Stories From the women of Bazaarastan
“My first trip to Istanbul was in 1991, during the ‘mout ou tsourt years’, shared a woman who asked to be named Saffran for this piece. “I had no job, no money and trading was the only solution.”
“Mout ou Tsourt”, literally meaning dark and cold. It is an Armenian expression for the bleak, unsteady period that followed its independence, more specifically 1991-1995.
Like many countries emerging from the collapse of the USSR, Armenia entered independence under conditions that were, almost immediately, destabilizing: hyperinflation, a steep contraction of industry, and an energy crisis that reduced electricity to a few unpredictable hours each day. Those hours could range from 1 to 3. An extra hour was given to the buildings when somebody died.
During these years many citizens of ex-soviet countries formed improvised transnational labor networks. Many women like Saffran were pushed out of their casual routines and
traveled to neighboring countries taking up unfamiliar work in trade. Their earnings, modest by Western standards, were transformative at home.
“If you weren't flexible, or were too gentle, you wouldn't survive back then,” continued Saffran. She is in her seventies. Her hair is dyed bright red and her pseudonym perfectly suits her.
This was my second visit to her home and Saffran already seemed more relaxed. During our first meeting she has been more cautious, checking if I was looking for anything political, if I represent a certain political party or have a hidden agenda. Now she knows I’m here simply to hear whatever she’s comfortable sharing.
“I dreamed of writing a poetry book one day, once I’d retired from work as a literature teacher.” She said, adding that many women she knew, regardless of their profession or desires, found themselves taking up unfamiliar roads towards markets of Turkey.
As I sank into her old, green armchair neatly draped with hand-knitted doilies, holding the black coffee she had prepared, Saffran announced that she's ready to share the story I came after, though it was, in her view, “inessential”.
“But if you have no particular agenda, perhaps it will suit you,” she added, smiling and sharing the story of her first trip to Istanbul.
“I was shocked by the city. So big, active and beautiful. These kinds of contrasts make you realize how different your life is.”
She had arrived with practical intentions and her schedule was organized entirely around buying and selling. Wandering, she explained, was never part of the plan.
But Saffran recalled abandoning her plans almost immediately for something urgent.
“I left my bags in the room my friend and I had rented, asking her to wait for me.”
Here she paused, as if the memory required a brief recalibration.
“You were little then, you may not remember Armenia of the 1990՛s. It was a mess. We had no electricity, no hot water, no normal life. I haven't slept normally for over a month. My body ached and I realized how bad I felt only in Istanbul…”
Saffran continued sharing that they were a family of five living in a two-room apartment. Herself, her daughter, her sister, and their parents. Only her parents had beds; others were sleeping on the floor.
“We didn’t even have a proper toilet door, just a curtain…” she said, “I needed to rebuild our house. That's how I ended up trading in Turkey, but I was mainly visiting small cities and had never been to Istanbul, before this one time.”
Only in Istanbul, Saffran recognized the extent of her exhaustion and, with it, a longing for ordinary comforts. She suddenly realized something.
“My brain was always busy with survival. But at this very moment I felt the need to rest and…get a haircut.”
So Saffran entered the first barbershop she encountered.
“I didn’t know the language, I pointed at my hair, mimed scissors. Though, honestly, some part of me hesitated…” she stops, carefully adding “I was afraid to surrender my hair and head to…muslims.”
The room fell awkwardly silent until she continued.
“My closest friend at school was an Azerbaijani girl,” she said. “Teachers used to call her the pearl of the school.” She speaks without nostalgia, as if describing a social arrangement rather than diving into memories. “I had no particular feelings about Muslims then. But closer to the end of the Soviet regime, something shifted. Turks and Azerbaijanis began to merge in my mind into a single category. They became enemies. And I’m sure I wasn’t alone in this.”
We fell silent again, letting the information sit for a while.
“But my desire to have a good haircut won those fears,” she continued, laughing. The barbershop, she recalled, was unremarkable, but busy. The women working there regarded her with polite indifference, trying to understand who could find time for a new client. Unable to explain herself in Turkish, she resorted to gestures pointing to her wrist, “I showed that I was in a hurry, and told them I was from Ermenistan and then…I bursted into tears.”
The reaction, she remembered, altered the room. Two women hurried toward her, offering a seat; another one poured her tea and gave small sweets.
“I don't know if they knew what was happening in Armenia and felt compassionate or just my tears moved them.” As she spoke and her eyes lit up again. “I remembered this day in the barbershop when an earthquake struck Turkey a few years ago. I thought of those women and of that day.” She fell silent for a moment, then resumed, her voice regaining the tone I was already used to.
