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The Armenian Weekly; Volume 73, No. 32; August 11, 2007
Arts and Literature:
1. The Intrigue of Constantinople Politics
By Kay Mouradian
2. Book Review: ‘Targeting Iran’
By Khatchig Mouradian
3. Roads
By Z. Khrakhuni
Translated by Tatul Sonentz
***
1. The Intrigue of Constantinople Politics
By Kay Mouradian
(November, 1913)
Henry Morgenthau was anxious to meet the Turkish politicians and the
ambassadors posted in Constantinople.
"It is better to wait," his dragoman Arshag Schmavonian advised. "They want
to meet you, Sir. Let them be the first to extend an invitation."
"Are you suggesting I remain aloof?"
"No, Sir, but this is Constantinople and intrigue is part of the culture.
You want to arouse their curiosity."
Hmmm, like a negotiating ploy, Morgenthau thought and said, "I like the idea
of being visible, yet distant. Let’s ride through the city in an open
carriage. You can show me the embassies and the Turkish government offices
and the excursion will give me a feel for the city."
"I’ll plan an itinerary for tomorrow. You may not know that Constantinople
is, in reality, a triple city. There is the Turkish quarter on the Asiatic
side of the Bosporus and Pera and Galata are the foreign quarters. Most of
the American community lives in Pera, the Christian quarter. But our embassy
is in Galata."
"I understand Constantinople’s population is upward of a million. Correct?"
Henry asked.
"Yes. One-half are Turks and the rest are Greeks, Armenians, Jews and many
of mixed European stock. The charm of this city enticed these Europeans to
stay, marry Ottomans and raise their families here."
Morgenthau was struck by Schmavonian’s love and pride for the city. "You’re
Armenian?"
Schmavonian hesitated. "Yes."
"You are the first Armenian I’ve ever met."
"I’m a Protestant."
Morgenthau’s lips slowly widened into a grin and he chuckled. "Are you going
to try to convert me?"
Both men laughed so long and hard that Schmavonian had to wipe tears from
his eyes. Still laughing, Henry reached for a cigar. "I like a cigar
occasionally." He rolled the cigar around in his mouth and savored the taste
of the fine Turkish tobacco. He blew the smoke up toward the ceiling and
extended the humidor to Schmavonian.
Schmavonian took a cigar and both men settled back into their chairs. It was
the beginning of a heartfelt bond the two would have for the duration of
Morgenthau’s tenure in Constantinople.
"At one time my father was the largest manufacturer of cigars in Germany,"
Morgenthau said. "He exported them to America and when he learned the tariff
was going to be raised significantly, he loaded a ship with cigars intending
to beat the tariff. But, unfortunately, the ship had a difficult crossing
and arrived in New York one day after the tariff took effect. My father lost
his fortune, we immigrated to America, and my sweet mother, who was used to
having servants wait on her, had to run a boarding house in New York City.
So, you see, I am never complacent." Reaching for a pen, he opened his
notebook. "Now, tell me. Who are the major players in the city?"
"Turkish or foreign?"
"Let’s start with the Turks."
Schmavonian placed his hands on the edge of the desk. "The most powerful
Turk is the Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha. He is about 45 years
old, speaks some French, and is a man of the people. He has a keen
intelligence and at the time of the revolution seven years ago he was merely
a telegraph operator at Salonika."
"Interesting," Morgenthau said as he made notations on the paper.
"The second most powerful is Enver Pasha, the Minister of War. He studied
military methods in Berlin, speaks German fluently, and has a close
relationship with Kaiser Wilhem. He is only 32 and was promoted to General
from Lt. Colonel in less than six months." Schmavonian grinned. "That
promotion normally takes six years."
"How does someone so young reach such an exalted position?"
"He was one of three military heroes in the 1908 revolution. He, Nazim
Pasha, and Shefket Pasha led the army into Constantinople. Nazim Pasha, the
Minister of War and the strongest Young Turk leader, was a liberal who
wanted the subject races to be part of the government. He was murdered last
year and Shefket Pasha was assassinated six months later."
