My object is a necklace with a pomegranate pendant given to me by my cousin when I went to visit Lebanon this summer. He’d been visiting family in Armenia & got me a black necklace with a gold pomegranate pendant. I was touched, since Lebanon is not an affluent nation.
My ancestry doesn’t date back to Lebanon, but to Armenia. In 1915, the Armenian Genocide forced my family to flee to Lebanon. My great grandfather was 8 years old, & after seeing Turkish soldiers kill his parents, he spent days in a cemetery until he was discovered & forced on the infamous Death March with no food or water. He marched alone to Lebanon, where he was adopted by a butcher & grew up to take over the family business. 
In 1999, civil war in Lebanon led my family to immigrate to Boston to create a better life for themselves & my 2 year old sister. They moved into a two bedroom house in Watertown, where they lived until they had enough to move out on their own. I was born here in 2002 & raised with Armenian spoken at home, in an Armenian school. Today, I consider my culture to be my primary trait of mine. It’s important for me to share my culture because, although I may be biased, it’s a pretty cool one. When I wear my necklace, I have the opportunity to talk about my culture & can explain that the pomegranate is the national fruit of Armenia & symbolic of my culture. It reminds me that I can proudly carry my culture wherever I go & I can be proud of who I am & where I come from.
 

– AK

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant