Melemed

by Peniamin Noorigian (village of Hussenig, Kharpert)

from the volume Aykegoutk (New Jersey, 1937)

translated by Harry Kezelian, 2021

Melemed: Kharpert dialect for the eve of Dyarnuntarach (Presentation of the Lord to the Temple, Feb 14), when according to ancient tradition the customs described are practiced.

        It is winter, but there is a light breath of spring in the air. It is the moment of the evening when the sun once again circles behind the faraway mountains, on the shoulders of which the clouds - that a minute ago were ablaze - now blacken and take on monstrous forms, while the shadows dissolve into the twilight that descends from the heavens. The eye can barely see.

        On the flat-top roofs, all around, dark human figures swarm with impatient movements.

        One dosen't know who gives the signal - and suddenly, the bonfires crackle and alight one after the other. Among the rooftops huge tongues of flame shoot up; clouds of smoke rise up and up, rolling, and are lost in the darkness. 

        Above the village a wondrous half-light hangs for a moment, where merry faces are outlined and then disappear. Human figures jump over the bonfires and shout joyously - "Melemed! Melemed!"

        Newlywed brides and newlywed grooms grandly dance in a circle around the flames. And the spirits of past ages, awakened for a moment from their profound slumber, spread an ancient blessing over the village. The flames die down slowly, gently and go out. The darkness takes the village in its arms like a mother and rocks it, and puts it to sleep.

        Tell the truth, O village  - isn't it true that your slumber on Meled night has the pagan repose and dream of lost ages?

Welcome to My (Great-Grandfather's) Street

GROUP OF MEN FROM FENESSE, KAYSERI REGION, PROBABLY IN DELRAY, EARLY 1920s

Many years ago, in Detroit's now-vanished ethnic neighborhood of Delray, amongst the mostly Hungarian population was the only Armenian neighborhood in the State of Michigan. The center of that neighborhood was South Solvay Avenue, or as the streetcar conductors called it, "Armenian Boulevard."

Though the old Armenian communities in Delray and Highland Park are gone, and the Armenians of the Detroit area have spread out throughout the suburbs to the north and west of the city, I think we all carry a little bit of Armenian Boulevard in our hearts. 

Armenians in Detroit were a community with their own Boulevard but they were not solely an ethnic enclave to themselves. They might have spent much of their time on the Boulevard but only a few streets away were the Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Italian neighborhoods, to which they often ventured, and it wasn't too far to get to Downtown Detroit. 

Today we still try to strike that balance between being maintaining our community and being a part of the world around us. I recently received a book, "Armenian Proverbs from Delray and the Greater Detroit Armenian Community" by Susan Kadian Gopigian, who talks a lot about Armenian Boulevard and the world surrounding it, which is where she grew up. A wide-eyed girl growing up in an Armenian family in the Southern/Eastern European immigrant enclave of Delray during the 1930s ... I recognized her experiences in my own as a wide-eyed kid growing up in an Armenian family in the Detroit suburbs, in Beverly Hills, Michigan, in the 1990s with the descendants of many Delray or Highland Park inhabitants. (Most of the neighbor kids were Irish Catholic, my best friend was Greek, and I distinctly remember my first crush, in first grade, was on a girl from a solid Hungarian background.) Our "Boulevard" was a little bit bigger, we had to drive half an hour to go to St. John's Armenian Church, but it seemed in my time everyone drove everywhere anyway. 

I'm not in contact with any of the kids I grew up with except the Armenians. The Boulevard remains but it seems the outside world has changed. It's seems as if it's gotten crazier, scarier out there. There's new kids on the Boulevard straight from the Old Country, and they're just as confused as I am. And all of a sudden there's a lot of talk about "the Middle East." The people of the Boulevard had lived in a Hungarian neighborhood so long that they started to call themselves Eastern European, since nobody knew where Armenia was, not even the Armenians! Eastern European - Middle Eastern - Near Eastern - Mediterranean - what's the difference? Who cares? But all of a sudden a lot of people care very much, and they don't seem to like anyone from the "Middle East." The new kids on the Boulevard seem to be really getting picked on for that. And now when I play the old Armenian music in the car, men in Ford pickup trucks look at me funny. Haven't they driven past the Boulevard? I guess not. What happened?

It seems like things these days are confusing and a mess. But maybe it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe if we remember how our grandparents lived on Armenian Boulevard right in the middle of the bustling City of Detroit as it was in the 30's and 40's, we can regain our balance in today's world. 

Come take a walk with me down Armenian Boulevard, where we see residents of the area, Armenian and non-Armenian, walking into the coffeehouses, walking out of the bookstore, sitting on their front porches, talking about what's happening in the country, playing music, laughing at jokes, enjoying life and the clear blue sky over God's green earth. Where we hear the stories of the old country, the happy ones and the sad ones, hear the songs - also happy and sad. Where we find out what's going on in our community and in the city around us. Where we remember and where we dream of the future. It might be a small street, but it's OUR street, and to us it's a Boulevard.

ONNEG KEZELIAN, MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER