Cher in Armenia, 1993

[wh00t]

Title: UP FRONT: IN A BROKEN LAND Her life as a star on hold, a somber Cher goes to the aid of her troubled ancestral homeland, Armenia

Date: 05/17/1993

Publication: People

Author: Reported by SUSAN CHEEVER

 

I DON'T KNOW WHY I CAME HERE,'' says Cher. It is a late April afternoon, and she is standing before a group of 1,000 students at Yerevan University, deep in the ravaged heart of the former Soviet republic of Armenia. No one in the unheated, dank assembly hall seems to know why she is there either. They remember Cher from the not so long ago days when they had television and batteries a... (400 of 11006 Characters)

 

---

 

Who wants to sign up for the free 7 day trial and post the article here?

Link: http://tinyurl.com/4wi3

[wh00t]

No Stormy, never had one. I was hoping someone with a credit card would go and sign up for the free trial (no fees as long as they cancel within 7 days) so that we could all see the article.

[Armine373]

I think I read that article before..She talks about how "Armenian" she felt when she went to the Armenian churches, and that's all I can remember, but I do remember that it was a REALLY REALLY good article, so someone please subscribe so we can read it I'm underage to have a credit card.

[Stormig]

Your membership expired?

[wh00t]

That's it, I'm going into the psychic business. Some members here know what I'm talking about.

 

Arpa, care to provide us with a scan?

Will someone just get this article for us??

[Arpa]

I remembered after I posted to add that, yes I do have a scanner but after I deinstalled it I never reinstalled it into my new CPU. Being the klutz that I am it will probably take me forever, if at all. Two suggestions, 1. One may find the article, at any reputable library, I gave the date (People, 5/15/93)or, 2. If anybody wants to scan I'll be glad to send a copy. Send me a PM and give me you address.

Oh, BTW I did say that there several BW pictues as well.

[Arpa]

This is not only eerie it is also scary.

Only a few days ago we were talking about the Big Fat Wedding and I mentioned tne fact that Cher was also Armenian like Andrea Martin. Of course my frienddid not know that, neither did she know that Mike Connors' real name is Grigor Ohanian. Then I remebered that I had clipped aricle about Cher. Sure enough, I found it, it was in the People Magazine, 5/17/93 issue, by Susan Cheever, photos by Taro Yamasaki. Here is an excerpt.

"To understand why Cher undertook this journey, it helps to remember that behind the leather and lace costumes and the club scene poses, she is still Cherilynn Sarkissian..."

[khodja]

You folks do not understand "Hollywood." The celluloid reality is different than what these folks are in their real lives. Do any of you interact with these folks on a daily basis? I did and realize that their business persona is different than their real persona. Similar to politicians.

 

As for Cher, she had an on/off relationship with her father John Sarkissian, but she must have interacted with her grandparents, who were farmers in Fresno, her aunts uncles and cousins. There are so many of us like her at the fringes of the Armenian community. But our leaders set up so many litmus tests as to what you must be to be considered a true Armenian.

[Stormig]

Well? Any progress? Hm?

[hyebruin]

Hagarag

I'm not understanding what it is you are trying to say??? Would you please elaborate, so I understand where you're coming from and what you mean by being "on the fringes" of the armenian community? I'd really like to know!

[khodja]

Hyebruin,

 

Go ask any Armenian cleric how many of his former parishoners are no longer are seen at the church. Ask him how many have married odars who have been made to feel unwelcome at Armenian affairs. After being treated unworthy by a prominent young Armenian to date any of his sisters, he later condemned me in front of the whole church assembly for bringing an Odar grilfriend to a church affair. It seems that this odar (former model) made his sisters feel uncomfortable.

 

Further, the two little words "amot eh" have done more harm to Armenian unity than all the Turkish propaganda.

[Tina Marie]

Unfortunately I have to disagree with you. I am bi-racial. Native American and Armenian, as a matter of fact the exact combination as cher, except reversed. ( my mom is armenian ) and I grew up with both cultures having a stong presence in my life. I went to armenian school from pre-k until graduation. I've been active in the armenian community, and all other communities as well. It's all in you, and your own delivery as an armenian. If you are confident with who you are, and can bring to the table an irresistable quality then the armenian community will embrace you with open arms. Unfortunately, the armenian community is also an old heritage, with many old values, and you will always run into those people who will always view certain things as 'amot'. But then there are those who are evolutionizing our ways by just being who they are.

[Azat]

Tina welcom to our forum.

