News.am, Armenia
Feb 23 2020
17:21, 23.02.2020
Category: 2020
Tehran: Armenia stresses coop. with Iran on fighting coronavirus
Mehr News Agency, Iran
Feb 23 2020
TEHRAN, Feb. 23 (MNA) – Advising its citizens to avoid unnecessary trips to Iran, the Armenian Foreign Ministry announced its close cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran to counter the outbreak of coronavirus.
“In terms of a comprehensive assessment of the situation in the region we are closely cooperating with our colleagues in Iran and Georgia in the direction of information exchange, as well as necessary measures and consideration of possible scenarios,” the statement said, according to Armen Press.
The novel coronavirus, Covid-19, has so far claimed the lives of 2,464 people across the world, with 2,443 deaths in mainland China, 5 in South Korea, 8 in Iran, and others in Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, France, and Taiwan.
According to the data collected from Worldometer, the number of patients with the new virus across the world has so far reached 78,829.
MNA/IRN 83686945
The stars of Dhaka’s Armanitola [Bangladesh]
Live Mint
Feb 23 2020
Updated: 23 Feb 2020, 08:14 PM IST
The search for the monument on the 100 taka note leads to the Armenian quarter of Old Dhaka, once home to an Armenian community
Tara Masjid gets its name from the star-shaped mosaic work inside. Photo from alamy
I am pretty sure I made quite a spectacle of myself that sweltering summer afternoon in Dhaka, waving a soiled 100 taka note in front of scores of bewildered passers-by. Even my feeble attempt at mouthing a few Bengali words seemed to fall on deaf ears. After almost giving up hope, my phone’s wavering GPS came through. Finally, I was standing in front of the structure that stared out at me from every 100 taka I spent during my stay in Bangladesh.
I had trekked through the dusty alleys of Old Dhaka for hours, with the sole aim of visiting the rather unusual Tara Masjid. Its four domes are decorated with rare chini tikri (Chinese style) porcelain tile mosaic work in star motifs, giving the mosque both its name and its place of glory on the “tails" side of a 100 taka bank note.
But rather than the end of a quest, the find set me off on a new one. In my search for the mosque, I had unknowingly meandered into Old Dhaka’s Armenian quarter. Called Armanitola, the neighbourhood on the shores of the turgid Buriganga river was once the nerve centre of Armenian life in East Bengal. This was where jute and leather traders from the South Caucasian country decided to set up both shop and home. Today, Armanitola is much like the old part of any South Asian city, densely packed and cacophonic. I found myself dodging everything from cycle rickshaws to the stray grazing goat, while walking under a mesh of power cables linking the tenement buildings. But then, there’s also respite from the chaos.
Just 300m south of Tara Masjid is the Armenian Church, the spiritual centre of this unique quarter. The Armenian Apostolic Church of the Holy Resurrection was built by the traders in 1781 on a plot of land that they had earlier used as a cemetery.
This edifice, with its hexagonal, crucifix-topped steeple and generous narthex, reminded me not just of St Peter’s Armenian Church in my home city of Mumbai, but also of the similarly structured Armenian Holy Church of Nazareth in Kolkata. Several Indian cities besides Mumbai and Kolkata once had thriving Armenian populations and grand churches to cater to the growing congregation that had been settling in India since the 16th century.
There were not one but two separate waves of Armenian exodus to India (which Bangladesh was a part of at the time), according to the book Armenian Settlements In India by Anne Basil, that I found while researching the subject at Mumbai’s Asiatic Library once I was back home. The first was in 1645, when the aforementioned merchants arrived in Bengal, purely for trading purposes. The book references an agreement of 1688 between the English East India Company and Armenian merchants that reads, “Whenever forty or more of the Armenian nation shall become inhabitants in any of the garrisons, cities, or towns, belonging to the Company in the East Indies, the said Armenians shall not only have and enjoy the free use and exercise of their religion, but there shall also be allotted to them a parcel of ground to erect a church thereon…."
The second exodus was more poignant, taking place in the wake of the 1915 genocide of over a million Armenians by the Turkish forces in East Anatolia. Basil writes that “hundreds of children of uprooted families…found shelter and a roof and received sufficient education…" at the Armenian College and Philanthropic Academy in Kolkata. The academy is still functional, a source of pride for the city’s small Armenian diaspora.
I was only superficially aware of this history when Hafiz, the old watchman who had let me into the church at Armanitola, told me the story of the last Armenian in Bangladesh. Speaking in broken English, bolstered by wild gesticulating, he recounted the tale of Mikel Housep Martirossian, the Dhaka-born son of an Armenian jute trader who was not only the caretaker of the Armenian Church until 2014, but also its sole congregant. He would say his prayers daily, sitting quietly in the first pew. After he suffered a stroke, he moved to Canada, where his children live.
