Author: arabaliozian

Thursday, May 25, 2006
*************************************
Is Marxism right or wrong?
That’s like asking, is a volcano right or wrong? Like the Koran and the Bible, DAS KAPITAL has reshaped the perception of countless people and the political map of entire continents.
*
Many people have read the Koran and the Bible. How many have read DAS KAPITAL?
Very few, probably one in a thousand or even ten thousand. Many others, among them myself, have tried to read it and have given up after the first few pages.
*
Is Marxism a science, a philosophical system, or a religion?
To the believers, it is all three.
*
If it is incomprehensible to most laymen, why is it so popular?
People are attracted to the incomprehensible. Consider the mysteries of our own religion. Consider the popularity and longevity of astrology.
*
What is its source of strength?
The short answer is, propaganda. We call ourselves Homo sapiens (man the knower), but “man the propagandizer” would have been far more accurate.
*
If propaganda is the source of many wars, revolutions, and massacres, why is there no law against it?
Because all organized groups (religions, ideologies, and political parties) engage in it. Some day if we ever meet extraterrestrials that have never experienced war on their planet, we may be astonished to discover that the secret of their pacifism is an educational system that rejects propaganda as a medium of communication.
#
Friday, May 26, 2006
**************************************************
Whenever an Armenian wins an argument against a fellow Armenian, the nation loses because once more consensus eludes all three.
*
For every article against Turks, our pundits should write at least two about Armenians, and I don’t mean petty little success stories (which may be moral failures) but articles exposing our filth. To concentrate only on Turkish criminal conduct means to cover up our own, which also means to conspire with crooks against their victims.
*
With every drop of knowledge I acquire, I discover an ocean of ignorance within me.
*
According to Aldous Huxley,”War has been one of the principal occupations of civilized human beings”; which amounts to saying, behaving like barbarians is a favorite pastimes of civilized men.
*
If you wait long enough it will come to you, and the chances are, by the time it does, you will no longer need it.
*
The less I need, the happier I am.
*
Huxley again: “Too much evil and too much suffering can make it impossible for men to be creative.” He could have added, “…or to value creativity in others.”
#
Saturday, May 27, 2006
****************************************
AN ARMENIAN PIANIST
**********************************
In his travel impressions of Jerusalem, titled “Usually Destroyed,” first published in ADONIS AND THE ALPHABET (1956), and more recently included in his COMPLETE ESSAYS: Volume V: 1939-1956 (Chicago, 2002), Aldous Huxley writes: “Here, finally, was St. James’s, of the Armenians, gay with innumerable rather bad but charming paintings, and a wealth of gaudily colored tiles. The great church glowed like a dim religious merry-go-round. In all Jerusalem it was the only oasis of cheerfulness. And not alone of cheerfulness. As we came out into the courtyard, through which the visitor must approach the church’s main entrance, we heard a strange and wonderful sound. High up, in one of the houses surrounding the court, somebody was playing the opening Fantasia of Bach’s Partita in A Minor – playing it, what was more, remarkably well. From out of the open window, up there on the third floor, the ordered torrent of bright pure notes went streaming out over the city’s immemorial squalor.” As Huxley goes on reflecting on music, art, and religion, he hears his guide say: “In the year of Our Lord 1916, the Turkish Government massacred approximately 750,000 Armenians.”
#

Sunday, May 21, 2006
*************************************
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
************************************
Propagandists treat the past as if it were a supermarket, picking and choosing only the items that support their interests and ignoring the rest. But reality, being one and indivisible, refuses to be sliced like baloney.
*
The belief that God created man comes with a heavy price – keep your nose clean or else! Atheism comes with a price too – you are no better than a chemical accident waiting to disintegrate.
*
The believer’s options are between heaven and hell; the unbeliever’s, between freedom and nothingness.
*
When a man kills, it’s seldom for a good reason. But when nations engage in war and massacre, nationalist historians and religious leaders combine to convince the people they are carrying out the will of God. Capitalism legitimizes greed; religion, murder.
*
When a man kills in the name of God, who is the guilty party? The killer, he who brainwashed him, or He who is the source of their driving force?
*
The best argument against nationalism and for atheism: the spectacle of two nations killing, mutilating, and raping in the name of a Being who has the power to stop them but who prefers to stand by and do nothing. (As for the concept of free will: it may apply to the killers but not to their innocent victims.)
*
The secret of popularity and success consists in flattering the collective ego of the maximum number of people by saying they are right (even when they are wrong) and God is on their side (even when there is no evidence to that effect). The secret of failure consists in exposing liars and their lies.
*
Society rewards those who deal in baloney and penalizes anyone who dares to think for himself.
#
Monday, May 22, 2006
****************************************
After identifying himself as a competent judge of character, one of my gentle readers takes it upon himself to inform me that I am a self-hating Armenian devoid of all talent.
If I have learned anything from life is that nothing can be as misleading as assessing oneself. I speak from experience. I don’t mind admitting that, once upon a time when I was young and foolish, I too assessed myself as a good judge of character and trusted in the objectivity and accuracy of my assessments until the day I met a loud-mouth inbred moron who had assessed himself as a genius.
