paul chaderjian

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not… Your face has changed. It’s fuller now. Your five o’clock shadow has disappeared. Your hairline has receded. And the decades you’ve lived are recorded in the wrinkles on the back of the hands you’re washing. You’re standing in front of a sink in one of the bathrooms of Baghramian Hall in Montebello. Nareg is at the sink to your right. You’ve known his family your entire life; and tonight Nareg, his brother Varand, and their mother Louisa will receive the St. Mesrob Mashdotz Medal awarded posthumously to their father, Vahik Gourjian. As Nareg says something, you remind yourself that you will write him and his brother an e-mail tonight and tell them that it was an honor to have known and learned from their father. You will tell them you feel fortunate to have known this former editor of the Asbarez, this community leader, and an ARF executive. You will write that you feel fortunate to know h...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not … … a moon so large in the Angelino Sky that I could clearly see the red underbelly of a Southwest jet flying over me, out of the Burbank Airport and into the future. On this first Sunday of October, the moon was so close that I could touch her wrinkles. I knew God had put her there just for me, so that He would illuminate the humdrum, drab, artless, and uninspired set of my midlife feature film. Aristotle and some researchers quoted in a February Scientific American article believe the powerful pull of a full moon leads to temporary lunacy. Though science rebuffs the urban legend of being moonstruck, last Sunday I was not only moonstruck, but also overcome by a rush of patriotism and nationalism. After watching the Horizon TV recap of the rally outside the Beverly Hilton, I stepped out to my balcony, stared at the moon and screamed, “Ararat-eh mehrn-eh (Ararat is ours).” I paused for a s...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not … Last Sunday I stood a foot from my TV flipping channels to find local news coverage of the protest rally at Pelanconi Park in Glendale. Instead of a story about ten thousand Armenians gathering there were stories about Roman Polanski’s arrest and Yom Kippur services. Why had I even bothered, I thought, remembering what a pale-faced, petite news executive said to me five years ago. “The only thing the Armenian Genocide means is a traffic tie up on Times Square every April 24th,” she stated bluntly. She wasn’t trying to be funny. She thought her position as my boss and as a supervising producer at a TV network earned her the right to arbitrate the 21st century value of an unpunished and unspeakable 20th century genocidal crime. “You’re not getting it,” she said, “it’s not newsworthy.” That exchange in the early hours of April 24, 2004, was like the Ottoman sword that split my head op...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not … Etched somewhere in your memories of childhood must surely be a moment, an image, a fleeting impression, or a moment of you in your yesteryear buying a book or borrowing one from the library. Etched inexplicably in my memory is this one moment at a bookshop in Damascus, Syria –Cleopatra’s wedding present. This Twilight Zone-ish moment is one of my dad buying three books in English for me, of the polluted stench of spent fuels in the air, the dozens of whizzing scooters feet away, traffic horns, jets flying above, and the buzzing of construction drills above the noises of hawkers and street peddlers. In that moment and since my earliest memories, there was something special about books. Perhaps it’s a cultural or generational thing, but books were cherished, handled carefully, and were more important than our Matchbox cars and other toys. The printed word, hardbound, softbound – cov...

A column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez Newspaper Once there was and there was not … What I hope is the last bill from a 30-minute visit to a Burbank hospital a few months ago arrived in the mail this week. My cost for the emergency room visit was around $2,500, which is an average annual salary in Armenia. The bills have been coming in multiple parts from four different departments. They’re confusing, unjust, and an example why Americans are expressing their anger during health care reform forums. A poor gent actually got his finger bit-off at one of the protests in Thousand Oaks last Thursday. Among the reams of paperwork I received from the hospital was a $300 invoice for medical supplies. What medical supplies? Other bills came for a tetanus shot, for x-rays, and for the four stitches the physician’s assistant said I needed on the upper crease of the middle finger of my left hand. Moments before walking into the emergency room, I was across the street at a pharma...

By Paul Chaderjian Once there was and there was not … “Go back where you came from,” said the elderly man entering the auditorium to see the Red Army Choir perform. It was 1989, and I was on assignment for Horizon Armenian TV, reporting on why Armenians were protesting the performance. The USSR was turning away from a command economy and introducing economic and political reforms through glasnost and perestroika. Taking their cues from Moscow, Armenians in the centuries-old Armenian region of Nagorno-Karapakh voted for autonomy. Stalin had unjustly carved Karapakh out of Armenia and put it under the rule of Turkic republic of Azerbaijan. Remapping the USSR was Stalin’s way to control its population. When Armenians exercised their new democratic rights, Azeris targeted Armenians to hold on to real estate. Turks had a dream of one Turkic state from Central Asia to the Baltics, but Christian Armenians had been in the way during the Ottoman Era. A hundred years later, Soviet Arme...

by Paul Chaderjian WASHINGTON—Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds testified under oath Saturday about shocking details connecting the Turkish government to an intricate network of individuals and organization that bribed, persuaded, and – at least in one case – blackmailed US lawmakers and corrupted American government officials. Corruption. Espionage. Bribery. All to ensure that the US does not recognize the Armenian Genocide ever again. For years, the Turkish government and its representatives here in the United States have stopped at nothing to fight the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. This far-reaching campaign of denial and cover-up stretches from well-funded efforts to block education about the Armenian genocide to ensuring that American media does not address or acknowledge the Armenian genocide as historic fact. The Turkish government and Turkish lobby have for years pressured local, state and the federal governments and American and global media to rew...