But there is still hope for the church. The Armenian embassy in Dhaka that looks after its upkeep has hinted at the possibility of bringing a new warden from Armenia. Till then, it is up to Hafiz to keep the place clean and protected, and to light the altar candles at 7pm daily.
As I leave the church gates, I make sure to squeeze a small tip into Hafiz’s wrinkled palm. And yes, it was one of those same 100 taka notes that started it all!
Raul Dias is a Mumbai-based writer.
https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/the-stars-of-dhaka-s-armanitola-11582468772877.html
Saroyan memorialized Madera High
The Madera Tribune
Feb 22 2020
History
Bill Coate
Madera County Historical Society
William Saroyan at Madera High School.
William Saroyan was apparently not the easiest person in the world with which one could deal. As talented and as well known as he was, he didn’t suffer a fool lightly, and he didn’t seem to need anyone’s approval. In fact this internationally acclaimed writer refused the Pulitzer Prize for his play, “The Time of Your Life.”
He almost never went to a college or university to speak because, as he said, “I can’t be bothered; it’s too much trouble and just a little silly.” However, on Jan. 27, 1977, he came to Madera High School to speak. Let me tell you how that came about.
It just so happened that Brenda (Najimian) Magarity was teaching English and drama at Madera High, and it also just so happened that her family knew Saroyan. If fact Brenda became his unofficial driver — not a chauffeur, but a friend, a driver.
At some point in the 1976-77 school year, Brenda decided that she wanted Saroyan to come to her class, so she asked him, and can you believe it? He said yes.
The date in January was set, but the young teacher didn’t tell anyone at school for fear Saroyan would back out at the last moment — something that occurred often, according to Magarity.
When she found out on that Thursday morning that Saroyan was indeed going to come to Madera, she told her friend and fellow teacher, Ben Bufford, and he helped her prepare for the writer’s visit to Madera, including a lunch in his home prepared by his wife, Milly.
When the students in Brenda’s first class came through the door that morning, they were greeted by dark-haired visitor with his trademark, drooping mustache that was nearly white.
Saroyan took to the Madera students immediately, and they liked him. He shared with them that the favorite books of his own were “The Human Comedy” and “My Name is Aram.”
One student asked him if it was really true that he dropped a cat off the water tower in Fresno as he said he did in “My Name is Aram.” Saroyan replied that the story was true. He wanted to see if it was true that cats always land on their feet; Saroyan claimed this one followed suit and ran away.
As Saroyan spoke and answered questions from the students, he did a strange thing. He asked the kids their names and then wrote them down. When he left Madera High, he put that list of names in his pocket. After lunch at the Buffords, Magarity took him home to Fresno.
Saroyan lived four more years, and before he died, he wrote one more book. He entitled it “Obituaries.” It was based on the annual list of important people who had died in 1976. Saroyan wanted to write about them, whether he knew them or not. Actually it was really a commentary on death by a man who was about to die, but in chapter 17, the author took a strange digression. He included a piece on the living, and those were the folks he met in his visit to Madera High.
He asked himself in the book why he got up at 5:30 in the morning in order to go to a high school and talk four times for free instead going to a college where he would be paid from $1,000 to $3,000 to speak once.
Saroyan wrote that the answer was simple. He had been asked by “a girl who teaches English and Drama there, and during the past three or four years, this Armenian girl has been a good kid at filling me in about life in a high school in a small town and has taken me in her Toyota to the laundromat and around and about. He was talking about Brenda (Najimian) Magarity.
Now Saroyan was in Paris when he wrote “Obituaries” which meant that he carried that piece of paper upon which he had written the names of the students he met at Madera High with him to France.
Here they are as they appear in Saroyan’s book—the Madera High kids with whom he was so taken: “Mary Elisalde, Donna Beckwith, Robin Dollar, Marie Catanezesi, Diana Seagraves, Debbie Fimbrez, Reida Irby (who Saroyan said was writing a novel entitled “Sharing Borrowed Treasure,”) Lori Kay Brady, Eleanor Hernandez, Shari Girardeau, Lisa Peterson, Darrell McCallen, Adolph Vizcarra, Gilbert Trujillo, Steve Funderburg, Tony Martin, Roger Accornero, Richard Flores, Rickie Elias, Jim Jenkins, Denise Hayes, Lesli Niino, Mary Ann Brown, Sherry Martinez, Julie Foresi, Kay Keating, McAllister Donnell, Toni Reno, Nancy Barton, Shari Mongaral, Debbie Ellington, Susan Munoz, Charlene Poore, Lee Ann Rutherford, and I guess that’s about it. All are alive and going to high school. They are good kids, and I liked meeting them.”