"So Enver is now the Minister of War?"
"Yes. He is very ambitious."
"Was he responsible for the assassinations?
"Many thought so, but no one was able to prove he was behind the coup d’etat."
Morgenthau was beginning to understand the tenuousness of the Turkish Empire
commonly referred to as the Sick Man of Europe. "Who is the third?"
"That would be General Jemal Pasha, the Minister of Marine."
"A General in charge of the Navy?"
Schmavonian smiled. "Yes, but soon he will be taking command of the Fourth
Army in Syria and Palestine. He speaks French like a Parisian and has been
instrumental in bringing French experts to Constantinople to train our
Turkish police."
"Sounds like Jemal runs everything. How old is he?"
"About 45."
"And the position equivalent to England’s Prime Minister?"
"That is the Grand Vizier, who is Said Halim Pasha. He went to Oxford, comes
from one of the oldest families in Egypt and is an ardent Turk. He replaced
Kiamil Pasha, who was told that if he did not resign he would be murdered."
"By whom?"
"Talaat."
"I think there is more I should know."
"Definitely, but you need time to absorb the political situation. First,
meet these men."
"What about the Sultan? How much power does he have?"
Schmavonian laughed. "He is merely a figurehead, quite different from his
predecessor, Abdul Hamid II. How much do you know about the 1908
revolution?"
"Are you going to give me a history lesson?"
"Yes! But over coffee at the Pera Palace Hotel just a couple of blocks away.
It will be good for you to be seen in public."
The two men crushed out their cigars, left the embassy and were at the hotel
within minutes. They entered the lobby where several well-dressed patrons
were sitting and chatting on settees placed by expensive wood paneled walls.
They settled themselves into two comfortable red sofa chairs placed on
either side of a round brass coffee table.
A waiter, standing by an elegant copper cart designed especially for making
Turkish coffee, was approaching.
"Do you like your coffee sweet?" Schmavonian asked.
"Yes." Morgenthau learned at a young age to resist sweets for which he had a
penchant, but he had heard horror stories about the strong Turkish coffee.
Schmavonian nodded to the waiter and said in Turkish, "Both sweet."
Morgenthau watched the man, the hotel’s expert coffee maker, put water and
two spoons of powdered coffee and sugar into a small brass pot. The man
brought it to a boil, pulled the pot away and passed it over the flame
another two times, skimming the froth and spooning it into the demitasses
and carefully poured the coffee into the cups. Steaming fumes spiraled
upward as the waiter brought the coffees and set them on the table.
The ambassador picked up the dainty cup and took a sip. "It will take time
for me to develop a taste for this potent stuff." He set down the coffee and
said, "What do I need to know about the Sultan?"
"Mehmed Rechad became Sultan of Turkey when the Young Turks deposed his
brother, Abdul Hamid II. Abdul Hamid had ruled the empire, or as some have
said, misruled the empire for 33 years. He was a hardened despot who had a
deep fear of being assassinated."
Schmavonian lifted his coffee to his lips, sniffed it as he would a fine
wine, sipped it and returned it to the table. "That fear of assassination
was such an obsession he devised a network of spies throughout the empire to
nip any plot that might be hatching. He had 50,000 spies in Constantinople
alone, and his first day of business always began with reports from those
spies. Ruling the empire was secondary."
"Shouldn’t his son have become Sultan?" Morgenthau laughed and added, "I’m
assuming he had a large harem and at least one son."
"Yes, he had sons," Schmavonian said with a smile, "but in Turkey the eldest
in the family rises to the throne. You can imagine the maneuvering of the
harem wives who wanted their sons to become Sultan. Often it led to plots
and assassinations, and sometimes brothers were killed to prevent the threat
of a coup."
The new American ambassador was beginning to understand why Constantinople
held such a flavor of intrigue. It started at the top. "Then he had good
reason to fear assassination?"
"Yes he did! He had been instrumental in the plot to depose his elder
brother, Murad, whom he claimed was mentally unfit to rule. He imprisoned
his brother in the basement of one of the palaces and Murad was found
strangled twenty-eight years later."
