Life in Gharghoun, Peria

My grandmother, Khachkhatun Petrossyan, was born on February 18, 1933 in a small town called Gharghoun located in Peria, Iran.  She was raised in Gharghoun for the first ten years of her life.  During this period she grew accustomed to the challenging lifestyle.  Although my grandmother’s life in Gharghoun took place well over half a century ago, her memories still remain quite clear for her.  Being a resident of Gharghoun for many years, my grandmother vividly remembers her time there and always has plenty of stories to share from her childhood.  Currently residing in Glendale, California, my grandmother lives with her husband and takes pleasure in caring for her three children and six grandchildren. The detailed stories she shares of her childhood in Gharghoun always seem to have an important message and moral to them. While living in America, she never forgets the struggles that were a part of the daily lifestyle and firmly believes that she wouldn't be the individual she is today if it weren't for the hardships she faced. Although she agrees that the overall lifestyle here is convenient and less complex, she still prefers the lifestyle she once lived in Gharghoun simply because “you had to work hard to get something, which made you feel proud of yourself.”

I lived in a small, highly populated town known as Gharghoun, Peria in Iran, from 1933-1934, until I was ten years old.  I lived there for ten years.  Then we moved to the city close to it, called Isfahan.  It was the first city in Iran that was known as an Armenian city.  Only Armenians lived there.  We had 12 churches, which were very valued and well-known churches.

During the years that I lived in Gharghoun, there were no wars or battles, but we would often only hear the sounds of war.  It was the time when the Russians were fighting.  Although the war was far away from us, the food in Iran got very expensive.

Living in Iran, we were literally closed so we didn’t get any news about the world.  Only the people who would often go to the city nearby (Isfahan) went to the market for newspapers for everyone in the town.  That was our only source of news.  The newspapers would sometimes be printed once a week or even once a year.  Every time it was different.  In Gharghoun, we had no radios, but the people of our town had a lot to do with each other.  The people got their happiness from other people around them.  At nights, people would gather at each other’s houses, and talk for hours about the Armenian culture and their great ancestors.

In Gharghoun, there were several people that everyone knew.  There were priest and teachers that were well known, and there were field workers, who were people that would do any job there was to be done in our town.  I remember the field workers that would often go up on top of a house and yell to the people of the town, “Folks, our cow is lost.  Whoever’s house it is in, please speak now!”  And the people of Gharghoun were so honest that they would bring the cow back and give it to the man, when they found it.  For example, people would put their storage for wheat right next to another’s, overnight, and nobody would take it because the people had the fear of God inside of them.

Gharghoun had several famous people.  There were duduk (a traditional woodwind instrument of Armenian origins) players and singers that would entertain, but they weren’t paid; they just made the people of the town happy.  The people of our town were very consistent in keeping traditions.

We would have respect for elders and young people – elders gave young people advice and helped them.  It wouldn’t matter if a child was a person’s own child, or a neighbor’s child - if they saw the child doing something wrong, the elder would help out and give advise.  But the child’s mother or father wouldn’t get upset at the person who told their child he or she was wrong.

Not every family in our town had the same amount of money.  Some were rich, some were poor and some were neither.  Some were sick and some were healthy.  There were all kinds of people, but none of the sick or poor people were ignored of looked down on because everyone in the town would go to the person’s house to visit.

Almost everyone in our town had had hard jobs and easy jobs.  In the summer, all jobs were almost the same.  In the town, they had to claw the soil, they had to plant wheat, then pick them and then strain them.  And they would grind the wheat to make flour and store it.  For the winter, they would keep and store those kinds of things, and use them throughout the winter.  Grain, rice and lentils were also stored.  They would store all of those things for the winter.

In our town, people didn’t get paid for doing their jobs.  Everyone did their own work.  The only time that money was involved was with flour or sheep.  They would take them to the city, sell them and get money, which was used throughout the year.

Children had a place to learn in Gharghoun.  There was one school in the churchyard and it had ten classrooms.  Every child in our town went to school, but there were times when they wouldn’t go right away, but sooner or later, every child would go.  However, before it was a shame for girls to go to school.  The girls that stayed home would do work, knit stuff.  But later on, girls started to attend school.

