Tattoo ԴԱՋ

[Arpa]

TATTOO

ԴԱՋ

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=21...mp;#entry259791

Tattoo, the most primitive and cruel form of culture, mostly practiced by the most backward societies.

Who said that a tattoo is a symbol of beauty?

Picture of Syrian Bedouin woman;

http://www.vagabondjourney.com/photos/tatt...douin-woman.jpg

Not all the stories hd "happily ever after"- Cindrella type. At times those blemishes would brand and stigmatize those women and make their lives miserable.

I have seen Armenian girls/women with such tattoos. One of them was a relative of my mother. A very melodramatic story. I have photos of her, very similar to the below. Some day I may tell her tragic story, that fortunately eventually ended in joy.

Armenian girls abducted/adopted by the Syrian Arab tribes;

http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/online_exhibition_2.php

How many were permanently disfigured, even died of infection??

The Armenian word for it is “daj/դաջ/ դաջուացք/դրոշմատիպ”.

Some chose to undergo removal surgery, but at the time, before the laser, many ended up with even more disfiguring scars.

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I can’’t find the origin or the etymology of the word ԴԱՋ/daj except here;

Observe the last stanza where he says

Դէ, թո՛ղ իմ սիրտը հանեմ, որ վառւի,

Ճառագայթ շաղի՝ շւաքին գցած,

Թող իր տենդերում տապլկւի, այրւի,

Հեռանայ՝ պոչը քամակին ցցած...

Դա հանդիպում էր գառան ու գէլի,

Խաչս դաջ էր՝ աստղ - մահիկի վրայ.

Մեր միջեւ երբեք չի եղել հայելի,

Դա ապակի էր՝ սնդիկի վրայ...

Շող՝ շեղւած աչքի գնդիկի վրայ,

Դող՝ անշեղ կամքի գնդակի վրայ…

...............................................

Is he saying - My heart will be a “blemish on your moon/crescent”?

http://www.alikonline.com/newsviewpage.aspx?idl=11288

Except that the Persian dictionary has, among others the word as KHAL/Xal for tattoo, Which we know as beauty mark. Listen to Alla Levonian’s video of Koghba yelan seler@ where , “Al eghnim, al eghnim, tshid vera KHAL eggnim/ Ալ եղնիմ, ալ եղնիմ թշիդ վրայ խալ եղնիմ”.

Beauty mark;

http://a93.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images...e17d3ecabac.jpg

From the Armarakan, where it says it is from the Persian.

ԽԱԼ

2-313 LW.-pers.

(-)

«մարմնի վրայ բնական նիշ, ծին, տճ. պէնկ» **

խալ. ունին միայն ԱԲ. եւ ՓԲ. յաւել: (origin:) պրս

.

In addition to the above the Armatakan goes further, that the word is used to mean blemish, even such as a spot on one’s clothing. That the word خال*** is used by many of our neighbors, Kurds etc..

** How many Armeniaians do you with a family name of “benglian”?

***Also note that the Persian dict. says it is of Arabic origin.

Edited June 25, 2009 by ArpA

[Arpa]

Crazy Priest

http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/online_exhibition_2.php

Did you notice that one of the girl’s name is Dalida Khakhamian????

This is the most interesting,

Victoria Delikeshishian. Which actually mean “Crazy Priest” in that cursed language..

In the book of Marash there is such a priest with that nickname “deli keshish/crazy priest/Խենդ Վարդապետ“. He is the bishop T. Barthoghomeus, the abbot of Sb. Karabet monastery of Frnouz, a suburb of Marash, who is pictured in one picture riding his white horse/steed, and I another holding his sword up and commanding those “rats” to pass under it with their heads bowed .

 

[Louise]

This is a total fiasco

How do you spell Ուղղագրութիւն or Ուղագրություն

Note that I am not advocating one spelling against the other. But, can we all get together and agree on ONE system? How many "spellchecks" do the English have, where 6 billion people speak and write in? A spellcheck for the Armenian language that less than 2 million speak?