An astonished look crossed Morgenthau’s face.
"Yes," Schmavonian said with a nod. "There were some who began to promote
the idea that Murad should retake the throne and they claim that is why
Murad was murdered. The Palace guards kept Murad, his wife and three
daughters in the basement with no furniture except for an old piano. They
were given plenty of food, their only heat was from a small charcoal pot,
their clothes consisted of rough gray cloth, the kind used to make soldiers
uniforms, and they slept on the cold floor. Murad’s wife and one daughter
died during the first year of their imprisonment."
"This is hard for me to comprehend."
"That’s not all," Schmavonian scoffed. "This supposedly feeble minded
brother taught his remaining two daughters Turkish and Persian poetry, using
boards from a broken wooden tray and bits of charcoal. He had no paper,
pencils or books, and he still managed to give his girls an education, all
from memory. He even taught them to play the piano."
"What an incredible story. What happened to Abdul Hamid?"
"The Young Turks exiled him to a thirty room villa in Salonika after he, so
the Young Turks say, instigated an unsuccessful counter revolution in 1909.
When the Greeks took Salonika last year, the Germans helped the exiled
Sultan escape and now he is imprisoned in Beylerbey Palace on the Asiatic
side of the Bosporus." Schmavonian grinned. "That imprisonment, however,
allows him to keep 8 of his harem favorites, two eunuchs and a few
servants."
Morgenthau laughed. "If one has to be imprisoned, it’s not a bad way to go.
And what about the present Sultan, Rechad?"
"He is another story. Abdul Hamid kept him in another kind of prison, one
surrounded with the sensual pleasures of life, in the harem and with
opiates. Abdul Hamid did not want his younger brother to develop the
strength and character needed to roust him out of power. Sultan Rechad is
now a gentle old man whose lot in life left him resigned rather than bitter.
He is no threat to the Young Turks."
"Mr. Schmavonian," a voice with a cultured British accent called. A
well-dressed middle aged man was fast approaching.
Schmavonian quickly turned to Morgenthau and said, "Sir Louis Mallet, the
English Ambassador." He extended his hand toward the man and said, "Please
join us."
The waiter quickly appeared carrying a carved wooden chair for the English
Ambassador.
"Medium," he said in his British Turkish accent to the coffee maker, turned
toward Morgenthau and said, "Do I have the pleasure of meeting the new
American Ambassador?"
Morgenthau rose, shook the man’s hand and said, "Henry Morgenthau."
"That’s the western introduction." The Englishman cracked his heels, leaned
forward in a stiff bow, his hands by his side and said in his precise
British accent, "Louis Mallet." He gave Morgenthau a smile and said, "That’s
the eastern introduction."
"It has a Prussian feel," Morgenthau said as the two men settled into their
chairs.
"I heard you had arrived, and I’d like you and your family to join me for
dinner one evening next week." The Englishman turned to Schmavonian. "You
must come, also."
"Thank you. You know that Ambassador Morgenthau is here with his daughter
and her family?"
"Yes. Diplomatic news in this town travels quickly."
"I plan to send for my wife as soon as I’m settled." Morgenthau did not like
being separated from his wife, Josie, and now he was feeling apprehensive
about her arrival after hearing about the coup d’etat. "Mr. Schmavonian was
briefing me about Abdul Hamid."
"Ah yes," Mallet said as the waiter set his medium coffee in front him. "An
odd chap and a mighty tyrant. His officials were so frightened of him they
never dined together, except at a foreign embassy. And then they had to ask
the Palace for permission and always left the embassy separately. If there
was even a hint of a plot, the officials simply disappeared. Ah yes, those
were the old days, and not so good I might add. But then, these days aren’t
much better, either."
Schmavonian turned toward Morgenthau. "The English and the Germans want to
extend the railroad onto Baghdad and are negotiating for oil concessions."
"The Turks can be a difficult lot to deal with," Mallet said. "The Turkish
bureaucracy is very slow and the political situation is tenuous. If this
group is replaced, for example, will the new leaders honor the negotiated
contracts?"
"Has there been talk of another coup?" Morgenthau asked.
