Tag Archives: Armenian Genocide

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18 Wednesday Jan 2017

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ghostsista:

ghostsista:

Prayer to Astghik

Աստվածուհին սիրո եւ վերջին սերը. Աստղիկ, ես մենակ եմ. Ուղարկիր ինձ իմ ցանկություն.  Բեր ինձ ցանկամոլություն. Սապփո, որ Աֆրոդիտեի դուստրը. Ես ուզում եմ ձեզ հիմա, իմ մուգ մայրը.

.

Goddess of love and last love.  Astghik, I’m alone. Send me my wish. Bring me my desire. Sappho was Aphrodite’s daughter. I need you now, my dark mother.

.

note:

Astghik, besides being a popular Armenian girl’s name, is one of the old gods that lived in the Caucasus mountains before Armenia became the first Christian nation in the world. She was, and is, a love goddess, the protector of young girls and the guardian of fresh water. The Greek poet Sappho wrote a hymn to Aphrodite. This is my hymn for Astghik.

And once again I must apologize for my poor skills in Armenian. I am slowly learning the grammar, but it is a slow process when you are teaching yourself. One day I hope to be able to write the poems I dream about writing in Armenian, but until then I will keep on trying.

April 24, 2015 will be the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I am reblogging various posts I’ve done to commemorate it.

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20 Saturday Feb 2016

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Today, Saturday February 20th is the last day to vote for the Audience Choice Award at the LA CineFest.

If you haven’t voted yet, I invite you to do so by the end of the day:
1- Please go to: http://lacinefest.weebly.com/feature-doc-1-12016.html
2- Click where it says “Vote Now”
3- Enter the required info and make sure you type “Orphans of the Genocide” where it says, “ Production title you vote for.”

Thank you (

shnorhakalut’yun/ շնորհակալություն) for your support.

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the children of arba lijoch

19 Monday Oct 2015

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gyumriboy:

ghostsista:

— for Kwame Dawes

Crown Prince Ras Tafari brought the children
of Arba Lijoch out of the desert —

Orphans who became Ethiopian,
who sang of the Metz Yeghern, the Great Hurt;

composed, “Marsh Teferi,” the first music
Marcus Garvey heard while in audience.

I, too, have heard of, “Natural mystic
blowing/ through the air,” Ararat’s fragrance

in each word. I’m told, Babylon crashing.
Where in Kingston is the orchestral sound

of Addis Ababa? — I listen — I
listen, but the dance halls tell me nothing.

The ghosts of Van hang low in the background.
Who will sing their song? Tell their prophesy?

Notes:
Arba Lijoch were a group of forty Armenian orphans who had escaped from the 1915 atrocities in Turkey, and were afterwards adopted by Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. He had met them while visiting the Armenian monastery in Jerusalem; they impressed him so much that he obtained permission from the head of the Armenian church, the Catholicos, to adopt and bring them to Ethiopia, where he then arranged for them to receive musical instruction. The Arba Lijoch arrived in the capital city, Addis Ababa, in 1924, and along with their conductor, Kevork Nalbandian, became the first official orchestra of the nation. Nalbandian also composed the music for Marsh Teferi (words by Yoftehé Negusé), which was the Imperial National Anthem from 1930 to 1974. Metz Yeghern is the Armenian word for their Great Calamity, their genocide.

the children of arba lijoch

17 Saturday Oct 2015

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— for Kwame Dawes

Crown Prince Ras Tafari brought the children
of Arba Lijoch out of the desert —

Orphans who became Ethiopian,
who sang of the Metz Yeghern, the Great Hurt;

composed, “Marsh Teferi,” the first music
Marcus Garvey heard while in audience.

I, too, have heard of, “Natural mystic
blowing/ through the air,” Ararat’s fragrance

in each word. I’m told, Babylon crashing.
Where in Kingston is the orchestral sound

of Addis Ababa? — I listen — I
listen, but the dance halls tell me nothing.

The ghosts of Van hang low in the background.
Who will sing their song? Tell their prophesy?

Notes:
Arba Lijoch were a group of forty Armenian orphans who had escaped from the 1915 atrocities in Turkey, and were afterwards adopted by Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. He had met them while visiting the Armenian monastery in Jerusalem; they impressed him so much that he obtained permission from the head of the Armenian church, the Catholicos, to adopt and bring them to Ethiopia, where he then arranged for them to receive musical instruction. The Arba Lijoch arrived in the capital city, Addis Ababa, in 1924, and along with their conductor, Kevork Nalbandian, became the first official orchestra of the nation. Nalbandian also composed the music for Marsh Teferi (words by Yoftehé Negusé), which was the Imperial National Anthem from 1930 to 1974. Metz Yeghern is the Armenian word for their Great Calamity, their genocide.

