Home is a concept many of us take for granted. When we have free time, when the holidays come, home is often the first place we go. For many of us, how our roots took hold and grew from our very beginnings defines who we are, and in turn, how we go about living our lives. For some of us, the question of home becomes much more complex and in the ever-shifting, porous and migratory atmosphere of our New World, the definition of home itself may be changing. Lara Matossian-Roberts takes RELATIVTY OnLine inside the tragic beauty of belonging everywhere and nowhere, and how it forever changes those living within such a social construct.  

At a bus stop, where my husband and I waited for a bus to take us from rural Sagadi in Lahemaa National Park in north Estonia to its capital city Tallinn, we met an Italian. On hearing that we reside in Dubai, he smiled, shook his head slowly and said, “Ah, like living in a plastic bubble.”

We smiled and said, “Oh, so you know about Dubai?”

“Yes, from the news on TV and in the paper,” he answered.

I remember back in 1990, when my family and I first went to the U.S. to visit my grandmother, aunt, uncles and cousins, along with people in general had no idea where Dubai was. When we pointed out it was in the Middle East, that it was a Gulf country, the classic question was, “Oh, so do you ride camels and live in tents?” 

I am serious.  So were they.

Dubai, the little big city in the UAE, was where I was conceived and has been my home since I was three months old.  It’s my home because I’ve seen it grow – at a slow, steady pace in the first couple of decades of my life, then in an explosive, frenetic way following my graduation from university.  It also feels like home because I can say what building, establishment or hotel used to stand where there is something more recent now.  I can understand the language, although the Emirati dialect itself can be a little tricky for me. Emiratis have their own vocabulary and their gulf pronunciation is unlike my Lebanese one.

I am, to a certain extent, familiar with the Emirati customs and traditions.  I don’t find the ladies’ shela (the black scarf that covers their head) and abaya (the thin, black, dress-like garment they wear over their clothes) or men’s kandoras (white, long, dress-like tunic) and headgear odd.  I grew up seeing it.

I also grew up with children who’d come from many other parts of the world, so, I had the fortune of becoming familiar with, not just the culture of the Emiratis, but also that of the other ethnic groups, who like me, were at home in Dubai.  Yet many of those children actually went ‘home’ for the summer to India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, or Jordan because they had an actual, physical home they could go back to. . . whereas we didn’t. 

My father had some family left in Iran, although almost all of them are now seeking freedom from the regime the Islamic Revolution brought to its people. Many have ended up in some country in the West, so, over the course of our childhood, we’d visited less than a handful of times.  We certainly didn’t have a home there and never intended to make one.  Even my father hasn’t lived in Iran since he was 14 years old.  So, although I’m an Iranian passport holder, it was never a case of ‘going home’ to Iran to spend the summer vacation.

The same is true of Lebanon.  The war in Lebanon prompted most of my mother’s family to flee, but once it stopped, we went to visit – once.  I also went to university there.  So, although my mother’s an Armenian from Lebanon, and although my years at university there place Lebanon in a very special place within me, I really cannot call it home. It was never even considered a place to spend our summer vacation, until the war stopped.

I am familiar with many aspects of Iranian culture.  I can recognize Farsi, maybe understand a word here or there.  I know some of the more traditional dishes and can even make them myself.  I know a little about what the music sounds like.  I know about some of its festivities and celebrations and can recognize Iranian traditional art, but feel completely and utterly disconnected from Iran itself.  There is no way Iran and home can be associated with one another.

It is, unfortunately true with Lebanon as well.  When I speak Arabic, I sound Lebanese.  I can dress up to look exactly like the stereotypical Lebanese (always dressed to the nines).  I cook Lebanese food regularly.  I am very familiar with its traditional and pop music and I certainly feel more connected to Lebanese culture than I will ever feel to Iranian culture – a whole lot more, actually.  However, I can never refer to Lebanon as home, as much as I would like to.

The sorest point: Armenia.  I am Armenian.  That’s my ethnicity.  I speak Armenian at home, yet I can read and write it only as an elementary student – although my mother never stopped trying to teach me and my brother at home.  My parents even put us in Armenian school.  It was held once a week – on the weekends – on the grounds of the church, for only a few hours.  My brother and I hated it!  We couldn’t get along with the other Armenian students and we found the entire thing rather tedious.  We only went for a year, at the end of which my parents pulled us out following our incessant complaints. 