"There have been rumors, but then again rumors of war are also blowing all
across Europe."
Mallet finished his coffee. "Well, I must be off. Will Wednesday be a good
evening for dinner?"
"Fine."
"Mr. Schmavonian, I’ll be in touch about the specifics." Mallet left as
quickly as he had arrived.
Schmavonian scanned the room. "It was no accident he was here," he said as
they rose to leave. "Someone saw us and went to the Embassy to tell Mallet."
As they walked out the hotel door, Henry lowered his glasses halfway down
his nose, impishly looked in both directions and chuckled. "Do you think it
was one of his spies?"
Both laughed heartily and walked back to the embassy each deep in his own
thoughts.
Henry Morgenthau felt he was on the edge of something great. He felt as if
he were in a canoe on a river whose whitewater rapids would challenge his
skill to avoid crashing upon the rocks.
——————————————- ————————————————– —
2. Book Review: ‘Targeting Iran’
By Khatchig Mouradian
"Do not ask about the harvest; ask about the plowing," says the Chinese
proverb. In Targeting Iran, award-winning journalist David Barsamian follows
that advice. He asks his interviewees, Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian and
Nahid Mozaffari, about all the plowing and planting that has culminated in
the demonization of Iran by the U.S. since the Islamic Revolution of 1979
and vice versa.
Some of Alternative Radio founder and director Barsamian’s interviews have
appeared exclusively in the Armenian Weekly, including an interview with
Agos editor Etyen Mahcupyan in the Weekly’s July 14 issue. His listeners and
readers know what to expect: clear, straightforward questions, often
preceded by some background information-and to borrow imagery from farming
one more time-sowing insight into the intricacies and complexities of a
region that has long suffered in the hands of those worshipping at the
altars of oversimplification, trivialization, decontextualization, et al.
In his introduction, Barsamian provides a brief history of Iran and
U.S.-Iranian relations. He concludes by quoting Iran’s Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Shirin Ebadi’s favorite couplet, which rings as true regarding U.S.
foreign policy as it does about Iran’s current state of affairs:
If there is no justice,
then those who are deprived
may one day take to the streets and rise up.
(Hafez, a renowned 14th century Persian poet)
The first interview-the shortest of the three-is with Noam Chomsky, whom
Barsamian has interviewed dozens of times, culminating in five
Chomsky/Barsamian books. Chomsky, talking about U.S. policy with regard to
Iran, demonstrates the self-destructive logic of preemption. "By U.S.
standards, Iran ought to be carrying out terrorist acts in the United
States," he says. "In fact, adopting U.S. standards, we ought to be
demanding that they do it. They’re under far greater threat than anything
Bush or Blair ever conjured up, and that’s supposed to authorize what they
call anticipatory self-defense, namely attack."
Talking about Iran’s resumption of uranium enrichment, Chomsky says, "[J]ust
do a media search and find out how often it has even been mentioned that
when Iran began enriching uranium again, it was after the Europeans had
rejected their side of the bargain, namely, to provide firm guarantees on
security issues." He then charges that the press knew about the Europeans
backing down-under U.S. pressure-but chose to ignore the story.
Chomsky’s interview centers on Iran, but-surprise!-his analysis and examples
take us on a roller-coaster ride from the U.S., South America and Europe to
Palestine, Iraq and China, spanning almost half a century. Always at ease
and at his best with Barsamian, Chomsky pulls out examples and arguments
from his memory with the skill of a seasoned magician pulling out all kinds
of objects from a hat and leaving the audience in awe. However, the
interview would have benefited from a few footnotes or editor’s notes,
providing exact information and percentages when, for example, Chomsky says,
"I forgot the exact number, but I think they’re [China] getting maybe 10-15
percent of their energy imports from Saudi Arabia." Or when he says, "He
[Moqtada Sadr, an Iraqi Shiite cleric-politician, opposed to the U.S.
presence] gained, I think, 50 percent or so in the last parliamentary
elections."