I am more than willing to concede that I have no talent whatever, and that all my notes and comments are those of a very ordinary person who uses only his common sense. Does that mean what I say is without merit? Does that also mean only those with special talents have a right to testify or voice their opinions? If so, who among us will come forward and declare himself qualified to separate the sheep from the goats?
As for being a self-hating Armenian: if I hate anything it’s being at the mercy of self-assessed leaders (be they bosses, bishops, benefactors, or academics) who feel authorized to tell who is and is not qualified to exercise his fundamental human right of free speech.
And to suggest that only self-hating Armenians criticize their fellow Armenians is to imply that Armenians, being the Chosen People, are beyond criticism. In the words of a wise Englishman, “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!” – including your own assessment of yourself as a connoisseur of character and talent.
#
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
*********************************************
At the center of our being there is a vacuum (Sartre’s “nothingness”) that needs to be filled. That’s one reason why man, who cannot create a single worm, has created ten thousand gods.
*
During the Soviet era there were Armenians who believed the Soviet Union, very much like Hitler’s Germany, was going to last a thousand years.
*
Believers like to speak in terms of millennia and eternity. It never even occurs to them that the most important factor that goes into defining their selection of belief system may well be the accident of geography, that is to say, real estate; that is to say, mud.
*
In his travel impressions of Soviet Armenia, OLD DREAMS, NEW REALITIES (Beirut, 1982) Antranik Zaroukian discusses at some length the conversation he once had with a faithful member of the Party who had a prefabricated argument against all his doubts, objections, and criticisms of the regime.
*
I have met several such specimens myself. One of them, also a former member of the Party and, in the words of a friend (himself an Evangelical minister), “a professor of atheism in Yerevan,” who after the collapse of the USSR, emigrated to the United States, saw the light, and became a born-again Evangelical preacher. Which may suggest that some believers let self-interest, rather than mud, handle their selection of belief system. Which may also suggest that their number one concern is neither God nor Country but taking care of number one.
#
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
*********************************************
The aim of dialogue is not to prove one side right and the other wrong but to advance towards the truth or to reach a consensus, which does not mean agreement on all points but agreement only to work together, because the alternative is Armenian history as we know it.
*
He who is consumed with the idea of asserting infallibility is sure to be wrong.
*
If he sits on his ass and does nothing on the assumption that in twenty or thirty years all our problems will solve themselves, he must be an Armenian.
*
If he is a perennial underdog but speaks with the arrogance of a top dog, he must be an Armenian.
*
If he is a loudmouth imbecile and brags about his IQ, he must be an Armenian.
*
Please note that I am talking about myself now, or rather, the way I am perceived by some of my readers who invariably ascribe my failings to my identity as an Armenian. The implication being that had I been a Patagonian or a Hottentot, I would have none of these defects. So much for Armenian self-esteem…
#

Thursday, May 11, 2006
********************************************
MARIA IORDANIDOU
**********************************
Ever since I read Lesley’s Blanch’s SABRES OF PARADISE – one of the very few books that I have read three times (the other two being Thomas Mann’s MAGIC MOUNTAIN and Arnold J. Toynbee’s STUDY OF HISTORY(volume xii): RECONSIDERATION), I read everything I can lay my hands on about the Caucasus. Which is why, the only reason I read Maria Iordanidou (an unfamiliar name to me until last week) is that the title of one of her books is HOLIDAYS IN THE CAUCASUS. Immediately after I also read another book by her titled LIKE CRAZY BIRDS.
*
Maria Iordanidou may not be a giant in world literature, but unlike most giants, she is incapable of writing a single boring or unreadable line. She writes about her life in Istanbul at the turn of the last century, an extended stay in the Caucasus during World War I and the Russian Revolution, her residence in Alexandria, and final move to Athens on the eve of World War II.
*
In A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, Virginia Woolf writes that since women can’t express themselves fully and authentically, they cannot take a rightful place in a literary tradition which has been shaped by men. Reading Maria Iordanidou is discovering the obvious fact that liberation consists in being oneself, and if one is honest, one’s authenticity and originality will shrine through every sentence one writes.
*
Maria Iordanidou doesn’t write as a writer but as a human being. As a result, her humanity speaks louder than any literary tradition you care to mention. And though she writes about Turks, Armenians, Russians, Arabs, and Greeks, she judges no one. Which may suggest that most of our judgments about people are based on hearsay evidence.
#
Friday, May 12, 2006
**************************************
When Canadian writers speak of survival they mean surviving the influence of the United States. There is even a popular brief history of Canadian literature titled SURVIVAL. When Armenian writers speak of survival they mean it literally — surviving first the sultans and commissars, and after them our own mini-sultans and neo-commissars.
*
In his DECLINE OF THE WEST, Spengler tells us only “awake” people make history, the rest exist in subhistory. James Joyce said that history was a nightmare from which he was trying to awake. Whenever we make the Genocide our central concern we betray our unspoken wish to relive the history (or nightmare) that was inflicted on us.