Sad, isn’t it?  Even now, I don’t seek out other Armenians from the community in Dubai, or have the slightest desire to make friendships with them.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite: I have actively cut myself off the community.  Growing up in Dubai, we would go to Armenian Church quite regularly, and not just for Christmas and Easter mass.  We would go to all the celebrations the community organized for Christmas, New Year and Easter and never missed the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide on April 24^th.  But, now, as an adult, many aspects of this community put me off and I don’t want any association with it.  I did, however, make some good Armenian friends when I was studying at university, and am still in touch with a few of them.  Having said that, I wouldn’t – and I don’t – feel at home in the company of Armenians from the community in Dubai.

And Armenia itself?  Well, we’ve never been.  It’s a foreign country to me.  I only cook a little of proper Armenian food, as opposed to Turkish Armenian food, because I learnt to from a cookbook.  My mother’s Armenian cooking is basically Turkish Armenian, which is what she learnt from her mother who grew up in Armenian provinces in Turkey.  Proper Armenian cooking is more influenced by Russian cuisine.  As for other aspects of Armenian culture, I don’t follow its day-to-day news, although now, with the Internet, it is easy and accessible.  Sure, I know a lot of its traditional and folk music and some about the authors of classical literature, but I don’t know anything about the current pop scene or its contemporary authors, artists, dancers, musicians, or geography. I wouldn’t be able to name a single street in its capital of Yeravan.  I would stick out like a sore thumb in Armenia, especially because I speak the Western Armenian spoken by Turkish-Lebanese Armenians.  I would be considered, a tourist, a foreigner – in the only country that I feel I should belong, but know I never will.

So, I’ve come back, full circle, to Dubai; the place foreigners see as the land in the plastic bubble that has a ski slope in the desert and man-made islands.  It’s the only place that comes close to what I can hope to call home, but I can never be its citizen and, although I’ve lived there all my life, all I have is a resident visa that expires if I leave the country for more than six months. 

With ever-changing rules about immigration and residence, and with the threat of deportation for any reason the government sees fit, I don’t kid myself. Emotionally, Dubai may be the only place I may feel tempted to call home, but rationally. . . I know I am only a visitor.

In his travels around the world RELATIVITY OnLine’s James O’Hearn discovered something: home is where the heart is, but it’s also where the socio-cultural norms of a society are represented. From the suburban sprawls of Winnipeg, to the cluttered neighborhoods of Tokyo, to the sandy streets of Dubai, O’Hearn examines the buildings and houses that center the lives of all those living within them. You just might be surprised by his conclusions.     

Growing up, I moved around quite a bit. At various points in my life, I’ve lived in a trailer, an apartment, a townhouse, a duplex, a condominium, a basement couch, an office, a storage closet, and, once or twice, in an actual honest-to-god detached house. During my first two decades on this coil, I moved in and out of those many types of accommodation in three of Canada’s four largest cities, and numerous small towns.

 Nice as that little bit of biography is, what’s it got to do with the oldness of buildings in Toronto? I guess it has to do with how I’ve come to view how others see their own homes.

In Canada, just as it is in the United States, a dilapidated house with chipped paint on the walls and an unkempt front lawn signals poverty. It signals the presence of a person or family uninterested in how the community views them, or how their behavior affects the community. On the other end of the spectrum, a house that is completely walled off, disallowing the any passersby the possibility of glimpse inside signals someone who is could be rich, crazily eccentric, or preparing for the coming apocalypse. Either side of the coin is considered a derivation from the norm, and the norm for homes in Canada and the United States means houses with a front and back lawn, a big window facing the road, and a driveway with one or two cars. We mow our lawns, tend our gardens, and in general ensure that cleanliness and order rules the day. A fence with chipped paint quickly gets repainted. A leaning chimney gets straightened. A wild looking lawn gets tamed. And on, &c.

To care for our homes and lawns, an entire multi-billion dollar economy centered around home improvement sprang into being, replete with a profusion of Home Depots, Home Hardwares, and Canadian Tires. Something needs doing? Head on over, buy some 2×4s, nails, get a new power saw, and maybe a can of paint for the garage door. With do-it-yourself not only an option, but every homeowner’s duty, there is no reason, short of financial ruin, why a person’s house shouldn’t be spic and span.

