As a child, when Anouche Dourian heard the sound of the key in the lock, she knew that she had to stop speaking French quickly. It was the return of his father to the family home in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and, with him, to an Armenian culture that it was not possible to give up.
Roger Tcherpachian, born in 1925 in Marseille and died a year and a half ago, is the man who, in Charenton (Val-de-Marne), made it possible to fill the square de la Cerisaie with a memory, that of Armenia that he had “pegged to the body”. It takes the form of a khachkar, this sculpted stele which has one or more crosses and in front of which took place, this Saturday, the commemoration of the 106th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, in the presence of elected officials and officials. There are several dozen in France.
“Proof of an openness”
But each khachkar “is unique”, explains Anouche Dourian, likening the work carried out above, particularly fine, to “lace”. An impressive monument which, in the 90s, attracted to it, like a magnet, the former mayor of Charenton Alain Griotteray, co-founder of the UDF, who died in 2008. He was then in the courtyard of the Comptoir commercial d ‘ Orient, the food business founded in 1947 by Roger Tcherpachian, rue du Port-aux-Lions, near Bercy.
A friendly bond united the two men. “This stele had been stored there, it was clearly visible,” says Anouche Dourian. But she did not belong to the family and had to be settled in Paris. “Faced with the interest of the mayor at the time, Roger Tcherpachian decided to order one for the city of Charenton.
This 16th century stele, shaped by a sculptor from Armenia, took its place in 1996 in this public garden and it is quite a symbol, too. “Armenian tombstones are a symbol, not necessarily a funeral,” specifies Anouche Dourian. It’s like an ex-voto. That monuments like this one are installed in public spaces, it is the proof of an openness ”, she assures, recalling that their implantation outside a religious site has not always been obvious.
“There is the duty to remember”
“Installing it here means paying attention to history,” she sums up. There is also a school next door. In Alfortville, his father also contributed to the creation of the Saint-Mesrop Arabian school, a Franco-Armenian bilingual school, to which a college has since been added. With its thousands of inhabitants of Armenian origin, this city is “little Armenia”, which Charenton is not.
“There is no Armenian community as such, but there is the duty to remember and we are attached to it. It is a pride to have this emblematic stele ”, explains the mayor (LR), Hervé Gicquel. The one, which had first been spotted by the former mayor and who did not belong to the Anouche family, was installed at the entrance of the Armenian cathedral of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Paris, in the 8th arrondissement.
Roger Tcherpachian was also a “personality of the Armenian Church in Paris”, recalls his daughter. At the time of his death, one of his representatives recalled that he was “the oldest member” of the religious association of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Paris and the Paris region. A friend to whom he had confided that he had been “French since 1925 and Armenian for 3000 years”.
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