YEREVAN — It would seem that as time goes by, as many urge Armenians to forget their past, an almost iron-willed determination makes them want to hold on to it ever more dearly and delve into their rich, if sometimes tragic, history. At least such is the case with Armenians born into the far-flung global diaspora.
On June 18, Yerevan communications professional, creative guru and board member of Hakawati NGO Raffi Niziblian — born in Jordan but a resident of Armenia since 2003 — organized an evocative event that centered around the fascinating work of two remarkable women, Riyadh-born writer Micheline Aharonian Marcom and Syrian-Armenian actor/writer, multimedia artist and founder of Hakawati NGO Sona Tatoyan. Titled “The Many Forms of Storytelling,” the event was moderated by another intellectual titan, translator and Armenian University of America (AUA) professor Dr. Shushan Avagyan, the author of the experimental novels Girq-anvernagir [A Book, Untitled, 2006] and Zarubyani kanayq [The Women of Zarubyan Street, 2014]. It was also hard not to notice what a physically striking quartet these four remarkable people made, as they held a packed audience of 40 or so people mesmerized in the AUA student gallery for well over an hour.
Aharonian Marcom, who has authored eight books, read from Three Apples Fell from Heaven, the first in a trilogy of books that she has written about the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath in the 20th century. Marcom — whose partially experimental writing follows in the tradition of greats such as Joyce, Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf — has received fellowships and awards from the Lannan Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the U.S. Artists’ Foundation and was a 2022 finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Three Apples Fell from Heaven was a New York Times Notable Book and runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction, while her second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, won the PEN/USA Award for Fiction.
Aharonian Marcom teared up when talking about the remarkable fact that she was reading with her back to majestic Mount Ararat. She humorously referred to fact that she used a thesaurus while writing Three Apples Fell from Heaven while still in her twenties, but whatever the source of the rich vocabulary employed, its powerful result is evident in sentences and expressions such as “rumor is a mendacious tatterdemalion.”
When discussing Aharonian Marcom’s work, Tatoyan explained: “I discovered Three Apples Fell from Heaven while I was here in Yerevan in 2001. To be sitting at AUA in front of Mt. Ararat with Micheline is a very surreal moment. Finding the right adaptation for that novel has led me on a journey of excavation all over the Middle East— from the killing fields of the Der Zor Desert, to my family’s ancestral villages in modern day Turkey. All of this has inspired my pieces “Azad Storytelling” and the multimedia show “Azad (the rabbit and the wolf)” that is now in development. Both works I refer to as a quantum collaboration with my great-great grandfather, Abkar Knadjian, an intergenerational healing journey across space time. To face the darkness and therefore become azad… free.”
A first-generation American, Tatoyan divides her time between Los Angeles, Aleppo, and Yerevan. An accomplished stage artist, Tatoyan was featured in the world premieres of José Rivera’s “Brainpeople” at the American Conservatory Theater, “Massacre (Sing to your Children)” at the Goodman Theater, and “Boleros for the Disenchanted” at Yale Repertory Theater. She acted in her first feature film, starring in “The Journey” (2002), the first independent American film ever shot in Armenia. In 2021, alongside Isaac Saboohi, Tatoyan co-created the event 1001 Nights, a celebration of Middle Eastern music, movement, storytelling, and food in LA in 2021. It will be produced by Hakawati NGO later this month in Armenia, for the first time. The mission of this NGO is healing through storytelling. It integrates the work of professional artists, spiritual teachers, innovators, scientists, and therapists with a commitment to transform trauma through authentic storytelling.
