The New Republic Online

An Armenian in America
by Aghavnie Yeghenian

Only at TNR Online
Post date: 07.03.04
[ In 1915, roughly 2 million Armenians lived in Turkey. By 1923, the
government had murdered one and a half million of them. In this article by
Armenian-American Aghavnie Yeghenian, published in 1921, the author asks why
America’s morals have not matched its might. Yeghenian questions the moral
fiber of a nation–“so beloved, so rich, free”–that did nothing to stop the
Armenian genocide despite full knowledge of its existence. Today, some
30,000 black Africans have been murdered in Sudan; once again, America has
failed to act. Will we do anything about the Sudanese genocide? Or will our
morals once again fail to match our might? –Eric Herschthal ]

June 29, 1921

How does it feel to be an Armenian in America?” asks a thoughtful friend. I
stare at him. Does he wish to change places with me just once? “Write it, if
you can’t tell me,” he urges. Yet even while I write these lines I wonder if
he will really read what promises to be so painful.

Being an Armenian–an Armenian anywhere–gives one strange feelings. My mind
is torn by the conflict of opposing emotions growing out of my racial
inheritance and my living experience. Fear struggles with courage; pain with
the will to endure; worry with optimism; depression with buoyancy; sorrow
with faith; despair with hope; overshadowing death with promising life.

The injection of my friend’s question into such a consciousness makes me
gather my life into a shifting scene in which we Armenians, bleeding,
wounded, murdered, outraged, drowning in the sea of barbarism, beaten by the
waves of civilized cruelty, call out to the multitudes dwelling on the shore
of security.

We cry the story of our life-long suffering, of our murdered manhood, our
outraged womanhood, our dying babies, our tortured mothers, our crucified
leaders. We cry in anguish and pain. We show our wounds. We call for help.
The crowd on the shore throw out some handfuls of pennies which fall leaden
into the waters. Our cry has not been understood.

Perhaps that band of strangers will be stirred by the story of our marvelous
history of heroism. We tell of our struggle for liberty through the ages, of
our martyrs who are countless, of the ever-undaunted courage of our men and
women, of our undying faith in the triumph of right, and our unfailing hope
of human goodness. Again we have failed to thrill the crowd upon the shore.

What has happened to the people who look out at the Armenian sea of
suffering? They are incomprehensibly unresponsive. They seem almost
motionless. We detect, however, a slight movement. It seems to spring from
an emotion like that described in a cartoon published in a well-known
American magazine, showing the gaunt figure of Armenia disturbing the peace
of a fat congressman, who, handkerchief to his eyes, exclaims, “Get out. You
are breaking my heart.” Yes, there almost seems to be a slight movement, a
turning of the back to avoid a harrowing picture.

The scene gives way in my mind to a question that stands out in letters of
living fire: Has the world a heart? Alas! this is Armenia’s eternal and
unanswered question. People who appear great and noble talk about the heart
of the world. Do they really believe in it? Are they sincere? Have virtue
and love of human valor died? Is there only the false and pretentious?

The suffering that comes from feeling that we live in a shallow and isolated
world is more tragic than the danger of impending death. For death we have
always met fearlessly, but it is life,–good, brave, real, serious
life,–which Armenia craves; and the time when she feels her wings most
broken is not when the Turk is out killing and plundering, but the time when
England is deceiving her and France is betraying her, and when America is
turning her back to avoid the painful picture. To be an Armenian in America
is to be bitterly disappointed. To this country, this America so beloved, so
rich, free, happy, it seems impossible to impart the sadness of an
Armenian’s life.

But why do I suffer? Haven’t I the privilege of living in America, a
privilege envied by others of my countrymen? Haven’t I all the opportunities
of an American? All this I have, freedom, position, opportunities, friends,
but the happy smile of an American I can neither achieve nor buy. I walk
about like one in a dream, my head heavy, my throat choked, my spirit
crushed. I go to church and the minister reads from the old prophet of
Israel, “How doth the City sit solitary that was full of people! She is
become like a widow, that was great among the nations! Is it nothing to you,
all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my
sorrow.” I do not comprehend the application of the words. I keep asking
myself, “Isn’t it of me that the minister speaks? Is there anyone else in
the congregation who has lost his country, even as did the prophet?” I
review the desolate cities of Armenia, its burned homes and ruined churches,
its solitary hills and deserted streets. The rest of the minister’s words
are lost to me. As I walk out I cry silently to the passing crowds, “Is it
nothing to you, O Americans, that I suffer, that my people are murdered,
that my country is destroyed, that the virgins of Armenia die in shame in
Turkish harems, that our children are starving, that our youth are still
falling in the field so sacred to you, the battlefield of liberty? Is it
nothing to you?”

I go to a concert, and the singer begins Mignon’s passionate love song for
her country, “Connais-tu le pays ou fleurit l’oranger–? C’est là, c’est là
que je voudrais vivre, aimer, aimer et mourir.” A desire to sob aloud seizes
my whole being. I want to run away from the audience sitting there politely
and smiling while they listen, they who cannot understand. I cry silently
once again, “Is it nothing to you who have a country that I have none?”

I go to the mountains and the memory of the green hills of Armenia takes me
back to its present valleys of tears. I leave the mountains and run away to
the beach in despair. The gay crowds marching up and down bring to me the
dark picture of columns of women and children marching up and down the
plains of Armenia in search of herbs for food. I attend a dinner party and
note the luxurious gowns and wasted food, and I am forced to think of the
rags in which the once wealthy and beautiful women of my land are now clad.
I pass through the streets where American children play, pretty, happy,
careless, and in my vision rise the rows of our orphanages with their pale,
solemn-faced babies. The bright side of every situation points out to me
with unmistakable clearness the other, the darker side, the Armenian side,
and so, confined in my Armenian being, I cannot step into the freedom of
America. I wait, still I wait for America to break my chains.

This is how it feels to be an Armenian in America.

Aghavnie Yeghenian