I Love You / Yes Kez Sirum’em

24 Friday Apr 2015

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These poems are a sonnet cycle;
commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide (April
24th, 1915-2015), when the Young Turks systematically murdered 1.5 million Ottoman-Armenians; marching mainly women and children into the deserts of southern Turkey, Der-ez-Zor. The poems are based on the music of the torch song singer Datevik
Hovanesian and use phrases in Armenian within the poems (though since
the translations are part of the titles I hope it doesn’t cause too
much confusion). I myself am not Armenian, though I had the honor of
living in the country for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer, working in an orphanage for infants in the city of Gyumri.

][][

[The Light, The Moonlight / Es Gisher,
Lusniak Gisher]

Something is burning through these dry
desert

streams. A wind – glowing, grating,
fluoresce.

A storm is burning through these
dreams. The dirt

from these cattle cars. It is a
cloudless

night, I can see – no. I cannot speak
this

language. These dreams. A scream. I
cannot speak.

Things are burning. This sight is both
a bliss

and a curse. Sight is a curse. I am
weak,

moonlight, lusniak gisher; blind these
screams

from me. Blind me. I loved you – now
farewell.

I loved you, once, now you twist and
deform,

moonlight, lusniak gisher – all my
dreams;

this sound of flesh, light and
firestorm; this smell

of fat melting and consuming firestorm.

][][

[The Breeze / Hov Arek]

I am ill from waiting for you — too
long –

waited for you all — waited for you
all.

I am ill with change. Daylong and
nightlong;

changing unchanging, all restless. I
crawl.

I stand. I faint. I – ill with signs.
Sweating

in your breeze, hov arek. All so cold,
shawl

cast down, eyes cast down. So ill.
Shivering

desert. In all the cattle cars. Each
wall

blocks you, little breeze, hov arek.
Who pleads

for me? Who pleads? Listen to this
dreadful

song I would sing. I would. My throat,
bloody,

gags. I am ill. That is all. My throat
bleeds.

My throat bleeds. That is all. Now my
little

ill breeze, hov arek, you must sing for
me.

][][

[I am Burning / Ervum Em’]

Skim by these holes, sink holes, a
crust covered

in skin. A crust, the foulest of –
dust. Skim

the long ladle pool. Dust from skin –
the word

for skin I’ve forgotten. Teach me the
hymn

of your grandmother. Teach me how to
burn.

Blackened pools long dried. Cattle cars
now grim

rust burnt from your hymns – bodies
all iron,

all bone, now rust. The right tongue
can teach you

to fight, moonlight. The right door can
open

everything. Sing that hymn, “I am
burning,”

ervum em’. Not this crust skin; hymn
about

your tongues ripped out and no one
would listen.

Door shuts; voices on a record,
skipping,

skimming, hissing – No way out. No
way out.

][][

[LAVASH]

All these fingers are dirty – lick
them clean.

There is dough in my hair – kiss me
clean. With

a kiss like this. Obscene. All day
you’ve seen

me make bread. Lavash. Song of
flat bread; myth

of dough rolled flat slapped against
tonir walls.

Simple song of flat bread; the dead’s
flat food.

Simple smell. The smell of burning.
Night falls

and the dead still burn. The dead’s
bread; imbued

with grief. What else? I am leaving;
come kiss

me clean. Clean all my fingers, clean
my soul,

clean my lips, my body – like this –
like this.

When you make bread, you make me; when
you roll

the bread flat you touch me. I’ll be
ghostly

so soon. Touch me. Touch me. Touch me.

[note: Lavash is a popular flat
bread in Armenia; Tonir is an oven used to cook the bread.]

][][

[I Love You / Yes Kez Sirum’em]

Dawn comes. “A Love Supreme”
scratching, swinging,

bluing, singing. One lone moonbeam –
my scream

cools. Love redeemed when you taught me
to sing.

To speak. Your words. Your words. My
dream. My dream.