Everyone in our town was Armenian Apostolic.  However, no one was forced to practice a certain religion.

When we were bored, we would go to the schoolyard and play.  But no matter how bored we were, we would never bother people for fun.  When we weren’t allowed to go outside, in the evenings, the neighbors would go to each other’s houses and tell each other old storied, especially Armenian stories about the past.

In Gharghoun, we would mostly eat dairy.  We didn’t eat meat so often; only once a week or so.  There wasn’t a lot of meat, but whenever they would slaughter cows, they wouldn’t let it rot.  We had no refrigerators, so in the winter, they would put the meat in jars and put them in the snow.  In the summer, we couldn’t keep food.  We ate all kinds of grains: garbanzo beans, kidney beans and lentils.  We would use a tonir to heat or cook our foods.  A tonir is like a little fire underground.  We would turn it on in the morning, and the house would get warm, and the food would be cooked or become warm.  But in the summer, we used a fireplace.

Back then, our country didn’t have televisions or telephones.  To communicate, we often wrote letters, telegrams or use the payphones in Isfahan.  Sometimes, we would send a letter, but it wouldn’t get there.  Basically, when someone in the house left to go somewhere far, for a long period of time, it would take a month for us to get news on that person.

In our town, everything was very clean.  The sanitation was better than it is now.  In the town, we had several natural sources of water and a river.  We would get buckets of water to use.  The river was very breathtaking and beautiful, with trees all around it.  The river water was very clean.  In the summer, almost everyone used the river to bathe in it.  But in the winter, we would bring the water, heat it, and bathe in it, inside the warm barns.  We bathed every few weeks or every month, because we didn’t have the luxuries of showering and it wasn’t necessary.

In our town, we had no power.  For lights, we would use lamps, and oil to light them.

The musical instruments used for entertainment were the duduk and the dhol (a double-sided barrel drum), which were popular for weddings.  We had a very fine duduk/dhol player in our town, who was well known.

Our days wouldn’t end that early.  Since we didn’t have clock back then, we told the time by where the moon was.  When the sun would set, everyone would go back into their houses.  But even then, people would go to each other’s houses to talk and socialize until late night hours.  Afterwards, when someone’s guests got up to leave, the homeowners would go stand outside until the guests got home safely, because in the winter, there was snow and that was when the wolves would be visiting.  Our day normally started at dusk.  People would start working right when there was enough light to see.

The town was very safe.  Only, in the winter, the wolves would come.  That was the only danger in our town.  Parents would let their children go out and play without worrying, because there was nothing to worry about.

At the time I lived in Gharghoun, already, there were cars, but not a lot of people had them.  However, many cars would pass through our town.  During the later times in Gharghoun, we would get around, to far places by car, but before that, obviously we would get around with horses and wagons and donkeys.

Most people spoke Armenian and Persian, but there were people that knew Turkish.

In our town, most of the families were big.  I remember a house that had sixteen children.  The house they lived in had five to seven rooms.  My mother had twelve children, but I only met six of them.  The other five had passed away before I was born, and I was born a few months after my father passed away.

Men did most of the construction jobs, like making houses and some sewed shoes.  Women were the housekeepers.  Everything had to be in order.  They sewed the clothes, took care of the children and washed them.  Children started to work at age three.  They were already given very little jobs that they could handle.

There were no hospitals in Gharghoun.  Isfahan had a hospital, but it was too far from our town.  When someone was sick, we had homemade remedies to make them better.  Women gave birth to babies inside their homes, although sometimes it was difficult and both would die.

Back then, there were many arranged marriages.  Girls got married around fourteen, but when a girl reached eighteen, they would say, your time is up.  But, after a while, they realized that it was wrong for girls to get married at such a young age because they weren’t mature enough.

After living in America, I wouldn’t really want to go live in Gharghoun again because it would be hard for someone who lived such an easy life, to go back and live the hard life.  But I would want the psychology and honesty of people back then to be in everyone, today.

Interviewed by: Stella Khashakyan