The Chamichian Saga: Gold and Pistachios

Najib Shirkijian, Ani’s maternal grandfather, was one of those who survived the pogrom, but only because of his prowess as a goldsmith. It seemed the executioners were prepared to make an exemption in the case of tradesmen like him: if you were a carpenter, blacksmith or goldsmith, you were reprieved and would be allowed to stay behind and serve the needs of their Turkish “hosts.”

The Chamichian clan in of Jerusalem belonged to the Evangelical denomination and had their own church, the Nazarene, perched at the top of a flight of stairs, a minute’s walk from the Christian Quarter of the Old City where Ani and one of her sisters were born.

Ani suspects her grandmother was not really a Protestant because “every once in a while she would take me to [the Cathedral of] St. James, and quietly slip upstairs for a service. She would say, ‘don’t tell your father or mother’ because it would be embarrassing to him as the pastor of a Protestant church. She loved to listen to the “sharagans” (hymns) and I’m assuming she missed them in the more austere Protestant church.”  The other thing she missed in her Jerusalem exile was the “hamams,” the public baths of which one is still functioning in the Old City.

“In our house we had an indoor bathroom with a tub and shower but she would frequently drag me to a ‘hamam’ with her to be tortured by the hot water and be scrubbed down with the black “cassa” [bag] that she took along. After getting clean the ladies wrapped themselves in huge towels and sat around chatting.”

”I don’t remember tea being served as like in the Aintab and Paris ‘hamams I visited in my travels,” Ani recounts.

One of her Saturday chores as a child was to heft a large tray of loaves and carry it to the bakery just outside the Convent of St James, then wait for it be baked and take the warm bread home.

“Because of my father’s position in the church, we were frequently visited by American Nazarene pilgrims who came to the Holy Land. This was at Easter, Christmas and summer, just those times when I didn’t have to go to school and got to go along [on their tours],” she recalls.

“In this way I was very fortunate to see parts of the region I would not have otherwise seen. We went to Bethlehem at Christmas, the Garden Tomb at Easter, and my grandmother used to take me to the miraculous appearance of the Holy Fire on the Saturday before Easter at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”

Eventually, Ani left Jerusalem and settled in the United States but her attachment to the “city of gold,” and “the flower of cities,” remains strong.

“I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a city with such an ancient history and physical beauty and to have been taken to so many places with deep pre- and post Roman history. The white stones along the hillsides, the red poppies blooming in the spring and the crisp clear air have all become part of who I am,” she proclaims.