In the office of the director of the Meghradzor Sports and Cultural Center, paperwork ends where real life begins. For Gohar Gogolyan, a title is something that “comes and goes,” but culture is eternal. You might find her sitting with village elders, recording stories, or immersed in a ritual — loud, witty and full of humor — only to see her the next day in formal attire, resolving serious institutional issues.

The resistance of the “deaf frog”

When Gohar began reviving the past, many mocked her. “This is my favorite question,” she says with a smile. “There’s a form of folk irony that I resisted by acting like a deaf frog. Like the frog who couldn’t hear the skeptics and, because of its deafness, reached the top of the mountain while its peers stayed behind. Now, those who believed in me and I are standing right there — at the top of that mountain.”

Adzik: Sprouted wheat and the “immortal milk”

The memory of Adzik, a traditional sprouted wheat sweet, has lived within Gohar since childhood, when her grandmother prepared it and only she and her mother, in a family of nine, would eat it. Today, Gohar has succeeded in placing Adzik on the State List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, but more importantly, she has brought it back into the home.

Preparing Adzik is a sacred ritual. The wheat is sprouted to the length of a finger joint, then ground. “Our grandmothers, who didn’t have electric grinders, beat it in stone mortars. If it takes us two hours to grind five kilograms today, it would take them an entire day. During the process, an immortal aroma fills the air — you’d think the king’s youngest son, searching for the Water of Immortality, ended up in the wrong place. That ‘Immortal Water’ is actually the milk of the sprouted wheat.”

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The mixture is strained through three sieves, mixed with whole wheat flour and boiled over a fierce fire. From 40 liters of liquid, only 8 to 10 kilograms of chocolate-colored Adzik is produced. Gohar notes it was once considered the primary food for children after mother’s milk. To dispel doubts about how it can be so sweet without sugar, she first offers visitors a taste of the raw wheat sprout.

Reed weaving and Grandma Astghik’s “kogich”

Gohar rescues old items that villagers are about to throw away. Her collection includes a reed mat from the 1890s. To restore the craft, she hunted for the entire toolkit: the palakh, the banoki, the kemar, made of goat horn and bone), and the tool for spinning jov, a coarse rope, which she found in a neighboring village.

Her greatest discovery was the “sword” — the kogich. “A man found a piece of wood in his attic and showed it to me. I went from house to house, visiting elders, until 96-year-old Grandma Astghik told me it was the tool used to press the rows of weaving together.” As soon as the weather warms up, Gohar and Grandma Astghik will be outside, weaving mats together.

Halim: The miracle of the shepherd’s pot

Another revived tradition is the Christmas Halim. According to legend, a poor shepherd wanted to help the Virgin Mary during Christ’s birth but had nothing but a small pot of dung and peat for fuel. His desire was so pure that by the time he reached the manger, the dung had turned into a hot wheat stew and the peat into a loaf of bread. For six years, children in Meghradzor have been delivering small pots of Halim along with their Christmas carols, or Avetis.

The golden generation

“A golden generation is growing up in our village,” Gohar says with pride. The same children who design drones in the Armath lab and win competitions find time to come to the cultural center to sing folk songs, dance, weave rugs and craft traditional “I Vayelum” belts.

The warmth of the village

Gohar doesn’t believe that city and village life are fundamentally different, but she knows the village offers fresh air and the luxury of watching the sunrise. For her, the greatest reward is the people’s love. “The walk from my office to the bus stop is only three minutes, but I always leave 10 minutes early and still have to run to catch the bus because the villagers stop me to say thank you or to share a priceless piece of history.”

Epilogue

Gohar is not afraid that her work will be forgotten. She teaches everyone, building a “cultural army.” “If someone finds the recipe for Adzik 100 years from now, they might think, ‘Who was this crazy woman who forgot her own home and family to dedicate herself to this sacred work for future generations?’”

When everything goes quiet in Meghradzor in the evening, Gohar finds strength in the memories of her ancestors. She fights so that those yet to be born will have a foundation — a bridge connecting the past to the future.

Photos courtesy of Gohar Gogolyan.