Small Town Life in Iran- Arus

Arus Keshish-panos was born in1931 in the small village of Garacaris in Iran. She had three brothers and one sister. She would spend her day working around the house. She would bring water from the well, bake the bread and weave rugs with her mother. She didn’t have the childhood most of us had. Her childhood was tuff. When interviewing her, she had a lot of trouble remembering things, but when she told me her stories, I could see how happy she was and how much she missed being a child. She would always tell me to enjoy my childhood. My grandmother is some one that I have a lot of respect for.

My name is Arus and I was born in Garacaris village in the year 1931. I lived there for twenty years and I liked it there.

I had three brothers and one sister. My dad’s brother and his family had a house next to ours. I had aunts and uncles that lived in other villages but only my uncle lived in the village. We also had far away relatives in the village. We would visit each other. We also had close neighbors right next to us. We would always visit each other.

In the mornings we would get up. My dad and my brother would go to the field to work. They would plant the seeds and do whatever was needed. I would do work with my mom. I would make dough so we could bake bread. I would go get water while my mom would prepare so we could weave rugs together. Me and my friends would go outside and play hid and go seek. I don’t remember ever getting into trouble.

The place where we would get water wasn’t far away. We would go on foot. We would bring the water in a bucket made of clay. We would take it to the fountain, put the bucket under the water and let it fill. We would put it on our shoulders and take it home. We would bring water twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

I remember we would make the flour into dough and then we would make the dough into little balls and line them up. We would roll the dough and it would become bigger and we had a container. Then we would turn on the tundeer; the tundeer was made of clay, it was round and it was in the ground. We would light a fire and it would get hot. We would put the dough on the container and we would stick the dough on the wall of the tundeer and it would bake. We would put one, two, three, and four at a time and it would bake. When it would bake we would get it out and put it to the side and would get the other ones out and put them to the side. We would stack all the bread on each other. We would put it in the dulabe and we would constantly eat it and when it would finish we would bake some bread again

We would weave big rugs, some about twelve meters. There would be times were we would weave small rugs, like six meters. There were some even smaller. We would buy colorful strings from the city. We had designs on boards. It was all by count. We would count it and weave it. When we finished the rugs, my dad and my brother would sell the rugs in the city and from there they would buy milk, tea, clothing and cloth. And they would bring more string so we could weave more rugs.

The village leaders name was Shimavor, but we would call him Katkhode. If the village people had any questions they would ask him. If they had any questions about the crops they would ask him. We would receive newspapers. The newspapers would come from different places. There would be news on other cities. Tehran for example.

There was a war in Iran long before I lived there, but when I was living there was no war. Just in 1949 when Iran was taking Armenians back to Armenia, we found out that there was a fight in Armenia. The fight was in 1944 or 45. In 1946 they would come and take the Armenians in the villages back to Armenia. They took some and left some. When they were allowing Armenians to go back we would say “well it’s our Armenia, we should go back.”

I remember we would celebrate New Years. We would spend New Years with close relatives. We would also go to church. We would gather together and be happy. We would also celebrate Easter. We would paint eggs and make gatta.

I remember we would get together for Hambarsoom, a festival. The mothers would make gatta and we would paint eggs and the wood. There was a big place where we would all get together. We would gather there and we would talk for hours. People would come from other villages as well; there would be a lot of people. We would talk a lot and update each other on news. We would also celebrate Vartevor. For Vartevor we would go to church. We would wet each other and throw buckets of water on each other. On Vartevor, after church, we would come out and the priests would all come out and walk around the church singing and the villagers would follow them around. Whatever was in the book, the priest would say when walking around.

There were schools in the village but since it was a small village, there was just one school. The village kids would go. The boys and some girls. I went until fourth grade and my brother went until eight grade. There were more grades but that’s all we went. It was with money.

I remember we had a field next to our house. There were fruit trees. My mom had flattened about a meter of the floor and had made a little tundeer. She would make a fire in there. Then she would boil water and make tea. When my dad would go to harvest wheat, he would go in the mornings and would harvest until night. He would come back at around five or six o’clock. My mom would put a blanket on the floor and they would sit there. My dad would drink is tea first then he would eat dinner. And we would always play there it was very fun. We would spend most of our summer days in that field. It was very nice, I always remember it.

Interviewed by Narbe Khachikyan