*
By saying and repeating that half of Turkey is probably half Armenian, I hope to reduce by half our hatred of Turks. An absurd hope, because we are capable of hating our fellow Armenians as intensely as we hate Turks. I speak from experience, both as provider and consumer of hatred. As for those holier-than-thou phonies who say they hate no one, they only want justice: I challenge them to explain Gostan Zarian’s dictum, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
There is an unspoken principle in our post-Genocide literature which goes something like this: “Criticize everyone, including fellow writers, but leave possible sources of income, such as bosses, bishops, and benefactors, alone.” Case in point: In his OLD DREAMS, NEW REALITIES (Beirut, 1982), Antranik Zaroukian analyzes mercilessly the motives of a totally harmless 83-year-old Armenian priest in Moscow who does his utmost to be of assistance to him, but says nothing remotely critical about the Catholicos who allowed Etchmiadzin to be run by KGB agents.
#
Saturday, May 13, 2006
**************************************
THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS
***************************************
Vassilis Vassilikos: “There is Midas, whose touch turned everything to gold, and there is anti-Midas, whose touch turned everything to crap.”
*
If I knew what I know today, I would have chosen to write for a more tolerant bunch, like the Taliban of Afghanistan or the Sunnis in Iraq.
*
After being exposed to the venom of my readers, I can’t help thinking: If they can be so nasty towards a harmless scribbler, what are they capable of doing to a defenseless Turk? — (in their selfless search for justice, of course).
*
Being honest in a dishonest environment is nothing short of a heroic act. Perhaps one of our greatest misfortunes is that we have produced many more martyrs than heroes, and one party’s hero is another’s…anti-Midas.
*
Somewhere Antranik Zaroukian writes that an Armenian hates tyranny but he considers it a privilege to serve a tyrant.
*
To the hooligans who insult me I will only say, once upon a time I too was young and foolish and said things that I now regret.
#

Sunday, May 07, 2006
************************************
As a boy my ambition was to be a writer, but my idea of a writer then was as different from what I do today as a virgin is from a bordello madam.
*
I don’t mind admitting that I have been a source of disappointment to a great many people. But I have been a source of greater disappointment to myself.
*
The slaughter of millions of innocent civilians is a serious matter that should not be forgotten. But it is equally wrong to make of it a collective obsession if only because our credibility is not enhanced if we project the image of monomaniacs.
*
Choose yourself as god’s chosen and run the risk of being slaughtered by someone who decides to choose himself to be chosen by a superior god.
*
“I know better” is an enemy of “I could be wrong.”
*
The Internet is the quintessential democratic medium. It allows imbeciles and hooligans as much space as Nobel-Prize winners.
#
Monday, May 08, 2006
**************************************
WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING
*************************************
We are a people like any other people, and most of our problems have been self-inflicted. Because I have been saying this I have become an outcast. Nothing new in that. All in a day’s work. Thus it was in the past and thus shall it be in the future.
*
To those who object and say, “In what way was the Earthquake self-inflicted?” May I remind them of the maxim that is common knowledge among architects and contractors around the world: “Earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do.”
*
And I remember, shortly after the Earthquake, when asked why the construction of buildings in Armenia, a well-know earthquake zone, was not closely supervised, a Moscow official with an Armenian last name stated on the evening TV news: “We don’t consider that our responsibility.”
*
My mother is fond of quoting an Armenian saying that goes something like this: “Even if responsibility of blunders were made of very expensive fur, no one would want to wear it.”
#
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
***************************************
REVOLUTIONARIES
*********************************
Somewhere in Dostoevsky’s THE POSSESSED (sometimes also translated as THE DEVILS) a character says that when the revolution is fully achieved, “Cicero will have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out, and Shakespeare will be stoned.”
*
Like politicians everywhere, revolutionaries too speak with a forked tongue: what they say is not always what they mean, and it is not at all unusual for them to say the exact opposite of what they mean. So that when they speak of freedom, they may mean the freedom to kill, when they speak of equality, they may mean suppressing excellence, and when they speak of fraternity they may have fratricide in mind.
*
If revolution were a religion, Cain and Torquemada would be two of its major role models and saints. In the eyes of some “useful idiots,” Stalin and Mao continue to be revolutionary saints.
*
“Wrong words are hard to take back,” reads a headline in our paper today. So are wrong actions and policies, but they can be easily justified by revisionists, and there is a revisionist as well as a useful idiot in all of us.
*
There is also a bourgeois. Like the revolutionary, the bourgeois may cling to ideas that have lost their validity, and both the bourgeois and the revolutionary may qualify as dupes or useful idiots of ideas that are eminently corruptible to the point of becoming their own contradictions.
#
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
****************************************
ON THE RADIO
************************
People from all walks of life were being asked about their phobias. Some said death and dying, others old age and illness. An author said writer’s block. On the whole predictable stuff except for the woman who said: “I am fifty years old and I’m afraid I’ll never have sex again.”
*
MY FAVORITE PUNCH LINE
******************************************
When an old Indian predicted a bad winter, they wanted to know how he could tell, and he replied: “White man makes big wood pile.”
*
SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE
*****************************************
Experience may teach us to avoid mistakes that we have made, but not all mistakes, of which there are an infinite number.
#

Thursday, May 04, 2006
**********************************
If you believe in something because you want to believe in it, or because it is to your advantage, or because it enhances your image and flatters your vanity, you will be closer to the truth if you believe the exact opposite.