Which is why, when I moved to Tokyo, I was at first disoriented by what seemed, to me, a total lack of care and concern homeowners seemed to have for their homes. Rust, chipped paint, stained walls. In entirely prosperous areas, I saw homes that would have faced the wrath of suburban bylaw committees back home. More than that, most homes were entirely walled off, and cars parked in driveways behind a padlocked gate. That irony of that last little bit never ceased to amuse me. Of all the cities in the world, Tokyo is one place where you would have to go out of your way to be victimized in any way. A buddy of mine left his laptop in a Mister Donut for two hours one fine day and after all the panic, breathless running, and racing with a sunken heart, sure as shine that it would be long gone, he arrived at the Mister Donut and there was his laptop. Though every table in the shop was full, nobody sat near the laptop, perhaps thinking that the owner would be by soon enough.

It seemed strange to me that in such a safe society, people would act so paranoid.

The most common complaint about Dubai is that, architecturally, it has no history. All the buildings are new.  How I feel about those thoughts are best summed up by writer Christopher Sail.

As I approach this brand new building, I am struck by something so few others seem to have noticed – it’s new. This new city is filled with new buildings. There is not a single Anglo-Saxon era church, no Roman remains, no Georgian terraces. Nothing built here over the last twenty years is older than twenty years. How can British people sink so low as to live here? Why have they not built anything older?The old versus new issue really has no place where I live. Not just because of the age of the place, but due to the basic geography of the place.

In Canada, you if you built a beautiful stone church in the 1800’s, chances are it would still be around today. Sure the doors may have been replaced, and maybe a few windows, but the building itself is still there. What’s more, these buildings are remarkably clean and nice looking, considering their age. They look especially clean compared to buildings that are only twenty years old in Dubai. Which begs the question, why is that?

In the temperate zone, where all the G8 nations reside, buildings are buffeted by wind, rain, and snow, and maybe the odd bit of car exhaust. Little else. In Dubai, any building, no matter how shiny and new, looks like a complete wreck in ten years. Not because the owners destroy it, but because the unending barrage of extreme heat, humidity, and constant surface abrasion caused by the sand wears down buildings very quickly. Old stone churches would never have lasted two hundred years in this environment. The mortar would long ago have been chipped away by windblown sand, and the stones would have fallen one by one until the entire edifice lay on the ground, in a heap of rubble.

When you think about it a bit, it all makes sense. Places where humans could successfully settle permanently, absent technology, are also places where permanent structures can be built, and were built. In places where permanence was a death sentence, humans took up a nomadic existence, and permanent structures were not built. It’s basic geography, the effect of which on humans themselves seems to have been long forgotten by so many commentators today. Technology and the globalized world have lulled is all into forgetting what once was the most salient point of life – survival depends on adapting to your environment.

 All the above said still doesn’t answer the question at hand. Do I miss those old buildings?

I do, a little, but mostly I don’t. The old buildings were nice to look at, sure, but I never lived in any. I walked by many, walked into a few, and thought about walking into more, but their absence is not something that pains me that greatly.

What I do miss is that sense of permanence, of solidity. The buildings back where I am from, with all their niggling building codes, R-2000 ratings, and more, are all quite dependable. In Canada, at least, you can be sure that if you live in the city, in a building, it will have adequate water, power, elevators, parking, air conditioning, heating, lighting, and more. You know the building won’t fall over, and that if an issue occurs, you have legal recourse to force the developers or building managers to attend to that issue. In the US this is mostly the case, but according to NPR, in many of the new “luxury” accommodations that sprang up, new tenants are finding themselves trapped in buildings without proper power, water, improperly built foundations, and no owner at all. The “owner” or developer, having long fled the country. But other than those few examples, you can trust in the soundness of structures that they will last.

The same has yet to be proven in Dubai. It is a bit disconcerting to see so very many skyscrapers built, essentially, on sand. During the record rains earlier this year, there was some speculation amongst a number of my colleagues about how these new buildings would hold up. Would the water erode the foundations? Would the buildings themselves flood due to improper drainage? We didn’t know, and if it had happened, we still wouldn’t know because news like that just would not get reported at all. So for all new structures, potential renter or purchaser follow the same code – caveat emptor.

