Interview with my Grandmother’s Neighbor – Haykoosh Hakopian

Every morning, eighty-three year old Haykoosh Hakopian wakes up to the love and gentle care given to her by her four daughters and one son. There is no doubt that she is a comfortable and happy woman but her happiness is bombarded by the fact that none of her siblings are still living. Her life is filled with both shopping for clothes and apparel, and shopping for food at local Armenian markets. She carries her groceries in a little cart that has seen one too many bags of pita bread. She does not have any friends from Peria in the U.S. but she does have friends from Tehran . She takes daily strolls up and down Stocker Street , the street on which she lives. She goes to church very often and keeps a bible on her nightstand. Her religious side comes mostly from the religious influences in her old hometown Shoorishka, Peria, a town that was Christian-Armenian and very famous for an ancient bible which they kept in an old church, one of the few churches they had.

I was born in a little village in Iran called Shoorishka, Peria. It was a Christian- Armenian town that was famous for its ancient bible kept in the church. I was born on January 1st, 1925 and I lived in Shoorishka for twenty three years. I left the town one year after I got married to Mr. Grekor Hakopian.

I lived in a very small town where everyone knew each other. We were like brothers and sisters. We were all close friends. Everyone in the town was basically Armenian and everyone got along and everyone was polite with one another. There wasn’t really any news. What we really knew was about each other. If we ever did get news it would be from travelers or family. We didn’t have any carnivals or events like that but if their was a wedding in the village everyone would go. On holidays, people would go over to each other’s houses. During the winter we would spend most of our time indoors because it would be too cold to go outside or work. But in the summer we would work, weave rugs, and if we finished all our work we would play backgammon. There was in fact three classes. There was rich, poor, and middle class people and I was a part of the middle class because I wasn’t rich because my mother had died at an early age and I wasn’t poor because my eight brothers and sisters and I would do work. The upper-class people would eat meat from cows by making kabobs and etc., however the middle class which I was a part of, would just eat meat from our own cows, we would make our own soup out of barley and yogurt sometimes and we would make our own butter and just eat bread and butter. To drink we would drink milk or water. There was one person in our town that I always looked up to. His name was Abraham, and he was a man who built schools.

We were all mostly non-educated. Only the wealthier boys and girls would go to school. They would go for two months and have the rest of the time to do work to make their family extra money. We would all go to a local church and in the church there was a one room a class room with one teacher.

There wasn’t a war really going on near us since we were in a little isolated village away from the city. I was really small and don’t remember much but as far as I can remember no one I knew had gone to war.

My family would do a lot of agricultural work and we would focus mainly on making and selling wheat. No one from my whole family is alive anymore. From my eight brothers and sisters I am the only one living.

The houses in Shoorishka were all stuck together. We all had one roof. We had about two rooms per house. All the restrooms were located outside. We had no kitchen. The girls would not be able to go to each other’s houses if we were friends. Only parents could spend time with friends. During our free time we would make socks and do handy work. I remember that it snowed a lot and we would get snowed in and when it rained it would rain hard. But in the summer it was really warm. I noticed however, as time went on, I felt that the town and the overall environment was becoming worse.

I was extremely happy when I left Shoorishka, Peria because of the horrible conditions I lived through. I was even happier when I got to Tehran and saw how life was so much better their, especially weather wise because it was a lot warmer than Shoorishka. I did not like the weather in my old village at all.

Life Glendale today is much more different than life in Shoorishka. When we were living in the village we knew what we were eating and what we were wearing, since we would make our own clothes and our own food. Also, the air was a lot cleaner and crisper compared to city life. In Tehran there wasn’t much stealing going on but in Shoorishka, people would do crimes such as stealing. I remember one time I woke up in the middle of the night and saw someone trying to steal one of my family’s goats, but since our town was so small and everyone was so helpful and kind, the people of my village caught the guy. I would not like to ever go back to Shoorishka because there is no reason to go back, and everyone I know who lived there before, doesn’t live there anymore.
One specific event that I remember was the day that they were bringing some sort of cinema to our village. So they were putting up the speakers and everything and I remember the sounds were so loud that it woke the whole village up and we all basically got to see a movie for free, since our house was one of the ones that were on top of the hill. I also remember people from everywhere would come to our village for only one purpose and that was so they can see the ancient bible which was kept in the little town church. It was a religious event for all of us who lived there.

Interviewed by Allen Kazangian