SHARED LIVES

By Salpi H. Ghazarian
THE ARMENIAN REPORTER
September 20, 2008

In My Grandmother (Verso Books, 2008) Fethiye Cetin recounts the life of her
grandmother, and mine. Sort of. It turns out we were the cousins divided at
birth.
A young girl, living in Anatolia, Eastern Turkey, separated, violently, from
parents at an age too young to remember. That¹s the story of her
grandmother. That¹s the story of my grandmother, too. Neither had schooling.
Neither had a profession, other than grandmother.
Raised by well-meaning captors, they were the children who were saved, at
least physically, while their parents were forced onto the deportation
route.
The children grew up. Raised in the desert, they did not forget the names of
their mothers and fathers. They did not forget their own names – screamed
by their parents as they were torn away — nor abandon the expectation that
somewhere, somehow they would be reunited.
It was not to happen. In my grandmother¹s case, there was no trace of the
parents. She was raised by a family that sold her off to an Armenian
merchant. Through the sands of Syria to the orphanage in Aleppo, she made a
new life for herself, her daughter and the Diaspora that they comprised.
Fethiye Cetin¹s grandmother Seher was married off to the son of the family
which cared for her and adopted her. For her, there could have been a
reunification. But when her long-lost mother and father were located in a
not terribly distant Aleppo, Seher or Heranush, dared not risk insulting her
husband and his family, and did not take a trip, albeit a short one, to
reconnect with parents and siblings. Her family was again lost, now forever.
But for this noble, some would say misplaced sense of responsibility, there
might have been a different ending to this story.
Instead, the story goes like this: After raising obedient and loving
children and grandchildren, and old enough to fear that her story might go
with her to her grave, Seher or Heranush shared her story with her
granddaughter. She did so partly with the hope that at this late stage some
family might still be found. But she also opened up in order to begin the
settling of accounts that each of us will do, before the books are finally
closed.
In the Diaspora, dozens of students and scholars discovered that such final
reckonings are useful to the recounting process. Stories otherwise too
painful to tell now required listeners. Survivors who for decades would not
speak, now sought an audience in order to share their improbable, matchless
stories.
Some 2000 survivors from France to Canada and the US have recounted their
tales of deprivation, struggle and survival. Some cursed the Turks, others
yearned for the days when they lived together as neighbors. Most did both.
No one remembered the estimated two million Turks whose grandparents too had
stories, similar to Heranush¹s.
Hrant Dink used to say that he¹d get several calls a week from Turks who had
just discovered that they were, after all, also Armenian. One such call came
>From Fethiye Cetin, Hrant¹s own advocate and a human rights attorney.

The story Fethiye Cetin told Hrant is in this slim 100-page book. It is
painstakingly and elegantly translated into English by Maureen Freely, who
is also Orhan Pamuk¹s translator. (There are two translations into Armenian
as well.) Although it¹s called a memoir, Ms. Cetin writes an easy-to-read
unavoidable tear-jerker. A confessional of sorts, she breaks the silence on
a most open secret – that there were Armenians in Turkey several generations
ago, and their descendants live in Turkey still. This is a message for
Ankara.

But this is not a book of politics and ideologies. It¹s a simple story of
two women – a 90+ year-old who broke her own silence only when she knew she
had no choice, and her courageous granddaughter who chose to break the
silence that could no longer be sustained. How else to explain to sisters
and nieces about the grandmother who made interesting sweet breads in the
spring – the Easter cheoregs that reminded her of a life lost? How else to
deal with the phone call that came from America when Heranush¹s death notice
was published in the Istanbul daily Agos and read 10,000 miles away by the
new children of the parents who had survived, moved to the other side of the
ocean, but never forgot the daughter they left behind.

The silence has been broken. The Fethiye Cetin generation will support Hrant
Dink¹s call to talk to each other and listen to each other. Now, the
Diaspora generation of victims¹ descendants must exhibit the dignity,
capacity and willingness to also talk and listen.

Salpi Ghazarian, formerly editor and publisher of Armenian International
Magazine, is Director of the Yerevan-based Civilitas Foundation. From 2001
to 2008, she was Special Assistant to Armenia¹s Minister of Foreign Affairs.