Providing the global and historical contexts, Chomsky sets the stage for
Iranian-Armenian history professor Ervand Abrahamian’s in-depth look at Iran’s
political structure and the U.S-Iran confrontation today, with emphasis on
the nuclear issue.
"If Iranians are hit by air strikes, they will hit back where they have the
upper hand, which is Iraq and Afghanistan," Abrahamian says. "They are
obviously not going to attack the U.S., nor will they attack Israel,
although people have this paranoid view about that," he adds.
Abrahamian maintains that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad engages in
Holocaust denial and calls for the destruction of Israel to bridge the gap
between Sunnis and Shiites and to "pitch for Arab support." He says that
this rhetoric does not resonate in Iran as much as it does in the Arab
street.
Asked about Tehran’s connection with the Lebanese Shiite armed group
Hezbollah, Abrahamian says that Iran does not use this party to threaten
Israel: "One major mistake the Israelis are making is thinking that
Hezbollah is so closely tied with Iran that once the U.S. attacks Iran, Iran
would automatically use Hezbollah against Israel. I don’t think that’s in
the works."
Reading the first two interviews, the reader has the impression that the
book is a critical look at U.S. foreign policy with very little insight on
Iran’s internal dynamics. Then comes the interview with Iranian-born
historian Nahid Mozaffari. She and Barsamian take the reader on a journey
inside Iran’s vibrant literary life (yes, they DO have literature) from the
early 20th century to the present; from poetry to novels and memoirs; from
dissidents to female voices. She notes how Iranian writers, who visit the
U.S., are treated as "human rights guinea pigs," but also expands on the
censorship, oppression and persecution they suffer in Iran, as well as the
rise of the bloggers. Mozaffari deals with women’s issues (divorce, custody
rights, property right, dress codes, etc.) in some detail. She also talks
about the development of cinema in the post-1979 period and the clampdown on
the rock groups and rappers under Ahmadinejad’s rule.
"The Islamist conservatives regard developments in civil society as
threatening and susceptible to foreign manipulation," explains Mozaffari.
One of the book’s main messages is in the concluding lines of this last
interview: "This tough resolve by those who desire change within Iran, along
with their [i.e. the Iranians’] equally strong determination to be
independent of outside pressure and manipulations, should serve as a stern
warning to the U.S. and other states who contemplate any military action
against Iran."
————————————– ————————————————– ———–
3. Poetry
R O A D S
A.
This isn’t just once, or twice
Each time
We reach the same location
The entire train turns off its lights
for one minute or so
then it turns them back on
This isn’t just once, or twice
Each time we approach the same location
No accidents, no construction, no danger
There’s only a house in the distance
a window all lit up
an opaque countenance
that shuts and opens up and down
Until the train moves on
And turns on its lights once more in triumph
But what would you call this?
It’s not always the same train that switches on and off.
With this train this story turns to mystery
If I fail to grasp
Who it is that runs like mad from one end of the train to the other
Who it is-the luminous appearance that glows
as the curtain opens and shuts with a wink
And what the teeming train carries spilling over hill and dale
full to the brim.
November 22, 1984
B.
To look out
The window at the
Parading woods and fields, villages and houses
And to say
Born, grown-up, residing in this house-or that one-
I’d be the owner of that remote one-owner of surrounding lands
Or the garden where bloom apple tree, cherry tree,and all flowers
That I’d have planted-
I could have been this man
Who walks forlorn alone in the fields towards the distant grove
Not seeing, not thinking of me
Concerned only
With the land and the sky between which he stands alone-
I could have been that timid child
Waiving at the train and me
Without ever seeing me, knowing me-
Or be in that carriage moving at high speed
Same direction as the train or headed the opposite way
Makes no difference at all-always by smooth winding trails
Which always take him to his destiny without his knowledge – or
In contrast think about it and wish to be on this train
To be in my place-to be me
As I thought I could be him
Be someone else-the one roaming in the field
Pruning the rosebush in the garden
Smelling the magnolia
He lives in this house with gardenias aflame on its front
And all disappear from my view in the blink of an eye.
November 25, 1984
———-Z. Khrakhuni
Translated by Tatul Sonentz