The Oregonian – OR
Nov 3 2007
Starved for recognition
Armenians wait anxiously as Congress considers labeling as genocide
the deaths of 1.5 million countrymen by the Turks
Saturday, November 03, 2007
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES
The Oregonian Staff
Hunched at a table in a dim corner of Ararat, Portland’s Armenian
bakery, Albert Bedrosian peeks through a heavy halo of Marlboro
smoke. Tar stains the prickly gray whiskers at his mouth, and he holds
his cigarette with a hand callused by the building of successful
businesses.
Bedrosian is 80, an Armenian immigrant who pulled himself up by his
bootstraps. Yet, when he speaks, it’s of sad things. "I have six
grandchildren," Bedrosian says softly, in words drenched with an
accent. "But I never know what it is to call someone grandmother."
Neither age, nor prosperity, nor distance has erased the longing. For
family he never knew because they were killed by the Turks during the
World War I era. For an acknowledgement from his adopted country of a
genocide.
The longing intensified recently as a congressional committee debated
a resolution that recognizes the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians
around World War I by the Ottoman Turks as genocide. Bedrosian finds
himself fanatically watching and reading the news and then weighing
odds with his countrymen that the resolution will finally pass
Congress. It consumes the conversation at Ararat bakery.
"A whole generation was killed; we can’t ever, ever forget," Nelli
Grigorian tells the three men who munch on nazook, a sweet bread. They
sit in the bar of Grigorian’s bakery, which moonlights as a restaurant
and international disco. "So I feel in my heart it’s going to be the
right decision."
Albert Keuftedjian isn’t so sure. He loves this country, he says,
because it gave him freedom and opportunity. He voted for President
Bush. Now he feels betrayed by Bush’s decision not to support the
resolution because it could harm the relationship with Turkey, an Iraq
war ally.
"For him to come on TV and say it’s not the right time is very
disappointing," Keuftedjian says, pounding his open hand against the
table. "It is a sad point when the greatest nation in the world says
it’s not time. It’s time to ease the pain that we have."
Keuftedjian takes a sip of sweet, thick liquid from a tiny cup
embellished with a Grecian motif. They never call it Turkish coffee,
he points out; it’s Armenian coffee. The group of four laughs. But
brevity is fleeting. "Why now?" Rafael Saakyan voices the question in
many Armenians’ minds. "We’ve been fighting for this for 92 years."
Saakyan is just 26. His great-grandfather survived the annihilation of
his town by hiding under the bodies of his dead parents. It’s a
generational wound, Saakyan says, that won’t heal until the world
acknowledges the genocide.
One by one, they recount horrible family tales.
Keuftedjian, a 47-year-old business owner, says his great-grandparents
both died in the genocide. Grigorian is 48, came to the U.S. in 1991
and started the bakery before she even learned English. She stares
into the next room as she speaks of her grandparents’ deaths at the
hands of the Turks.
Bedrosian, his voice even and low, says both of his parents were
orphaned in the genocide. His mother watcher her own mother being
killed, he says, from between the mattresses where she was
hidden. Bedrosian grew up with no aunts, no uncles, no
grandparents. Who, he asks, can expect us to forget that this
happened?
"It’s an example for all humanity, for what is happening in Darfur and
all over the world," he says. "It is an example so that it doesn’t
happen again."
The old man stumps out his cigarette, shakes his head, then reaches
for another.