WWI survivor offers healing touch to the vulnerable
In Abid Street of Damascus, a modest office overlooks glittery gold shops and busy, tempting food outlets. Amidst such lively setting, a low-profile showcase with scientific tools and skulls seems out of place until one sees an elegant man inside. His inviting eyes attract the people to enter his shop and be recognized. The man in the late 50s is leading Syrian-Armenian businessman Gabriel Jambarji.
From his modest office equipped four wooden chairs, a table, a small library and a telephone set, he runs three factories of science laboratories. He manages marketing and distribution of his products not only within Syria but also elsewhere in Europe, Canada and the Gulf region.
Jambarji may be a billionaire today but he was born to a poor family in Aleppo, where most Armenians came to escape the First World War bloodshed. His grandmother brought his five-year-old father to Syria from Cilicia in Gaziantep, Turkey.
“My family managed to survive as their city was close to Syria,” he recalls his grandmother repeatedly telling him so.
“Many died of starvation, cold and diseases while walking naked and barefooted for several months to find a safe patch of land in Syria,” says Jambarji recalling bitter days in Armenia’s history.
Over the years, some 200,000-strong Syrian-Armenians have integrated well in their newfound Middle Eastern home. Damascus not only gave them nationality but also allowed to open Armenian schools and establish associations. They were also free to keep traditions of the Eastern Christianity alive.
Jambarji illustrates religious plurality of Syrian society with a childhood anecdote. He remembers two playgrounds in Aleppo, one alongside a church and the other next to a mosque.
“We would go to the mosque or the church to wash hands and faces after playing, without caring for difference and without being stopped on religious basis,” Jambarji says in an exciting voice.
Next minute, he scrolls down the contact list in his cellular phone. One finds more Muslims than Armenians being his frequent callers and friends.
Jambarji says, "Instead of travelling on my Armenian passport, I am proud to introduce myself as a Syrian."
He had to quit secondary school education for his proletarian father could not afford it. “This is when I discovered my interest towards games and scientific instruments,” he tells this correspondent, pointing to his own childhood framed photo on the table.
Young Gabriel Jambarji soon discovered an appetite in Syrian and Arab markets. "I love everything related to children and I introduced Arabic version of Monopoly game.”
He focused on educational games before developing interest in solar panels for cheap renewable energy.
Today each of his three sophisticated and advanced factories in Syria and China employs 20 workers, most of them Syrians and Muslims.
Jambarji has been decorated by governments of Syria and Armenia both.
This year, he heard that Diocese of Armenians in Aleppo has been struggling to build a hospital for the last 15 years. Gabriel consented to bear its financial cost without hesitation.
Located in an area of Armenian mass graves, the 2,000 sq-meter medical facility would save lives pregnant mothers and infants alike in remote northern Syrian region of Markada.
Armenian doctors will perform surgeries for two months every year.
For Jambarji, it is a humble bid to return the favour to Syria for saving the Armenian lives during the First World War.
"The hospital is a symbol of life . . . where it starts with childbirth,” he says.
The locals are upbeat about the benefits from the facility.
Ali Mohammad, a 30-years old owner of food shop says, "No one needed it more than this isolated area where accidents take the toll on life." Local say that the nearest hospital is a little over 100 kilometers far.
Being honorary chairman of the Pan-Armenian Human Resources Development Fund, Gabriel Jambarji has been helping education sector in Armenia. Since 1998, he has provided 600 modern laboratories to schools in his ancestral homeland.
In 2007, Gabriel Jambarji was awarded gold medal of the Armenian education and science ministry.
Besides, he was linchpin in easing tensions between two factions of Ethiopian Christians. Following successful mediation by the Patriarchs of the Armenian (Cilicia), Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox churches issued a joint statement of reconciliation.
Even hostility between Armenia and Turkey did not stop him from going there, whether for business or tourism. His wife Angeel Hartonyan accompanied him to a symbolic but politically sensitive Church of the Holy Cross in Akdamar island. The worship had remained closed since collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Both sides lauded the effort to address distrust between Ankara and Yerevan. Jambarji’s charity is sharing the cost of re-restoration of the historic worship place.
The horrible events of the First World War are hard to forget for any Armenian. However, emotions and anger still taint an objective analysis.
On the question of Armenian killings, Jambarji’s take is different and pragmatic. "The Turks played in the hands of Hitler’s Germany but this does not absolve Turkey from its accesses”.
Syria has proven conducive for Armenian diaspora. Many were chosen to the parliament while a few made it to high military ranks high in the Syrian army, fighting against the country’s wars against Israel over occupied Golan Heights.
Physician by profession, Ms Hartonyan is a humble woman, who barely speaks English and Arabic. She has been working shoulder-to-shoulder with Jambarji in setting up business and charities both.
She admits, “We fell in love and I find him a kind-hearted man with a sharp mind.” Their 18-year-old son Sarkis Jambarji is more global with his fluent Armenian, Arabic and English. He simply can’t stop liking diverse and historic Aleppo city.
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