My scream still burns – desert cattle
cars rang

through the moonlight and the breeze
and partridge

sang and all the world’s crusted burned
skin sang

with this — Language of memory.
Language

against forgetting. Against the mayhem

of this past. Cut out my scream, redeem
my

vast love, lover. You who loves me. You
who

taught me to love again. Yes kez sirum

‘em. I love you. Yes kez sirum ’em. I

love you. Yes kez sirum ’em. I love
you.

ash and bone [1]

26 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Armenia, Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, drama

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memory is nothing but ash and bone
hishoghut’yan mokhir yev voskrayin
հիշողության մոխիր եւ ոսկրային
— Armenian proverb

ACT I:

FADE IN:
EXT. YENI BIR KADIN.1 FINISHING SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES — DAY

[It is the age of the NEW WOMAN,2 July, 1914. YENI BIR KADIN SCHOOL is an experiment in Constantinople, the first of its kind, a brief, liberal attempt to dismantle the DHIMMI,3-caste system. The students are mainly from middle-class Turkish, Armenian and Greek families, a combination of Islamic and Christian faiths. Riot of girls cheering loudly, something that has never been seen before; wild-looking girls running at break-neck speed. The athletes wear a curious combination of head scarves, pantaloons and silky knickerbockers. Their classmates, in their official YOUNG TURKS’4 -sponsored school uniforms, cheer enthusiastically as the athletes race around on the immaculately-kept grounds. It is amazing enough to make even SUFFRAGETTE SALLY5 stand up and take note.]

[NARINE DILSIZIAN (27), an Armenian gardener, works on the school’s garden. A few feet away, her daughter, HASMIK (15), leans against a broken and bullet-pocked wall, watching the race.]

[ZELDA KIRKE, a 40-year old American English teacher, wife to a junior member of the American embassy, is enthusiastically cheering on her daughter, MATILDA (15), who, dressed in the same silly Edwardian-era fashion, leads neck-and-neck with another girl in the last lap of the race. The excitement increases as they approach the finish line. ZELDA is beside herself, encouraging her daughter with shouting and jumping up and down. A young Turkish teacher (though not a YOUNG TURK), ASIYE, stands next to ZELDA, shouting, “Bravo, Matilda!” over and over while clapping her hands.]

[MATILDA breasts the tape just ahead of the other girl; her head scarf unraveling, letting her long brown hair shine in the sun. The grounds are invaded by girls running to congratulate MATILDA and her rival. ZELDA hurries towards her happy but exhausted daughter, pushing her way through the mass of school girls.]

ZELDA:
This was your best race!

MATILDA [perspiring]:
I — I beat her, Mama.

ZELDA [proudly]:
You did daughter! [Laughing.] Come to the baths, we will get you cleaned up again.

[Mother and daughter walk happily towards the school buildings; MATILDA getting many kisses from her friends as they pass by. ZELDA stops to talk to NARINE, who jumps to her feet and looks nervous.]

ZELDA:
Narine, my dear, I hope you can make it. There isn’t much to do, you know, only caring for the tulips.

NARINE:
We’ll be there, Madam Zelda, bayan,.6 Hasmik-jan.7 will come to help me.

[ZELDA, who hadn’t realized HASMIK was there, turns to her.]

ZELDA:
How’s the calculus? Still confusing?

HASMIK [with respect]:
A little, Madam Zelda, bayan.

MATILDA [with a very fond look in her eye as she steps forward]:
Me too.

NARINE [straightening herself]:
My daughter works hard, Madam Zelda, bayan. Your money will not be wasted. Varton and I will always thank you.

ZELDA [gaily as she leaves]:
I hope to see you both later, darlings.

[NARINE returns to her work. A group of students, TURKISH GIRLS, laughing and pushing each other boisterously, amble by. As they near HASMIK, two girls nudge each other and giggle. Suddenly one of them trips HASMIK as she passes. The Armenian girl falls to the ground and jumps up aggressively, about to attack the Turkish girl. NARINE shouts “Hasmik-jan!”]

[The headmaster, OSMANOGLU BEY (65), despite his so-called liberal views, observes the incident but simply looks the other way.]

[HASMIK stands, suddenly blind with rage. With a snort she strides away towards the main school’s gate.]

NARINE [shouting angrily in Turkish]:
Nereye gidiyorsun?
(Where are you going?)

HASMIK turns to look at her mother then continues to storm off.

footnotes:

1. Turkish, literally, New Woman.↩

2. The New Woman was a Feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence on Feminism well into the 20th. The term was popularized by writer Henry James, to describe the growth in the number of Feminist, educated, independent career women in Europe and the United States. According to historian Ruth Bordin, the term was, “intended by James to characterize American expatriates living in Europe: women of affluence and sensitivity, who despite or perhaps because of their wealth exhibited an independent spirit and were accustomed to acting on their own.”↩

3. Dhimmi and Dhimmitude are historical terms referring to non-Muslim citizens living in an Islamic state. Depending on the people and time period this “separate but equal” status has led to persecution, purges and, in extreme cases, genocide.↩

