The Story of a Provincial Armenian Woman

By Fel Justice

‘Fel’ grows up in an Armenian province. What do we know about Armenia? A small Christian nation, locked between large powers, some of which are hostile. Preserving the Armenian culture is of paramount importance, but what is “culture”? As valuable as it is to the elder, the youth seek their own new values. This story is about an extraordinary young woman who struggled between respect for her country, love for her family and her own desire to be independent, preserve her self-esteem and live her ambitions. Through her eyes, we see what tensions a teenage girl in Armenia is subject to when she follows her own emotions and preferences. She takes the reader into her world filled with dilemmas, loyalty conflicts and confrontations. When her life story unfolds the reader is dragged into the astounding turmoil that results from her choices in life. Choices that are always inspired by her emotions, her personal principles and never-ending willpower to find respect, understanding and happiness, for herself and her loved ones.

This story is certainly an inspiration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398459441

Fel Justice

Born in an Armenian Province, Fel Justice spent her childhood and teenage years in great schools and had excellent educational achievements. After finishing her school curriculum with a gold medal, she received her first Master’s Degree as an English Language Teacher at the age of 21. After enriching her professional career as a high school teacher and teacher trainer for the Ministry of Education, simultaneously volunteering for Red Cross and Vanadzor Orphanage, she decided to go further to get her second Master’s Degree in Education and International Development in England. Finally settling in France, she taught English language extensively at a university and Catholic college, as well as at various Training Centres. Having lived in Armenia, Russia, the Netherlands, England, and France, she currently speaks four languages.

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About the Author

Born in an Armenian Province, Fel Justice spent her childhood and teenage years in great schools and had excellent educational achievements. After finishing her school curriculum with a gold medal, she received her first Master’s Degree as an English Language Teacher at the age of 21. After enriching her professional career as a high school teacher and teacher trainer for the Ministry of Education, simultaneously volunteering for Red Cross and Vanadzor Orphanage, she decided to go further to get her second Master’s Degree in Education and International Development in England. Finally settling in France, she taught English language extensively at a university and Catholic college, as well as at various Training Centres. Having lived in Armenia, Russia, the Netherlands, England, and France, she currently speaks four languages.

Copyright Information ©

Fel Justice 2022

The right of Fel Justice to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398459434 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398459441 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my family, especially my parents for the emotional sensibility, the education and most importantly values they passed to me. Thanks also to my brothers and their families for the love and trust, to all my international friends and colleagues who believed in me and enriched my personality. A very special thanks to Paul Ritter, my dear friend and spiritual father, for the support and guidance throughout the whole journey, including constructive feedback and proofreading. V. Peleshyan, thank you for the cover photo.

Life Adventures

Chapter 1

Family

Born on 17 December 1982 to a traditional Armenian family, my life has inherited a lot of tolerance, devotion and care for others. Like in the majority of Armenian households, my father at the head of the family took care of all the external needs, financial stability and protection while my mother, who was in charge of the interior comfort, gave care, warmth, nurturing us and making home a comfortable place for everybody.

The Grigoryans

My father was an Armenian who had lived all his entire life in Armenia. His parents, that is to say my grandparents, were very respected and honoured in my native town Vanadzor, which was and is the third largest city of Armenia.

My grandfather was a dentist, originating from a poor family, consisting of parents and five brothers. Thanks to his hard work and strong will he founded his own dental clinic in Vanadzor, one of the first in its type, which was famous for its quality and especially the cooperation with foreign, particularly German dental associations.

My grandfather was known as ‘a man of surrounding’ as people would say at that time, meaning someone popular among his generation, someone who loved family and friend gatherings, singing in public during the gatherings and otherwise a socially outstanding person. The picture was different at home. He was cold, distant, especially with women, his wife (my grandmother), his daughter (my ‘so-called’ aunt), his daughters-in-law (my mother and my aunt-in-law), and of course, female grandchildren—one of whom was me. The discrimination between how he was with my brothers and with me was so evident that even I as a young child could sense it all the time.

He was so happy and proud to take my brothers, for instance, out for a walk, or give pocket money to them for an ice-cream, whereas with me not even a conversational exchange, perhaps just a couple of remarks. The only thing I remember is that when I was in the third grade, once I had to learn a poem by heart, and while I stayed with them, he was the person who helped me, although being very severe and critical.