How will this correct my and Johanes'orthography?

Does this mean that the system will correct when one writes բարեւbarew բարէվ barev պարեվ parev փառեվ pharev and a million of other ways.

Let me repeat. This is useless until we come together and have ONE spelling system.

I will not advocate which, but ONE.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Excuse me, I cannot find the topic where you wrote yesterday about the girls who had been tatooed by Turks or Arabs:

I have a testimony on that subjetc:

 

A true story from Vergine Svazlian about a girl named Sirena Alajajian from Adabazar. it is the number 227 of the testimonies.

The girl had been "adopted" by a man and woman who were Arabs and tatooes her. But later on, the Americans came and

found her and put her in a orphanage. She changed many times of places. When she was a young girl a young Armenian fell in

love with her and she hoped to get married, , she loved him too, but because of the tatoos he said it was not possible to marry her.

So she never married, she became a lonely old woman. At last she finished her days in the Sourp Prgish hospital in Bolis.

 

 

[Arpa]

It was here

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=21754&hl=

And the artile about the girls is in there the URL is "www genocide museum...."

You can repost your tetimony there and perhaps remove it from here, I will remove this post as well once you have found article in question.

 

 

 

Note: Arpa I brought the last two posts here for you. Yervant

Edited June 25, 2009 by Yervant1

[Arpa]

http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/online_exhibition_2.php

As mentioned above, the subsequent lives of these girls was not a bed of roses, a Cinderella happily ever after type fairy tale, even though Mary had a somewhat happy ending . See Louise’s post above. Many were taken back honored and adored, became prominent members of the Armenian society, mothers and grandmothers in their own right. Yet many were branded and stigmatized and insulted. Please look up the definitions of “stigma” and “brand”. Many were stigmatized, as Louise’s testimonial indicates for the tattoos, others were rejected for having had physical contact (many in sacred(?) matrimony ofmarriage, no less) with Muslim Arabs.

---

A close relative on my mother, Mary/Marie was born in 1907(?) in Marash. Father Rev. Hovhannes Chilingirian, mother Khanum. The latter ended up in Aleppo and lived her later life a bedridden invalid. Both parents were highly educated, just as Mary in her own right, at that tender age was quite literate. (We will see more about this aspect). Father was a graduate of the Marash Theological Seminary and founding father and professor at the Marash Academy of boys. He is mentioned in several contexts in the Book MARASH by Grigor Galustian (who btw was a graduate a well ). Those who don’t have access to the book see him in the Hanragitaran, Vol. 7, page 298- Մարաշի Ճեմարան(ակադեմիա).

The father was murdered in 1915. She was separated from her mother on the way to Der Zor, picked up by an Arab family in the suburbs of Aleppo. Of course, she was tattooed around the mouth, the neck (neckace), around the wrists (bracelets) and around the ankle (anklets). When she became of age she was married to one of the boys. She had had two daughters, the first Shamsi who had died at a young age, and Jamileh that she brought back with her.

(I Have pictures of her both before where she holds Shmasi and after at her son Samuels wedding. I wish I had the means and the know how to air them. In both pictures we see how beautiful she was, even at the latter one, at the age of some 60 she could still compete for Miss Universe)

Please pardon my tears , I get foggy every time I look at her picture.

Just like the other girls in the above site, she was plucked away from the ADORING Arab family and brought to Aleppo. When I say “adoring” I mean it. For many years after that her Arab husband and the entire tribe would come to visit her, take her back to the village honor her, shower her with gifts and respectfully return her.

As above, Mary was born in a highly educated (evangelical) family, she was quite literate in her own way, in Armenian, Arabic and even Latin/English. We will see the attitude of the Muslim Arab and the so called Armenian. Mary was born and reared in a devoutly Christian Family. Her Arab family being aware of this had given her an Armenian Bible.

From Arab heaven to Armenian hell. We will see what happened when in Aleppo she was coupled with an Armenian BUM and how she was harassed and insulted because of, among others her denomination.