The building I live in is 19 years old now. Built in 1990, and completed, actually, during the first Gulf War. It’s a good building, solid as a rock. My wife’s parents worked hard to get a flat in this building, and held on to the lease ever since. Whenever the topic of moving comes up, the question is quickly sent to die on the floor, unanswered and uncared for. Why move when where we are is a sure thing? What’s more, all the newer developments here adhere to the North American nonsense of strictly separated commercial and residential zones. In those new suburbs and developments, there is nowhere to walk to, no way to go anywhere if not by car. But where I live now is in the middle of a very dynamic, urban area. This brings us to what I do like about where I live.

Jane Jacobs would smile at a place like this, with it’s mixing of residential commercial. The first floor of my building has over twenty jewelry shops, a host of textile shops, a “department store” called Cha-Choos that once got a shout out on the show 30 Rock, a nice restaurant, and a small, very dirty cafeteria (a mini restaurant). Step outside and there are buildings old and new, countless little restaurants and take aways, small grocery stores and large, and just about any amenity you can think of. I can sit down and eat a $1 shawarma with a Pakistani laborer, sipping a $0.25 cup of tea, or walk five minutes down the road, and bump into jet-setting douche bags at Saks Fifth Avenue, and unload $20,000 on a gold plated Vertu phone.

In Karama, where I live, there are buildings that inner city slum dwellers in Detroit would sniff at, yet parked out front there are no shortage of Porsche Cayennes, Toyota Land Cruisers, and every imaginable class of Mercedes. It is the most insane juxtaposition of high and low, rich and poor, that I have ever encountered. In Toronto, if you want rich, you go to Yorkville or Younge St., south of St. Clair, roundabout the Rosedale Subway Station. For low, you have quite a hike over to Jane and Finch, Rexdale, or the Kensington Market. But in all of those places, there is a strict separation of economic class. That’s not the case here.

While I might miss the sight of a few buildings in downtown Toronto, like the flatiron off of Yonge St. near Front St., those areas with charm are also areas that I would never have been able to live in or near. Those old, charming buildings filled with wonderful lofts are actually only converted factories, gentrified by overpaid artists and downtown professionals. Walking in and among those neighborhoods, I never had the sense that I could strike up a conversation with anyone I saw or met outside of a Tim Horton’s. And even thought Toronto is supposedly the most diverse city in the world (47% are recent immigrants!), where I live, over 90% of the population is from elsewhere. In this community I am an extreme minority, since pretty much every other white (For South Asians, little distinction is made between Canadian, American, or European – They’re all known as “whites”) long ago demonstrated their discomfort with anybody of a darker shade, and sequestered themselves in far off gated communities.

In Toronto, the different nationalities sequester themselves in small communities, to the extent that not only will you find the traditional Chinatown, but you can also go to Little Italy, Little India, Greek Town, Korea Town, and New Guangdong (Otherwise known as Markham). In those small communities, you will see English alongside other languages, but outside of those little enclaves, that diversity quickly evaporates. Where I live, the Chinese restaurant is next to the Arabic joint, which itself is next to a kill-your-tongue Keralite curry house. Here, wherever you look, there is an explosion of language – Sanskrit, Arabic, Malyalam, Telugu, English, Chinese, Urdu, Russian, Serbian, you name it. On signs, on billboards, in stores, spoken on the street and on the television.

Back home I’d see lots of nice old buildings, and I’d also see the people who lived in them or around them – who would almost always resemble me. In Japan, where only 1% – 2% of the population was foreign born, I knew what it was to be in the minority, forever excluded from the majority. But in Dubai, I live the life of a minority in a profusion of minorities, not isolated from the mix, but warmly welcomed in. And while this experience will one day end, and the call of the two car garage on a quiet street draws me back to Canada, I will continue to learn and grow here.

 From James O’Hearn. . .

 

From Lara Matossian-Roberts . . .

I was actually watching Armenian television the other night.  The channel is a free-to-air one my parents get with their provider.  When we first discovered it, we were ecstatic; finally something from the homeland we’ve never been to. 

That excitement has long worn off.

The program, that had a Russian name, was an Armenian-Russian collaboration similar to some kind of Oscar’s ceremony.  There were long episodes of different hosts chatting to one another in Russian, Armenian or a combination – a male and a female, a Russian and an Armenian – followed by some kind of performance: a dance, a song, a stand-up comedy or even a bizarre combination of all of the aforementioned, then the performers were presented with a mundane bouquet of flowers.

