Life on the Small Lane
Anik was in her beautiful small
kitchen cook all kinds of food from kotlat to oliva. She was born on January 21,
1935 which makes her 73 years old. Anik loves to cook extra food everyday just
incase her daughter and daughter-in-law didn’t have enough time to make food.
She is also my lovely grandmother. Walking and watching Armenian/Iranian soap
operas are her favorite activities besides cooking. Anik has the life of most
senior citizens today. All the little children love her because she has the
energy for a four year old. She loves to take care of children like my brother.
Everyday she walks about 3 blocks, that’s all she can do and that is still a
lot for someone around her age. She has lived in Arad for 20 years and has
enjoyed every minute of it since the day she was born. Her and her siblings went
to school everyday.
Armenians
and Pe
rsians
went to different schools. I started school at the age of three which I started
preschool at that age. School started at 8:30 a.m., we would go
home at 12 then come back to school at 2 and go back home at 4. So we had a
break to go home, eat lunch, and do some homework if we
had any at that time. I got a lot of vocabulary, textbook, math, and history
homework. I learned Armenian and got homework like reading and writing. I also
learned Farsi and did homework for that too. My brother and oldest sister were
in the higher grade school then the rest of us, they just had
to walk a little more than we did to get to school. They would always drop us
off, go to school and then pick us up on the way back home. At school we would
all sing and dance, we would also do a lot of sports. I played Dodge ball, hop
scotch, basketball, and jump rope. My favorite
game was Hop scotch we call that “Plampootik.” After I was done with school
I was sewing a lot of the time. I was at home sewing
but, I did go to sewing classes for around three to four years. When I was bored
I would sew shirts, vests, and little socks.
In
my house we had two bedrooms, a big backyard, and we had trees in yard like
different fruit trees. At that time nine people would live in a small house like
that, there were big families that lived in little houses. I had five sisters
and one brother. My oldest sister lives in Tehran, my other sister is on
Australia, and my brother and my other three sisters are here with me in
America. When my mother would make food we helped her, set the table, washed the
dishes, and do house cleaning too. When we were bored we would sit and talk
about random things. In the house we would play cards and soldier front, with my
sisters I would play with the dolls fix them up, and make clothes for the dolls
by sewing it. I would cut it, sew it by hand, and make clothes that you
couldn’t find in a store. My father had a carpet shop he would sell carpets
for a living and at that time in Arad carpets were very popular. My father
wouldn’t play with us but, he would come home and tell us stories if he was
not too tired. Also he would give us money to buy supplies for school and then
we would go to school. Most of the time we would listen to Armenian music but, a
little bit of Persian too.
We
would go to other towns and mostly we would go to the beach. The weather was
very good at the beach we would swim, play with the sand, run around, go on the
boat, and rent a room because we would stay at least a week at the beach.
At Easter my mother would buy us new clothes and take us to the church. The
Easter dinner was Kookoo – cooked green leaves that were like a pizza and we
would cut it like a pizza – rice, fish, and she would fry another kind of
fish.
There
were some activities that the girls and boys had different interests in. The
girls liked to dance, sing, and play jump rope. The boys liked to ride bikes,
play soccer, and run around. Not that my people knew each other, no one was in
each others business and there was no gossip.
I got news from the radio but, it was not that fast. My parents would watch the
news on television. There were earthquakes in 1970s but, not only in my
childhood. There was also a war going on in the 1980s. The war was about
religion, they wanted to make it all Islamic. Iran and Iraq were fighting to
change the way people lived and the rules they went by. Like everyway the
Islamic religion was. So the women started to cover themselves, wear all black,
and wore clothes to cover their hair and most of their head. I didn’t wear the
cloth over my head when I was younger. It was the result of the war. During the
war we tried as hard as we could to live normally but it just got harder and
harder to live there because of the war. The fight was just getting to be too
much so we had to leave Iran and come to America to live a peaceful life like we
did in Iran before the war. We had a king his was Mohammad Reza I believe. We
were not allowed to show affection toward a man or woman in the public like no
holding, no kissing, and also we where not allowed to have parties to have fun.
We had parties but, very little and most of the parties were held at Ararat and
we had to travel to get there. I came to Armenian in 1995 about thirteen years
ago. I was sixty years old.
The men and women didn’t have the same jobs. The women were pretty much like
housewives. The women that had jobs worked at the bank most of the time but, not
rough jobs. The men worked in mechanics and heavy work. I didn’t work in my
life my job was being a housewife. My husband worked different jobs; he did
accounting and electric work.
I
did everything there but, I got here and I was pretty old and really could not
do things. I liked it in the small town very much. I was born there and I was
raised there so I was used to the town like feeling. I prefer here because in
Arad there was no life after the war and I just had to get out and take my
family away, the government was very harsh at that time.
Interviewed by Vana Khachatourian