In Aleppo Mary had been coupled with an Armenian BUM, when I say bum I mean, no one remembers him of having worked a day in his life, he was a widower, twice Mary’s age with three children (two boys and a girl) of his own who were as old as Mary, if not more, he pretended to be an invalid always in bed, and Mary (a slave, concubine?) had to wait on him and his children hand and foot, just as his children would insult Mary every chance they had, except the older boy (older than Mary) who showed some respect.

Let’s get back to the Bible given to her by the Arab family. Mary was constantly taunted and tortured for not being a “real Armenian”, i.e not Apostolic, besides, they were from different towns of Kilikia. How CRUEL can we be?.

In the meantime she had had a beautiful baby Samuel whom she raised to be a decent Armenian man, and he did. (See the above picture of her at Samuel’s wedding.)

Her first daughter Shamsi had died, her second daughter Jamileh, after enduring yeas of insults, finally ran away to Beirut at the tender age of 16, some said she was engaged in prostitution, NOT!!! She kept herself as a domestic help until she married an Armenian man (who adored her and Mary) and their beautiful (Armenian) children.

In the meantime her so called husband had died, Mary took her son Samuel and moved to Beirut to unite with her daughter Jamileh.

----

I wish I knew what happened to Jamileh’s and Samuel’s Children.

Al in all, Mary remained a true and devout Christian all her life, never complained, never gossiped or insulted, perhaps her Saving Grace.

PS. Yervant, do you remember Miss Ferida Salibian, Paren Sanents (Kazanjian who just died) and Aram Bulghurjian, his ancestor was also a professor at the Academy?

Edited June 26, 2009 by ArpA

[Yervant1]

(I Have pictures of her both before where she holds Shmasi and after at her son Samuels wedding. I wish I had the means and the know how to air them. In both pictures we see how beautiful she was, even at the latter one, at the age of some 60 she could still compete for Miss Universe)

 

PS. Yervant, do you remember Mis Ferida Salibian, Paren Sanents (Kazanjian who just died) and Aram Bulghurjian, his ancestor was also a professor at the Academy?

Arpa if you know someone who has a scanner could scan the pictures and e-mail them to you, in order to be able to post them.

I remember the Salibian family name but can't put a face to it, because it's been a long time. But Aram Bulghurjian was my High School principal for few years.

[Louise]

It was here

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=21754&hl=

And the artile about the girls is in there the URL is "www genocide museum...."

You can repost your tetimony there and perhaps remove it from here, I will remove this post as well once you have found article in question.

 

 

 

Note: Arpa I brought the last two posts here for you. Yervant

 

Note: Arpa. Thank you. I have read the article of Genocide Museum. It is so terrible. I will put the URL in armenews forum.

I d'on't know how to remove my precedent reply.

If simeone is interested in my french translation or the true story written by Verjine Svazlian, here it is:

 

http://www.armenweb.org/espaces/louise/rep...age_rescape.htm.

Merci pour tout.

[Arpa]

Note: Arpa. Thank you. I have read the article of Genocide Museum. It is so terrible. I will put the URL in armenews forum.

I d'on't know how to remove my precedent reply.

If simeone is interested in my french translation or the true story written by Verjine Svazlian, here it is:

 

http://www.armenweb.org/espaces/louise/rep...age_rescape.htm.

Merci pour tout.

Not to worry. Yervant has graciously moved your and my posts already.

And now, let's go back to the so called "salvage" of Armenian girls from Arab "slavery?"

Edited June 25, 2009 by ArpA

[Arpa]

http://www.armenianow.com/?action=viewArti...246&lng=eng

(July 31, 2009)

Trend, Tradition, Tattoos: Armenians challenge stereotypes with body art

By Siranuysh Gevorgyan

ArmeniaNow reporter

Published: 31 July, 2009

Summer comes, clothes go and the sun colors Armenian bodies.

 

Lately, there’s an increasingly popular option for the latter, as the world tattoo trend a decade old has reached Armenia.

