a pharmacist.
"It is quite hard for small and medium-sized business here [in Armenia]. If there were equality in the market, it would be much easier to work here. The law must be equal for everybody," says Bozoian's elder son Andranik.
The young businessman shies from specifics, but has the same complaints as many repatriates and locals alike. Namely, he says that success in Armenia is achieved by who you are related to or have paid off, more than by sound business practice.
Still, the sons (Andranik is 30 and Harut is 26) say their father's decision to move to Armenia was good timing for them, as it got them to Armenia at an age when they could adjust, get an education, and start professional careers.
Andranik and Harut also share the opinion of other diasporan Armenians, who complain that Armenia's tax system doesn't favor start-up businesses, especially for small and medium-sized operations.
But that is the Armenian reality and repats either learn to adjust, or leave disappointed.
"I remember we started a coffee shop, and we failed; however, we did not get disappointed. We even started a shop fixing flat tires for 1,000 drams (about $2.70). We hardly earned 3,000 drams per day those years. But we didn't get discouraged," Harut recalls.
Fellow Syrian-Armenian Adroushan Shakelian concurs that starting a business in Armenia can be a test of one's patriotism. He feels it each time he compares the tax bill incurred by his company in Armenia with the one he pays for the family business in Syria.
In 2005, Shakelian moved to Yerevan from Aleppo, and soon established Medical Horizon pharmaceutical company.
For the opportunity to run such a business, he must pay 30 percent customs tax on the raw ingredients required for making his company's brand of anti-fever serum. The same tax, however, is levied on ready-produced goods, meaning that Shakelian's operating costs are necessarily higher than a competitor who is only importing.
"In Aleppo a newly started business is treated quite differently," says Shakelian, 41. "First of all, business loans with very low interest rates (two-five percent) are provided, which is twice, even three times as low compared to Armenia. And while taxes levied at customs houses may be 30 percent for products, they are only five percent for raw materials."
Assimilation, not "Aleppo, Armenia"
The Bozoian brothers say that from the beginning they made conscious efforts to gain acceptance in the local community, hoping to earn their place and not always be viewed as outsiders, despite their ethnic identity.
"Syrian-Armenians consider Armenia to be like an Aleppo-Armenian community, and they do not associate with locals. When you associate with locals, you become a local yourself," Andranik explains.
And, adds the father: "When our Armenians come here from Syria, they do not like the mannerisms here. I wonder why. They respect Arabs' morals and manners, because they have to. And this is ours, why don't they accept and get used to it?" Bozoian asks.
He explains that in Syria, Armenians endure the life of a foreigner and tolerate habits and customs of the host country.
"But in the homeland," Bozoian says, "they cannot stand even the slightest inconvenience. For example, if they wait in a queue to buy something, and someone is rude to them, they think it is a tragedy that it should happen in Armenia. In reality, such things happen everywhere."
The difficulties have been significant for the Shakelians. Their five-year-old company has operated in the red until this year. Shakelian says it is doubtful that his pharmaceutical firm could have survived, were it not for support from his other family business in Syria.
Under such discouraging conditions, then, why would he open not only one, but four businesses in Armenia? Whether profound or naïve, the answer, he says, is found each time he arrives at his home, to a neighborhood where the air is filled with the noise of his native tongue.
To offset the struggle of starting the drug company, Shakelian opened a restaurant in Yerevan, called Oregano. In addition, his wife, Nanor Tangukian, 33, started two clothing shops for women.
"I wanted to set up a serious business in Armenia, too," Nanor says. "After researching the market, I found that Armenian women are in great need of high-quality clothes, and they do not want to pay big money."
The couple (parents to one child) says their monthly living expense of about $3,500 is double what it was in Aleppo. They are confident of their work, however, and Shakelian says that he made the right decision by moving here.
Let us go and try
In 1915, when Syria began offering asylum to Armenians fleeing the Ottoman Turkish genocide and expulsion from Turkey, a relationship was forged that led to subsequent generations of Armenians making the Syrian Arab Republic their home.
Today more than 80,000 Armenians live there. The majority can be found in Aleppo, with about 5,000-6,000 in the capital city of Damascus, and others in Latakia, Hasaka, Kamishly and Kessab.
As was the case with other countries, Syrian-Armenians were among those who repatriated shortly after World War II, during a brief period when the Soviet Union relaxed its policy by which those from outside the USSR could move to Soviet Armenia.
It was after independence (1991), though, that today's Syrian-Armenians looked to Armenia for new opportunities. According to the Ministry of Diaspora, about 150 families have relocated.
Forty-two-year-old Syrian-Armenian Gevorg Sarian says that for many years Armenia felt like his "brother's home." In other words, he felt he would be welcome, but would have to prove his right to be there.
"I have earned my place here," he says. "I adapted gradually."
In 1979-1985, Sarian studied at the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute (currently State Engineering University of Armenia). Even during those years, he thought about settling in Armenia, but the atmosphere of the Soviet period was not inspiring for taking such a step. When the Soviet Union collapsed, a door was opened for Gevorg.