[khodja]

Tina FCC,

 

Do you know that there are full-blooded Armenians who are shunned by the Armenian community? You need not be of an alternative sexuality or a indicted criminal, for this to occur. Just being a real American will do. That is why Cher is not considered an Armenian by many Armenians. There are litmus tests. You probably have many Armenian traits passed down from your mother. My mother mingled with many prominent Herias in her work and was influenced by them, so she was somewhat Judified.

 

What is peculiar is that each group of Armenians has it's own litmus tests. As an America-Hye with roots in Turkey, I have the most problems with the Araba-Hyes. Get along great with the Yeghyptotzis. OK with the Barskahyes. Not so good with the Russahyes. Why I married a Libana-Hye, I do not know. Perhaps men's minds sit between their legs.

[hyebruin]

Originally posted by TinaFCC:

[QB] I just wonder why, I.. as a half armenian did not receive that kind of negative credit. Maybe it's because of what I represent? maybe it's because of my confidence in my own beliefs? Maybe I bring to the table something armenians can't resist? ... I tell the people who don't know about our culture more about us. Isn't that what we're suppose to do? MAybe that's why I haven't been shunned away...

 

Hi there:)

I like where you stand with your identity and sharing your culture with others ~~~just because someone's a full-blooded armenian doesn't mean that they're a 'true-armenian'...some have forgotten or choose to forget important cultural and historical aspects of the armenian community... those who care more about being politically/socially correct and seek to 'please everybody'...I don't even bother with this type, because in the end you don't even know where they stand!...they don't really count, sadly...but! I get humbled by those who strive and struggle to learn the language and immerse themselves into the armenian culture...now, that's honorable!

[Tina Marie]

Here's the full article.

 

I DON'T KNOW WHY I CAME HERE,'' says Cher. It is a late April

afternoon, and she is standing before a group of 1,000 students at

Yerevan University, deep in the ravaged heart of the former Soviet

republic of Armenia. No one in the unheated, dank assembly hall seems

to know why she is there either. They remember Cher from the not so

long ago days when they had television and batteries and something

other than candles by which to read the newspapers at night. And so

to them she is an intriguing apparition, a sudden shaft of light

slanting in from the West, even if her message is not full of hope.

''Most Americans have no idea you are here,'' she tells them, in

her characteristic let's-cut-the-b.s. fashion. Now, suddenly, she

seems to grasp her mission. ''The most important thing I can do,''

 

she continues, ''is take a picture back to America so they can see

what it's like.''

For three days, Cher, 46, traveled through Armenia, collecting

--

and generating -- such images of a country and a people who have

fallen through the crack of consciousness between Bosnia and Somalia.

She arrived in Yerevan -- once a prosperous capital city and now a

ragged shadow of its former self -- on a sunny, 50 degreesF

Wednesday. She had departed her home in Santa Monica several days

earlier, paid a visit to her 17-year-old son, Elijah Blue Allman,

at

his New England prep school, stopped briefly in London, then flown

to

Armenia under the auspices of the United Armenian Fund, a nonprofit

relief organization, on a rickety DC-8 cargo plane. With her came

45

tons of medical supplies, books, printing equipment, candy and toys

-- including Glitter Beach Barbie dolls. Then, at the airport, she

and her companions -- including her old pal and assistant Paulette

Betts and true love turned best friend Rob Camilletti, 28 -- boarded

an ancient bus crammed with an international group of reporters and

photographers who had vied for the chance to join her. ''I want to

bring a face to the name Armenian,'' she had said. Her itinerary

included an orphanage, a typical Armenian household and -- because

she is, after all, Cher -- a brief stop for Diet Pepsi with the

president of the country, Levon Ter-Petrosyan.

To understand why Cher undertook this journey, it helps to

remember that behind the leather and lace costumes and the club-scene

poses, she is still Cherilyn Sarkisian, the only black-haired

member in a family of Southern California blonds. Cher, who grew up

with one half sister, is the daughter of a mother, Georgia, with

Irish, English, German and Cherokee bloodlines, and a father, John,

 

whose parents left Armenia after an ethnic-cleansing campaign

conducted by the Ottoman Turks in which an estimated 1 million

perished. Her parents divorced when Cher was 14 months old, and she

enjoyed meaningful contact with her father for only a few months when

she was 11 and Georgia and John briefly reconciled. Although her

relationship with her father, who died in 1985, was volatile, and

the

two seldom spoke, Cher will always remember that first sight of his

dark eyes. ''I just looked at him,'' she recalls. ''Until then, I

didn't know there was such a thing as an Armenian.''

