The Best Revenge

Oh no, I am not advocating revenge in the old sense. The best way for vengeance is to take the route of self-improvement. When I say self, I mean the people who, like me, are Armenian by heritage. When I say improvement, it means in strategic thought and action. It takes a giant leap into faith and out of the repetitive. The ways of politics have not changed in 94 years and I for one think that the change we seek should come from within. The truth always prevails and it is on our side. That should be a consolation but it is a long way to checkmate.



If you have not had the chance to check http://www.keghart.com/ yet, please do so and read some of the articles there dealing with the aftermath of when we rediscovered how naive we still are. Some are truly therapeutic. Despite the fact that a poll on the aforementioned website shows that 62% of readers had said President Obama will not acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, that same percentage of Armenians in general have been utterly disappointed. The others are having a hard time holding back the "I told you so."



I voted for Obama because he seemed to be the better candidate and not because he promised to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. I voted as a United States citizen and not as an Armenian. Yet, when the issue of the Catastrophe comes up it becomes hard to separate oneself into two and thus see things objectively.



Both the Palestinian cause and the Armenian cause can take a look at Cyprus and see how the land grab that was conducted in 1974 is still in the hands of Turkey. When the powers to be don't have the capacity or don't want to repair injustices more recent, like Darfur as another example, I have a hard time expecting that they will repair injustices prior.

I see the best Armenian minds coming together, starting with our champion chess players, Gary Kasparov, although the latter has his hands full currently, Knarig Mouradian of Lebanon who was the four time women's chess champion of the Arab countries at the young age of 22 and grandmaster Levon Aronian of Armenia and let no one tell me that there are no intelligent Armenians. If the game demands strategy, they will be the best strategists. There was no Armenia to speak of for over 600 years until 1990. We are new to the dirty business of politics. Yes, I know, I know, there was a brief independent republic in 1918. Other than that we were always subjects under this or that power, can we be verbs for a change? We might even end up being followed by a good adjective. Before the verb and the adjective, we need a realistic objective, one that does not make me feel that my only salvation as an Armenian depends on the utterance of the word genocide by a United States president.

In the meantime, I want to enjoy what is left of this dreadful month of April which seems to get longer every year.

Happy spring!

I'm OK You're OK

In 1973 or 1975 in the cool and sophisticated village of Broummana, on the outskirts of Beirut, I read the book I'm OK You're OK. What part of OK I did not understand? None. I was OK. It was written in black on white. So it was true. I understood OK to be OK. I was so happy that I was OK. My happiness lasted a few hours. Then I forgot. There are other people in the world you know? I might think I am OK and next thing you know I am not. And that's normal. In fact it is law. As soon as contentment sets in, we slip-slide as in what goes up must come down. Then what do we do? Do we wait for someone to make law what goes down must come up? Was there ever a law for that? I know there are thousands of "how to" books written reminding that I'm OK You're OK. So it must be true.



Conclusion: Going down is automatic. We are down before we know it. Going up takes time and effort if not sheer will. In both cases, I'm OK You're OK is timeless.

After I wrote the above, I received a phone call from my dear friend Arpinée with whom I was very open about my moods of late. She informed me that I am not alone and gave me examples and names of people who are going through rough times of late. She added that they too thought they were alone in not finding a way up. If it was a staircase going to heaven, the fact of knowing that I am not alone took me one step up. I wonder if others did the same when they found out that they are not alone. One, two, three, hop!

I am not alone. Many blessings to all who have felt the same way lately...and to those who haven't also...I do not discriminate.

The Mother Who Saved Hazro

Hazro is a small village some 50 miles from the city of Diyarbekir in Turkey. My dad was born in that village. He had three older brothers who were also born there. My Uncle Arshag, the second born who was around 8 years old during the deportations of 1915 has written extensively about Hazro and life in and around Hazro in his later years. He had no children and somehow all his handwritten notes ended up with me. Stacks of notebooks bundled in a plastic shopping bag have been sitting in my "things to read" pile and for the past ten years I have read most of it. Some narratives handed down from previous generations, some personally witnessed and some guess work went into it. His handwriting is not hard to read and yet he has rewritten them clearly in another notebook without much editing. The following incident is described in detail with names and conversations and fills up pages. I will attempt to write it as briefly as I can.