“Once my hair was done, I felt oddly restored,” she said. “I returned to my friend, and together we took our place in the market.”
The Bosphorus wind, she recalled, possessed a particular bone-cutting severity, slipping through every layer of fabric. Her hands were getting so cold she could hardly count the money when she needed to give a change to buyers.
“But that day I sold everything more quickly than my friend. I decided it must have been the haircut, or perhaps, for the first time in months, something resembling confidence.”
Once she was done with selling and had some money, she started searching for things to buy herself. There were a few things her clients from Armenia ordered; she quickly found it all, and then while moving between stalls, she noticed a little dress: red velvet, elegant, and priced at thirty dollars, a sum that seemed improbable in a market back then.
“30 dollars! For comparison, men’s sweaters were only 2 dollars,” she said. “I walked past it repeatedly, seeking a discount. The seller wasn't giving up. But eventually he reduced the price, and I bought it for 25 dollars.”
Still, her coworkers, she told me, considered the purchase irrational in her situation.
“I didn’t care what they said,” Saffran allowed herself a brief, satisfied smile. “And as it turned out, I was right.”
The dress, as she recalls, brought with it an unexpected turn of events. Weather neighbors, having seen it on Saffran's daughter, began requesting similar ones in other colors. And this little dress fed Saffran's family for a while.
“The most popular ones were green and cherry red and also the jeans dresses with little laced edges.” She notes with little hints of nostalgia in her voice.
This detail triggered some nostalgic images in my mind as well. I recalled a childhood photograph of myself trying on such a dress in our neighbor’s dim apartment always crowded with plastic bags from Istanbul.
This was my second visit to her home and Saffran already seemed more relaxed. During our first meeting she has been more cautious, checking if I was looking for anything political, if I represent a certain political party or have a hidden agenda. Now she knows I’m here simply to hear whatever she’s comfortable sharing.
“I dreamed of writing a poetry book one day, once I’d retired from work as a literature teacher.” She said, adding that many women she knew, regardless of their profession or desires, found themselves taking up unfamiliar roads towards markets of Turkey.
“I bought those from specialized USSR stores, for my own house” she said, “But to renovate my house and build anything resembling a normal one, I needed money beyond my salary…That’s how my “bazaar career” started a little before the USSR collapsed” she continues, sipping her coffee “And then…we all had to trade.”
She took one more sip, asking me if I liked it, proudly sharing that it's from Turkey.
“Mehmet Efendi, my favorite. My friends always get this one for me.” She asked if the coffee was familiar and I nodded.
Everyone who has been to Istanbul at least once has seen that coffee in stores or duty-free shops. In Yerevan, it appeared with striking regularity in the homes of women who had once worked in Turkey, and seeing this coffee feels like a subtle sign of a private sorority, one that exists but is rarely spoken of.
“I love their coffee and sweets.” Saffran’s mood lightens up when she speaks of food, “During those working trips most of us had no money. So we'd order a 1 dollar dish and eat it all together.The bread and tea were included in the price. So we ordered one hot dish and just ate all the bread coming with it, sometimes asking for more and more. It could feed almost 3 women.”
Saffran pauses, looking absent again. Her finger is on her lips as if she is second guessing herself. It takes a minute until she speaks, carefully choosing each word. She speaks of her first ever trip to Turkey, undertaken with a neighbor’s acquaintance, a woman she referred to simply as X.
“Everyone knew she was experienced in the bazaars,” Saffran said. “I wanted her to show me how it works, where to stay, where to buy.”
This journey required an overnight stay. They rented a small room and, by necessity, shared it. The day, she recalled, had been spent mostly moving between narrow shops and crowded market corridors, navigating through the informal geography of products and prices.
“By evening I was too exhausted and fell asleep immediately.”
But something at night bothered her and Saffran woke up in fear.
“There was a knock at the door. I pretended to remain asleep, though I kept watching.”
Soon Saffran saw her companion rise quietly and carefully slip outside. After a moment’s hesitation, Saffran followed her. In the dim corridor, she observed the woman enter another room, where a man was waiting. In the morning, no mention was made of the incident.
“I did not ask questions, though, I had some doubts…” Saffran said, adding that for a time, she heard nothing further.
Months later, however, X’s husband telephoned.
“He told she had been detained by the police for three months and wanted to know why this might happen.” Saffran paused, continuing, “I told him that happens a lot, if you carry too many goods across the border,” she said, “But it was a lie, 3 months were too long for that, everyone who traded in the 1990’s told me so.”
The room fell briefly silent.
“Anyway that trip was the last time I stayed overnight. During my next trips there, no matter when I finished the work, I always returned to Yerevan,” she paused and then added something as if to break the wall of my curiosity, “If she did whatever I imagined, it was only to feed her family. I have no judgment toward her. Maybe her husband, but not her.”