In 1993 there is barely such a place as Armenia. The country of

3.7 million -- shattered by a 1988 earthquake, economically ruined

by

the disintegration of the Soviet Union and locked in an unwinnable

war with neighboring Azerbaijan, which has blockaded most of its

borders -- is so staggeringly dysfunctional that it could rouse

maternal instincts in a stone. Unemployment brushes 85 percent in

the

cities, electrical power is sporadic, and a pound of beef costs 1,

000

rubles -- for most people, two week's pay. Scattered along the route

that Cher's bus traveled were the weirdly uniform stumps of trees

that had been cut down for firewood during the long winter.

So why plunk herself down amid the misery? Cher says that at this

point in her life she actually feels herself drawn to such grinding

need and utter turmoil. One reason is that her family

responsibilities are lighter these days. Elijah (her son by second

husband Gregg Allman) is off at private school. And her daughter (by

first husband Sonny Bono), Chastity, 24, is pursuing a rock career

with a band called Ceremony. ''I was living a life of seclusion --

 

and it wasn't working,'' Cher says. Later she adds, ''If you want

to

represent people as an artist, you've got to live your life with your

ear to the ground, to be disturbed and restless.''

During the last few months, Cher has been shaking up her world.

She has put all of her real estate holdings -- a house and 1.3-acre

spread in Malibu, and another house on 7-plus acres in Aspen -- on

the market. She has stepped up her contributions of time and money

to

the Children's Craniofacial Association, a group she learned about

while making the 1985 movie Mask, in ( which she played the mother

of

a teenage boy with a severe facial deformity. And though she hasn'

t

made any definite plans to pull out of the infotainment business,

her

days of huckstering hair and skin products on late-night TV appear

to

be numbered.

''I think I kind of lost my way,'' she said one night in Armenia,

 

speaking from the darkness of a hotel room that would have to wait

another day for its allotted hour or so of daily electricity. ''I'

ve

sold my soul in a way. What I've done is nothing to be ashamed of,

 

but I just don't want to be a businesswoman who does infomercials

anymore. It doesn't feel good.''

It's strange what does. During her brief but emotionally charged

tour of Armenia, Cher did her makeup by the light of a sputtering

candle, hid her unwashed bangs under a velvet cap and a striped

headscarf, huddled for warmth each night under ratty blankets -- then

woke up refreshed and ready for more.

Each day in that land of poverty and chaos brought serendipitous

surprises. For example, Cher probably never thought she would want

to

see the inside of an orphanage again. She had spent some six months

in one when she was about 2 and her mother, a single parent, was too

sick to take care of her. But Cher's visit to the warm but shabby

Mangadoon home near Yerevan brought smiles instead of traumatic

memories. Cher sat cross-legged on the floor in her leather overalls

while two dozen children of preschool age recited the Lord's Prayer

for her and sang the Armenian national anthem. She rewarded each

child with a hug and a Barbie, a gift that left many of the Mangadoon

residents, who had never had a new toy before, speechless. ''I always

hated you, Barbie,'' Cher said to one of the dolls. ''I always

thought you were a blond bimbo, but now I see that you have your

uses.''

The woman who headed the supposedly typical Armenian household

that Cher visited on her second day in the country was anything but

speechless. ''I hope this is the worst of times,'' Alvard Keropian,

a

woman in her mid-40s, said to her celebrity visitor. Ensconced on

the

sixth floor of a concrete apartment block atop a hill in Yerevan,

Alvard and her husband are raising five children on a diet of little

more than rice, potatoes and powdered milk. Against a backdrop of

dozens of books -- which, along with brandy glasses, coffee cups and

a few sticks of furniture, seem to be the family's only possessions

-- she chatted with Cher, mom to mom, about the difficulties, and

occasional joys, of having a teenager. ''My son is doing so well

at

mathematics,'' she said, ''that someday you, Cher, will be proud to

say that you have met Vahan Keropian.'' The boy, standing nearby,

emitted a strangled noise -- the international signal for adolescent

embarrassment.

The next day, Cher visited another household a few miles away and

encountered yet a deeper level of need. Christina Agabekov, who lives

with her parents and year-old sister, has been partially paralyzed

since birth from cerebral spastia. Although she is only 3, she knows

who Cher is because her mother, Nelli, reached the movie star eight

months ago with a letter that she had entrusted to a friend who was

immigrating to the U.S. and who found an address for Cher through

a

charitable organization in New York City. What the mother wanted was

help in getting Christina to America, where her condition could be

better diagnosed and treated. ''It's a miracle that letter got to

me,'' Cher says. But the family thinks it's an even bigger miracle

that Cher not only wrote back, offering to bring Christina to the

U.S., but showed up to sit in the parlor and confirm the

arrangements. The child and her mother will be going to a hospital

in

Los Angeles some time this month. ''Unbelievable!'' said Christina'

s

Aunt Irina, who traveled about 400 miles from Uzbekistan to be with

the child and witness the celebrity visit. ''Yeah,'' said Cher, with

her patented deadpan. ''This is kind of the Armenian version of Guess

Who's Coming to Dinner.''

