Arthur Hagopian

I was born in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem which my people have helped transform into the centre of the world. I studied and worked there (mainly as teacher and journalist), on and off, in between constant peregrinations that took me to the ends of the world: through the sandblown desert of Kuwait and to the sunshine of Australia. When a new incumbent ascended the See of the Saint James Patriarchate in Jerusalem, he invited me to assist him as his private secretary and press officer. Among the news outlets I wrote for are the Canberra Times, Reuters, Fairchild News Service, the Israel Scene, the Jerusalem Times, the Kuwait Daily News, and the Associated Press. Among the unique adventures and myriad mishaps/misadventures that punctuated my career were a beating and the threat of deportation from Kuwait (for an unfavorable article), a secret nightly sojourn to Saudi Arabia and the loss of one kidney. The shortest job I held was as a construction worker on a site in Sydney: for two whole minutes, while trying to push a wheelbarrow full of bricks, which I unceremoniously dumped on the architect's shoes. I have one daughter and three grandchildren. Zen has been a guiding spirit for my life ever since I stumbled on Christmas Humphreys' "A Western Approach to Zen" in a Lane Cove (Sydney North Shore suburb) library. I live in Sydney but Jerusalem will always be my spiritual home. A recent visit to the Old City inspired me to finish writing a book about it, entitled "The Cobblestones of Jerusalem." Prior to that, I had written a reconstruction of the life and times of Jesus against the background of the eschatological aspirations of the age. I also like writing stories for children. Two have been recently published: "The Ring in the Tummy of the Whale" and "A Dog Called Yup/"