Clash of Old, New Challenges Growing Colony of Armenians

Up and down Washington Boulevard in Pasadena--along the storefronts of pastry shops, small vegetable markets and convenience stores--refugees from war and persecution have created a new home, a new Armenia.

They have come in two waves of immigration, one in the early 1970s and one that continues today, fleeing pressure to choose sides in Lebanon’s civil war. Out of the madness, the destruction of Beirut, they have created a community that straddles two worlds, embodying both a dream and a fear.

Many have been shunted from one war-torn country to the next and welcome the stability of America. They embrace its vast potential while fearing it as the only country in the world with the power to fully assimilate them.

They say they have grown accustomed to a nomadic life style, for this has been the history of Armenians, a small tribe of Christian people who remain patient in the face of remarkable vicissitudes. Yet their voices betray a certain weariness from living too long at the grace of others in adopted lands.

Promising Pianist

There is Nazareth Mankerian, who works 16 hours a day, seven days a week, in his small market on Washington Boulevard. His oldest son showed promise as a young pianist in Beirut and Nazareth brought his family to the United States so his son might realize his full potential as an artist.

There is Abraham Karabibergian, a jeweler by trade who opened a toy shop on Washington Boulevard two years ago. Karabibergian, 27, said he sees endless opportunities in America but still waits for the Armenian homeland that was lost 70 years ago when 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by Turks in a forced exile from eastern Turkey.

He believes that to fully accept the United States as his permanent home would be a betrayal of his dream. His license plate reads “HYE MNA,” which means, “Stay Armenian forever.”

Pasadena’s Armenian community ranks second only to Hollywood’s as the fastest growing in the nation. There are an estimated 17,000 Armenians living in Pasadena, half of whom arrived in the last five years, chiefly from Beirut.

Because so many of them have arrived in such a short time and cannot speak English, Pasadena has had trouble absorbing these newcomers in a tight job market.

To help ease the transition to a new life in Pasadena, Armenian community leaders lobbied hard for a law recognizing Armenians as a protected class under Pasadena’s affirmative-action ordinance.

Classified as Minority

The law, which went into effect in March, is the first of its kind passed by any city and will mean that Armenians, like blacks and Latinos, are officially classified as a minority and must be recruited for city jobs and city-awarded contracts.

Beyond its economic implications, the measure is seen as a positive force against the tendency by recent arrivals to band together and form ethnic enclaves apart from and ignorant of the larger Pasadena community.

The inclination to gather in tightknit groups and speak Armenian in public has caused some tension between the newcomers and longtime Armenian residents of the city. Second- and third-generation Armenian-Americans, whose forebears came to the United States in the aftermath of the 1915 genocide, worry that the newcomers are creating a bad name for Armenians.

Recent immigrants respond that Armenian-Americans have adopted American culture as their own and have forgotten what it is like to be an Armenian.

The differences between the newcomers and established Armenians are underscored by a nagging debate over Armenian terrorism and whether it advances the goals of forcing Turkey to admit that it massacred nearly two-thirds of the Armenian race from 1915 to 1918 and to relinquish the ancient Armenian homeland.

In the last 10 years, Armenian extremists have assassinated a number of Turkish diplomats in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Turkey and Turkish-American lobbying groups have responded by conducting a wide-scale campaign denying that Armenians were systematically massacred and contending instead that Armenians actually massacred Turks.

Newcomers from Beirut, who tend to be more nationalistic, often justify the assassinations and bombings of Turkish institutions as options forced upon the Armenians by an unresponsive world.

Most Pasadena Armenian-Americans argue that the violence has served only to besmirch the reputation of all Armenians.

“There are two Armenian communities in Pasadena,” said Bob Nigsarian, a former Pasadena police officer and an acting commissioner for the Pasadena Parks and Recreation Department. “Armenians who came here after the genocide were forced to fit in.

“On the other hand, the Armenians who have come from Beirut in the last few years have learned to survive in an atmosphere of war,” he said. “Terrorism gets a great deal of emotional support from these newcomers. We’re dealing with a different set of values.”

In some ways, the merchants of Washington Boulevard stand as a bridge between Pasadena’s two Armenian communities and, more broadly, between the immigrants and their new country.

The shop owners have integrated at a faster pace than other recent arrivals from Beirut, partly because so many of their customers are non-Armenian and they have readily learned English. Yet they hew to tradition, holding close the Armenian values of family and preservation of language and culture. They work long hours and live for their children.

