Interview with my Grandfather- Setrak Ratavousian

Setrak Ratavousian, a devoted husband, father, and grandfather, has always had the role of the story teller in the family. My grandfather, which I call "metspap," can nowadays be found either gardening in his large backyard, or walking around from city to city exploring new places. Spending much of my childhood with my grandfather, has taught me the tricks to life, and my favorite- how to play cards. As we sit around his dinner table with a cup of hot tea, his mind bursts with memories waiting to be told. I eagerly wait for our trip to his past to begin. Growing up in his tiny village in Rasht, Iran, my grandfather was very aloof to the rest of the world. As he says, he would have never imagined to come to such a place as America, where cars are used instead of donkeys, and technology is being used to help our everyday lives.

I was born in Rasht, Iran and lived there for about thirty years. In the village there were the people who stood out, and they were the workers, not the poor people. The rich people were best known, and yes there were a lot. There were rich people in the village, but our lives were the same. The rich and poor were equal, and the rich would even help those in need. We celebrated Hambartsoum, where the people gathered and collected eggs and egg oil and they would go to the streets and have picnics. We had a few popular foods in Rasht, it was the best. We had "koor-koot(barley soup)" and common foods, and the most popular food was rice and stew, but there was very little of the rice and stew. We had rice once a month, since there was very little of it. We ate "abgousht(mashed meat)" alot with bread and cheese. We would prepare the bread at home; we would get flour and make dough. We had no cakes, but made pastries called "baghats" which were like dough with milk and oil. We would eat these once a year, for there was so little of it.

I had two sisters and three brothers, but my sisters both died very young. I was left with two brothers. Many people died in our village due to lack of doctors and medicine. For every little thing people would die, fevers would choke them to death. We had no cures to sicknesses, but we weren't depressed because of all the deaths. We were happy for we hadn't seen anything; all we knew was our village and God.

My village was all Christian-Armenians, and surrounding villages were all Persians. Everyone in the village was together, we had a church there and everything we had was within one another. We would rarely fight with the Persians, if they didn't bother us, we wouldn't fight. Our village had no newspapers, televisions, and radios, so we knew nothing about the rest of the world. We got news from the village, at night we would gather at someone's house with about ten people and speak. We would sit on the floor and listen to stories. It was better than the ones on TV today. We would talk about the village, the fields, and the trees. We didn't know about the other villages so we didn't talk about them. The whole year the nights would be pitch-black, and there would be a lot of snow, wolves, and robbers. All we would hear were the dogs. We had very little candles and we had a glass covering for our candles so the wind wouldn't blow out the fire. We were content with our lives though. When it was winter and we had meat, it was as if the world was ours.
Our education system was bad, out of one hundred people, sixty would have no education whatsoever, and the highest level was the sixth grade. The schools were open only during the winter because in the summer we had to work in the fields, to save food for the winter. In the three months of school, about fifty to sixty students would go to school, depending on how many there were in the village. They would go to school until they were sixteen or seventeen, then they would get married and get on with their lives. The education level didn't bother us, for it was all we knew. Our village had a leader who had a badge that would show his authority. He was like the village's manager. He would be there during fights, like the police. We had a chief leader also, like the police's leader, he would decide on which laws to pass for us. We had no court. We would just go to the leader and talk to him.

The food we planted in the fields was what we had to eat. There were no stores but this small one that sold nothing but sugar, cigars, and tea. We would share our crops with our neighbors, but we wouldn't sell anything, just shared food like milk and yogurt. We all had our own sheep, cows, and everything. Starting from nine to ten years old we would help our parents in the fields. The whole day we would work with them under the sun. It was hard work, but there was no other way, we needed to work to be able to live in the winter when everything got covered with snow. In our spare time we would go out into the streets and play hide-and-go-seek and swords with friends, one of us would be he swordsman and the other an animal, we would run around and chase each other. There were no balls to play with. We would talk about when we grow up and when we're able to buy cows and make plants. That's how life was there, we wouldn't think that we would buy cars and build homes.
We had nothing. Whatever was in the village was what we had. Our village had no cars but once a month, a small car would come by our village. We hadn't heard of anywhere but Tehran and surrounding villages, and for other places we had no idea about them. We couldn't go on vacations to Tehran, for we had no money. We would walk or ride our donkeys as our transportation. Our donkeys were our BMWs. Life in America now, is nothing like how we lived back then. Today's people wouldn't be able to last a day in the cold, electricity-less village of Rasht.

Interviewed by Arlene Haghverdian