now

We hear that for many writers, the characters they create “come alive” during the writing process. But in what ways is that phrase more than a simple metaphor? And how is a writer supposed to manage the expanded household as it begins to fill up with progeny spilling over from the pages of a work in progress?

My third novel, All the Light There Was, which is set in the Armenian community of Paris during the Nazi Occupation, took ten years to research and write. In part I needed a decade because I had a great deal of research to do, but it was primarily due to the fact that I was juggling a few other jobs-running a household, raising two daughters (and it turns out that dealing with kids between the ages of eight to eighteen takes more space in your head than was necessary from zero to eight) and working for a women’s peace group trying to stop multiple U.S.-funded wars and occupations.

In order to recreate the atmosphere of the working class neighborhood of Belleville during the period the French refer to as Les Années Noires (The Dark Years), I read voluminously from histories, journals, collections of letters, and novels penned during and immediately after the war years. I went to Paris to tour the lycée that my narrator and protagonist Maral Pegorian had attended, and to interview octogenarian and nonagenarian Parisian Armenians who had lived through the war.

Through the research, several salient material details were impressed upon me again and again: during the Occupation ordinary people were hungry most of the time, during the four winters under Nazi rule Paris apartments were generally without heat, and Parisians were often in the dark both literally and metaphorically. Germany used France as its wartime breadbasket, making off with the lion’s share of French butter, milk, wheat, vegetables, fruit and meat. Food was rationed and even with ration tickets in hand shoppers were often unable to procure their due. Rutabagas and turnips, which had been used before the war as cattle fodder, were now a staple of French cuisine. The Germans also requisitioned French coal and other fuel, leaving Paris apartments unheated in winter. Nighttime blackouts meant the streets were dark and curfews often kept people in their homes after nightfall.

Once the bulk of the research was done, I disciplined myself to write two hours a day, five days a week, aiming for two pages a day. This schedule was mostly successful, except when one of the kids stayed home sick from school, or there was an emergency street demonstration.

While I was writing, I traveled back in time and across the ocean to Occupied Paris. I could not only hear the voices of my characters, but I could also feel the cold air seeping in the cracks around the window frames, and smell the dreaded rutabagas cooking in the kitchen. I fretted with Maral over her lack of bath soap, and shared the frustration of her cobbler father about his inability to get leather. But it wasn’t until the day that my husband asked me why we had seven jars of mustard in the pantry that I realized how deep this shared experience had gone.

It was true—there were seven jars of mustard in the pantry, and six jars of jam, along with more canned goods than we could eat in a winter. Without being conscious of what I was doing, I had stockpiled the foodstuffs that Maral’s family lacked in Paris in 1942. I had always thought of myself as spending hours living in the Pegorians’ world; what I hadn’t realized was that the characters had moved into my apartment. They were haunting our pantry, showing up in conversation through the Armenian proverbs I cadged from Maral’s father, and occupying my thoughts when I was supposed to be helping with the science fair poster. Once I became conscious of their presence as part of the family, I was better able to balance their demands with those of my real world children.

Ten years on, once the novel was completed, the manuscript handed over to my editor and the rest of the publishing team, the characters started to recede, and I missed them. But I’m glad too that they are soon heading out into the world and into the homes of my readers.

Now I’ve begun work on my next novel. It’s about an Armenian family in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. I’m excited, but a little anxious, about what life will be like with them in the house.

Nancy Kricorian

When I was growing up, my mother, sister and I spent many an afternoon doing craft projects out of magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and Family Circle. My mother also took a cake decorating class, and then shared her knowledge with me. (These skills were much appreciated when my own daughters were in grade school where I was known for Barbie birthday cakes and basketball cupcakes.) Remembering those afternoons, I pulled this poem from the archive.

