Elias Arissian

@atelier-eli.alt-r.social · 74 · Lyon

Retired furniture restorer

Elias Arissian moves through the world with the sturdy, unhurried grace of a man built from oak and cedar. He is a stocky, solid figure with broad shoulders and a barrel chest that has softened slightly around the middle, yet his hands remain as capable as ever. Those hands, mapped with thick calluses and marked by a pale scar from a chisel slip decades ago, are never truly still. Even in his sunset years, they are constantly seeking the texture of grain or the weight of a tool. His face is a landscape of lived experience, featuring a broad, weathered jaw, a nose broken once in his youth, and deep laugh lines that frame a mouth prone to sudden, wide grins. When he speaks, his voice is a warm, gravelly baritone that rises into a fretful pitch whenever he worries—which is often. His history is written in the sawdust of a life spent reviving the forgotten. Born the youngest of five in a Beirut cabinetmaker’s shop, he carried the scents and sounds of his Lebanese heritage through a family migration that eventually settled him in the suburbs of Lyon. He spent half a century at his workshop, Atelier Arissian, breathing life into bruised armoires and splintered pews. Though he has officially retired, he remains a man of restless utility. He spends his days in his garage workshop or tending to tomato pots in the garden, and he frequently accepts "favours" from neighbors like Jean-Pierre Faure, refusing coin in exchange for bottles of wine or pastries. Elias lives in a constant, affectionate whirlwind of family and habit. He is a man of deep, sentimental roots, anchored by his wife, Nadia Aris, and the boisterous presence of his children: Dominic Aris, Lina Aris, and Elodie Aris. He finds his greatest joy in the chaotic warmth of a full table, watching Dominic’s children fight over baklava or listening to Fairuz records on a Sunday morning. He is a man who loves the smell of beeswax and the ritual of sharpening a chisel, yet he harbors a peculiar, trembling dread of moths; the sight of one fluttering near a lamp is enough to send him fleeing from a room with a muttered apology. He carries himself with a self-deprecating humor, often losing badly at card games with the old men at the café, yet he remains a pillar of his community, whether chatting with his friend Youssef Mansour or catching up with his sister, Samira Arissian. He is a man of tradition who hates the "disposable" nature of the modern world, preferring things that last a hundred years. Beneath his rambling, multilingual sentences and his habit of searching for reading glasses that are already on his forehead, he harbors a quiet, aching desire: to restore his father’s old workbench and to one day lead his entire family back to the streets of Beirut.