The Reparations of the Heart project began in 2012. With the centennial remembrance of the Armenian Genocide ahead in 2015, I began to face the conflicts of living in diaspora as I had so often during my life. What would my life have been if Ottoman Turkey had not committed genocide on its indigenous Armenian and other minority populations?I began traveling to Armenia and other places in the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region to meet people, connect with our ancestral cultures, and envision the future. Everywhere I traveled in the region, and all the SWANA folks I met in diaspora, showed me the beauty of our shared culture, while making me appreciate our unique differences. From the strangers who helped my family find our ancestral village to the sustaining support we received from the SWANA community during the 2020 war on Armenia and Artsakh to the global pan SWANA community we founded in the aftermath of that war, I have felt and followed the threads of our shared culture. My vision for the world that could have been, indeed that could be, began to take shape in my dreams and in my imagination. We could connect with the ancestral while envisioning a future that we could build together, writing our own story, building a republic in our imaginations. Connecting with people of different backgrounds, traveling in the region, learning about the history, building a community both locally in my hometown of Chicago and across the world inspired and enlightened my work.