"In 1997, we visited Armenia, and what we found then was not like the current Armenia. Everything was very difficult then, but it was not as hard as it was in the early 1990s. It was then (1997) that I told my wife Alin, 'Let us go and try.'"
Sarian lived in Armenia for a year to study the taxation and customs legislation in Armenia in order to be able to establish a business here.
"In 1998, I brought my family here. During those years, I used to go back and forth to Syria quite often and, each time I left, one of the immigrants here asked for something—spice or desert. That is why I decided to set up a store and call it 'Halep' (Aleppo)," Sarian says.
Now the business has become so popular that three Halep shops have opened in Yerevan, with another planned for Armavir and others for Gyumri and Vanadzor.
"We integrated a piece of Middle-Eastern culture here with Halep," Alin says.
The family's primary business is Sharoian-Sarian company, of which Gevorg is the director. The company not only imports motor oil, but also contracts large construction.
Gevorg speaks candidly about the shadowy reality of running a business in Armenia.
"In Armenia you have to break some of your principles. The taxation sector, customs, as well as municipality, firefighter and sanitarian offices, are all corrupt. You should decide where you are ready to concede and where you are not. One must choose. This is a huge river, and if one goes against the stream, he will get pushed out of the river. And on the other hand, it's hard to 'go with the flow,' because it is against one's principles. So one must accept this somehow," Sarian explains.
Alin and her local friends set up a store called "Hanin" where women's cotton underwear is sold. But after 11 years, she still feels like a foreigner.
"Very trifling things make me angry. At the beginning, I thought that it is Armenia's fault, but then I realized that the country is not to be blamed. Simply it is necessary to rise above the pettiness of other people's prejudice (against outsiders) and take control of your own emotions. And I manage to do that," Alin says.
"If you live in the Diaspora, you try to go along with different nationalities; you are brought up in the atmosphere of compromise (acceptance or tolerance). While here, where Armenians are 99 percent of the population, there is no compromise. You are treated like everyone else here."
In other words, as a "foreigner" in another country, one might be excused for behavior that doesn't meet the cultural norm. But as a diasporan transplant in Armenia, one is expected to immediately understand the way of life, simply because of being born Armenian.
Gevorg thinks that no matter how strong and respected Armenian communities are abroad, in the Middle East, they feel themselves to be 'alien.'
Referring to his own experience in the Middle East, he says: "A Western Armenian by fate is an alien abroad. At least one does not feel himself/herself alien in (current) Armenia. I did not want my children to feel like strangers abroad, because that feeling destroys you."
Armenology
Two-and-a-half-year-old Aregi sings "Ararat," Arto Tuncboyajian's ode: "Geghetsik, geghetsik doon, Ararat hey jan im…" (My dear beautiful Ararat). Aregi forgets the words, and her mother, 42-year-old Nairi Mkrtchyan, helps her.
"I consider my daughter to be lucky because, unlike me, she is born and lives in the right place. As a tree grows well in its land, a person grows up the right way in her homeland," says Nairi, who has lived in Armenia for 10 years.
Nairi was born and brought up in Kamishly, Syria. Her ancestors migrated there from Sherik village, Taron province, Western Armenia (modern-day eastern Turkey).
"All Armenians who were forced to migrate were settled in this town (Kamishly), hoping that being close to their homeland, they would be able to go back soon," Nairi tells.
She was brought up in a teacher's family and says that the Armenian community in Kamishly and her family's model of upbringing are the main reasons for her choice of profession.
"All my goals were directed at Armenia—to live in Armenia, to be a true Armenian, and I understood that my mission is solely to become an Armenologist," Nairi says.
She got an education at the Public Armenological Institution in Lebanon and in 2001 continued her education in the Department of Education Management at Yerevan State University. Here she met her future husband, who was from Lebanon. They got married and decided to settle in Armenia.
Since 2009 Nairi has worked at the Ministry of Diaspora of Armenia, as a Middle and Near East expert.
Nairi analyzes the positive and negative aspects of the upbringing she got in the Diaspora.
"The positive aspect is that diasporan life keeps you Armenian. The negative aspect is that it represents Armenia too ideally, and once you come to Armenia, you come across the bitter reality. But one thing is definite—if you come to this country, you must wear the hat of this country," she explains.
Nairi says that the survival risks in moving to any country are multiplied in Armenia, where there are few jobs of quality, compared to other places. For the Diaspora, too, there is the challenge of fitting in and the risk of rejection.
"You can also reduce those risks by your temperament and your approach," Nairi says. "Many diasporan Armenians come here with the intention to teach locals something. That approach immediately repels and creates a gap."
Like many others—locals and repats—Nairi is eager to see Armenia become more democratic and more focused on creating statehood.
"There is no collective will, even among employees working at state structures; they worry only about their own interests, and they forget about the state. It is noticeable even among common people; they do not look beyond the end of their noses in order to change something," Nairi says.
"... Nevertheless, this is my place. I do not regret coming here."
In the news from abroad
When viewers in the "homeland" or abroad tune to Armenian Public Television (H1), a familiar face of the "Hayloor" news program is the Syrian-Armenian Abraham Gasparian.
In 2007, Gasparian went on the air as a news presenter; however, his residency in Armenia began in 1999.
