Armenian center in Beirut's Burj Hamud aims to keep tradition alive

By Beckie Strum

Re-published from Daily Star

A pink house nestled among the narrow streets of Burj Hammoud has accumulated piece-by-piece relics of the country’s Armenian heritage.

A decrepit but functional loom sits at the end of a narrow workshop – its worn wooden frame taking a temporary rest after 60 years of daily work.

Armenian-style rugs hang in the dining room alongside elaborately woven satchels, which Armenian monks filled with salt and carried on their solitary trips more than 100 years ago.

Nearly all the items – from the hand-embroidered pomegranate on the napkins to the abstract iron sculpture on the second floor – carry a story of Armenian heritage, all of which Arpie Mangasarian has memorized.

Mangasarian is the mind behind the pink house, which will open under the name Badguer at the end of the month as a hub for Armenian craftsmen and culture.

Badguer will house workshops for traditional trades, showrooms for budding artisans, galleries for Armenian artists and an enormous dining room, where local housewives will come to dish up traditional fare for the public.

No other cultural preservation project like Badguer exists in Burj Hammoud. The house will serve in passing down traditional trades, skills and foods to younger generations, which Mangasarian fears have turned en masse to jobs and lives outside the Lebanese-Armenian community, she said.

The center will also give a boost to local artisans by highlighting their work and giving everyone from fellow Armenians to short-term tourists information about the community and where to find a particular craftsman.

“They deserve this kind of attention and to preserve this culture,” said Mangasarian, who has been involved in community organizing and advising the municipality’s government for decades.

“They work day and night without negotiating on time or materials or serving their clients. But they don’t know the value of their product: This is the strategy, to raise awareness about the quality of their product,” she said.

Take any of the traditional craftsmen for example, she said.

Nazareth Besserkian, who died several years ago, worked on the loom that now occupies a corner of Badguer since 1959, through the Civil War and up until his very last days weaving carpets.

“It wasn’t until he was invited to do exhibitions that he began to know the value of his work,” she said. “He spent his whole life sitting in the corner of his shop, and when he brought his products out of Burj Hammoud, that’s when he saw there was an interest in his skills and his talent.”

The old weaver and Mangasarian had become friends by the end of Besserkian’s life, and when he passed away, he offered his loom to Badguer. With the loom and the help of a master weaver of Besserkian’s skill level, Badguer will create a women’s workshop specifically for weaving traditional rugs.

“More and more young people are going to offices to work, they don’t inherit the know-how for these crafts,” she said.

Among Armenian traditional crafts are textiles, like weaving, sewing, shoe cobbling and embroidery, as well as metal work, such as gold and silver smiths, welding and other related trades.

Armenian goldsmiths have found it particularly hard to transfer the business to their children as the price of gold in recent years has skyrocketed after the global recession. Many Armenians have had to close their gold shops entirely, Mangasarian said.

It takes a very dedicated family to pass such skills on to children without a business that makes those skills necessary, she said. “The son now isn’t learning the know-how. It is this fear that makes me work. It’s the fear of losing this specialness that we have.”

At the heart of Badguer sits another tradition: Armenian cuisine.

During a short tour through the large pink house, Mangasarian lit up as she described the future restaurant.

She showed off the color palate of the flatware, the pomegranate she had local ladies embroider onto the serviettes and the piano she brought in to make the large dining room feel like a home.

She gleamed as she described the sorry state she bought the house in, as brand new tiles and chestnut-colored kitchen cabinets line the walls now ready to serve hungry guests.

The restaurant will have a limited menu each day of specific dishes made by local ladies from the neighborhood.

Some of the women involved with Badguer debuted their food at the Beirut Cooking Festival earlier this month. They too saw the value of their skills as strangers savored carrot dolma, sweet carrots stuffed with rice and topped with a savory broth; a light pudding dessert with raisins and apricots; tiny meat dumplings called mante; and the ever-popular sou beoreg doughy cheese dish.

Determined to explain the recipes despite a language barrier, Marie Hogapian described in a hodgepodge of Arabic and
English the work that goes into soft lentil dumplings covered in Armenian-style tabbouleh.

“One of the lady’s daughters told me her mother was up until 3 o’clock in the morning cooking last night,” Mangasarian said. “It’s not enough to say it’s good. They need to see, to be convinced, that what they’re doing has value.”

At the cooking festival and at the Badguer boutique, the women will sell homemade preserves and treats like Armenian-style baklava, pomegranate molasses, Armenian wines and, a novelty in Lebanon, homemade apple cider.

The boutique will also sell items made by Armenian fashion and shoe designers, jewelry, work from the carpet workshop and other wares collected from the community.

“I love the passion, the organizing, but I hate the math,” Mangasarian said, with a laugh. “I wish I could say don’t give me money and don’t ask for money.”

On the second floor of Badguer a small gallery already houses a photography exhibit by local Nareg D.B.

The second floor will also be home to the master artisan, who will come from the community or Armenia for several months and stay in a cozy studio flat and teach the women how to work on the loom.

The short-term resident will have plenty of other spaces to explore in the giant house.

The second floor has a veranda where Mangasarian envisioned guests will come to chat and strategized new ways to uplift the community. A large conference room will also offer discussions and seminars related to Armenian history and cultural heritage.

The project itself is Mangasarian’s inheritance. Mangasarian purchased the house and began Badguer with money she inherited from an uncle living in Australia and homesick for his community in Burj Hammoud. The idea for Badguer: an inheritance also from a family dedicated to its roots, she said.

“My parents and my grandfather were telling us all the time their past, their story,” she said. “This was rooted in our soul. It become precious to me and my brother, and I think I listened a little too hard.”