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From L.A. to Iraq, Leader Helps Connect Assyrians
Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, News Feature,
Jerry Sullivan, Apr 24, 2004

LOS ANGELES -- Pierre Toulakany is active as a property owner and community volunteer when it comes to efforts to improve downtown Los Angeles. His local focus is clearly demonstrated by his work as a founding member of the Historic Downtown Business Improvement District and as an elected representative on the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council.

But the land of Mesopotamia is never far from Toulakany’s mind.

The nattily clad executive devotes much serious thought to the ancient past. He can reel off famous names and dates from 5,000 years ago.

But he’s constantly working to secure a future for an estimated two million members of a little-known ethnic group in Iraq, as well as several million of their compatriots who are scattered around the globe.

Toulakany is seldom seen without a lapel pin showing the U.S. flag. He doesn’t hesitate to credit his adopted country with providing him valuable opportunities.

But the symbol of the U.S. he wears is depicted alongside the banner of a nation that hasn’t had official status in the international community for nearly 2,000 years.

Those are some of the contradictions that come with being an Assyrian, an ethnic identity that Toulakany claims with pride and determination. Just ask him and he will tell you about the long history of the Assyrian people, who once towered over their known world but have more recently seen nearly two millennia of hard times.

“The Assyrians were the first civilization known to the world,” Toulakany said during a recent interview in the office he keeps as a co-owner of the West Coast Jewelry Center in the heart of Los Angeles’ bustling Downtown. “So much of everyday life--the words you are writing, the window we look out of--can be traced back in history to the Assyrian people.”

Toulakany stopped to clear up any confusion, explaining that the Assyrians are a separate and distinct people from Syrians.

Assyria established an empire more than 5000 years before the birth of Christ (B.C.). Indeed, Christ is widely believed to have spoken the Aramaic tongue of the Assyrian people--a language they still speak and which has gained notice recently because of its use in the controversial movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

Ancient Assyria counted Babylonia as an extension of its empire, which was centered on the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That territory is known by historians as the “cradle of civilization” and also forms the heart of present-day Iraq.

The use of glass and the development of the lens are attributed to the Assyrians. So are many important advances in agriculture and irrigation, the development of written language and the arts, and various innovations in military strategy and logistics.

But Assyria’s political power ebbed over many centuries and the empire collapsed around 600 B.C. The Roman Empire eventually took control of Assyria’s territory.

Assyrians remained a people without a country of their own throughout the ascendance of the Romans and later Islamic conquests. Tense relations with various empires and governments--some Arab, but including a long period of Turkish domination--have been a factor for Assyrians ever since.

Toulakany grew up in Iran, where his family owned a huge stretch of farm and ranchland.

“It would take two days on horseback to cover our land,” he said.

He went to Paris, France, for college, and returned to Iran with a new perspective. The government was confiscating chunks of his family’s land, he said, and leaving anti-Christian prejudice unchecked, making life miserable. In 1959, Toulakany left for New York, eventually visiting some friends in Los Angeles.

He eventually joined several clients in forming the current partnership that owns the West Coast Jewelry Center.

Toulakany’s arrival in the U.S. came in the middle portion of what has been nearly a century of Assyrian immigration here.

A wave of anti-Christian violence in Iraq after World War I pushed more Assyrians to the U.S. Some historians estimate that as many as 200,000 of 2.5 million Assyrians who remained in Iraq were killed in anti-Christian violence by the 1930s.

The waves of Assyrians immigrants to the U.S. first established significant population centers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

There are currently about 600,000 Assyrian Americans in the U.S., with roughly 15,000 in the Los Angeles area.

The local population counts North Hollywood as a cultural center, with many homeowners spread through the rest of the San Fernando Valley.

The earliest immigrants formed the Assyrian-American National Federation in 1932, a group dedicated to lobbying the U.S. government and providing food, medicine and other relief to comrades in Iraq.

Toulakany took on a major role during the resettlements of the 1970s, providing the driving force for the formation of the Assyrian Universal Alliance Foundation. It’s one of many organizations Toulakany has helped found or support, and he guided it through its early years while also serving as national president of the Assyrian-American National Federation from 1974 to 1976.

The community spirit extends to Assyrians still living in Iraq, too.

“The one I’m most proud of, the one I spend 90 percent of my time on, is the Assyrian American Aid Society,” said Toulakany, who currently serves as president of the organization’s Los Angeles chapter.

The aid society was founded in 1991, after the first Persian Gulf War, when Assyrian lands in northern Iraq--along with the territory of Kurds, another distinct ethnic group--received some U.S. protection against the now-deposed Saddam Hussein.

“Saddam Hussein had destroyed more than 200 Assyrian villages--churches, homes, schools, everything,” Toulakany said. “We started raising money, about $500,000 a year. We have rebuilt a lot of what was destroyed, including about half of the schools. We’ve built dormitories for about 9,000 students who have to live at the school because the roads have been destroyed and travel is difficult.”

The Assyrian American Aid Society also negotiated with major U.S. pharmaceutical companies for discounts on much-needed medicines to send to northern Iraq. And a program to plant apple trees has helped more than 400 families reestablish agriculture in the region.

Toulakany credited his wife, Angie Toulakany, also an Assyrian, with handling more than half of the local chapter’s work. It’s a partnership that has proved dynamic in fulfilling the chapter’s mission, he said.

Such efforts by the Toulakanys and fellow Assyrians around the world appear to be paying off in Iraq these days. An interim constitution recently approved by representatives of various ethnic and religious groups in the war-torn country recognized the Assyrians as an indigenous people and granted the Aramaic language official status, clearing the way for its use in schools.

Preliminary plans called for 15 of 250 seats in an Iraqi national congress to be designated for Assyrians. There are currently about two million Assyrians among Iraq’s estimated population of 27 million people, meaning the 15 seats promised in a new legislative body roughly match the community’s numbers on a percentage basis.

Toulakany bounced around his office one day this spring, just hours after receiving news of the agreement in Iraq. His daughter, Patricia, a Hollywood set designer who has the same intense eyes as her father, was visiting.

“It’s a great day,” Toulakany said. “A great day for the Assyrian people.”

“Yes it is,” Patricia agreed, providing the next generational link in the long history of the Assyrian people.

The Los Angeles Garment & Citizen is a weekly newspaper serving Downtown Los Angeles and adjacent neighborhoods. For more information call (213) 892-9983.



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