Your Namak for Monday, March 13
Video confirms Azerbaijani ambush of Armenian policemen in Nagorno-Karabakh, U.S. Ambassador to Armenia visits Lachin Corridor, and Azerbaijani military opens fire on Armenian posts in Gegharkunik.
Hi there, here’s your weekly briefing of Armenian news in English, curated, reported and fact-checked by journalists Astrig Agopian and Maral Tavitian.
Azerbaijani Soldiers Planned Ambush of Armenian Policemen in Nagorno-Karabakh, New Video Footage Confirms
Video footage obtained by the Human Rights Defender of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) has confirmed that Azerbaijani soldiers killed three Armenian policemen in a targeted ambush last week. On March 5, Azerbaijani servicemen attacked an Armenian police van traveling from Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional capital of Stepanakert to the village of Lisagor. According to the Human Rights Defender’s closed report shared with journalists, the police van stopped because of stones obstructing the road, after which five Azerbaijanis approached and immediately opened fire.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense asserted that Azerbaijani soldiers tried to stop and check the vehicle, and acted in self-defense after being shot at. The newly acquired video and photo evidence defeats that claim. According to the November 9, 2020 trilateral agreement that ended the 44-Day Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijani soldiers do not have the authority to stop and inspect Armenian vehicles.
U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Visits Lachin Corridor
On March 10, as part of a tour of the Syunik and Vayots Dzor regions of Armenia, U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Kristina Kvien visited the entrance to the Lachin Corridor. The only route linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh has been closed for more than three months as part of Azerbaijan’s blockade of the region. In a statement, Kvien’s office said Syunik Governor Robert Ghukasyan briefed the ambassador on the effects of the blockade, including “the impact on hundreds of separated families.” Kvien reiterated that the road should be opened immediately.
Azerbaijani Military Opens Fire on Armenian Posts in Gegharkunik
On March 9, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces opened fire on Armenian positions in the Verin Shorzha village of Gegharkunik region. While no casualties were reported, residents living along Armenia’s eastern border have repeatedly come under fire since the end of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Most recently, the unprecedented offensive launched by Azerbaijan against sovereign Armenia in September displaced thousands of civilians and heightened widespread insecurity about the sustainability of life in Armenia’s border regions.
Aram Mrjoian: Meet an Armenian-American writer and editor fostering a new generation of Armenian literary voices
“We’re always educating. We’re always contextualizing. We’re always trying to inform people about this history that has been revised and erased and continues to be revised and erased. And sometimes we should be able to go outside of that.”
Every writer remembers their first feedback session –– when they presented publicly what until then had been a mostly private exercise. For Aram Mrjoian, that experience came while pursuing his Master of Fine Arts at Northwestern University, where he submitted his first short story in a fiction writing workshop.
“It was truthfully a disaster. It was an absolute mess,” Aram recalls with a laugh. “I sat there in silence and just heard everything I had written kind of get politely torn apart.”
That classroom critique was a formative moment for the 33-year-old writer and editor, who has since published a prolific body of work spanning topics including the climate crisis, aging and intergenerational trauma.
“There were issues with tense. There were issues with point of view. I didn’t know how to put things in scene. There was a lack of character development,” Aram says. “I had never thought about writing in that way, in terms of all these hyper-intellectual elements, in terms of craft.”
Although graduate school might have prompted Aram to think critically about writing for the first time, his appreciation for the art form emerged much earlier.
“I’ve always loved books and reading. Part of that was instilled by my parents,” Aram says. “It was the one thing I was allowed to stay up and do.”
Thoughtful and easy to talk with, Aram was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan to a Polish mother and an Armenian father. His great grandparents arrived in Detroit after fleeing the Armenian Genocide, part of the first wave of survivors to join what would become a significant Armenian diaspora community in the automobile manufacturing capital.
Growing up in a Midwestern college town, Aram says he felt removed from his Armenian heritage. He did not speak the language nor possess many connections to the culture. But Aram’s parents did give him one important identifier that would provide a gateway to cultural exploration: his name.
In Movses Khorenatsi’s legendary tome, The History of Armenia, Aram is one of the Haykid kings, whose name is believed to have inspired that of the nation. Yet for many of the children Aram grew up with, his name’s most distinctive quality was its difficult pronunciation.
“People were constantly mispronouncing my name when I was young. There was always that sense of feeling a little bit different,” Aram says. “At some point you get curious about where your name comes from, what is this family history that has not been super talked about, that we don’t have a great record of.”
As he entered his teenage years, the shadow of his family history became impossible for Aram to ignore, and he approached his parents with questions.
“My grandpa gave my dad this folder full of newspaper articles about the genocide that he had collected over time. On the front of it, it just says ‘Never forget. Never forget,’” Aram says.
Aram was 12 years old when his parents gave him Black Dog of Fate, the award-winning memoir by Peter Balakian, who chronicles the horrors of the Armenian Genocide through the lens of his journey to discover his past. Aram resonated deeply with Balakian’s personal account, which would set the stage for the young writer’s exploration of his own diasporic identity.
“Peter Balakian talks a lot about having a similar experience of never really hearing about the genocide growing up until he got a little bit older and having to go out and learn a lot of that family information on his own and ask a lot of questions. And then writing about those findings,” Aram says. “That just felt so similar to my experience at the time.”
Determined to explore his ancestors’ past and keep on writing, Aram graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and from Northwestern with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. In 2021, he completed his Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Florida State University.
Throughout his studies, Aram honed his skills in storytelling and composition, and eventually transformed from pupil to professor, writer to editor. Which is how he arrived at his latest project: We Are All Armenian, a collection of 18 deeply personal essays about the diaspora Armenian experience. In going beyond genocide narratives and highlighting the voices of diverse authors, including mixed race and queer Armenians, the anthology defies traditional notions of what Armenian literature can be.
“We’re always educating. We’re always contextualizing. We’re always trying to inform people about this history that has been revised and erased and continues to be revised and erased. And sometimes we should be able to go outside of that,” Aram says. “For me as an editor, a big part of it was saying that this project is going to be different.”
Aram has been overjoyed by the early response to the book, which is already on its second printing after pre-orders sold out. He hopes that the stories can be an entrée for outsiders to learn about the Armenian experience, and also an educational tool within the community itself.
“Intersectionality and inclusivity are very important to me,” Aram says. “Being able to embrace the wide-ranging multiplicity of how we experience identity is very important to me.”
In addition to his personal writing and editing projects, Aram serves as Editor-at-Large at the Chicago Review of Books and Associate Fiction Editor at the global arts and politics magazine Guernica. Through his work, he seeks to foster a new crop of Armenian literary voices and share contemporary Armenian stories with the world.
To read: How a comedian and a chef turned Armenian-Mexican food into a funny, viral pairing, a Los Angeles Times feature about how childhood friends comedian Jack Assadourian Jr. and chef Ara Zada fused culture and cuisine to create a hit video series.
To listen: Armenian-ness and Solidarity in a Changing World, an episode of The Fire These Times podcast hosted by writer Joey Ayoub, featuring an in-depth discussion about the layers of Armenian racial identity, erasure of indigenous voices and intersectional solidarity.
To admire: Gandzasar at Highland, a collection of screen printed works by artist Mike Nesbit, inspired by the 13th century Gandzasar Monastery in Nagorno-Karabakh. On display in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, the exhibition may be viewed through private appointment with the artist.
That’s it for today, see you next week!
Questions? Story ideas? An urge to say barev/parev? You can send us a secure email at namaknews@protonmail.com.