FRENCH TURKS AND FLIP-FLOPPING IN BOURJ HAMMOUD
Cagil Kasapoglu
Daily Star – Lebanon
August 1 2009
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, August 01, 2009
"Don’t tell anybody that you’re a Turk," said most of my Lebanese
acquaintances when I asked for directions to Bourj Hammoud, an eastern
suburb of Beirut populated mainly by Armenians who settled there
during the early decades of the 20th century. Although the conventional
wisdom was intimidating, namely that a Turkish visitor could only hope
to encounter unpleasantness in the "Armenian capital" of Lebanon,
a single excursion was sufficient to prove the opposite. Walking
down from Marash Street, named after a city in southeastern Turkey,
I noticed a small goldsmith atelier owned by Sako Khatehabourian,
a man in his 50s.
"I have a tiny store, but a big heart," Sako said with a warm smile
on his face, after learning where his visitor was from. Excited to
talk about history and memories, he first offered a "Turkish coffee,"
as he preferred to call it.
"My grandparents moved here from Aintab [the southern Turkish town
of Gaziantep] in the 1920s. They left everything and immigrated to
Lebanon. Now, even if they offer me money to move back, I wouldn’t,"
Sako said. While he’d managed to integrate himself into Lebanese
society like many of his fellow Armenians, he continued to live with
the dark memories of his ancestry. "I don’t have any problems with
the new generation of Turks who want to build peace between two
societies, but there are millions of bodies in our history. And,
this makes everything difficult."
Although we were discussing a tense history of conflict, Sako’s older
friend Rafi Ourfalian invited me over to meet his family.
As Rafi’s daughter, Betty, unlocked the iron fence of their house,
she asked his father in Armenian about the unexpected guest. I
could only catch the word "Turk" and was expecting the doors to be
slammed in my face, but instead she exclaimed cheerfully in Turkish,
"Hosgeldin evimize, [Welcome to our house]."
Inside, three generations had gathered to follow a Turkish soap opera
– not the version dubbed into Syrian colloquial, but the real thing,
in Turkish. Angel Bezdjian, the eldest member of the family, talked
about her desire to visit Istanbul, where such serials are often
set. "I watch the Bosphorus, the bridges and the mosques of Istanbul
in those soap operas. Is it really that beautiful?" she asked, as if
missing a home that she never knew.
The warm welcomes nearly convinced me that the tensions between
two peoples had melted away. But at another family’s home, there
was a warning. "Please tell your friend not to mention her Turkish
nationality!"
My new friend Ara’s mother, who had been pampering me with delicious
fish and arak only a minute earlier, issued the directive when she
noticed an elderly woman at her door, poised for a visit. Without
giving Ara the chance to translate, I began to speak French, as we’d
agreed to do in "emergency cases."
"She likes gossiping," Ara whispered to me as the lady entered the
room. "It’s no good for my mother to be known as someone who invites
Turks to her house."
It’s a jarring argument for a Turk to face, but I silently heard out
his explanation.
"You have to understand. If Turks hadn’t killed millions of Armenians,
she would have been back in Adana now, where she was born. Nobody
would be here in Bourj Hammoud, this town wouldn’t exist," he said.
In keeping with my new French identity, I headed toward Camp Sanjak,
the first settlement of Armenian refugees, built in the 1920s.
Camp Sanjak is slated to be replaced by a shopping mall, to boost
Bourj Hammoud’s commercial activity. A people that preserves its
historical memory throughout the world will lose an important piece of
its past in Lebanon, the symbol of its first arrival, as refugees. My
nationality made me nervous about asking questions about Sanjak, even
though elderly residents around me were playing "tavla" (backgammon),
as Turkish words peppered their conversations.
In the end, Rafi Pamboukian, a 28-year-old shoemaker, agreed to tell
me about the history of the place, before asking where I was from. He
invited me into his atelier, and I sat in a corner, prepared for the
inevitable. "First, tell me what size you wear," he said, offering
a pair of hand-crafted flip flops as a gift. Soon, "the question"
was asked.
"Where are you from, by the way?" "Well … I’m Turkish." Rafi sat in
place as if paralyzed, staring at my chair. His eyes misted over as
he said that when his shop used to be the family home, his grandmother
used to sleep exactly where I was now seated.
The "one who fled from the Turks" was how he described her.
We somehow managed to steer the conversation back to the fate of
Sanjak.
"They want to demolish this camp now," Rafi said. "There’s no doubt,
it will be good for Armenians to strengthen the [local economy], but
on the other hand the memories will be erased, and we don’t want that."
He paused, and then asked: "Why did you come to Bourj Hammoud anyway?"
The original idea was to write about the memories of Sanjak, but the
memories in Sanjak and Bourj Hammoud proved to be the more compelling
story. I left Bourj Hammoud in my new flip-flops, after encountering
history and memories that can make Turkish people "French" and the
Bosphorus so distant.