Zarian then moved to Istanbul, which was then the most important cultural center of the Armenian diaspora, though he often travelled between Venice and Istanbul; and during such a trip, when leaving Istanbul on the ship S.S. Montenegro in 1912, he met his future wife Takuhi (Rachel) Shahnazarian, marrying her on December 4, 1912 in Venice, then returning to Istanbul with her in two months. In 1914, together with Daniel Varoujan, Hagop Oshagan, Kegham Parseghian, and , he founded the literary periodical "Mehian," which means pagan temple in Armenian. This constellation of young firebrands became known as the "Mehian" writers, and like their contemporaries in Europe—the French surrealists, Italian futurists, and German expressionists—they defied the establishment fighting against ossified traditions and preparing the way for the new. "In distant cities people argued and fought around our ideas," wrote Zarian. "Ignorant school principals had banned our periodical. Well-known scholars looked upon us with suspicion. They hated us but did not dare to say anything openly. We were close to victory..." The tone of the "Mehian" publications was politically, aesthetically and religiously radical, with a strong influence from German philology—with Zarian specifically advocating an anti-Semitic idea that was present in many of his later works of fiction: that Armenians were an Aryan people who needed to overcome the Semite within themselves.