A DIFFIDENT WITNESS TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Sorcha Hamilton
The Irish Times
June 28, 2008 Saturday
HISTORY: WRITING ABOUT the Armenian genocide is a sure way to get into
trouble in Turkey. Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk received
death threats and was brought to court for his comments about the
murder of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.
Bestselling writer Elif Shafak was prosecuted by the Turkish government
for referring to the incident as genocide in her novel, The Bastard
of Istanbul. Newspaper editor Hrant Dink, who spent much of his
life campaigning against the government’s denial of the massacres,
was assassinated by a Turkish ultra-nationalist last year.
To this growing chorus of counter-narratives comes a striking memoir
by Fethiye Cetin. My Grandmother examines the real, human story behind
Turkey’s hidden past. It describes how Cetin, a human rights lawyer
who represented the murdered journalist Dink, uncovered a tragic
family secret.
For years Cetin knew nothing of her Muslim grandmother’s past – that
her real name was Heranus, not Seher, and that she was a Christian
Armenian torn from her mother’s arms during the infamous death marches
and adopted by a Turkish gendarme captain.
Cetin grew up in the small town of Maden. When her father died,
her family moved in with her grandparents. Cetin loved living in
this busy household where she could watch her aunts and uncles doing
their housework or spend hours at the big windows looking out over the
market. Her grandmother took pride in her cooking and the cleanliness
of her home, and was protective of her fatherless grandchildren.
Once, when the river flooded and Cetin and her brother and sister
were trapped in the cinema, her grandmother came to the rescue,
braving the high waters alone to bring her grandchildren home.
Cetin’s grandmother was a devout Muslim but the type of strong,
principled woman who dismissed the hoca religious leader when he
said it was a sin for children to play the mandolin. Instead, she
encouraged her granddaughter to play.
It was much later, after her grandfather died, that Cetin’s grandmother
began to speak about her past. Her family fell victim to the forced
deportations of 1915, when most of the men in her village were
slaughtered in public.
She remembers the bodies left on the side of the road during the
death marches and how her mother raced after her when she was plucked
from her arms by a man on horseback, who later took her into his
Muslim home.
It was only years afterwards, when she was married, that Cetin’s
grandmother discovered her parents had escaped to the US. While
she never got a chance to meet her family again before she died,
her granddaughter later visited them.
Cetin describes how she and her grandmother would talk for hours,
quickly changing the subject if anyone came into the room. There are
some unforgettable details in this memoir, such as the way Cetin’s
grandmother, while speaking about the past, smoothed her hand over her
skirt repeatedly "as if she were ironing her dress". Or the fact that
the sweet, braided breads that her grandmother would offer guests was
an Armenian tradition, almost like a secret code shared by neighbours
or others with similar pasts. Or how she would say, almost chanting:
"May those days go away and may they never return."
This is a remarkable book. It contains all the fascinating details of
a family history, with copies of photographs, letters and even one
of her grandmother’s recipes, while Cetin’s simple, unsentimental
style allows the story to speak for itself.
"May she forgive us," Cetin cried at her funeral, almost like a plea
on behalf of all Turkish Muslims to acknowledge their past. There
is no doubt that this story of hardship passed through generations
will have resonance among the estimated two million Turks who have
at least one grandparent of Armenian extraction.
Maureen Freely – who has also translated Orhan Pamuk – describes in
the introduction how Cetin wanted the book simply to bear witness to
the Armenian experience.
Cetin avoids the controversies over figures and the exact number of
dead or the politics of genocide recognition, which remain highly
divisive topics in Turkey. Instead, she seeks a more personal
truth. And perhaps it is only in stories like these – the tragic
secret passed from grandmother to granddaughter – that real histories
can begin to emerge.