Bangladesh’s last Armenian prays for unlikely future

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Michael Joseph Martin outside the Armenian church in Dhaka

Bangladesh’s last Armenian prays for unlikely future

DHAKA (AFP) – Michael Joseph Martin is guarded about his exact age and
reluctant to accept he will be the last in a long line of Armenians to
make a major contribution to the history of Bangladesh.

Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, was once home to thousands of migrants
from the former Soviet republic who grew to dominate the city’s trade
and business life.

But Martin, aged in his 70s, is now the only one left.

"When I die, maybe one of my three daughters will fly in from Canada
to keep our presence here alive," Martin said hopefully, speaking
broken Bengali with a thick accent. "Or perhaps other Armenians will
come from somewhere else." Martin came to Dhaka in 1942 during World
War II, following in the footsteps of his father who had settled in
the region decades earlier.

They joined an Armenian community in Bangladesh dating back to the
16th century, but now Martin worries about who will look after the
large Armenian church in the city’s old quarter.

"This is a blessed place and God won’t leave it unprotected and
uncared for," he said of the Church of Holy Resurrection, which was
built in 1781 in the Armanitola, or Armenian district.

Martin — whose full name is Mikel Housep Martirossian — looks after
the church and its graveyard where 400 of his countrymen are buried,
including his wife who died three years ago.

When their children, all Bangladeshi passport-holders, left the
country along, Martin became the sole remaining Armenian here. He now
lives alone in an enormous mansion in the church grounds.

"When I walk, sometimes I feel spirits moving around. These are the
spirits of my ancestors. They were noble men and women, now resting in
peace," said Martin, who is stooped and frail but retains a detailed
knowledge of the Armenian history in Dhaka.

Marble tombstones display family names such as Sarkies, Manook and
Aratoon from a time when Armenians were Dhaka’s wealthiest merchants
with palatial homes who traded jute, spices, indigo and leather.

Among the dead are M. David Alexander, the biggest jute trader of the
late 19th century, and Nicholas Peter Poghose who set up Bangladesh’s
first private school in the 1830s and died in 1876.

Martin, himself a former trader, said the Armenians, persecuted by
Turks and Persians, were embraced in what is now Bangladesh first by
the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries and then by the British
colonial empire.

Fluent in Persian — the court language of the Mughals and the first
half of the British empire in India — Armenians were commonly
lawyers, merchants and officials holding senior public positions.

They were also devout Christians who built some of the most beautiful
churches in the Indian subcontinent.

"Their numbers fluctuated with the prospects in trading in Dhaka,"
said Muntasir Mamun, a historian at Dhaka University.

"Sometimes there were several thousand Armenians trading in the Bengal
region. They were always an important community in Dhaka and dominated
the country’s trading. They were the who’s who in town. They
celebrated all their religious festivals with pomp and style."

The decline came gradually after the British left India and the
subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 with Dhaka becoming the capital
of East Pakistan and then of Bangladesh after it gained independence
in 1971.

These days, the Armenian Church holds only occasional services on
important dates in the Orthodox Christian calendar, with a Catholic
priest from a nearby seminary coming in to lead prayers at Christmas.

Martin said the once-busy social scene came to a halt after the last
Orthodox priest left in the late 1960s, but he is determined to ensure
the church’s legacy endures.

"Every Sunday was a day of festival for us. Almost every Armenian
would attend the service, no matter how big he was in social
position. The church was the centre of all activities," he said.

"I’ve seen bad days before, but we always bounced back. I am sure
Armenians will come back here for trade and business. I will then rest
in peace beside my wife."