*

The Artist as the Queen of Peas

It started with the cakes. I bought
tips, a tiny brush to clean them,
small jars of color, and the crisp
paper that twisted into sacks.
I practiced roses, leaves, festoons,
and the scrawl of “Happy Birthday.”
The first cake, a globe-shaped devil’s
food, was a hit at the missionary
conference. I iced it blue, and
smoothed on the continents in green,
sticking tiny flags into the countries
they represented. But it was sad
to see the cake disappear by the
forkful and the plate of crumbs.
I took photos of the others:
a heart-shaped cake for Valentine’s,
a chocolate sea bass for Father’s Day
(with maraschino cherry eyes),
the pineapple-layer turkey for my
vegetarian sister at Thanksgiving.

In the Christmas issue of Women’s
Day, I saw a gingerbread carousel:
there were reindeer instead of ponies.
Of course, you couldn’t eat it
because the icing dried rock hard,
but it looked lovely in the center
of the table, and could be stored
for future use. The next project
was a pasta Christmas tree: macaroni,
shells and bows glued to Styrofoam
and sprayed gold. After the apple-
head dolls, oranges imbedded with
cloves in the closets, star cookies
shellacked and hanging in
constellations, I wanted
something more, something grander.
For weeks I wondered how to create
food that would last, until, pushing
a cart down the grocery aisle, I rolled
past a pyramid of cans. It was easy
after that: I made self-portraits
with cans and jars of vegetables,
fruit and legumes, huge sculptures
of tin, glass and bright labels.
Now every major museum in the country
has a “Self-Portrait with Cling Peaches,”
or “The Artist as the Queen of Peas.”
They’re launching a major retrospective,
accompanied by a short film of my
lecture on “Culinary Art.” And I
owe it all to my mother, who taught
me everything I know about food.

Nancy Kricorian

Originally published in MISSISSIPPI REVIEW, Spring 1991

I’ve been thinking of Leo Hamalian lately. Perhaps it’s because the tenth anniversary of his passing is approaching. Or maybe it’s because as the launch of my third novel nears, I’m remembering my earliest professional publications. Leo was a distinguished and prolific writer, educator and editor. He served as the editor of ARARAT Literary Quarterly from 1972 until 2003. In 2001, I was invited to join a roster of speakers, including Peter Balakian, Diana Der Hovanessian and Peter Sourian, at a celebration of Leo’s career. Below are the words I offered at the time.

~

This is the scene. As I was driving my father’s car up Lincoln Street in Watertown, I, Nancy Kricorian, waved hello to a little neighborhood boy and somehow ran into a parked car. The parked car, it turned out, belonged to Paul Moushigian, who had graduated high school two years ahead of me. When the police officer got out of his cruiser to fill out the accident report he and Paul shook hands. They knew each other. The cop’s name was Eddie Bakarian. It turned out that Eddie Bakarian had gone to high school with my father, Eddie Kricorian. It was an Armenian thing. We’d be able to work it out.

What you might ask, does this anecdote have to do with Leo Hamalian? There is a circuitous connection. Because I grew up in Watertown, Massachusetts in the Armenian community, I had learned from my father that when you needed anything—a fixture installed, a TV repaired, a summer job—you should contact an Armenian. Now, there were instances that this didn’t work out quite the way one hoped. There was the shady Armenian house painter that disappeared with all the money when only half the house had been painted, for example. But to counter this were dozens of happy stories, like the one involving the gracious Paul Moushigian and helpful Eddie Bakarian.

This is where we get to Leo Hamalian. When I was in the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia, I decided to start sending my poems to literary magazines. That was the way you launched a literary career as a poet. Following my father’s dictum, the first place I sent my poems was ARARAT Literary Quarterly. I thought, surely, the Armenian journal would take my somewhat Armenian-themed work.

