Lebanon

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Kiki cooking at Sajj Terouh Setté. Photo: Hranush Mashakaryan/OC Media

Creating a piece of Lebanon in northern Armenia

•6 min read

After a move that neither of them could have anticipated, two friends from Lebanon ended up bringing a little piece of home to northern Armenia. ‘It was a crazy idea’, admits Christiane ‘Kiki’ Saadeh. In 2020, Kiki Saadeh and Natalie Khalife were living in Lebanon and had just lost their jobs in hospitality, a result of a financial crisis compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and Beirut port explosion. Despite their deep devotion to Lebanon, or perhaps because of it, the two friends felt the

Shoghik Hekimyan-Godalazian, a survivor of the Beirut explosion. Photo: Nellie Petrossian/OC Media.

Armenia

From Beirut to Yerevan: A survivor’s story

by Nellie Petrossian

•5 min read

Seventy-three-year-old Shoghik Hekimyan-Godalazian moved to Armenia after a massive explosion in August 2020 ripped through her home in downtown Beirut. But the move, coming just before war broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh, has not been without difficulties. Shoghik Hekimyan-Godalazian still carries shards of glass in her legs from the 2020 Beirut explosion. She is one of 1,100 Lebanese-Armenians to immigrate to Armenia following the blast. For the months she has lived in the country, she has sta