Thursday, August 25, 2005
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One of my problems is my total inability to communicate with teenage hooligans or, for that matter, adults, or even seniors who happen to be clear-cut cases of arrested development.
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An Armenian editor from New York recently visited the editorial office of another Armenian paper in Paris and was given such an unfriendly reception that it bordered on the hostile. I know now why we have no use for critics and dissidents: we don’t need them because every Armenian is another’s critic and dissident. What we need now is peacemakers, negotiators, compromisers, harmonizers, and coordinators.
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We said “Yes, sir!” to sultans and Stalin for almost 700 years; and we now compensate by saying “No, sir!” – but only to our fellow Armenians.
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I once met a Turkish student who spoke Armenian fluently but identified herself as a Turk. She probably thought she would get more respect that way.
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An Armenian will criticize a writer for repeating himself and a speechifier, sermonizer, or propagandist for not repeating himself.
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There seems to be an unspoken theory among us that says, you can tell how good an Armenian is by how much he hates Turks.
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When confronted with the issue of hating Turks, an Armenian will rationalize it by saying, “I don’t hate them; I just want them to acknowledge the Genocide.” Which raises the following questions: What if being dependent on Turkish justice is almost like being a subject of the Ottoman Empire? What if by rationalizing our hatred of Turks we also rationalize our intolerance of fellow Armenians? What if our hatred pollutes our relations with our fellow men? What if Gandhi was right when he said, “Hatred harms the hater more than those he hates”?
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And if you were to ask me: “What about you? Don’t you hate anybody?” My answer would be, “Of course I do! I was born and raised as an Armenian.”
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Friday, August 26, 2005
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Armenian proverb: “Better the slave of a wise man than the master of a fool.”
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Denis Donikian: “Dissent is not so much a form of political opposition as a defense of values that we all share.”
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We have no use for human rights because our own rights were violated by a long line of tyrants. We have no use for civilized conduct either because we were ruled by barbarians. You may now guess the identity of our role models.
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The very same people who have made Turkish barbarism their central concern see nothing inconsistent in adopting their methods, and the only reason they don’t massacre is that it is against the law. But the moment the law is relaxed in their favor, as it happened in the Soviet era, they will not hesitate to be their brothers’ executioners.
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Whenever a fellow Armenian calls me a brother I start wondering who is Cain and who is Abel.
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There is a Cain and Abel in all of us, but we prefer to parade as Abels and to assign the role of Cain to anyone who dares to disagree with us. We thus view dissent and criticism as activities peculiar to the Cains of this world even as we ourselves violate their fundamental human right of free speech.
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Saturday, August 27, 2005
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“You are a dishonest man, a bad writer, and a worse Armenian,” a reader, himself a poet, informs me. To which I can only say: “I am sure the nation will be eternally grateful to you if you reject me as a role model.”
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Jewish saying: “Fools who hide their ignorance are wiser than the wise who parade their knowledge.”
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Denis Donikian: “If you want to solve our problems, share your money not your ideas.”
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Armenian proverb: “Neither candle not incense can open a path to heaven.”
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All politicians are atheists, including those who believe in god.
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Some people are so outrageously wrong that they don’t have to be corrected; sooner or later life, facts, the reality principle will speak to them much louder than any logical argument or appeal to common sense.
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