My father’s visit to the barber in Yerevan

Like so many Armenians who moved from Syria to Armenia, Hagop was a millionaire before destiny decided that he would cut men’s hair for a living in the suburbs of Yerevan. Before the war, he had never been to Armenia. Life in the Levant on the shores of the Mediterranean was too good, and a $300 plane ride to the homeland seemed like an unnecessary expense. However, as is axiomatic of life, misfortune eventually struck, and an ironic, cruel world forced Hagop to make his one-way journey to Armenia. He arrived not as a millionaire, but as a poor man who would perhaps forever be despondent as he reminisced about his glorious past.

Yet Hagop, like many Syrian Armenians, was remarkably resilient. Although Armenia, the homeland, was still foreign to him, at 40 years old he did what he could to survive. He quickly relearned an old skill of cutting men’s hair. After mastering a few types of haircuts, he opened a modest barber shop in one of the many narrow allies of the city. He wasn’t particularly skilled, but he knew enough to lure in older men who couldn’t care less about what type of haircut they got. For some locals, Hagop’s broken Eastern Armenian was all they needed to hear to trust him. For them, Hagop was from abroad; hence, he was dependable. One of our nation’s enduring defects is trusting in everything that is from abroad.