I watched a video online recently of a three-year-old girl being quizzed with questions about her mom (adorable). It was a mother’s day video set up by her father who was speaking just out of frame. Some of the questions were answered with precision. "What's your mom's name?" was met with her mother's actual name. When the stakes rose and it came time for her middle and last name, the answers provided were "mommy" and "mom", respectively. I delighted in this video for many reasons. Among them was that it was very relatable. It reminded me of how comfortable we get with the people closest to us, to the extent that we can forget to be curious about them. It’s kind of like how we tend to neglect the fine arts in our home towns as if we need to be somewhere distant and less accessible in order to enjoy these rich offerings.
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to turn the camera to my mother and ask her questions about herself. Each time I did I was too distracted to really absorb the answers. I know this because I caught myself asking the same questions over time. One day I finally decided I would take out this nifty pocket computer that I was always so consumed by and use it to record her answering questions that I had undoubtedly asked before. The answers eventually led to a song on my new album Neon Summer Skin [pictured below]. That song is called "Canopies"
My family is Armenian; specifically Western Armenia which is now Eastern Turkey. People with ancestors from this region have a limited understanding of them due to the Armenian Genocide of 1915. So while my mom couldn't answer questions about her grandmother, I was gifted knowledge about her own unique upbringing in Syria and Lebanon, as well as a bit about her mother’s. It wasn't an uncommon one given that the Armenian Genocide resulted in a mass migration down the Euphrates River.
What was disguised as a relocation was actually a "death march" or a "caravan to oblivion" towards a fatal destination (if the journey there didn’t do it). Eventually, with the help of French troops in Southern Syria, Armenians were liberated and guided towards Aleppo in 1925 to escape repeated persecution from the followers of the Turkish coalition responsible for the slaughter. That's why my grandmothers from both sides of my family were raised in Aleppo. My mother's story differs in that she was eventually taken to Lebanon to escape an abusive father just before she was seven, which was the legal age for a father to take a child from their mother. With this in mind, my grandmother hid my mom in an orphanage just outside Beirut called The Birds Nest [pictured below left, Bedouine's mother, Janet Arslanian, as a child, with her grandmother Antoinette Shadoyan].
The Birds Nest was founded as a safe haven for orphans of the genocide in the early 20th century and it still functions today for children in need. Located on the coast of Jebeil, an ancient city north of Beirut, it remains picturesquely perched on the cliffs; a truly awe-inspiring seaside location. Nowadays, it’s surrounded by fancy five-star resorts, laden with queen size beds staggered right there on the beach. Mere feet from the shore, waiters promptly circle patrons delivering frosted glasses and savory native appetizers that make my mouth water just at the mention. This juxtaposition might sound jarring, but makes more sense when you see it in all its coastal cliffside glory.
The orphanage actually started leasing out land itself not too long ago. A stretch of land to the coast behind their main building is now home to a new beachfront resort. This lease helps fund the orphanage but the decision was a controversial one since it required the consideration of a small cemetery located in the same area. I experienced the full spectrum of this duality the day my mom took me to visit the orphanage and tagged on a day pass to the neighboring beach. It’s about an hour's ride, so to get there she scheduled a van that travels up and down the coast. This was the kind of service that packs you in shoulder to shoulder, about which only a once-local would know. The kind where even the aisles became seats as the van fills up so that every passenger is pretty much triple-parked. Not for the faint of heart but the payoff was as swift as the sliding van door that blew open to the coastal air upon arrival.
This story about my mother [pictured above right, as a child] is sad, but not without a deep sense of love and respect between her and her mother. The thing that struck me the most was the way her mother handled a truly difficult decision of sacrifice in order to protect her daughter. My mother shared a mantra-like poem that her mother would recite from a relative’s apartment. Not far from the orphanage, it was there on the balcony where her mother would sit endlessly to take in the breeze coming in from the coast and repeat (roughly translated), "Flutter, flutter goes the sea of Beirut, and how sweetly it sends my darling’s breeze." I was so taken by this stoicism in the face of a profound loss that I built a song around it written from her perspective, or at least what I imagined of it. It encapsulated what I suspected of motherhood then, and know of it now; at all costs, the safety of children is the most important thing.
Below: Watch the video for "On My Own" by Bedouine ("Canopies" is unreleased at time of going to press)
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