*
There is only one way to see through lies and propaganda and that’s by learning to think against yourself.
*
At an early age I sensed that working for a living meant doing what others tell you to do even when these others happen to be idiots motivated by greed; and since I could not hide my feelings, I was constantly being fired, laid off, demoted, and forced to resign. As a result, I never made more than minimum wage.
*
Society moronizes you because it divides men into employers and employees, or masters and slaves (Hegel), or capitalists and workers (Marx).
*
Society tells you to gain the whole world even if it means losing your soul.
*
You are never at your best when you do what is expected of you, because to conform to someone else’s wishes means to sacrifice part of your freedom, your self, and your deepest impulses.
*
Three things to remember: (i) perennial victims are easy to manipulate; (ii) where there are victims there will also be manipulators; (iii) manipulators do not manipulate against their own interests.
#
Friday, May 05, 2006
***************************************
MORALITY: IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
******************************************************
In theory, the aim of morality is to establish what’s right and wrong, or what’s good and evil. In practice, it’s to misrepresent wrong as right, and evil as good.
*
Until very recently, to justify their racism, Americans invoked god. Children were educated to believe god is a racist, and racism was not a prejudice but one of god’s commandments. And if you think this type of perversion of morality was peculiar only to Southern hillbillies, consider the fact that at one point in his career, Mahatma Gandhi, that apostle of love, truth, and non-violence, called the British “satanic.” It probably never occurred to him that on the day the British quit India, his own people would engage in satanic wholesale massacres – Hindus slaughtering Muslims, and Muslims slaughtering Hindus by the million.
*
I was myself brought up to believe that Turks massacred Armenians because all Turks are bloodthirsty, Mongoloid, subhuman barbarians; and I said as much in my first book, and was outraged when a Canadian critic called me a “racist” in his review of the book.
*
One of the most important undertakings of a state is to demonize the enemy. Children are brought up to believe the enemy eats babies for breakfast. To suggest otherwise, saying that the enemy is a human being like us, is seen as an act of treason.
*
Which is why arguing with a brainwashed Armenian can be as difficult as arguing with a brainwashed Turk. To paraphrase Lenin, a brainwashed person is a brainwashed person regardless of nationality. Which is also why only perverts use morality to assert moral superiority.
#
Saturday, May 06, 2006
***************************************
TURKEY’S JOYCE
*******************************
James Joyce called himself “Shame’s Voice” because he exposed what his fellow countrymen tried to ignore, cover up, or pretend it does not exist, namely, Irish intolerance. In his own words, “Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.” Our own Joyce, Gostan Zarian, echoed this very same sentiment when he said, “Armenians survive by cannibalizing one another.”
*
It is not at all unusual for a murderer to begin by pleading not guilty. If the evidence against him is solid, he may plead self-defense. When more evidence to the contrary is presented by the prosecution, he may plead murder two, or justified homicide, or manslaughter. The same applies to perpetrators of genocide, with one difference. No nation in the history of mankind has ever invented a genocide, and having done so, believed in it for a hundred years.
*
Orhan Pamuk: Turkey’s Shame’s Voice.
#

Sunday, April 30, 2006
******************************************
It is said that if you have mastered the art of learning, a single letter of the alphabet will teach you more than a thousand classics.
*
There is only one way to get even with detractors and that’s by using them as sources of inspiration.
*
An Armenian was presented with a Japanese samurai sword so sharp that it would slice an apple by simply touching it, as if by magic. The Armenian returned the gift with the words: “Thanks, but I have no use for it. My tongue is sharper.”
*
I have understood the nature of radical evil not by observing it in others but by analyzing it in myself.
*
Two of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century were Heidegger and Sartre – the first supported Hitler, the second Mao.
*
Wisdom is not a commodity that you look for and, if you are lucky, you find. Wisdom is something that you never find.
*
Searching for wisdom is like peeling an onion. After you have peeled off all the layers of prejudice, ignorance, stupidity, evil, and fear, you end up with nothing.
#

Monday, May 01, 2006
**************************************
Some of our most fundamental assumptions and certainties have been foisted on us at a time when we could not yet think for ourselves. There you have the source of most conflicts.
*
We all want the same thing, to be happy; and we all behave as though the only way to be happy is by making others miserable.
*
All our problems stem from the fact that narrow tribal interests are placed above national interests; and all international problems stem from the fact that national interests are placed above the interests of mankind. Result? War and massacre.
*
Killing a patriotic act? That’s like saying rape is an act of compassion.
*
Cruelty parading as wit – that’s how Freud defined humor. If true, humor must be one of the most civilized ways of disarming aggression.
*
TODAY’S QUOTATIONS
**********************************
On Karajan (a German of Greek descent): “…despite being narcissistic, nasty and Nazi, he was a superb conductor.”
*
Saint-Beuve: “Speaking the truth is the best revenge.”
*
Vassily Grossman (Russian writer): “We are not people. We are shit.”
*
Lenin: “The capitalist is so greedy that he will buy even the rope with which we will hang him.”
#
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
*****************************************
One reason vegetarians in the animal kingdom are perennial victims of carnivores is that they develop a consensus only to run away.