I was slowly ambushed by a host of feelings. 

First, it felt odd watching a people I was meant to belong to, but clearly didn’t.  I didn’t really relate to the Armenian they were speaking.  Not only did it sound foreign to me, but it also sounded downright flat and unappealing.  I found myself concentrating to keep up.

Armenians from Armenia and Iran speak Eastern Armenian.  Armenians from Turkey and the Middle East speak Western Armenian.  My father’s Armenian from Iran and my mother’s Armenian from Lebanon, but I speak Western Armenian, like my mother.  And although I am familiar with Eastern Armenian, thanks to my dad and the few holidays I’ve had with his side of the family, I not only find it sadly funny, but highly annoying as well.  I find myself thinking, why can’t they speak right!  I know, it’s neither patriotic, nor very PC, but it’s the truth!

So, given that it was an Armenian-Russian collaboration, they were speaking mostly in Russian.  Although I knew Armenians from Armenia spoke Russian because the country was part of the former USSR and learning the language was part of the curriculum, it felt particularly disturbing watching them speak it.  That was largely due to the fact that I have personally spent a lot of breath trying to explain to a lot of people who’ve met me over the years – and mistaken me for a Russian – that I wasn’t Russian.  And here were ‘my people’ speaking the language like they actually were Russian!  And, they actually were, along with a bunch of other hapless nations, up until their independence in 1992.

I also felt … embarrassed.  Yes, embarrassed.  Here’s why.  Growing up in the UAE, the only contact I had with Armenian music and entertainment was the sad, sad band they would fly out of Syria to sing at the annual Christmas and Easter balls.  Someone from the Armenian committee that organized these events had some relative in Syria who was in a band, so we were subjected to this, year in, year out.  They would mostly sing traditional type Armenian songs, so I was, to a certain extent, familiar with the typical Armenian melodies and rhythms.  On television, however, that seemed to be a thing of the distant past.  For, I could swear they were singing some American Beyonce type number.  The melodies were unmistakably hip-hop, but they had Armenians words to them.  Eastern Armenian words.  I must admit the combination made me cringe and I found myself covering my face with my hands, only to let them slide a little lower and allow my eyes to be lured back to the screen by the same force that holds spectators in a bizarre trance when glaring at a freak in a freak show.

My mom saw my reaction and said, “I told you, you’ve seen nothing yet.”

I played the devil’s advocate.  “Well, mom, they want to be part of the modern world, and this is the best way they know how, by emulating the most popularized culture.  Can you really blame them?”

“Yes, but what about originality?  Why can’t they have their own sound?  Why do they have to take someone else’s sound and graft it onto theirs?  Come on, this is sad.”

“It is sad, mom.  It certainly doesn’t work for me and I am supposed to be part of the young generation.”

“Yes, but I suppose it may work for them.  They have experienced the evolution of the music while we haven’t.”

The cherry on the top was a performance by two young Armenians – one male, one female. The male was in hip-hop garb: baggy trousers & t-shirt with bandana, cap and bling.  The female was in a tight, sexy dress that clashed with her nerdy eyeglasses and not-very-sexy frizzy hair.  The look just didn’t work.  They were singing a current American hip-hop hit whose tune I recognized, but not the words nor artists, with the American flag projected on the screen behind them. They were singing the actual song with its English words, and I couldn’t understand it.

I couldn’t decide what made me feel more miserable.  Armenians singing Armenian words to hip-hop tunes or Armenians singing the actual hip-hop songs in English.

Finally, I guess I felt sad.  I’ve spent my entire life explaining to others all about being Armenian, and yet here I was, completely alienated by its current culture.  Not just that, but completely uninterested to have any connection with it based on what I had seen being broadcast that night.

My experience of Armenians is that they hold on tight to their Armenianess.  Armenians are always proud of being Armenian, and watching that show, I felt betrayed.  I couldn’t help but think of them as hypocrites.  I am aware that I may be harsh in thinking so, but how can someone like me, from the Armenian Diaspora, who hasn’t even set foot in the country, hold on to any semblance of Armenianess, whatever that may be, when Armenians in Armenia itself are losing track of their own cultural identity?