On her final day in the country, Cher took a short trip through

Yerevan to pay a 30-minute call on President Ter-Petrosyan. They

discussed a book Cher had read recently, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,

 

about noble Armenians who fought the Turks. Then Cher went with her

group to visit Echmiadzin, the headquarters of the Armenian Orthodox

Church and Seminary built amid a peaceful setting of trees and

gardens in the year A.D. 301. She took in the ancient archways and

the painted and inlaid altar, then paused before a heavy jeweled

crucifix as black-hooded priests chanted the morning Eucharist. After

lingering over the tapestries, paintings and manuscripts in the

seminary's museum, she wrote in the guest book that ''visiting this

place has been one of the most thrilling moments of my life.''

Outside, the sound of hammering drew her toward a cave in the

ancient wall where a stonecutter was at work on an ornate cross made

from the crumbly pink tufa that is Armenia's native stone. She

clambered down into the cryptlike , space and asked for instruction.

Guided by the stonecutter, Max Chazarian, she helped etch an

elaborate chain design into the soft rock that will eventually be

installed in front of the seminary.

As Cher hammered at the stone, intent on her work, pink tufa dust

rained down on her black clothes. She couldn't have cared less.

Malibu and Aspen seemed far, far away. ''I could have stayed there

for days,'' she said later, shortly before getting on the plane to

head home. ''I met a man, and he taught me to carve on stone. At that

moment I began to feel Armenian.''

[Azat]

Thank you Tina.

[wh00t]

At long last! Thank you Tina.

The reluctance of everybody to sign up for the free trial and post this article has been surprising and disheartening.

[Tina Marie]

First, Thank you Azat for the welcome!

Second, what ever strong culture you encounter such as ours you will always find people who 'shun' away someone they consider a stereotype. I just wonder why, I.. as a half armenian did not receive that kind of negative credit. Maybe it's because of what I represent? maybe it's because of my confidence in my own beliefs? Maybe I bring to the table something armenians can't resist? I work in a very american melting pot environment. A place where most armenians would consider 'black sheepish'. But I also use that to my advantage. I spread the word of what's going on in our culture, what's been misrepresented. I tell the people who don't know about our culture more about us. Isn't that what we're suppose to do? MAybe that's why I haven't been shunned away... I am a strong armenian, and I am also a strong native american. I am very very proud of who I am, and if anyone has a problem with that then they can speak with me directly. If they can't do that, then they're not worthy of my opinion anyway. Be strong in who you are, and look to the good. It dosn't take intelligence or effort to find the bad.

[hyebruin]

How come you didn't?

[khodja]

I am totally immersed in the learning of Armenain culture and history. I am one of few Armenian-Americans of my generation who speak Armenian, have visited Armenia and have over 200 books on Armenia and Armenians in my personal library. So it is not lack of interest that has created me. What I reject is the "de righeur" mentality of the community, engendered by centuries of foreign rule, where new approaches are immediately rejected as alien. Baliozian is my guru.

[Tina Marie]

Where new approaches are regarded as alien? I think it's just a transition. Don't you agree? From the old to the new, from the foreign to the known, from the comfortable to the uncomfortable? Many armenians are leaving their comfort zones, their habitats and growing new skin. It's a hard thing to do and to hold on to your culture at the same time. I applaud our culture on it's efforts. And with this new generation I see, I see it's been paying off. They hold true to their roots without even realizing they are doing it, and blend in with society, AND... take it by storm. The armenians, 'the quiet storm'. Now.. if we can only get the US to get Turkey to ackowledge what happened less than a century ago...

[Arevik]

Oh, Tina, you're great!!! An absolute treasure! Thanks for posting the article. By the way, someone said, there were pictures with it. Anyone got them, by some chance?

[lady of grace]

hagarag.

What I reject is the "de righeur" mentality of the community, engendered by centuries of foreign rule, where new approaches are immediately rejected as alien. Baliozian is my guru

 

hagarag? Are the bolded words above Turkish? IF so what do they mean? Honestly no sarcasm or criticism, just curiosity. I myself know little bit of the language, but can't figure what you mean.

I know one thing, if everyone could view things globally, there won’t be criticism or anger, just opinions and opinions are always welcome..

[khodja]

Lady of Grace,

 

Here it is from Funk & Wagnalls English Dictionary:

 

GURU: noun (Hindi), 1. In Hinduism, a spiritual teacher or guide. 2. Anyone claiming to impart special knowledge, power, etc.

 

DE RIGUEUR: (French), Necessary according to rules or custom.