It was a warm Friday afternoon when I met Raymond Kupelian at his local haunt, Marie Calendar’s. The back bar was dim, covered in dark wood and green vinyl.
“It reminds me of an old English pub,” said Kupelian. That’s why he likes coming here.
Once we settled in, there was no need to look at my list of questions I had prepared for the interview. We began talking with such ease covering a wide range of topics, from his childhood in Lebanon to Hollywood’s portrayal of Africa in recent movies. I was spellbound as he spoke of the series of events that lead him to this extensive literary career.
The beginning of his literary life trace back to his parents. “Mom was a storyteller. She read Turkish coffee cups for fun and could write a whole book just reading one cup. While dad would easily forget to bring home bread, but never,” Kupelian said wagging his finger, “never failed to purchase the Armenian daily paper, Aztag.”
Kupelian didn’t learn to read in Armenian until he was ten. While going to school in Lebanon he was able to read in French and Arabic before learning one word of his native tongue. The only Armenian he knew was from Sunday school songs. “I longed for it,” Kupleian said soulfully. It was only after being admitted into St. Gregory Armenian Catholic School that he began to learn Armenian. “The Armenian Language became my first love!” he exclaimed, “Soon my twin brother and I were fighting over who was going to read Aztag first.”
Though it was the love for the Armenian language that pulled him into writing, what resonates most from his stories are the genuine acts of compassion seen from his characters. Theses traits are imbedded in his characters because he, himself is compassionate and has also been on the receiving end of these kind gestures.
There was a moment, while talking about his childhood when his voice became wrought with emotion. A memory that touched him deeply then and still does today. It was about Sami Garo, a barbershop owner who also rented Armenian books from his shop in Hajen Tagh.
Using his Easter pocket money, young Kupelian would spend it all renting Sami Garo’s titles. Once, after reading a 400 page romantic novel in four days, young Kupelain went back to the shop with a heavy heart. When he arrived at the barber shop, Sami Garo saw Kupelian from his mirror and stopped shaving the hairy Armenian customer.
“He asked if I didn’t like the story he chose for me. I said, voch, Baron Garo, I found it so exciting I read it before the due date! He came closer, and gave me an affectionate slap and handed me another book. ‘No charge,’ he said.”
To Kupelian the kindness of Sami Garo, the barber, left such a deep impression upon him that even remembering the story left him with tears brimming from his eyes. “He was a god,” Kupelian said, as he rubbed his eyes, “Mashdotz in person.”
However, Kupelian claimed the first catalyst towards his literary career happened when he was seventeen. “I hurt my back. It was a work related accident, a serious one! I would go to work, and as soon as I came home I would lay down a read for hours. I had no social life—reading became my savior.” The second catalyst was his move to Africa.
So, why Africa?
“Everyone always asks me that question,” Kupelian laughed lightly as he leaned back against the vinyl booth.
He discovered Africa through geography and his stamp collection but what sparked the intrigue with the Dark Continent was Tarzan. Apparently, it was the adventures of Tarzan and his movies that motivated Kupelian’s group of friends to sell all their possessions and move away to Africa. As he relayed the story, his “bold” group of friends didn’t even make it through one night on the streets and came back home, earning the nickname Africaxi. It was only Kupelian that actually made the trip into the Bush ten years after his friends first attempt.
“It was a ticket out of poverty and out of the Armenian ghetto,” Kupelian said about his decision to move to Liberia. On the eve of his departure close friends and family gathered at his household for a farewell dinner. “Our great friend, Kacharentz, the writer, and a fine poet made a toast. ‘Parov yeratas.’ he said, ‘go with peace and introduce the African landscape into Armenian Literature. I know you can!’” The toast, in Kupelian’s eyes, was essentially his destiny handed to him.
In fact among the Diaspora authors, Kupelian is the first to not only introduce Africa into Armenian literature, but also introduce genre of adventure into the cultures literary landscape.
“It took me some time to creatively feel the African landscape under my feet,” Kupelian said, compared to other great writers who have written about Africa, like Hemingway or Conrad, who’ve spent only a year in the jungle and wrote masterpieces. “The African in the fullest sense of his humanity, is absent from their work. They used them as décor and figurants.”
