ven at its height, the Armenian literary renaissance of the 19th century did not produce many dramatists, but it did beget Hagop Baronian, who remains our best known – if not best – satirist. Baronian’s milieu was the Bolis – or Constantinople – of the Ottoman Era, and his writing was devoted to skewering the Armenian bourgeoisie that burgeoned there during the decades preceding massacres and genocide.
I Can’t Afford To Die
Some three years ago I was sitting in a doctor’s office – one of Armenia’s best oncologists and a very good friend of my mother – who was telling my mother how many people fail to visit a doctor because they know that they need an operation and cannot afford one. The doctor was explaining to my mother how many people in Armenia fail to pay prophylactic visits to the doctor because of financial issues or, once the doctor tells them they need an operation, patients never show up for an operation. According to him he has dealt with numerous cases when the family of the patient rushes in the sick with hemorrhaging or another grave condition – when he can no longer resist the illness or the calls of his family to undergo an operation – and they perform an immediate operation.