What I didn’t think to know was that the Armenian-American editor at the Armenian-American journal had a calling and devotion much greater than simply being nice to people with –ian at the end of their names. His calling was to continue and to nurture the highest traditions of Armenian-American literature and culture, and his devotion was to the writers who came to him, often, as I did, little knowing what a huge impact his spirit and intelligence would have on us. He didn’t just publish Armenian-American writers; he grew them. For me, he did so many kind deeds that I am embarrassed to list them. But rather than get all sentimental, I’ll read from two other writers of my generation who have their own saccharine things to say about Leo.

This from Michael Zadoorian, whose fabulous novel SECOND HAND was published to critical acclaim by W.W. Norton: “Leo Hamalian was one of the first people to believe in me as a fiction writer. Even when he had to reject stories that I submitted to ARARAT, Leo always had something kind to say. The fact that Leo treated me like a professional writer helped me to believe it myself.”

And this from Chris Bohjalian, the best-selling author of such excellent novels as the Oprah-anointed MIDWIVES: “One thing I will cherish about Leo is his monumental generosity. There are few human beings on this planet not related to me by marriage or blood who are as relentlessly supportive and encouraging of my work as a writer—and in fact of so very, very many writers.”

Thank you, Leo, from me and from all the other writers whose talents you have cherished and nurtured not because we were neighborhood kids or vaguely your cousins, but because of your commitment to something greater—the collective work you inspired in us all.

Nancy Kricorian

Speech from A Festive Tribute to Leo Hamalian Upon His 30th Anniversary as Editor of ARARAT Literary Quarterly (Sunday, October 28, 2001)

In a used bookstore in Manhattan many years ago, I found a copy of Maria A. West’s 1875 memoir The Romance of Missions: Inside Views of Life and Labor in the Land of Ararat. Maria West was a New England missionary who had gone to the Ottoman Empire to convert the Armenians from their national church to her brand of Protestantism. On page 22 of this book, I came across a reference to an Armenian custom that I had never heard of before. West explained, “When the sons marry, they bring their wives home, and the mother-in-law generally rules them with a rod of iron. They are not allowed to speak in her presence till she grants permission, which is sometimes delayed for many years! In some cases, the mother-in-law dies before lifting the heavy yoke of imposed silence.”

My friend Patricia Constantinian-Voskeridjian did her master’s thesis in anthropology and Armenian Studies at Columbia on the topic of this practice, known as moonch genal (to stay or to stand mute). In some families, the mother-in-law granted permission within weeks or days, and in others, the bride labored in silence for many years. In some regions, the silence was accompanied by a mouth wrap that covered the bottom half of the young woman’s face as an outward indication of her bound speech. In some villages, it was the birth of a son that would win the bride—for the daughter-in-law was called a bride for long after she was married—the right to address her in-laws.

I was fascinated by this old world practice, which had long been in disuse when my French-Canadian mother came to live in her Armenian mother-in-law’s house. But my mother told me a story about how, not long after she and my father had married, my mother had offered her mother-in-law a bit of housekeeping advice. My grandmother had replied indignantly, “What? Should the baby bird now teach the mother bird to fly?” In that response I could hear the echoes of this old country custom. Some months later, I wrote a poem in the voice of a silenced bride.

*

The Bride Has Lost Her Tongue

There sits her mother-in-law, and, according to our custom, she cannot speak in her presence.

~  The Romance of Missions, or Life and Labor in the Land of Ararat (1875)

The day I left my mother’s house
I said, “Break my bowl and
throw it in the garden. Forget
the sound of my voice.”

At night when my husband sleeps,
I whisper words I have wanted
To say during the day into the
wooden box I keep by the bed.

Under the carved roses of its lid
are insults for my mother-in-law,
the aproned witch who keeps me
in silence. When she told me

to fetch some wood, I said nothing.
I said nothing when she commanded
that I comb out her hair. Then
the words began to seep through

the house like the smell of
a dead thing behind the wall.
She says, “Shut the door,” and
I hear, “Shut it yourself, you

braying ass,” as I set the latch.
When I shake out the blankets,
insults and hair balls cloud the air.
The broom mutters my curses.

