The Syrian-Armenian 'Refugee' Jewellers of Yerevan

• 02.07.2019, 17:43
•  Near East,  Armenia

Vahe Hovhannesian, a 31-year-old jeweller and Syrian refugee, sits by his work table in a studio in Yerevan, Aljazeera reports. 

An empty coffee cup, full ashtray, pliers, monocular glass loupe and weighing scale are scattered in front of him, along with a small pile of gold chains. His fingertips are stained black and he is sizing an engagement ring. In the corner of his cramped studio, a small portrait of Jesus hangs on the wall.

Outside, merchants barter and sell rings, bracelets, watches and other jewellery under the glare of fluorescent lights. It is a typical morning at World of Gold, a market in the Armenian capital.

Hovhannesian is one of tens of thousands of Christian Armenians who have returned in the wake of Syria's civil war. Two years ago, he was living in Aleppo, dodging snipers on his way to work.

"Every day leaving my apartment, I knew that I could not turn right," Hovhannesian said.

"I should always go to the left, otherwise I might be killed. There was a small territory in our district I had to cross to go to my workplace. I knew that there was a sniper and I was running so that he could not target me. Every day I had to run."

In early 2016, before Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's offensive on Aleppo, a rocket exploded in front of Hovhannesian's house.

"The rocket fell right on our building," he said. "It was useless to run or try to hide."

The explosion nearly levelled their home.

"At that moment I realised that I had to leave Syria."

Hovhannesian hired a taxi that drove him, his ageing parents, and his cat, Vito, to the Lebanese border. From there, they hitchhiked to Beirut, where they boarded a flight to Yerevan.

"We could take only our personal belongings and clothes. We left everything there, the apartment was fully furnished. We left the key to our neighbour."

Ethnically Armenian, Hovhannesian is one of at least 22,000 Syrian-Armenian refugees who have travelled to the country since Syria's conflict erupted in 2011.

The Hovhannesian family's journey, or return, has been in the making for over a century, beginning with the 1915 mass killings allegedly by Ottoman forces, which Armenians describe as genocide. Thousands were deported at the time.

For Christian Armenians, Aleppo became a sanctuary.