 

Employees at tattoo salons assure that with each summer the number of customers at Yerevan’s tattoo parlors increases.

 

One of them, Gagik Mkrtchyan, master of tattoo making, says that during recent months he manages to sleep only two-three hours a day.

 

“I even do not manage to serve all the clients registered for one day,” says Mkrtchyan, who is the owner of ‘Tattoo Art Club’ salon, one of the oldest tattoo salons.

 

His salon was founded 10 years ago, and it was one of the first of its kind in Yerevan. Mkrtchyan bought it five years ago. His clients include the average fashion conscious and members of Armenia’s showbiz community. Showman Felix Khachatryan, hip-hop singer ‘Hay Tgha’ (Armenian boy,) Hayko, members of ‘32’ Humor Club are clients as well as American-Armenian hip-hop singer Apeh Jan, who had his latest tattoo here.

 

Mkrtchyan says that five years ago when he just started working, he barely had five-six clients per month, and moreover he had to convince them to get tattooed.

 

And now the situation is quite different and Mkrtchyan and his colleagues see about 10 customers a day.

 

“The stereotype, which came from the Soviet period that only people who were in jails wear tattoos is changed,” says Mkrtchyan. He mentions that the number of girls who do tattoos also increased.

 

“Recently I made a tattoo, which looked like a piece of pizza on a girl’s body, and another girl preferred the piglet from ‘Winnie the Pooh’ cartoon,” Mkrtchyan says.

 

The least expensive tattoo at the salon is 10,000 drams (about $27), while, the tattoo of a middle size (which has about 15 centimeters length) starts at 30,000 (about $81). (Almost the same prices can be met at other tattoo salons of the capital city.)

 

Shattered stereotypes aside, old attitudes still prevail.

 

Karen Sahakyan, 24, who got his sixth tattoo this summer, says that after having each tattoo, he has an unpleasant conversation with his parents.

 

“My mom says that how can a boy like me who is well-educated and smart, wear tattoos and simply look like a bandit,” Sahakyan says.

 

According to tattoo specialist Mkrtchyan, very often boys choose religious symbols; renderings of Christ are widely popular.

 

“Very often most of them leave the salon with a quite different tattoo. Now people perceive tattoo as something beautifying the human body, or an expression of freedom. In a nutshell now they treat it more easily,” Mkrtchyan says.

 

Syrian-Armenian Siro Kejejian, director of ‘Body Art’ salon, which runs in Armenia for four years, says that Armenian men did not change their preferences that much.

 

“They (men) mainly ask for a cross, a tiger or wolf head, and ladies prefer small flowers, some ornaments which will be seen only in case if they wear swimming suits,” says Kejejian, whose salon is also full of customers, mostly foreigners and Diaspora.

 

© Copyright ArmeniaNow.com 2002-2008. All rights reserved.

Articles may be reproduced, provided ArmeniaNow.com is cited as the source

 

 

[Arpa]

From the Armenian Weekly. A rather large article but worth a read.

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http://www.armenianweekly.com/2010/05/28/a-quiet-place-along-the-khabour/

http://www.armenianweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Saad-and-his-mother-Zahaya-web.jpg

http://media.maps.com/magellan/Images/SYRIA-W1.gif

 

“A Quiet Place Along the Khabour: Rescue and Survival in ‘the Abattoir of Shaddadeh’

