mari silahli

Mari Silhail was born in 1953 and was raised in Vakıflıköy, known as the last Armenian village in Türkiye. She attended school in Antakya, an ancient Roman city and the current capital of the Hatay region, until she was seventeen when she married and moved to Istanbul as a new bride. Her husband had grown up in the same home village, but he was living in Istanbul when they married in 1970. In Istanbul, Mari Silahli became a homemaker, raised two sons, and earned money as a dressmaker, a skill she went to school to study. Her husband passed away twenty-two years ago, but she continues to live alone in her apartment in the Şişli district of Istanbul.

Mari learned needlelace making from her mother at the age of seven or eight. As a child she was expected to begin producing items, such as needlelace trimmed sheets and pillow cases, for her dowry. During the winter months girls attended elementary school, but in the summer they were required to stitch. Mari was not very fond of lacemaking. Her elders considered it the best activity to guard girls against idleness and Mari’s mother gave her the work as a chore. She, like the other girls, wanted to play, but stitching was considered the pastime of a dutiful daughter.

Mari remembers how traders would come to the women’s stitching circles and select pieces they would later retrieve and sell in Antep and Aleppo. And as a young bride in Istanbul, Mari was able to earn money by making needlelace-trimmed handkerchiefs, which were also sold in Aleppo.

Today Mari approaches the work as a contemplative practice. “It’s a meditation for me. Even now, I can’t sit idle." The work keeps her hands and mind busy, helping her to forget her troubles. “Otherwise,” she comments, “there are too many problems to think about.” She has sold her outstanding work over the years, and as a devout woman, has also donated pieces to the church. One altar cloth, she recounts, was decorated with tiny crosses. Mari is fortunate that her children and grandchildren appreciate her technical and artistic mastery.

Mari and Dzaghig Chitchi grew up in the same village where their families knew each other and today live in the same neighborhood of Istanbul. Armenian needlelace in the Hatay area has a fascinating history shared in Elise Youssoufian’s upcoming story From Port Said Back to the Mountain.