After a moment of silence, the gravity of this story seemed to lift, and she regarded me with a sudden question.
“Is it too late to change my name?” she asked. “I think I will use my real one. None of the people I know are likely to read this.”
I left Lousineh’s place with a very physical sense of cold, which happens anytime the 1990’s are mentioned. It shows me one thing: for us Armenians, it's not just a decade, but an emotional dimension, which comes back full-length every time we tap into it.
When you circle through the media coverage on Armenia of the 1990’s, you narrow down to one simple idea: raw survival.
“God bless we’ve made it through this winter too, but what will happen during the next one?” wrote Azg newspaper hopelessly in February of 1991 (issue: Year # 4, Feb 27, 1991, Yerevan, Armenia).
International magazines too flashed with articles titled “In a Broken Land” (by Susan Chever, People Magazine, 5/17/93 issue) or “Armenia’s ‘Good Life’ Lost to Misery, Darkness, Cold” (by Margaret Shapiro, The Washington Post, 30 January 1993).
Local and international publications alike showed the country as a space of darkness and chaos.
This context forever changed people. Like Lousineh, many women whose formal education had little relevance to their new livelihoods could be seen on regional buses and at border crossings, maneuvering oversized, pleated bags with weight sometimes exceeding reasonable limits.These women did more than circulate goods.
They supported emergent markets across the former Soviet sphere and came to define a new commercial vernacular: suitcase merchants, shuttle traders, bazarchi. They became part of a new economic folklore.
Many of them introduced unfamiliar products, and, in subtle ways, reshaped consumer life.
Arshalouys, her name translates as “daybreak”, was among them. She is one of the first traders who introduced semi-permanent tattoo stickers to the Armenian market.
“I was one of the first to notice them,” she told me. “My motivation was not initially commercial. I simply thought my daughters would enjoy them.”
When she spoke of her children, her expression softened.
I met Arshalouys shortly after her 53rd birthday. Her apartment reflected a patient, meticulous sensibility: hand-knitted gobelins, embroidered tablecloths she made herself, and other small decorative objects that rewarded slow attention.
“This cupid is silver-coated,” Arshalouys said, lifting a small curtain holder from the window. “I bought it in Istanbul in 2006.”
She guided me through the objects as she spoke: a small silver figurine, pieces of jewelry, each accompanied by a brief account of its origin.
“Most of them sold quickly,” she explained. “Only the smallest silver statues still remain.”
The items, she noted with evident satisfaction, had been produced by an Armenian jeweler working in Turkey, and she has spent a few days searching for him. While speaking, Arshalouys handed me an unexpectedly heavy silver mirror, its frame elaborately carved.
During our conversation, which extended for nearly five hours, she recounted episodes that, in another register, might have invited visible emotion: physical harassment, physical threats, financial loss, the disappearance of her inheritance. She described all these events without noticeable agitation, presenting them as matters of fact. Only when speaking of her children did her composure waver.
“Everything I did was for them,” she said and her eyes lit.
Her trading ventures were, by her own account, a bit ambitious. In Istanbul, she spent long days navigating textile factories in search of distinctive garments. Market preferences, especially in Armenia of the early 2000s, did not always reward originality, but Arshalouys believed she could introduce new tastes.
“I invested more than 45 000 dollars!” she recalled. “The models were excellent, but the profits did not match my expectations. People just wanted to buy whatever felt familiar.”
One enterprise, however, proved reliably successful.
“The Wedding dresses,” she said. “I gave them for rent, with gloves and other accessories.”
Even amid relative economic uncertainty, she observed, weddings retained their ceremonial significance.
Arshaluys remembered that her trips to Istanbul coincided with another, deeply personal project. Already the mother of two daughters, she hoped to have a son from her second marriage. Under medical supervision, she adhered to a demanding regimen, administering daily injections while undertaking journeys by bus. During some stops she had to drop off and make injections herself. On one return trip, exhausted from the road and the weight of her luggage, she realized the treatment had failed and her periods started.
“I cried the entire way back,” she said.
Years later, she gave birth to a boy. He now lives abroad, in Dubai, where Arshalouys has spent her birthday. She proudly shared this while preparing coffee, the same one Saffran had. While placing the small pot directly over the flame and promising, with a quiet ceremony, to read my cup, she recalled another memory from those years.
“Buses were often deliberately delayed at the border,” she said. “Passengers waited for hours, sometimes a full day. The border pass was asking for money to let us in.”
During one such delay, hunger drove the passengers to search collectively for food. Among the provisions discovered was a package of baklava Arshaluys had purchased for her daughters.