*
A career criminal in today’s paper: “I find the outside more scary than being inside.” He ought to know. The outside is at the mercy of people like him. Need I add that some of the worst serial child molesters have been Catholic priests, and some of the most dangerous serial killers have been statesmen?
*
Benefactors share their money, writers their ideas. As a community, or a collection of tribes, we respect both money and ideas in equal measure, and the idea we respect most is that money is infinitely more important than ideas.
*
What do we know about benefactors? Only how much they give. They are an extension of their capital. I once heard a benefactor deliver a short cliché-ridden speech in which he emphasized the importance of identity and culture. The same benefactor to a poet: “Desert people like Arabs may need poets. We don’t!” And to a writer: “I hire and fire people like you.”
#
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
****************************************
Turgenev to Dostoevsky: “Russia’s only contribution to civilization has been the samovar and the knout – and even they were invented by somebody else.” Elsewhere ( I think in SMOKE), one of his characters says, if Russia were to disappear tomorrow, no one would miss it – and to think that he was talking about the Russia of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky…. But Turgenev being Turgenev, I am interested in anything he has to say, even when what he says is against my own convictions. Because I for one would miss Russia, and if not Russia than Russian literature, including Turgenev’s intensely Russian novels, especially FATHERS AND SONS.
*
Speaking of Pushkin: Reading him in English, including Nabokov’s English, is like viewing a cadaver. It has been a mystery to me why so many Russian writers worship him. Today I read a few of his lines in a Greek translation and I saw the light and felt the magic – the cadaver came to life, and what life! So much so that I am now planning to teach myself Russian.
*
Joe Queenan: “A good percentage of the British population are vulgar dimwits who care about nothing but shopping, alcohol, football and Posh Spice’s navel.”
*
Armenian writers don’t dare to speak freely about their fellow Armenians except in private conversations, correspondence and diaries. As a result the average Armenian continues to cling to such clichés as first nation this and first nation that….
#

Thursday, April 27, 2006
**************************************
RUSSIAN PROVERBS
*******************************
“A wounded falcon will be pecked to death even by a crow.”
*
“Every day is different from another: one day it’s cold, next day freezing.”
*
“To a sinking boat all winds are in the wrong direction.”
*
LIONS AND FLIES
**********************************
The unfairness of life is never as evident as when you are insulted by someone because he thinks he is invulnerable or you are in no position to retaliate. In such moments it is useful to remember that every Achilles has his heel and even a fly can drive a lion crazy.
*
WHO’S WHO
**********************
Because I refuse to drop my pants and bend over, I am thought of as an unpatriotic non-conformist.
Very probably I am more conservative, patriotic, and traditionalist than our so-called revolutionaries. A hundred years ago they challenged the might of the Sultan. I am now challenging the might of our mini-sultans. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may now decide who’s who and what’s what.
#
Friday, April 28, 2006
************************************
“The British are a tolerant people,” I read in a commentary this morning. My first thought: When, O when they will say this about us?
*
In Antranik Zaroukian’s NEW ARMENIA, NEW ARMENIANS (Beirut, 1983) I read the following story: In Moscow they didn’t know what to do with Stalin’s body. They asked the French if they would like to have it and the French said no. They asked the Germans, Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, and a few other people, and they all said no. Finally Israel said, “We’ll have it. Send it over.” The Russians said, “No way. We will never send Stalin’s body to Israel.” “Why not?” the Israelis wanted to know. “Because,” the Russians replied,” “in your land there is the possibility of resurrection.”
*
We desperately need pundits who will tell us things we don’t know, instead of reminding us over and over again that Turks are butchers and liars, and we are their victims.
*
When asked for a favor, a friend tells me, an Armenian academic is reported to have said, “What’s in it for me?”
*
The more I live among men, the more I prefer the company of dead writers.
*
You may know a thousand things he doesn’t know, but if you don’t know that single thing he knows, forever after he will think of you as an ignoramus.
*
One reason I can’t stand idiots is that I have been one all my life, and I continue to be one today. How else to explain my illusion that if I share my understanding with my fellow Armenians, I may make myself useful to them.
#
Saturday, April 29, 2006
***************************************
It is said that when the Buddha ignored an insult by a passerby, one of his disciples wanted to retaliate. The Master stopped him with the words: “When someone offers me a bowl of rice and I am not hungry, I don’t eat it.”
*
Anonymous: “Sometimes what matters is not who you are but where you are.”
*
A question to our editors and pundits: If a member of your family is molested or raped, do you feel the need to speak of molesters and rapists every time you open your mouth? Why do you discuss Turks whenever you put pen to paper? Doesn’t the nation deserve the same degree of consideration as members of your own family?
*
During the last few days I have read three books by Antranik Zaroukian, a survivor. Does he mention Turks? I don’t remember. Maybe once or twice, and only in passing. But I am not sure. As lawyers say when they are through cross-examining a witness, “Nothing further, your Honor.”
*
What could be easier than making mistakes? What could be infinitely more difficult than admitting them? I don’t say this in reference to Turks, or for that matter, to Armenians who have committed their share of blunders, but about myself.
