Armenians Abroad Torn Over Return to Homeland

After seven decades of exile, Armenians around the world now face the possibility of return to an independent homeland, a dream nurtured across generations and brought to the brink of realization by the crumbling of Soviet Communism.

For many of this widely scattered people, the opportunity presents both a victory of perseverance and a vexing personal dilemma.

As they watch the tumult of independence sweeping the Soviet Union, the descendants of the Armenian diaspora realize they are approaching a precipice in their people’s history. On Sept. 21, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic will vote on independence, a measure widely expected to pass.

With independence will come a question borne of decades of struggle: go or stay?

The decision weighs on the children, grandchildren and even the great grandchildren of exiles who fled the pogroms of the Ottoman Empire, now living in Armenian communities from Aleppo, Syria, to Fresno, Calif.

“It has happened all so suddenly,” said Avo Keshishian, a La Verne resident who has lived in the United States for 14 years. “It was always a dream. Now, the dream is becoming a reality. What do you do?”

Johnny Derderian, a Los Angeles businessman, said he is thinking of returning but, after 35 years of living in the United States, is worried about uprooting his children and abandoning his businesses.

“The standard of living in the United States is good, you don’t want to accept less,” he said. “I want to go, but I’m going to liquidate at my leisure.”

Karo Gasparyan, a Soviet Armenian who fought for years to leave his native land, said he too wants to return, but is fearful of departing too soon. “It depends on so many factors. We can’t say, ‘Oh . . . Armenia is free so all Armenians go back to Armenia.’ Freedom? What kind of freedom?”

For Krikor Mesrobian, a lanky, brooding exile raised in Syria, the chance to return is a dream come true. But he has been torn by his desire to help his country and his parents’ wish that he stay in the United States with them.

“I feel trapped. It’s like I’m jailed in my own mind,” he said. “It took us 14 years to unite the family in the United States. Fourteen years to bring my parents from Syria. I can’t bring myself to break up the family again.”

Even as short as two or three years ago, the possibility of an independent Armenia seemed distant and improbable.

Few expected they would live to see it, although it remained a goal fostered by parents and teachers in Armenian schools from Syria to America.

Mesrobian said he learned in school the tales of the Turkish pogroms, called the “red massacre,” and the dire lessons of the spitak chart, the “white massacre” of assimilation that could prevent his people from returning to Armenia.

Learning Armenian, a language that his grandparents could not speak after years of Turkish rule, was crucial. Remembering always to think of returning to their native land, was the core of their lives.

“It has been with me for all my life, the need to return,” said Mesrobian, who owns a catering business in Pasadena. “I can’t break away from it. I can’t separate it even though I have never seen Armenia.”

Mesrobian and the estimated 1 million Armenians of the diaspora are the product of what is known as the eghern , the great calamity.

The Armenians became the victims of a series of pogroms by their Ottoman rulers that culminated in a massive deportation of Armenians from Turkey beginning in 1915. An estimated 1 million Armenians died in the killings and the difficult march into the Syrian desert.

The survivors left in search of new homes in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.

For two short years after World War I, a part of Armenia was established as an independent nation. But under renewed attack from Turkey, it was soon brought under Soviet rule and has remained that way since.

Gary Hindoyan, a gas station owner in Corona, said he always thought returning to an independent Armenia was a “long shot,” although he raised his children to speak Armenian “so they would have a chance to go back.”

Hindoyan was raised in the Muslim section of Beirut. His grandfather was a political activist who believed it was every Armenian’s duty to return.

But he has paused, amid celebration, on the brink of fulfilling his grandfather’s dream.

“If I was a bachelor, I would go tomorrow,” Hindoyan said. “If we were back in Lebanon or Syria, we would leave in a week. But we are more deeply rooted here.”

His two children are still young, and he concedes he would prefer they were educated in the United States. He figures he could adjust to life in Armenia, although Hindoyan concedes he would miss some things.

“I’ve been here too long,” he said. “I’ve grown accustomed to it here. The bad habits. My God, the luxuries, the hot showers.”

He also has no idea what work he could find in Armenia and worries about becoming a burden on the country.

“I don’t want to go back just for the sake of moving,” he said. “I would only go back if I could be of some help.”

Hindoyan, a board member of an exile political group that has pressed for an independent Armenia, said he believes he will ultimately return to his homeland, but does not know when.

“I wish my grandfather were alive to see these days,” he said. “He would probably grab me by the arm and say, “Let’s go!’ He would say, ‘Don’t even worry about the kids, don’t worry about starting a business, just go.’ ”

For Gasparyan, the patriotic fervor of the exiles is somewhat odd and worrisome.

Gasparyan left Armenia in 1986 after a long struggle with Soviet authorities. He grew up in Armenia, the son of Armenian patriots who had returned to their homeland in 1946.

Thousands of exiles had returned at the time--a decision they later regretted when many were persecuted for their foreign origin.

Gasparyan said he is determined not to repeat his parents’ mistake. He sees the exiles as idealists who have no concept of what life was like in Armenia.

“They all talk about the motherland or the fatherland, when we were just thinking of getting food for our children,” he said. “We cannot make the same mistake again.”

He is cautious in assessing his country’s future. What jobs will there be? What type of government will rise to power? What freedoms will be granted?

“I am ready to go back, but not today and not tomorrow,” he said. “We will wait.”

There are many Armenians who will probably never return. Their roots have been deeply set in their adopted countries. Among the most deeply rooted are those who came to America.

Unlike their kin in the Middle East, many American Armenians saw their futures here and were less concerned about assimilation.

Sarkis Sarabian, a 58-year-old Fresno farmer who speaks with the rural drawl of the Central Valley, said his parents never made him feel that America was just a temporary place. It was home.

His parents came from Turkish Armenia, fleeing the red massacre as young adults. “My mother and father had such horrible memories,” he said. “My father always wanted a free Armenia, but he never expressed a desire to go back.”

Sarabian asked his mother two years ago to accompany him on a visit to Armenia. She simply told him: “I have nothing there.”

Four generations of Sarabians have lived on the farm that his father started decades ago. He has lived all his life within a stone’s throw of the room where he was born.

In the yard outside his office is a white mulberry tree his father planted 60 years ago from a clipping from Armenia. An old treehouse built by his sons dangles in the branches.

Sarabian said he feels he was raised as Armenian as any child in the world. He can speak and write Armenian as do his older children.

But he said he feels no great pull to return to the land of his parents. “It’s important to me that Armenia become independent, but that doesn’t mean once it happens I’m going to scrap everything and run back,” he said. “My fantasy is to go back and help, spend a month at a time.

“Fifty-eight years in a country,” he said. “I’ve got something here. I was born in this office and this is the place I want to die.”

There are those, however, who have been inspired by the enormous changes in the Soviet Union and now have begun thinking of returning.

William Paparian, a Pasadena city councilman, grew up in Los Angeles, a San Fernando Valley kid who never learned to speak Armenian and surfed off the Malibu pier.

But like others of his generation, Paparian became more interested in his culture as he grew older.

He has become active in local Armenian activities and his three children now attend Armenian schools to recapture a language he lost.

With the prospect of an independent Armenia, Paparian said he already talked with his wife, a Syrian-born Armenian, about returning--perhaps a vacation home on Lake Sevan, maybe retirement in Yerevan, possibly a move for the whole family to Armenia.

They have yet to make a decision, although he feels no rush because there are many things he can do overseas to help Armenia.

“I’m energized. I’m going to see it in my lifetime. I wondered if I ever would,” he said. “Anything is possible.”