Newsletter issue number 001 (January 2006)

Azad-Hye, Dubai 13 January 2006: Kuwaiti “Al Qabas” Arabic daily published in its 7th January 2006 issue an interview with Giragos (Garo) Kouyoumdjian on the occasion of the celebration of Christmas by the Armenians in Kuwait. The interview was part of a wider coverage of the Armenian Community prepared by journalist Layla Al Saraf:

“I wish health and wellbeing to all”. With this phrase Armenian businessman Giragos Kouyoumdjian and his brother Hagop started the conversation on the occasion of the New Year and Christmas celebrations by the Armenians. “It is an opportunity for the individual to evaluate the outcome of a complete year, revising the possible mistakes that have been committed and regretting the casualties that have been suffered. In the meantime it is a time for sensing deep pride and contentment for various accomplished achievements”.

The beginning of the year is an occasion for expressing increased wishes and expectations on all levels: individual, family, relatives, friends, compatriots and homeland, said Kouyoumdjian, stressing that “It is quite common for individuals to forget what the Arab famous poet once said: Not everything that a person aspires can be accessed”.

AZAD-HYE (11 December 2005, Dubai): Damascus, the capital of Syria is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It is situated in the South-East corner of Syria, on the bank of a river called Barada, surrounded by a constantly shrinking oasis. Damascus is very much known in the Christian history as the place where Saint Paul was converted to the new religion.

It is estimated that some 80 thousand Armenians live now in Syria, out of which 6 thousands live in Damascus and the surroundings areas (total number of families is 1200). After a period of emigration in the sixties and seventies in the last century, the number of the Armenians in the city achieved a kind of stability in the two decades. New businesses managed to stop the flow of the emigrants and at some point Armenians from troubled Middle East countries such as Lebanon and Kuwait took temporary refuge in the city. Recently a number of Iraqi Armenians have been settled in Damascus.

The Armenian Apostolic Church of Damascus (Saint Sarkiss) is situated at the end of the famous “Street Called Straight” just next to the Eastern Gate (Bab Sharqi), while the Armenian Catholic Church of Notre- Dame of the Universe is close to historical Bab Touma (The Gates of Apostle Thomas). Not far from this location is the Evangelical National Church of Syria, where Evangelical Armenians (very limited in number) do their worships.

Read more about the interview with Kevork Parseghian.

Azad-Hye, Dubai 30 December 2005: The Newsletter of the Catholicosate of Cilicia reports that the archival storeroom in Antelias is going to be organized soon.

Two experts from Yerevan (Amadouni Virabian, Director of the Armenian Government's official archival department and Prof. Samuel Mouradian of Yerevan State University) visited Beirut last week to do necessary assessment for this project. They provided Catholicos Aram I with proposals for the classification process, due to start in April 2006, with the help of five experts from Armenia.

In 2004 a new archival storeroom has been built in Antelias financed by Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal, using latest technology from Italy.