##

Sunday, April 23, 2006
*************************************
DEFINING A GOOD ARMENIAN
******************************************
If a Ramgavar were to tell me a good Armenian is one who hates Tashnaks, I would be tempted to retort, “If we assume hatred to be a defining factor, then I must be a better Armenian than you because I hate both Tashnaks and Ramgavars for adopting and implementing the divide-and-rule tactics of our oppressors.”
*
If an Armenian were to tell me it is our patriotic duty to hate Turks, I would react by saying, “I must be a better Armenian than you because I hate not only Turks but also Germans, Russians, Americans, Patagonians or any other people you care to mention that at one time or another raped and massacred innocent human beings in the name of an ideology or religion based on a Big Lie whose ultimate aim is to label and dehumanize a fraction of mankind.”
*
How to define a good Armenian? It can’t be done. Every boss, bishop, and benefactor will have his own definition. But they will all agree on one thing: an assimilated Armenian cannot be a good Armenian because he is of no use to them.
*
What about the average Armenian? How does he define a good Armenian? No need to ask him. Watch his feet. If he can’t work and provide for his family in the Homeland or if he finds himself at the mercy of intolerant activists or corrupt operators in the Diaspora, he will say to hell with definitions and he will give up his identity before anyone can say Jack S. Avanakian.
*
If you were to ask me, I will say the most important thing in life is not to be a good Armenian but a better human being by making a contribution to the welfare of your fellow men. It follows, a Turk who does that is far superior to an Armenian whose number one concern is number one.
*
Wars and massacres are instigated not by good men but by charlatans who recycle a propaganda line based on a Big Lie. To an Armenian who believes he is god’s chosen and his brand of Armenianism is the only true one, and anyone who disagrees with him is a second-class citizen, perhaps even a traitor to the cause, I say, “I hope and pray you and your kind assimilate and are not heard from again, because the world will be a better place without your kind of bully.”
#
Monday, April 24, 2006
*******************************************
ZAROUKIAN ON ARMENIANISM,
OTTOMANISM, AND SOVIETISM
*****************************************************
The only reason some of my young readers are shocked, perhaps even outraged by my views is that they are not interested in Armenian literature and the chances are they have not read a single Armenian writer, except perhaps Saroyan (about whom see below). As a result, their so-called patriotism does not go beyond such clichés and slogans as “first nation to convert to Christianity.” I say this to stress the fact that none of my ideas is original. I only select and emphasize.
*
Today, for instance, I come across the following passage in Antranik Zaroukian’s THE LAST INNOCENT (Beirut, 1980). “Armenianism is one but Armenians are not. Some Armenians value freedom above everything else, others have Turkish souls, still others Bolshevik brains.”
*
Speaking of a certain type of Armenian leader, he further writes: “He was the kind of judge who pronounces a guilty verdict first then looks for a crime that will fit the verdict. And…he finds it.”
*
AGEE ON SAROYAN
*******************************
“Saroyan is an entertainer of a kind overrated by some people and underrated by others – a very gifted schmalz-artist. In the schamlz-artist strength and weakness are inextricably combined – the deeply, primordially valid, and the falseness of the middle-aged little boy who dives back into the womb for pennies.”
*
Elsewhere: “Saroyan’s brand of Christian anarchy I find about equally genuine, sympathetic, professional, and muddled.” For more on Saroyan, see James Agee, FILM WRITING AND SELECTED JOURNALISM (748 pages. Illustrated. Index. New York, 2005).
*
MEMO TO A REVOLUTIONARY
****************************************
Never start a fight you can’t win. But if you do, fight to the end. Do not abandon defenseless women and children at the mercy of the enemy you know to be bloodthirsty, racist, and ruthless. But if you do, have the decency not to wash your hands afterwards, absolve yourself of all responsibility, and spend the rest of your life blaming others, because that would be the height of cowardice.
#
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
*******************************************
The difference between my generation of writers and the one that preceded it is that we no longer think in terms of “occupying an immortal page in the history of Armenian literature” – an expression and similar ones pop up frequently in Antranik Zaroukian’s writings. Zaroukian’s generation took themselves seriously. We are more realistic. We take nothing seriously except the Genocide. Everything else we view as irrelevant and ephemeral.
*
Myself against our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and their assorted hirelings: it is as uneven a confrontation as that of our revolutionaries against the Evil Empire. But in my case, at least, I can always console myself by saying that no one but myself will suffer for my blunders, assuming of course I am on the wrong path and my “betters” on the right one.
*
What we say is not always what we believe, especially when it comes to saying what we really believe or our credo; and more often than not “we may believe that we believe, but we don’t believe” (Sartre).
*
We have two kinds of best-selling books: cookbooks and massacre books. The offspring of the starving Armenian now have fat bellies – too much pilaf, shish kebab, and baklava.
*
Russian proverb: “With cunning you can capture a lion; with force you can’t even catch a cricket.”
*
What am I doing to encourage the next generation of writers, I have been asked on one or two occasions. My answer: “What the nation needs more than writers is readers.”
*
Somewhere in his THE LAST INNOCENT Zaroukian sums up his philosophy thus: 5% of men are born good and will die good; 5% are evil and no power on earth will change them (“they are born to crawl not to fly”); the remaining 90% can go either way depending on conditions and circumstances. What he fails to add is that the evil ones are better at organizing themselves because lies and greed are more popular than self-sacrifice and truth.