The year is 1895. The Sultan has given secret orders to kill the Armenians here and there. One order reaches Hazro who had one head of gendarmes and two gendarmes who didn't have much to do in a village of 10,000 half of which were Armenians and the other half, Kurds who lived in their separate neighborhoods. There were some 4-5 Turkish beys with their families "representing" the Sultan. The beys and the head of the gendarmes gather for a secret meeting to decide the day and the way to organize the massacres. They realize they don't have enough man power to do this and decide to invite a couple of the neighboring Kurdish leaders ("ashirats") to attend a second meeting. The killings will begin early the next day. Everyone goes home to prepare including the two brothers who, upon entering their home, go directly to the room where their arms are kept instead of to their bedroom.


Their mother, a Cherkez woman and now the head of the household, is awake and finds this odd. She questions one of his sons, Katim Bey, who has sworn to secrecy, and very astutely makes him confess. She is apalled by what she hears and makes his son swear that they will do everything to stop this from happening. She tells him that the Armenians have our trust and have done nothing wrong to deserve a killing. She tells him that if they do that the Sultan will later hold them and all the beys responsible for the killings. In a nutshell she tells him to take the high road if he and his brother consider themselves the sons of the late Najib Bey.


The brother, in turn, persuades his brother and later that night, all the other beys of Hazro, not to carry out the order of the Sultan. When asked about the reason of this change of heart, Katim Bey admits that it is his mother's wish. The beys have great respect for this very noble woman and quickly realize that she is right. They all agree that the order of the Sultan should not be carried out and immediately send word to the Armenian men in the village to come for a meeting at the early hours of the morning. The Armenian men arrive half asleep not only to find out that they were to be killed but that they have to protect themselves in case the neighboring Kurds decide to follow the Sultan's order.


By the set hour of the morning all the beys' men and the Armenian men are in position to defend Hazro and the Armenians from being killed. Except for a few incidents wherein the attackers were overpowered, the Armenians of Hazro are saved together with other Armenians who had escaped from other towns and villages and taken refuge in Hazro.

The Cherkez woman's name is not known.

Sadly though, in 1915 there was nobody standing up for the Armenians of Hazro...

The Enabler and The Precedent

Unclenching the fist entails not threatening your citizens with punishment for telling the truth. Unclenching the fist entails not blackmailing the United States with "consequences" for acknowledging the truth. Unclenching the fist requires the kind of power which educates citizens and does not deny them their land's previous history, the history about the keepers of the land before they were thrown out into the desert and exterminated for being Armenian Christians.


Unclenching the fist is easier and cheaper than the millions of our taxpayer money spent for denial of that which will set you free and make you a benign power rather than a bully. But how would you know that? You are too busy clenching your fist and spreading your denials around, thus becoming the enabler of other despots and mass murderers around the world. You have been doing that for over 90 years and if we let you, you will turn around and accuse Armenians of that which you are unable to acknowledge yourself.


I don't know if President Obama knew the extent reached by his one sentence on inauguration day but this is the time and the reason to say it. "Unclench your fist and we will talk." It doesn't matter who he said it to at the time. He set a precedent and opened the door for opportunity. I hope he remembers this sentence when he goes to Turkey in a couple of days and the issue of acknowledgement comes up, if it comes up.


All the Yegisapeths, the Aghavnis, the Karnigs, the Zoras, Hagops, Dikrans, Anahids, Arminees, Arams, Vanouhis, Melkons, Arekags, Yenovks, Mgrditchs, Vartouhis, Manoushags, Haroutiuns and their sons and daughters need to rest in peace and as long as the whole world is not unanimous towards what happened to them, they will not fully rest. Neither will we.