With a son, I will earn my
speech. Someday his wife
like a servant will serve me—
in sweet, melodious silence.

Nancy Kricorian

originally published in RAFT, 1996

When I was in third grade our new teacher was different from any teacher we had ever seen at the Hosmer Elementary School in Watertown. Mrs. DeVoe was young and beautiful, with shoulder-length blond hair that flipped up at its ends. She wore mini-dresses with leather boots, and some days after school her handsome husband picked her up in a red sports car with a convertible top.

Each morning we started the day standing in a circle, holding hands and reciting proverbs. Things such as, “A stitch in time saves nine,” “When the cat’s away the mice will play,” and “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

I loved this activity and tried to find unusual sayings to share. I was particularly proud to offer this one: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Most of the other children didn’t know what a gander was.

We never discussed what a proverb was or why this might be a good way to start each morning. We rarely talked about their meanings. But the ritual provided a connection to communal wisdom. There was also something solemn and vaguely religious in it, although God was never mentioned.

A few years later I made a list of synonyms for proverb: adage, aphorism, axiom, dictum, maxim, and saw. Saw was the best one because it was a simple word with an esoteric meaning. There was another synonym—platitude—hinting at the fact that while proverbs might convey moral lessons and general truths, they could also be truisms that should be questioned.

At home we had other sayings. My mother’s favorites were, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” “If you want something done well, you have to do it yourself,” and “There’s no such thing as an ugly baby.” My grandmother instructed, “Shut the light. Edison is richer than me” so frequently that it became a family mantra. My father was known to say, “That’s about as funny as a submarine with screen doors.” And he frequently quoted my Armenian grandfather’s motto: “I’m not a miser, I’m an economizer.”

This last was said in English, but it follows a pattern and rhyming structure that is common to Armenian proverbs as I later learned from studying them. Over a decade ago, I purchased a copy of Dora Sakayan’s Armenian Proverbs: A Paremiological Study with an Anthology of 2,500 Armenian Folk Sayings Selected and Translated into English, and it has been a source of endless interest and delight. I have since then sought out other sources—a 1932 bilingual anthology by an Armenian priest in Venice, short sections in books about Armenian folk tales and village lore, and of late many online compilations. My rudimentary Armenian language skills are good enough that I can read the original and compare different English translations. With the help of a dictionary I can even do my own.

I used Armenian proverbs as chapter headings in my second novel. I made lists of proverbs to deploy as I was creating a character in my third novel—Garabed Pegorian, a Genocide survivor, cobbler and father who makes sardonic comments about the Nazi Occupation his family suffers through in Paris. I’ve taken to posting Armenian proverbs on my Facebook author page and to Twitter, where they generate much response.

Here are some of my favorites:

You cannot erase what is written on your forehead.

The hungry dream of bread, the thirsty of water. 

A lost rope is always long.

Be neither sweet and swallowed, nor sour and spurned.

Toss your good deeds into the sea and the waves will carry them back to you.

The fool’s tongue is always long.

Literacy is a golden bracelet.

The lid rolled and found its pot.

From heart to heart there is a path. 

A mother-in-law should be blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.

Walk with the devil, but don’t let go of his tail.

In a foreign place, the exile has no face.

Land of Armenians, land of orphans.

Land of Armenians, land of sorrow.

Heaven and hell are in this world.

If they send two baskets of shit to our city, one will come to our house.

It’s better to carry stones with a wise man than to eat pilaf with a fool.

It’s better to go into captivity with the whole village than to go to a wedding alone.

The person who looks for a friend without faults will remain friendless.

Grief for the loss of a child is a burning shirt.

Let’s sit crooked and talk straight.

Let it be one and fine.

What does the donkey know of the almond?

If you buy a donkey for the price of a cucumber, one day you will find it drowned.

I have a few ideas about what this last one means, but I’ll leave that to the reader’s interpretation.

Nancy Kricorian