#
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
**************************************
ON READING
***************************
A question that comes up once in a while: “If I can read Plato and Dostoevsky, why should I bother reading Armenian writers who comparatively speaking are no better than second-raters?”
The answer: Plato and Dostoevsky may teach you a great many things about human nature but they will tell you nothing about our situation.
*
Had our revolutionaries read less Plato and more Raffi they would have known that reliance on others (the West in our case) was wrong, and that mass exodus from the Empire (similar to what we see today in the Homeland) would have been a more realistic solution than isolated acts of terrorism and revolution.
*
Had they read less Hegel and more Baronian they would have known that after 600 years of subjection to the Sultan, the average Armenian was not about to shed his sheep’s clothing and turn into a wolf.
*
Had they read less philosophy and more history they would have known that without popular support a revolution couldn’t succeed.
*
They say, “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.” They also say, “None of us knows everything and everyone knows something we don’t know.” The aim of both sayings is to emphasize the importance of solidarity, consensus, and awareness — three essential commodities we lack.
*
I am not saying reading Armenian writers will solve all our problems, but I believe it may promote an intellectual and political climate in which fewer disastrous decisions are made.
#

Thursday, April 20, 2006
**********************************
CHOBANIAN
**********************
When Arshak Chobanian, a foremost writer of the last century, visited Beirut, Antranik Zaroukian writes in his memoirs, one of his first questions to friends was: “Where do we stand with our struggle against the Tashnaks?”
*
DIVIDE AND RULE
****************************
Zaroukian discusses and dissects many struggles, almost all of them internecine. Another proof of the fact that we have accepted the divide-and-rule tactic of our oppressors as if it were a fait accompli imposed on us by force majeure.
*
ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS
**************************************
We either agree with someone else’s answers or we ask questions of our own. If we choose someone else’s answers, let us at least make sure that his secret agenda does not conflict with our own.
*
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
***********************************
We are better at making enemies than friends. It has happened to me more than once that in my efforts to make a friend, I have succeeded only in making an enemy.
*
A BIG LIE
**********************
In a contest between a pleasant lie and an unpleasant truth, the lie will always win. Ideology is theology is one of those pleasant lies that have poisoned and Talibanized our collective existence.
*
PHILOSOPHERS AND CAPITALISTS
********************************************
He who hires and fires knows better than he who is hired and fired. It follows a benefactor is wiser than a philosopher. All a philosopher does is deal in “philosophical gobbledygook,” whereas a benefactor deals in dollars. Only an idiot would refuse to see the uselessness of the philosopher and the necessity of the benefactor. Conclusion: philosophers are idiots, benefactors lovers of wisdom (which is what “philosopher” means in Greek – a lover of wisdom).
#
Friday, April 21, 2006
*********************************
CONTRADICTIONS
********************************
During the Soviet era, Armenians of the Diaspora were divided into those who supported the Homeland on the grounds that the regime was only an ephemeral phase, and those who declared it was our inalienable right and patriotic duty to resist tyranny. Two questions that were avoided and continue to be avoided today: Does supporting the Homeland also mean covering up or ignoring its abuses of power and crimes against humanity? Does resisting tyranny justify violating the fundamental human right of free speech of all dissenters?
*
UNSPOKEN MOTTOS
******************************
Better a dishonest somebody than an honest nobody.
*
Better a fat idiot than a hungry philosopher.
*
MORONS AND OXYMORONS
*************************************************************************
An honest politician.
A tolerant partisan.
A pious bishop.
A humble benefactor.
A selfless academic.
*
QUESTION
************************
Have I ever said anything you did not already know or suspect?
*
MAXIM
****************
The easiest way to expose one’s ignorance is by pretending to know more than one does.
*
MEMO
****************
In my formative years the man whose judgment I respected the most was a Stalinist. Moral: Trust no one so completely as to paralyze your own judgment.
#
Saturday, April 22, 2006
**************************************
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
*****************************************
A dupe is one who thinks it is his patriotic duty to believe what his elders tell him. Millions were deceived because they thought Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao knew better. Many others believed in the slogan “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” (Mussolini is always right). What is even more astonishing is that among these countless faceless and anonymous mobs were also some of the most intelligent men of the last century – H.G. Wells, Shaw, Heidegger, Knut Hamsun, Gide, Koestler, Silone, Sartre… Never say therefore for whom the bell tolls.
*
CONFESSION
***********************
I have committed my share of transgression, probably many more than I should have. But I have never felt the need to legitimize my intolerance by joining a political party. If I hate a fellow Armenian to the point of wishing him dead, I do so on purely personal grounds without feeling the need of a boss to convince me that by hating him I am discharging my patriotic duty. If I hate Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenians it’s because I see traces of both in myself.
*
MASSACRISM
***************************
A man who is obsessed with the past cannot ask himself, Where am I? Where am I going? Where will I be tomorrow or next year? Remembering our victims, yes; letting them turn us into pillars of salt, no!