I think this is a good story; not because I wrote it, but just because it is good. A world class author who doesn’t like to speak to students comes to Madera High at the behest of one of its teachers and winds up recording the experience in the last book he would ever write.
In my view, that’s a tale worth keeping.
Armenia’s PM Pashinyan says Armenia is closing border with Iran for 2 weeks after reports of CoronoVirus cases in the Islamic Rep.
Yahoo! News
Feb 23 2020
Reuters•
ARMENIA'S PM PASHINYAN SAYS ARMENIA IS CLOSING BORDER WITH IRAN FOR TWO WEEKS AFTER REPORTS OF CORONAVIRUS CASES IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
Armenian PM: Karabakh settlement has new content
News.am, Armenia
Feb 22 2020
15:05, 22.02.2020
Armenian survivor of Baku Pogrom details horrors of killings in Congress
PanArmenian, Armenia
Feb 22 2020
– 14:51 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – Congressional Armenian Caucus leaders joined with human rights advocates and Armenian American community leaders in a solemn remembrance of the 30th anniversary of the anti-Armenian pogroms in Baku, featuring bipartisan calls for continued U.S. humanitarian aid to Artsakh, Asbarez reports.
The event featured moving keynote remarks by Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte, who, along with her family, fled the anti-Armenian attacks in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in the fall of 1989, finding safe haven in the US in 1992.
An accomplished lawyer, author, and human rights advocate, Astvatsaturian Turcotte, explained, “The same anti-Armenianism that made my grandfather an orphan and that made me a refugee is alive and well today. Just as with anti-Semitism, rooting out the hatred toward Armenians cannot be done by brushing aside this history.
The avoidance of calling things as they are contributes to the anti-Armenianism at the highest level of Azerbaijan’s government. These crimes continue with shooting across the Artsakh and Armenian borders at civilians.
The video below features Astvatsaturian Turcotte’s remarks
Armenian public bids last farewell to prominent actor Yervand Manaryan
Panorama, Armenia
Feb 22 2020
Culture 15:25 22/02/2020 Armenia
“Yervand Manaryan’s name is inseparable from the 50-year old history of Armenian cinematography. Our film industry is a national heritage, and Manaryan represents one of the brightest colors of that richness,” Davit Muradyan, Honored Art Worker of Armenia, Professor at Yerevan Institute of Cinema and Theatre told reporters at the funeral ceremony of Yervand Manaryan.
Muradyan, who had come to bid farewell to the renowned actor, noted that people love Manaryan as a famility member. “He was not the type of actors to speak to the audience from a pedestal but was among the people – in every family. Kids and elderly, ordinary workers and academicians equally admired him. That is a virtue beyond the artistic and remains a very human charactersitic. The art created by Manaryan came from his human essence, his humor, kindness, and the decency of truly art lover,” added Muradyan.
To note, the funeral ceremony of Yervand Manaryan is being held at Yerevan Theatre of Musical Comedy named after Hakob Paronyan. The public applauded last time to the beloved actor, when Manaryan’s corpse was taken out of the theatre under the music of “A Bride from the North” film where Manaryan played a leading role.
Prominent Soviet Armenian actor, director, screenwriter and People’s Artist of Armenia Yervand Manaryan passed away at the age of 95 on Sunday.
Manaryan worked as an actor and a director at Hakob Paronyan Musical Comedy Theatre and Gabriel Sundukyan State Academic Theatre. From 1957 to 1959, he served as the general director of Yerevan State Puppet Theatre after Hovhannes Tumanyan. Manaryan became the artistic director of Argus Puppet Theatre in 1988. He also served as one of the chief directors of Yerevan State Puppet Theatre.
Joint meeting of the Security Councils of Artsakh, Armenia held in Stepanakert
Aysor, Armenia
Feb 22 2020
On 22 February Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan together with Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan partook at the joint meeting of the Security Councils of the two Armenian republics held in Stepanakert.
In his speech President Sahakyan touched upon a range of issues on domestic and foreign policies, particularly, related to the recent foreign political developments, army-building, realization of a number of strategically important socioeconomic projects in the republic's southern regions.
Bako Sahakyan noted that the projects were ambitious, however, quite realistic, expressing his confidence that by joint efforts, systematic and consistent approach to the implementation of the activities, these projects would be brought to life.
Lydian presents false information to Canadian court, Armenian environmentalists say
News.am, Armenia
Feb 22 2020
12:31, 22.02.2020