He was born and brought up in Aleppo by parents whose families had fled to Syria from the Genocide. He came to Armenia to study political science and international relations at Yerevan State University, and never went back to Syria to live.
Gasparian, 29, has started his own family in Armenia, but remains mindful of advice he got when he was a teenager on his way to a new life.
When he was leaving Aleppo, the Armenian Ambassador to Syria told him: "Never forget that you are leaving for the Republic of Armenia. It is not the Aleppo-Armenian community."
"It was said to the point," the broadcaster says today, adding that he immediately was disappointed with the culture—or lack of it—that he found.
"Trivial things start getting on your nerves," he says. "The disappointment starts when you see how students here leave a classroom and do not switch the light off; or when instead of putting their garbage in trash cans, some people throw it on the sidewalks."
Abraham says it took about a month for him to get past the initial cultural shock.
"When you come to Armenia to be settled here, you must accept this country the way it is. If you can change something for the better, then do it. But emotions only hinder your ability to feel that the country is yours, too."
Some of Gasparian's friends came to Armenia because of him, but then returned to Syria disappointed by what they found in Armenia. He says some diasporans who attempt to repatriate don't have the will to face an Armenia that doesn't match their perception. Too many, he says, look at Armenia "through rose-colored glasses."
"They believe that everything is ideal here, that there is no injustice, no difficulty. An Armenian born and brought up in a different culture (than Armenia) faces quite different human relations, which leads to disappointment."
He understands, though, the frustration of those who expect too much too soon.
"I have lived in Armenia for 11 years, yet I have not seen any serious progress in one issue—social justice. A country which has no natural resources must become an isle of democracy, in order to be on a level plain with the rest of the world," Gasparian says. (The journalist, it is worth noting, works for the main State-controlled media, an institution that itself is seen as contributing to Armenia's lack of democratic development by censoring information.)
The shortcomings he has tolerated for 11 years, Gasparian says, "will never make me leave Armenia."
"The irony of fate (the Genocide) took me to a foreign country. I am a Genocide survivor's offspring, but now I have the opportunity to correct the mistake of fate," he says.
Mending lives, building a life
Hrant Ashtchian, Head of Admissions at the Traumatology and Orthopedy Scientific Center, says he turned the page on his life in Syria long ago.
Ashtchian came to study at Yerevan State University and was a student at the State Medical Institute when the Soviet Union dissolved. He took the chance to become a political activist.
"I participated in all the public actions in the movement for independence—sit-ins, student strikes, demonstrations," 45-year-old Ashtchian recalls. And he later served his nation as a doctor on the battlefields of Karabakh.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was fateful for the young doctor, who says he would have returned to live in Syria, had it not happened.
Instead, in 1996 he graduated and returned briefly to Syria, but then went on to Great Britain for additional medical qualification, and in 2001 he settled permanently in Armenia, where he married.
Patriotic to the core, the doctor is, nonetheless, astute and unapologetic about the problems he sees in Armenia that discourage others from making a decision to live here.
Daily, he sees problems in healthcare, and social injustices that he did not envision while demonstrating for Armenia's independence as a student. But disappointment, he says, is only as strong as a person's resolve to overcome it.
The trauma specialist says that whether or not there is a gap between diasporan and Armenia-based Armenians is merely a matter of perspective.
"There is a difference in upbringing, surrounding, and consciousness. Let us not forget that Armenia-based Armenians are heavily influenced by the Russian culture, and diasporan Armenians, by cultures of different nations," he says.
New age repat
Folk singer Arsen Grigorian, 42, announces that he is 24 years old. Arsen's second age is connected with his "return" to Armenia.
"Every year, on October 24, I celebrate the day of my return, because 'coming' differs from 'returning.' I did not leave from here, I was deprived of my homeland," says Arsen, who "returned" to Armenia from Syria (and refers to having his home taken during the Genocide).
The singer was born and brought up in a family of Sasuntsis (his ancestors migrated from Sasun, Western Armenia, to Syria) in Kamishly, a Syrian border town.
In 1987, he entered the Faculty of Philology of Yerevan State University, but, after eight months, he transferred to Yerevan State Conservatory, where he graduated in 1993 as a Master of Art.
"My family members always sang. And because during those (Soviet) years, the Diaspora was entirely isolated from the homeland, we used to live with those songs, which were the salt, water and bread of our home," Arsen says.
When Grigorian settled in Armenia, the Soviet Union was falling apart and some of Armenia's most challenging days were ahead. He says that during the years of electricity and water shortages he earned the right to "belong to the Armenian nation."
"Many left [Armenia] during those years. But if, let's say, your parent is sick, do you desert him or her? If you do, then there is a problem inside you. There are many diasporan Armenians who come here and kiss the land, saying, 'Oh, my homeland, my homeland.' But later they do not overcome the difficulties here and leave. Then what?" Arsen asks.
He says that many see only those who leave Armenia, but he sees those who return. He has four brothers and two sisters. One of his sisters has also settled in Armenia with her family, and so have his parents.
"Everybody knows that this is the final destination. Sooner or later, everybody is going to return to Armenia," Grigorian says.