#

Sunday, April 16, 2006
****************************************
ANOTHER HOJA STORY
**********************************
The following Nasredin Hoja story is my own version based on what I heard many years ago as a child. Like all truly wise men, the Hoja didn’t write a single line for publication. As a result there are as many versions of his stories as there are tellers. Most so-called Hoja stories, moreover, are not even his stories but counterfeits. In his anthology, THE SUBTLETIES OF THE INIMITABLE MULLA NASRUDING (London, 1973) Idries Shah, the foremost authority in the English language, includes even stories about the Hoja in an airplane, and another on a psychoanalyst’s couch, and still another about Hoja in London. I wouldn’t be in the least surprised, therefore, if an expert writes to say that the story that fellows does not belong to the canon. The only reason I am recounting it here is that “Se non vero, ben trovato” (freely translated: if untrue, it’s as good as true, because it’s good”).
*
When on his way home late one night Nasredin Hoja sees a man bent over looking for something, the following exchange takes place: “What did you lose?” “My gold ring.” “Where did you lose it?” “In the barn over there.” “If you lost it in the barn, why are you looking for it in the street?” “Because there is more light here.”
*
This story has several morals, among them:
(i)Most people pretend to solve a problem because pretending is easier even if completely useless. (ii) Before men hit on the right solution, they will try all the wrong ones first.” (iii) Common sense is the least common of all faculties. (iv) Before you act, consider your motives and the consequences of your actions. (v) Action without contemplation is meaningless.
#
Monday, April 17, 2006
*************************************
JESUS AND HITLER
**************************
According to scholars who have studied the underlined passages and marginalia of Hitler’s private library, one of the subjects that interested him the most was, “Where did Jesus derive the power that has held his followers for all eternity?” For more on this subject see, EVERY BOOK ITS READER: THE POWER OF THE PRINTED WORD TO STIR THE WORLD by Nicholas A. Basbanes (New York, 2005).
*
POETRY
*****************
I don’t read much poetry, especially that of our vodanavorjis, whose number probably exceeds that of our self-appointed pundits, but I love these lines by Salvatore Quasimodo: “Your eyes have seen my depths / Unto the darkness of my bowels.”
*
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A FORUM
********************************************
Some years ago I was a member of an Armenian discussion forum whose moderator did not allow four-letter words, abusive language, and aliases. Any member that did not abide by his rules was immediately and unceremoniously removed. As a result, after dwindling from over a hundred members to only one, the forum was terminated. Moral: Armenians are better at sharing insults than ideas.
*
TOLERANCE, ARMENIAN STYLE
*****************************************
A fascist thinks he is being tolerant when he allows the free exchange of fascist ideas. Tolerance of anti-fascist ideas he equates with treason.
*
JESUS AND TURKS
********************************
In his memoirs, Zaroukian quotes the following two lines from an unidentified Armenian poet: “The Turk did not yet exist / When Jesus said, Forgive your enemy.”
#
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
************************************
ACADEMIC MAFIAS
******************************
After publishing a genocide-related book, a friend of mine complained that no one had bothered to review it. “I know something I didn’t know before,” he went on. “We have a genocide mafia that treats non-members as interlopers.”
*
EGO TRIP
*********************
In his memoirs, Zaroukian writes that Nikol Aghbalian not only contributed scholarly essays to an Armenian academic periodical but also paid his annual subscription fee. When asked why he did that, he is said to have replied: “This is one of those publications whose sole subscribers are its contributors. If we don’t pay, it will cease to exist.” There you have a typical failing of our academics: instead of educating the masses, they try to impress one another with their erudition.
*
I REMEMBER
*************************
When I write about mafias, fascists, and dupes, I write about myself. I imagine nothing. I guess even less. I only remember.
*
Z/Z
***************
Zarian’s fans outnumbered his detractors; but whereas his fans were silent, his detractors were not, probably because he was an outsider, an interloper – an Armenian from Karabagh among Armenians from Istanbul and Yerevan. He could never qualify as a member of the club. Anywhere else he would have been a best seller. Among Armenians, his status continues to be marginal. For every positive statement that Zaroukian makes in his memoirs of Zarian, there are more than a dozen negative ones. Had I known Zarian only through Zaroukian’s, or for that matter, Oshagan’s writings, I wouldn’t even have bothered to read him.
#
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
************************************
MORE ON ZAROUKIAN
*****************************
One of the most astonishing aspects of Antranik Zaroukian’s memoirs is the degree of seriousness he and his contemporaries took themselves. Their internecine tempest-in-a-teacup disagreements and quarrels are treated as if they were historic events with serious repercussions. Case in point: When the three political parties agree to sign a document, the argument that erupts is about whose signature will appear on top. The wisest words in the book are spoken by a gifted poet who, when asked why he has quit writing, replies: “To write what? To what end?”
*
I REMEMBER
**********************
Once upon a time when I was young, naïve, and ignorant, I too treated our elder statesmen with some respect and believed what they said. But when in time I decided to rely more on my own observations and experiences, the Tashnaks assumed I was a Ramgavar, the Ramgavars assumed I was a Tashnak, our bishops assumed I was an atheist, and our capitalists, or rather their flunkeys, assumed I was a communist. It never even occurred to these gentlemen that one could be anti-partisan, anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist and be a decent human being able to have one’s own thoughts and to be independently poor by surviving on bread and books.
#