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In the early morning, our tailor passed away. His name was Mr. Hagop. A story has come to an end, the labor is complete, and those nimble fingers have vanished into cruel oblivion. Like Sisyphus, he rolled his stone; like Domenico (Erland Josephson) in Nostalghia, he protected his flame from the waters until his inevitable demise.
Countless hours spent patching, sewing and shortening vanish with him into the mysterious swirls of absence. The individual destiny of Mr. Hagop is registered within the contingency of parallel lives, embedded in the narrative fabric of his clients’ own existence. In Lebanon, perhaps more than elsewhere, artisanal labor serves as an archaic foundation of social life. The skillful hands that shape, craft and weave an enigmatic emotional connection between a loyal customer and a familiar craftsman stand as the last bulwarks against the folly of unconscious intolerance.
Sometimes, despite the falsely aesthetic productivist obsession propagated by the incessant and hypocritical lies of modern propaganda, meticulous personalized work triumphs. The supermarkets of clone-like consumerism thereby lose a few symbolic battles against real craftsmanship—a form of art that weaves an affable network between a loyal and demanding friend, a diligent and talented worker and a story that binds them like a scroll of minor trades.
Mr. Hagop is not merely the embodiment of a bygone expertise; he is an encounter, a smile, a vital moment in life. This character, as picturesque as one could imagine, serves as an incongruous relic of the diaspora, a comforting legacy of the painful history of a vanquished Armenia, a ravaged Lebanon. He is the improbable spark of a flame fueled by the vigor of culture and the love of timeless art.
In a base foundation, corrupted to the very core by venal motives, infected by social retrenchment and riddled with frail and moronic intolerance, there remains a Tarkovskian nostalgia—a flickering flame that serves as the ultimate defense against the dumbing down of a world invaded either by the destructive violence of lies or by the superficiality of aesthetic mimicry.
I see him lumbering down the unlit stairs with the absurd resilience of his muscles worn by the meticulous labor of lacework. Mr. Hagop, beneath the strange exterior of a brutal Russian doll, had a clear eye and nimble hands; a single glance sufficed to understand the quality of the fabric, its eternal dance beyond the ephemeral wave of fluctuating fashions.
Seeing him approach, panting yet cheerful, I felt a sense of completeness that no wealth can bring, except that which comes from the craftsmanship of expert hands and the poetry of the heart.
Craftsmanship is both a serious and amusing matter, the ultimate connection with the profundity of universal cultural identity. Everything is ephemeral, except for these hands that shape and sculpt and this unreasonable mind that deconstructs, reshapes and resculpts time and time again.