paul chaderjian

BY PAUL CHADERJIAN It’s 1980 in the Tower District of Fresno, and what kids do in this neighborhood is get into gang fights, smoke cigarettes, and skip school. What I used to do was listen to the radio and hand write my own newspapers. Like many of you, I developed a taste for pop music early in life, and songs became personal sign posts as I navigated through life. Where were you when you heard “Billie Jean is not my lover?” When I hear Adiss Harmandian, I think of my dad taking me to Adiss’ record store in Bourj Hammoud to buy vinyl 45’s. Back then, lyrics didn’t get any better than: “Char lezooneri havadatz eem yareh, artzoonknerov letzvets sev sev achereh.” Now when I hear “Summer lovin’ had me a blast, Summer lovin’, happened so fast,” I remember my friend, the late-Mary Sahatjian, who gave me a copy of the Grease motion picture soundtrack on a cassette tape in 1976. I spent months playing the album on my shoe-box-sized cassette-recorder that my aunt Sirvart bought me so I c...

A column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Everyone is always measuring our worth with units of money. Our employers tell us we are worth this much. We tell our clients we want that much for our time. And some random illogical and unstable marketplace algorithm puts a price tag on the cost of our health care. We’re not just the victims in this scheme but also the victimizers. We’re always trying to guess how much people are bringing in annually. We’re blurting out the square-footage of our homes and offices, guesstimating the price of other people’s rides, assessing their couture and bling, and readily announcing our children’s tuition. We’re always doing the math like TV channels that count wealth all day long. We’re like conglomerates tallying totals at the box office. We’re gauging the successes of our community by the number of attendees at events rather than the experiences of those attendees or the work accomplished through our fundraisers. Armenian life in ...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not … … one moment in our collective history when we came together despite our differences to celebrate our diversified popular culture. On Sunday, December 13, our hyphenated people came from the north and south of the Equator and the left and right of the Meridian to the entertainment capital of the world, to honor the Armenian stars, the modern makers of Armenian Culture, the ones who shone bright center-stage at the Nokia Theatre. At 777 Chick Hearn Court in the heart of Los Angeles were the sons and daughters of Hayk singing their hearts out and celebrating their vibrant, ancient yet modern culture. Their ancestors had witnessed the formation of a new people and a new culture two thousand years before Christ. Their people had ruled kingdoms and celebrated their golden age of literature just a mere 1500 years before the printing press. These descendants of Noah and the Arc had mastered m...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there were and there were not … .. three Armenian boys climbing the jungle gym in an Armenian kindergarten in Antelias, Lebanon. They were five-years-old, maybe six, donning their requisite red school uniforms, playing under the watchful eye of their teacher, Miss Jacqueline. The threesome were students at Mardikian Elementary, a school named after its American benefactor and located in the walled compound of the seat of the Holy See of Cilicia, a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean Sea. There, in the shadow of the St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, under the windows of the residence of the Catholicos, across the yard of the Cilician Seminary, and next door to the Holy See’s publishing house, the threesome would play at lunchtime. In their classes, in their short walks to the Cathedral, during the visits by the Cilician priests, these young minds would be impressed with the importance of their Armenian identity...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not … … a neighborhood in a suburb of Kolkata, India, where a tall, pristine white stone wall separates the grounds of a sparkling Armenian church from a modern-day slum and its poverty, smells, refuse, rabid dogs, and noisy rickshaws. Security guards kept the native neighbors at bay as our group of tourists entered and exited the church grounds. We were there a year ago today, a group of Armenians from around the world making a pilgrimage to India on the 300th anniversary of the founding of one of the Armenian churches in Kolkata. My stories of the journey and India are on the Internet, so there is no sense in repeating Indian-Armenian history or reality. Why I write this column is to convey abstract premonitions after my nearly-month-long journey to the once-thriving Armenian community there. While the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin has done a remarkable job of keeping our Indian-Armenian ch...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not… I am eight. The year is 1976. I am Armenian. I’m mixed up. And I am writing this with candlelight. Because, there is a war in my country – Liban. I am at home. All the windows and drapes are closed in our home. If a bomb explodes the glass blows and hurts people. So we keep all the windows covered. No glass. No blood. I tell my mother I am bored. She says to put away my toys and do art. My father tells me to read. I tell him I read all my books. He says to write a book. And I’m writing my book. My book is about war. It’s about how crazy people are to kill other people. Make them hurt. Make them cry. Destroy their homes and buildings and highways and the airport. And the new 747 MEA airplanes. The war started when I woke up one morning. I looked at my watch. It was only 7:30. I got up and got out of bed. I went to the living room. Everybody was crowded around the radio. They wer...

a column by Paul Chaderjian for the Asbarez newspaper Once there was and there was not… You feel a wave of air rush from the underground tube in front of you. The subway train is fast approaching Bagramian Station, your local friends are talking non-stop about Eurovision, and the invisible pressure of cold air – what you feel before you hear the hum of the tracks – embraces and chills you. This is your Saroyan moment. He had stood in New York City and missed home, and you are standing in the belly of your Homeland, homesick for Fresno. Instead of the cold air from the tunnels underneath Yerevan, you want to feel the fans at your gym in Fresno. You want to feel the giant fans above cooling you down as you jog on the treadmill, listening to Armenian revolutionary songs. You want to hear the songs that gave you goose bumps, that made you feel connected, the songs that had motivated you, your friends, your generation, and the generation that gave you life. These songs were ...