Making it: starting over at “Teryan Kebab”
By Gayane Mkrtchian - armenianow.com | Monday, 16 June 2014
For many Syrian-Armenians and others, “Teryan Kebab” small Syrian cuisine has become a perfect meeting point which has turned into a small Aleppo with its flavors, music, cuisine and endless Aleppo stories which always come to an end in Yerevan.The Azalyan and Hamalyan families are among those who led life in Aleppo for more than half a century, had their private business, but the civil war in Syria brought them to their motherland and made them think about a new way of life. “At this age of 64 I have to start anew, this time again from zero, but I am not young any more, I have to move a step at a time like a child. We had a private business in Aleppo – imported car parts from Korea – I had five workers, we had to leave everything and come here,” tells Nazar Hamalyan, the founder of “Teryan Kebab” together with the Azalyan family.The Hamalyan daughter is the Azalyans’ daughter-in-law. After a while the young family moved to Dubai hoping to find work there. The elders decided to stay in the motherland and start a new business.“We suggested starting business together. Otherwise every day our men would go to ‘Melody’ café, sit and talk, discuss, spoil their mood and health… and what shall we do? My daughter’s mother-in-law, Verzhi, and I thought to do something, so that our men wake up in the morning and go to work,” says 54-year-old Gohar Azalyan. “We divided work – one does the market shopping, the other one stuffs the meat for kebab, we prepare other dishes, we work.”They appeared at Teryan 89 address accidentally when they were looking for an apartment to live in.“We came to see this place with a real estate agent, asking what there was before, he said “some bakery, it is empty now”, I came and told them (the Hamalyans) there is a place, good enough for kebab place. In the beginning the place was much smaller, good for takeout only, then some of our Syrian friends told us ‘it would be good to sit down and eat’, so we put two tables, then we saw people come and wait outside for their turn, thus we enlarged it. It’s a lot of work though,” says Gohar.“Teryan Kebab” is a typical Syrian-Armenian cuisine, with spices typical to them, everything is prepared on the fire. Beef kebab, chicken, fish barbeque, humus, mutabal, orukh, lahmajun, vegetable borak,shish tavuk are specifically popular… the women do not open the secrets of the eastern cuisine, smile mysteriously and say “come on in, try it.”“Here we prepare dishes we prepare for our home,” says Verzhine Hamalyan mixing the ‘chikufta’. “This is one of the most marvelous dishes, we mix it with kufta and a bit of groats. People have already liked this dish in Yerevan, even the locals come and ask for chikufta, lahmajo or tabule.”The two families never ran a restaurant in Aleppo. The Azalyans had a big foundry where almost 150 people worked. Today, however, with a special skill of a businessman, they realised what would work in the motherland.The families mention that it was hard to get everything going, but now people know their place, which is one of the most important components of the business. “It is hard to pay taxes, there are no discounts for the Syrian-Armenians here. We rent everything – the house, the store. This job is difficult; the meat, the coal, the greens, the spices, we run out of them very quickly, we buy them every day, putting the profit in the business daily. We order the meat and I clean it with my own hands. I’ll show you so that you can see with your own eye how I spend three hours cleaning it from fat,” explains Nazar Hamasyan.They confess that they could never imagine there will be such a situation in Syria tearing their life apart. “I had a house in Kesab as well, was thinking of going there this summer, but no more of Kesab either. It’s been 35 years we are married and we spent every summer in Kesab. A garden, very beautiful… just like Armenia. So I thought, I’d go there instead of paying rent here, but this also changed,” says Gohar.And despite their numerous problems they meet and see everyone off with a smile, “Welcome… go in peace,” say the women.
