I DON’T WANT THE TURKS TO COME
A1Plus.am
20/04/10
Arus Grigoryan was born in Kars and was only two years old during
the Armenian Genocide.
Arus Grigoryan, 97, doesn’t remember much from the historical homeland,
but has a dream. "If they let me, I will go to Kars. I want to see
Kars and then die. I want to see Kars, but not live there. I can
smell Turks there."
Arus lives with her daughter and grandchild in an apartment located
in Kentron district Yerevan. She only remembers a couple of episodes
from the barbarities of the Turks.
"The Turks killed and massacred us. They would enter homes and hang
people. They treated us very badly." She told the story of how the
Turks killed her father, how her godfather Hovhannes threw her and
her brothers in a train wagon and instructed the driver to "drop the
kids off wherever the train stops."
After migrating to Armenia, Arus’s mother died from hunger. She was
homeless and an orphan and lived in one of the capital’s parks for a
while, slept on benches until she caught the attention of the director
of an English orphanage Nord Kort who took her to the orphanage.
Although Arus and her brothers were treated very well here, the pain
and suffering of the Armenians remained in her memory since childhood.
That is the reason why Arus doesn’t even want to hear about the opening
of the Turkish-Armenian border. "I don’t want the border to open. I
don’t want the Turks to come here. They must not enter Armenia."
Arus is politically active and, according to her daughter Evelina
Grigoryan, Arus never misses out on a news program. "I want us to
win after all the suffering. I wait day and night for the day when
the world will recognize the Armenian Genocide," says Arus.
The 10 years in the orphanage have been instilled in her memories
as days of salvation. After leaving the orphanage, she studied at
a vocational school and got accepted to the Polytechnic Institute,
but left her studies behind after getting married. Arus has 4 children.
Arus was very emotional throughout the conversation as she reminisced
about this or that episode of her life. Arus wasn’t able to listen
to the song "Otar, amayi tchampeki vra" (On foreign, deserted roads)
until the end, although she did perform an English religious song
that she had learned at the orphanage until the end.
Arus only wishes that the government pay more attention to her and
support her financially as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.