She ran unofficial culture ministry but had a phobia of publicity
By Nouritza Matossian
Born April 26, 1944, died August 6, 2025
Ruth Keshishian’s heart beat to the polyrhythms of Cyprus and Armenia. Her brilliant mind encompassed different disciplines and structures driven by her thirst for knowledge and truth.
She was the singular expert on ancient, mediaeval and modern history, geography, geology, flora and fauna, ethnography, politics, architecture, art, literature and oral poetry of the island. The width and depth of her insights brought scholars and students, travellers and diplomats, local teachers, book lovers and politicians through her door, again and again. Ruth’s warm smile, perfect articulation and kindness endeared her.
She nurtured and developed the Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia, with publishing and promoting art. Internationally valued and trusted, it is a testament to her genius and a source of great pride for Cyprus. Yet thanks to her innate modesty and phobia of publicity, she was overlooked for due recognition by successive governments. She was happy to hand it over to Kris Konnaris in spacious new premises for its reincarnation in 2020.
And it all began with her father. Ruth Keshishian was born in Nicosia on April 26, 1944, to Kevork Keshishian (1905-1996), who started life as a nine-year-old orphan wandering the desert during the Turkish genocide of the Armenians and to Josephine Gulesserian (1913-2003) from Adana American College for Girls. Ruth’s elder brother, Jirayr, (1940–1992) was a self-taught landscape photographer.
Her father, in line for directorship of the then Cable and Wireless (now CyTA), was bypassed along with many English-speaking Armenian employees who lost their jobs and pensions thanks to the British Cyprus Constitution of Independence 1960 based on colonial racial separation. It triggered conflict between the Greek and Turkish communities while denying Armenians and Maronites their full rights as citizens in Parliament. A point which always rankled with Ruth’s principles in human rights.
A keen amateur historian, Kevork worked in the early 1950s on the first ever English-language tourist guide, Romantic Cyprus, aided by his wife and schoolgirl Ruth who drew maps for the book. With growing popularity, the book ran into multiple new editions. He passed on his love for the welcome Cyprus gave him, repaying it with scrupulous attention and study.
Ruth went to the Sessions School and later the English School for Girls for A levels, with Art a favourite subject, taught by the leading modernist Christoforos Savva (1924-1968). She was befriended by him and ceramicist Valentinos.
My first memory of our friendship dates from age of four, taking piano lessons from teacher Miss Egyptiades, later Kheghzin Guebenlian. We spent summers in Pedhoulas playing outdoors and swapping books, our endless topic of conversation. Ruth became an excellent pianist with a fine ear and musical understanding which developed into a lifelong passion for early music and the harpsichord, but she also joined my forays into contemporary music.
After the inter-communal conflicts in 1963, the Keshishians moved to Scotland. Ruth studied Theology and English Literature at Edinburgh University. But she did not follow her parents’ return to Nicosia where Jirayr opened the Moufflon Bookshop in 1967. She studied classical Armenian ‘Krapar’ for early texts and scriptures under the distinguished Cambridge Professor Dowsett. Her hunger for knowledge was boundless. We shared our explorations and findings in Indian music, Theatre of Cruelty, Reggae, Beat Poetry. Ruth’s gentle irony and gift for story telling always ended in “to be continued …”
In April 1968 we set off to France in my little Triumph Herald following Richard Wollheim’s itinerary for the chateaux and cathedrals of the Loire and Dordogne, identifying the early Armenian arch as the source of Romanesque architecture. Back in Paris for our last coffee we witnessed riots and street-fighting elated by the start of the Student Revolution.
In the 1970s Ruth lived with me in London teaching English to foreign students and also working as backroom staff at Blackwell’s bookshop – suppliers to the late queen, King Charles and other royals, selecting books for Princess Diana on how to educate a difficult child!
I’d read Philosophy in London University, interviewed composers for my book about Contemporary and Electronic Music. She joined me in concerts and discussions with the likes of Cathy Berberian, her husband Luciano Berio and Xenakis. Bonding with my future husband, composer Rolf Gehlhaar, at our summer Cyprus Music Workshop 1973 we introduced the first synthesiser and electronic music to the island with an international student orchestra in Lapithos for that last year of freedom before invasion.
In 1982 she left in hot pursuit of Alexander the Great’s footsteps to India to study puppetry and to penetrate temple rituals and dancing in South India dressed as a boy. The journey filled her with enthusiasm and nuanced information on key aspects of Indian culture.
After the passing of her brother in 1992 she joined her parents to run the Moufflon, never to return London again.
She wrote in her A Biography of a Bookshop: “When I entered the shop and began to shape its future, my initial and lasting decision was to place new titles alongside the out-of-print books, but not publications earlier than 1850 as I had no knowledge of antiquarian books. Over the years the interest in all types of books developed, and in time encouraged us to mount our first Book Fair of out-of-print, used and rare books, held in the old city of Nicosia at the start of November 2000. It has become an annual event and one that attracts booklovers of all ages from around the island.”
Ruth was born an innovator. Not only did she cram her shelves with books on world histories and a myriad subjects, but quality came first. Soon she was specialising on Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, proud to highlight the distinctive features of Cyprus ancient history and artefacts previously misrepresented as ‘derivative’. She pursued Cypriot output in writing, poetry, music, culinary arts and translations.
Moufflon Publications was founded printing 26 memoirs and novels by Cypriots translated from Greek, and we enjoyed collaborating on a third edition of my book on Xenakis.
Artists’ Books, a new genre she pioneered in Cyprus, commissioned local artists and found early examples of Savva and the poet Kouyalis. Prints and works on paper by Cypriot and Armenian artists were often displayed and sold in the shop. She followed different ethnicities on the island from her own Armenian community to the guest workers, Asian, Philippine, African appreciating their religious and artistic events largely ignored by others.
In 30 years Moufflon Bookshop became an unofficial culture ministry in Ruth’s loving hands, returning the hospitality her family received on the island a thousandfold, unveiling the hidden treasures of Cyprus, revealing the new, with incisive perspicacity and tenderness. All too often she gave books away instead of selling them.
No wonder her circle of devoted friends holding vigil until Ruth’s passing on August 6 have been swamped by waves of concern and love from far and wide.
As for Ruth and I, we were lucky kids to choose one another for a sister; for a sister is forever.
Tributes to Ruth Keshishian
“Ruth was a source of light and inspiration to whomever came in contract with her.
Her knowledge and wisdom, her grace and refinement, joyful demeanour and gentleness were there for all to see and everyone saw it … She will be sorely missed,”
Garo Keheyan. The Pharos Arts Foundation
“My godmother Ruth’s gift was to weave between the lines, not just on a page, but in conversation, politics, history, art and everywhere. She had the secret story, who was the true influence in a potent situation, emerging or historic, and she wasn’t scared to say it. She knew every art exhibition, not just in Cyprus but in all major cities. And she was funny. I’ll miss her laugh the most,”
Vahakn Matossian Gehlhaar
“Ruth, a proud independent shop owner, was a pillar of the cultural and intellectual community in Cyprus. Our thoughts are with her family, friends and the community she nurtured so lovingly. She will be missed,”
The Australian high commission