For a stretch of three blocks, from Hill Avenue past Allen Avenue, virtually every business along Washington Boulevard--every produce market, appliance store, shoe repair shop and printing shop--is owned by an Armenian from Beirut.

Few Vacant Stores

Of the 260 Armenian-owned businesses in Pasadena, roughly one-third are on Washington Boulevard, the street that divides Pasadena from Altadena.

Except for a succession of commercial signs written in English and the ancient Armenian alphabet, there is nothing that distinguishes Washington Boulevard from any other thriving business strip.

Once inside the shops and stores, though, it becomes clear that Armenian merchants have accommodated two worlds in a way that transcends commercial signs in two languages.

At Nazareth Mankerian’s Armenian-American market, candy bars and Budweiser beer are sold alongside tahini, a sesame-seed paste, and halvah, a Middle East confection. About 80% of Mankerian’s customers are non-Armenian. Like other Armenian-owned businesses on the strip, Mankerian’s market can only be described as eclectic. It is part grocery store, part delicatessen, part liquor store and part appliance center.

“We Armenians like to offer a little bit of everything,” said Mankerian, a short, balding man who constantly chews a wad of bubble gum.

Mankerian, 55, and his wife, Virginia, have three boys: Vatche, 21, Shahe, 17, and Vahe, 14. The family left Beirut in 1979.

“We ran away for the sake of our children, especially my son, Vatche,” Mankerian said. “He was born to play music.”

Vatche, a senior at USC, started playing piano at age 5. Three years later, he was performing on Beirut television. Last year, he recorded his first album, a collection of pieces by Armenian composers. In May, he gave his first major concert, before an audience of 800 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater.

Mankerian, who displays the album on a spice counter behind the cash register, becomes emotional when describing the concert.

‘Tears Come From My Eyes’

“When he plays the piece and finishes and people start to applaud, how do you say? . . . Tears come from my eyes. Even when I read the article about him in the Armenian newspaper, when they wrote that he was a ‘hero,’ I can’t finish it. I can’t see the words after a while.”

Mankerian said his new country has been good to his family, pointing out that loans, grants and scholarships are financing Vatche’s college education. But Mankerian said he so wanted his son to be a concert pianist that he was prepared to sell the family home to send him to college.

“My father sacrificed for me so I sacrifice for my son,” Mankerian said.

Mankerian has dreams for his other sons, too. “Shahe will take singing lessons. He has a good voice. Vahe, he’s good in business. He will take over the market one day.”

Mankerian also insisted that his sons marry Armenian girls. Armenians refer to non-Armenians as o-dars , and the word comes up often in any discussion of marriage.

“It is better to marry an Armenian girl for the sake of our people,” he said. “We are a little bit chauvinistic and maybe an o-dar girl wouldn’t understand this.”

Kevork Karabibergian sits in the back room of his son’s Washington Boulevard toy shop, watching soap operas and thumbing through a conversational English-Armenian book.

He is 60 and trying hard to learn English. The pages of his book are worn from his looking up the dialogue of daytime television. “No problem,” he said, confronted by a new word. He searches with his pinkie up and down the page for the meaning in Armenian.

The toy shop is a minute walk from the family home. Kevork and his wife, Sarah, live there with their two sons, Abraham and Hagop, and Hagop’s Lebanese wife and their 5-year-old son.

Paid Ransom for Son

Hagop, 28, works as a graphic artist. Abraham, 27, decided to open the toy store when he learned that the ring molds he crafted by hand in Beirut were done more efficiently and cheaply here.

The toy store, which also stocks baby clothes, bicycles, backpacks and greeting cards, is similar to the one Kevork owned in Beirut. He sold that business two years ago, shortly after paying a $10,000 ransom to Christian militiamen who had kidnaped Abraham.

It was the fifth time in six years that Abraham had been kidnaped off the streets of Beirut.

He was taken from his jewelry shop in broad daylight with several other hostages to a warehouse in the city. The militiamen lined up the captives and tortured each one. Abraham said he was fortunate to suffer only a bullet wound and a knife puncture to the leg. Another Armenian hostage was decapitated; his head was paraded through town on a motorcycle.

“These killers are not Muslim,” Kevork said, still finding it difficult to believe. “They are Christian.

“If you saw the real Lebanon, you’d say, ‘America, no good.’ You could be on the sand by the sea and in 20 minutes be in the cold mountains with clean air. . . . What happened?” He shakes his head. “What happened?”