His first night in Africa, Kupelian recalls how the natives made a bonfire and danced to the sound of the tom-tom late into the night. “They lived in a compound called a yard. If one of them got sick, his neighbor would feed him and take care of him. They shared the little they had.” Kupelian quickly realized that what the outsider sees of Africa is only a façade created by the thickness of the jungle. To reach the true African nature, one must go into the Bush. “I wanted to reach out and touch that truth behind the façade.”
In living with the people and on the continents soil, Kupelain was able to deeply feel their humanity first before he went in search for the right Armenian words to convey it.
But his struggles didn’t begin there.
“My first year in Liberia was disastrous,” he recalls. Being the first Armenian decent in his profession as an expert in car repair, Kupelian complained about his Lebanese boss who was always broke and delayed pay to his employees. While on the subject of his early trials, Kupelian went on to relay another small story. With his pocket money gone and nothing to buy his meager diet of bananas and peanuts with, Kupelian decided to starve. A young native school girl, from whom he bought his food from sensed that he was hungry, gave him a bunch of bananas and some roasted peanuts. “She succeeded in keeping me alive!” he said, “What a beautiful soul…I felt their suffering as an extension of my own, as the one I endured as a little refugee child.”
“African’s feel close to the plight of those who have endured similar experiences,” speculating that is the reason why he never felt like an outsider during the twenty years he was there. Both cultures have lived under colonial rule for long periods of time and have been branded with inhuman sufferings
Yet, these kernels of human-to-human connection resonate in his first translated anthology of short stories titled, African Symphony. When Kupelian was ready to write about his African experience, he focused the energy of his writing into the social issues troubling the people who lived in newly liberated third world countries. Rather than spending large amounts of time and words into describing and detailing the lush surroundings. By doing so, there is no jungle dividing the natives from the educated class. They are all on the same level. What you have then, and what Kupelian achieves is exposing the humanity in each individual.
“One of the most difficult stories I wrote was ‘A Black Girls White Love.’” The story, in short, was about a young black woman’s vow to give her father a dark-colored grandchild, even if it meant entering a love-less marriage with a man, as long as he was the same skin color as she. She was determined to bare this grandchild to end her father’s secret grief over having light colored grandchildren. But as fate would have it, the young woman was unable to conceive a child. Her father, who had suffered multiple strokes was hanging on to dear life only to hear that his youngest daughter was with child. The Daughter in return, lied to her father about a false pregnancy so that he may finally rest in peace.
The lie was out of love for her father. How times have we lied to our own parents to keep the shadows of disappointment away from their eyes? It’s these types of issues that also erase any color line. These are not specifically black issues, nor are they white/ Armenian issues. They are problems that riddle all of humanity.
What is also very interesting about this collection of short stories is the raw sexual content that is laced with a sensual sensibility. But for being an Armenian text, it came as a surprise.
“There are some puritans who didn’t like my candidness in describing or portraying the African sexually permissive life style,” said Kupelian, “…I came to realize that our timidity in not using a bolder ‘manly’ language we are pushing young readers into other pastures. Armenians are a passionate people. You will not find that in our literature.”
The sexuality described in Kupelian’s prose, in the English translation, is neither abrasive nor vulgar. However, it sometimes lacks heaving emotion that passionate words sometimes create. One wonders if it’s been lost within the cracks of the translation.
The project of translating African Symphony took twenty years in the making was spearheaded by Dr. Ara Sarafian, who at the time was coordinating everything through La Verne University. However the project was stalled after Dr. Sarafian passed away. The final translation was done by Ishkhan Jinbashian and the title is now available. Currently, Kupelian is working on several projects simultaneously; the first is the English translations of his novels, Decadence, and, The Passport. As well as a satirical book, a children’s book and an anthology of essays titled, In Quest of the Truth. Kupelian is seriously considering publishing and releasing these new works on-line.
As our interview came to an end, Kupelian left me with these words:
“I love life, I love my Culture, and I love Humanity.”
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