My grandmother on the other side was from a very rich family, the granddaughter of a ‘village kulak’ the person who had money and power in the village of his origin. Thus, from very early age she was used to being noticed for her expensive clothes, leather shoes and fur coats, which were especially luxurious after the post Second World War period.

She was the first person in my native town to start English as a school subject, thus educating and teaching 6 decades at school, where she was the vice head-teacher. Everybody in town knew her together with my grandfather. As a matter of her work, I guess, she was keeping the same posture with us at home as at school, that is to say the posture of the headmaster, distant and reserved, rarely showing her emotions or her smile. She was not a grandmother who would nurture and care about her grandchildren, nor her children at the time being, as she had so many responsibilities outside home. She always had someone helping her at home with the household and with her own kids. Their high reputation and status in the society was a priority for my grandparents. Unfortunately, only at the dusk of their lives they became milder in their views and attitude.

My grandparents were in the same school and in the same class together, and they got married very early, just after their university. Early marriages at that time were very normal. But then, throughout their mature life, my grandfather was cheating on her with other women, and my grandmother knowing all this had to accept and suffer in silence. At that time, the family bonds were of ultimate importance and especially the social status wouldn’t allow a divorce, as it would be badly viewed by the society.

They had three children together, one daughter and two sons. My father was the second child in the family, but since his childhood he was very mature, silent and clever. He was the kind of a person who would talk little, but do remarkable things for his age, like really listening to people and their needs. He was extremely kind, always helping people in the community in one way or another when possible, but always keeping his kindness behind a severe face. I guess he had assimilated that from his parents at early childhood, and had learnt to hide his emotions and feelings, which remained a habit for the rest of his life.

The Karayans

My mother was Georgian-Armenian, her parents were Armenians born and living in Tbilisi, Georgia, thus she had a lot of influences from both cultures in her cooking and speaking habits, in her allure, etc. Her family was also well positioned.

Her father was a renowned professional tailor for whom people would wait for days to be served by him. My grandmother was working as a nurse in one of the capital’s hospitals. To my great disappointment, I never had the chance to meet them. They both died at an early age (51 and 52). My grandmother passed away first due to breast cancer, leaving my grandfather in deep grief and sorrow; he died a year after her.

My mother’s parents were also attending the same school in their childhood, and after their higher studies got married. They had three children, exactly like in my father’s family, one daughter and two sons. My mother was the second child in the family. In fact there was another child, a daughter who was born before my mother, but she died on the 40th day of her life. In early 1950s medicine was not yet enough developed to detect the dangers and save those lives for things that can be easily prevented these days.

I remember my mother being very nostalgic; sometimes she would constantly tell us about her life back in Georgia, about their international yard, where Armenians, Georgians, Russians and Azeris lived together in peace and mutual respect. My mother’s stories have inspired me so much, that years later when I was of the same age as she when she left Georgia, 23, I went to Tbilisi, found her street, found the yard and the house she used to live in and filmed everything for her, trying to imagine how she was playing there with her brothers and friends.

As I have mentioned, I never had the opportunity to meet my grandparents, as they died even before my mother got married. But my mother has been telling me much about her bright childhood, in the area where different nations lived in harmony, with warm neighbourhood, where everybody used to share whatever went on in the community, where it was a safe place for children to play outside together, without the surveillance of their parents.

When my grandmother was diagnosed with a fatal breast cancer, she was taken to Moscow, Russia, to be operated. At those times Russian medical technology was a pace forward as compared to the Armenian. The operation itself was successful, but guess what, she died of blood poisoning due to a nursing mistake. Such an irony, isn’t it? My grandfather didn’t live long after her; although physically healthy, he died a year after his wife, from sorrow, as people say. At that time my elder uncle got a contract as an engineer in Vanadzor, Armenia and moved there, my younger uncle was in the army, and thus they decided to sell their parental house, as it was emotionally too hard for them, especially for my mother to live there alone. And thus she moved to Vanadzor as well.

Destiny

Once in Armenia, my mother started to work as a biology and chemistry teacher in the same school where my father was the headmaster and teaching history. For the early 1980s, they had been dating for a long time, nearly two years, before taking serious actions of getting married and making a family. You will never even imagine why…

Remember I was telling that my father’s parents were well-off and famous in my native town. So, naturally, as Armenian bourgeois, they wanted to take control of the lives of their children. In fact, they had already chosen a bride from a good family for my father, a daughter of their friend. And when my father declared that he was dating an Armenian woman coming from Georgia, with no parents and no wealth, you can imagine the shock.