4. Officially known as the Committee of Union and Progress, the Young Turks were a Pan-Turkish nationalist reform party in the early 20th century, aligning themselves with Germany during WW1 and seeking to purge non-Turkish Muslims from the country. Originally favoring reformation of the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Empire, their leadership, what historians have referred to as a “dictatorial triumvirate,” seized power in a coup d’état in 1913. Led by “The Three Pashas” (Enver, Djemal and Talaat), their dogma and policies led directly to humiliating defeat after defeat against Tsarist Russia and the ethnic cleansing of 1.5 million of their own people, the Ottoman-Armenians.↩

5. The title character in a novel by English author Gertrude Colmore (1911), written to help further the cause of the Women’s Movement.↩

6. Bayan is the Turkish word for lady.↩

7. -jan is a suffix in the Armenian language denoting affection.↩

making the bread that the dead call lavash

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Armenia, Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Illustration and art, Prose

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lavash

The dead are always talking; it is the living, in every age of gizmos and thingamabobs, who have forgotten how to listen.

“I died like this …”

Contrary to what you might believe these stories are told to anyone who can hear, regardless of kinship curse, haunting or vague homicidal family blood ties. Why is it that those who worship ancestors the most turn a deaf ear to their own tribe, let alone the tribe of their neighbors? That is a darkening of the soul. That is something the dead will not abide.

“… far out in a desert, a wasteland of salt, in the heat and stink of what the Turks call Der ez Zor …”

If you can hear stars sing you can listen to the dead. It is simple, for the dead are always talking with red adder’s tongue and the blessed silver owl light. A kiss in your mouth that leaves sparks. Sparks. If you can rub amber’s essence between your fingers you can listen to anything.

…“I was a girl, fey-wristed with curly black hair. I will tell you. I will tell you everything …”

You know some things, but never all. Der ez Zor was a place of suffering during the starving times. During the long walks. During the annihilation. The dead can tell you this because they remember the names. Names for everything. Names that you have been taught to ignore, that you’ve forgotten.

“… we called it Medz Yeghern, the Great Calamity. Remember what I tell you. Remember when the first signs of destruction were blown to us in the wind …”

I tell you about the fourteenth year in the new century. I tell you what I’ve heard because I am nothing and nobody. I can’t speak their language or read from their books. But the dead don’t care about grammar or poor translation or how verbs are conjugated. All they need is a willing audience.

“… when the wild horsemen came and burned down our crops, killing our fathers and husbands and son, telling us that we must go south, to the camps, to follow the relocation orders …”

These are not my kith and kin. These are not my blood soaked lands. Still — Medz Yeghern, the Great Calamity — fills my dreams and will not let me rest. Ever since I returned home from Peace Corps. Ever since I first tasted that strange flat bread that the dead call lavash.

the nightmare girl: chapter 1

08 Saturday Mar 2014

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March 08, 2014 (1)

A few days after her birth in 1879 in the Cilician town of Tarsus, in what is now considered to be part of southern Turkey, Mariam’s father walked to the local government building to record the event. Her parents wanted everything in order before they moved to the Ottoman city of Kars with their infant daughter. They had decided to leave their small town for there were no opportunities in Tarsus at that time and many of their formally friendly neighbors were grumbling that Armenians were to blame.

Mariam’s father was known to the government official in charge of name keeping and the issuing of birth certificates.

“Ah, it is you, Yeghishe, what can I do for you?” the official asked.

“Help me celebrate my very good news,” her father said. “I wish to report and record the birth of my daughter. She is to be called Mariamna.” Mariamna being the Russian version of the Armenian name, Miriam.

“Mariamna?” asked the official in disbelief. “No, no. Mariamna is no good.”

Her father had not anticipated any objection to the name he and his wife had chosen. It was, though, an old maxim of the Armenians of Tarsus never to question Muslim officials without understanding what was expected of them first. Her father stayed silent and waited.

The official said, “You are going to relocate to Kars, he, Yeghishe?” There were no secrets in their town. Naturally, the Armenians knew everything about each other. It was curious, too, that their Muslims neighbors always seemed to know about the business of the Armenians as well.

“You see? there is no sense in burdening your daughter with a Russian name. What Turk would do that? No, no. Use Meryem instead. That’s a proper Turkish name and she won’t be so despised when she grows. Yes, yes, Meryem. Your daughter will be better off,” the town’s official said, presenting the startled father with a document bearing witness that one Shahani, wife of Yeghishe Zildjian, had given birth to a daughter, Meryem Zildjian, on October 30, 1879.

The story of Mariam’s forced name conversion soon became part of their family lore, and before her first birthday the three of them left Tarsus for Kars. By then, Mariam had evolved into Mare, a nickname that her parents and friends all called her, ignoring the Meryem decreed by the funny little man in a red fez.

Mariam was a good name, it suited her nature well, for it was ancient and meant “the rebellious one” and in a world that was about to be torn apart in war and fire only the rebellious shall survive.