Rita Keshishian with the rest of her family.
YEREVAN — What Rita Keshishian, a freshman at the American University of Armenia (AUA), misses most from her native city of Aleppo are her local Armenian school and the family piano, both left behind in 2012, when the family escaped to Yerevan. Even the carefully documented story of the piano, which was inscribed on a piece of paper and stored inside the musical instrument itself, was forgotten. Family photo albums were also left behind; and it is not clear whether her family’s home, on the top floor of a residential building and an easy target for bombs, has survived.
Several months prior to the family’s arrival in Yerevan and in the midst of the worsening situation in Syria, Keshishian’s father was kidnapped by one of the many rebel groups that formed out of the chaotic situation in the country. He was a highly-respected pharmacist in a town in the outskirts of Aleppo, who closely collaborated with an Arab Muslim physician and friend to cure the medical ills of the town’s residents.
The kidnappers, who were not aware of the clout that the pharmacist enjoyed among his clients, finally released him, but not before demanding that he treat their wounded, some of whom were highly placed figures in the group. Prior to his release, they even offered him payment to make up for any “monetary damagesâ€