Moreover, my grandparents’ fear was that my mother quite surely would have the same illness as her mother, as cancer was said to be a disease with a high percentage of inheritable factors from generation to generation. Every time my poor parents wanted to go out somewhere out of town to the suburbs, just to have the opportunity to exchange a little bit, my grandfather would send his ‘spies’ to follow them. My father, being a respectful and humble man, didn’t want to take critical decisions against the will of his parents, and so the hesitations stretched for two years.

My poor mum, I imagine her emotions on the day of her so-called wedding. With all the money and power that my grandparents from my father’s side possessed, they organised just a small gathering in the future flat of my parents, among very close people, sisters and brothers and some relatives. My mother didn’t even have the ‘honour’ to wear a wedding dress…and even crazier, she had to wash all the dishes of her so-called wedding party the following morning when she woke up as there was no one else in the flat to do that. And all this in the case where my grandfather had previously organised and paid for the weddings of his nephews, the children of his brothers who had passed away tragically, either during the war, or from an illness at an early age… From the first day, their relationship with my mother was rather formal and cold, in spite of the fact my grandmother appreciated her a lot.

Chapter 2

Childhood

I had a relatively happy childhood, stable and comfortable, at a time where even good food was a luxury for a lot of Armenian families. We were a family of 5, my parents, me and my two younger brothers. We have always been well off and even could afford summer holidays at the seaside in Russia. My father would always do the impossible so that we could taste the products that were in deficit in Soviet Armenia. Ham and chicken, bananas and pine-apples in those days were a real treasure. My father was always very attentive to our eating habits, making sure that we had meat, vegetables, and dairy products and not only cheap food like potato and pasta. We had a small farm house where he would pay somebody to keep and feed our cattle, several cows, pigs, and hens. Thus we always had fresh eggs, cheese, and milk.

My mother on the other hand was a very good cook. It would always smell deliciously at home with all the Armenian and Georgian specialties; I can still smell the dolma with minced meat rolled in cabbage leaves, harissa with chicken and corn, khachapuri, the cheese pie, ghata, day-and-night, ghozinakh with honey and walnut, and many other pastries.

We never had a pet, although when I was younger, I would have loved to have one. The excuse was that we were living in an apartment, where it was not convenient and hygienic to keep a pet. We had only three rooms, a living room and two bedrooms, and I was sharing one bedroom with my two brothers. Since then it was a dream for me to have my own room, just for myself, where I could stay by myself, listen to my favourite music, think my own thoughts, spend time in my imaginary world. This dream however, would stay unfulfilled.

With all financial opportunities that my family had, we were living a moderate life, never ever had we expensive clothes from well-known brands, never ever had my father bought an expensive car, nor modern technological devices for the house. Our flat was old, but comfortable. After the earthquake that stroke Armenia in 1988 the walls were cracked and especially the kitchen was badly damaged. Otherwise, we had everything one could dream to have in Armenia under the Soviet regime.

Earthquake

On December 1988 at 11:41 a terrible earthquake at a magnitude of 6.8 shattered northern Armenia. I was almost 6 years old at the time of the earthquake, but surprisingly I remember all the details of the day. It was a very powerful, devastating earthquake. To give you an idea how powerful it was, let me tell you that it has destroyed 90 percent of the city Spitak, which was right on the epicentre, 80 percent of the second largest city Gyumri (40 kilometres to the West), and badly damaged Vanadzor (20 kilometres to the East). Almost each family lost one or more family member or relatives at that time. By a miracle none of our relatives and family members were hurt.

It was a cold December morning around 10:40 AM. As a habit my mother was having coffee time with our neighbours in the morning around a nice chat. At that time people used to grind coffee with a long oval mechanical coffee grinder. Our grinder was at our neighbour’s house. We were living on the third floor and she was living one floor above us. So, my mother asked me to go and fetch it. As soon as I reached their flat, a terrific thing happened. We couldn’t understand what was happening, had no clue what it was and how it could happen. It was as if a powerful force was shaking the building. We could see all the plates falling down on the floor and breaking one by one.

My neighbour was really reactive, and took me quickly under the junction of the main wall, the wall with the main entrance door. It was said to be the firmest spot in a