“I had to really defend that little box,” she added. Her calm manner of speech brought an additional emotion to the words, giving a space to dive into the situation yourself: imagining people locked in an airless bus: hungry, exhausted, tempted by a beautifully packaged box of sweets.
In the years since, Arshaluys has turned to other forms of work: caregiving, occasional catering, and what she referred to, with characteristic practicality, as “dog business”, temporary care for clients’ pets.
She spoke with particular pride of her trained dogs, noting that they had even appeared in international music videos.
Soon after the coffee cup reading, I left to make another appointment, this one conducted by telephone. Her name is Anahit. She is 74 and an ex worker of “Dom Modeley” textile factory in Yerevan. She didn’t trade in Istanbul. In the ’90s she was sustaining her family by baking cakes (find her story here), but she called to share some memories about her colleagues who were working in Istanbul.
“I'd like to note that this wasn't easy or safe work, especially in the ’90s,” continued Anahit, speaking with a sharp Russian accent. “There were many burglars targeting these women because everyone knew they carried a lot of cash.” She continued, adding that sometimes even cars would stop in front of the buses and leave only when the passengers paid them.
“This was the detail I wanted to share, so you know what was actually happening.” She continues “Other than that, my colleagues had good memories from Turkish bazaars and people. They were all kind and even gave away small gifts or good discounts.”
She continues adding that their whole office waited anxiously for the colleagues to come back from the markets to each receive their beautifully packaged gift plus something extra like lokhums, chocolate or other sweets if they were lucky.
“These packages and boxes felt like they were from a parallel universe” she said, adding that her some other colleagues were requesting textile from Istanbul to sew dresses and sell those in Yerevan with higher prices.
“When people knew the textile was made in Turkey, they were ready to pay more. ” She continued, then asked, suddenly brisk.
“Are you still making notes?”
When I assured her that I was, she dictated: “Please write this down: our women took upon their shoulders a lot. They saved their families!” She was careful not to disparage men. “After the war, they were demoralized. To go to Turkey, after everything, was not something they could imagine. But women found a way to stay neutral. God bless them for that!”
Neutral is not the word usually applied to that border and the Armenian ’90s.
The relationship between Armenia and Turkey has long been weaved from narratives of accusation and refusal, memory and denial. Everything that even indirectly touches this border or topic is also viewed through those narratives and often judged.
“Unfortunately, as a society, we began collectively judging these women for their choices without remembering the context: the war, the 1988 earthquake, the energy crisis, and the massive unemployment that left them few options,” shares Hasmik Tonapetyan, an expert on strategic communication. Hasmik is also a trauma-informed breathwork specialist, advocating for mental wellbeing and trauma healing.
During our brief call, after learning the stories of Arshalous, Lousineh, and other women, she shared her perspective on their contribution, not only to the economic realities of the ’90s but also to broader social narratives.
As Hasmik notes, Armenia’s relationship with Turkey has long been framed in the grammar of violation and expectation.
“These women stepped outside that script and, in a way, they were rebels who found a way not to stay in this circle of hate, maybe without clearly understanding it,” Hasmik shares, continuing, “Our society often struggles to accept individual freedom and respect choices that don’t fit the traditional narrative.”
“But it’s important to find ways to step out of this circle of hate, to see choice as an act of courage, not betrayal.” She concludes.
As Hasmik speaks, I recall an interview with a woman, I’ll name her Lilli after a flower her mom loved. Lilli confessed to me that she had shamed, name-called her mother for working in Turkey. Only after her mother’s death did she regret it. She described standing at the coffin and apologizing aloud. The tearful apologies had nowhere to land though.
This story and many others shared with me underline what Hasmik Tonapetyan noted even during our first conversations: “The added economic value of women is often overlooked.
And maybe it's not only overlooked by the society, but even by the women themselves.
So far, Armenian society hasn’t found a way to truly confront the ’90s.
We have a small, moving memorial dedicated to the trees cut down during the harsh winter of 1993, when families burned whatever would burn for survival. The plaque thanks them for “Warming us, by burning down.”
It’s a small, moving gesture of gratitude to the trees that fell under our instinct to survive. But we haven’t yet found ways to express gratitude to these women: our mothers and aunts, our neighbors and friends, who forgot their comfort, risked reputations, damaged their health to bring us clothes and food, to keep our markets and cities alive, to give us a glimpse of hope and beautifully packaged gifts.
This feature story was created with support of Imagine Dialogues
Read the and follow the next chapters of “The Women of Bazaarastan” on The Other Armenian
Photo Credits: Arshaluys Karamyan
Photo Collages and visual edits by Ella Kanegarian Berberian