By: Elyse Semerdjian

The Armenian Weekly

April 2010 Magazine

The road to Der Zor—from Bab, Munbij, Meskene, Raqqa—is well documented in the memoirs of Armenian Genocide survivors and foreign eyewitness accounts. However, it wasn’t enough to arrive in Der Zor alive; deportees were driven to march further north along the Khabour River to a place where gendarmes thought no one would hear their cries for help. A letter from Jesse B. Jackson, the American consul of Aleppo, discussed the deportations north of the desert city as they began in June 1916, when Zeki Bey was appointed Ottoman governor, replacing his more lenient predecessor. According to Jackson, the deportations were systematic; Armenians were deported from the city according to their place of origin. “They were told that they would be conducted to certain villages on the Khabour River, which empties into the Euphrates below Deir, and were sent off under strong escorts of armed gendarmes. Some arrived at small villages on the Khabour, but the greater part were taken only hours from Deir al-Zor, where they were set upon by bands of Turkish, Circassian and Kurdish ex-convicts that had been liberated from prisons and taken there for that purpose. The most horrible butcheries imaginable occurred, the facts of which were related to me by a few survivors who miraculously escaped and who were given shelter by friendly Arabs and later returned to Aleppo after great hardships.”(1) Jackson recounts a period of intensified massacre in the summer of 1916 along the Khabour River. His account, when paired with those told by local descendants of survivors, indicates that buried under the lands north of Der Zor lay untold stories to be unearthed.(2)

 

Sa’ad As’ad overlooks the cave he has guided so many Armenians to over the years.

My first trip to Der Zor was on April 24, 2000, when I attended the genocide commemorations along with other Armenians. When the ceremonies subsided I made my first pilgrimage into the desert.My only geographical reference guide was a book I had purchased in Aleppo in 1994 by Robert Jebejian, a noted Aleppan doctor, who had documented the sites of the deportations and mass murders with the help of photographer Hagop Krikorian. His since out-of-publication Routes and Centers of Annihilation of Armenian Deportees made reference to Mergada, the church that sits upon a mass burial site about 88 km. north of Der Zor along the road to Hasakeh. From there, I had no idea how to get to the sites in the desert that I had seen in the book and had read about in survivor accounts. I did have faith that locals would guide me to the right place because since arriving to Der Zor people were forthcoming about discussing their Armenian grandmothers (called hababah in the local dialect). I hopped aboard a bus headed for Hasakeh, where I started a conversation with a young man returning home after serving in the Syrian military. He told me that his home town, Shaddadeh, was where I needed to go to see the caves and meet a wise man, referred to as “the shaykh,” who knew a lot about Armenians and could help me.

From the main highway, we walked about two miles to reach the end of town. I must add that the young soldier passed by his own home—full of relatives ready to celebrate the end of his mandatory military service—in order to introduce me to the man who would help me find my way further into the desert. Even in April, the two-mile trek in the sun was exasperating. Yervant Odian, in his book Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919, describes his deportation not far from Shaddadeh and how a fellow deportee taught him to suck on a stone to sate his thirst.(3) As my dependency on the bottle of water I carried grew, I imagined what it would be like with no water in April. Experiencing the desert in April only emphasizes that the survivors who made it this far on foot had superhuman physiology, as the body naturally desires only to shut down when the sun beats down on it like a sledgehammer.

As we approached the end of the long street that cuts through Shaddadeh, a striking, grey-eyed shaykh, whose real name is Sa‘ad Hammad al-As‘ad, greeted me in front of his home on the edge of town. His first words to me were, “Are you Aintapli?” I nearly fainted because the man addressing me was wearing a white abaya over his head, a traditional white jalabiya, and was clearly not Armenian. Or was he? I asked him how he knew I was Aintapli. He informed me that many of the Armenians who had came to see him hailed from Aintap. He said that most of the people who passed by this town during the genocide were deported from there; he pointed to the back of his house as if noting a pathway. Then, he told me that his own grandmother was from Aintap and was deported only to be rescued in Shaddadeh. He invited me inside for an afternoon of enlightenment that I will never forget.

 

Sa’ad and his mother Zahaya at their home in Shaddadeh

Inside the house, Sa‘ad sat in his living room ringed with elegant green cushions and armrests as his young daughters quickly served us never-ending cups of tea. There he told me his story. His grandmother was an Armenian deportee from Aintap named Khanimeh. He did not know her family name but was told that her father held an important position in the town as a mukhtar (neighborhood representative) in their city of origin. She and other small girls were brought by gendarmes to a small hill called Tel Shaddadeh in the village of Shaddadeh, which lies just outside a more recently developed

town by the same name. The gendarmes ordered the chief of the district (mudir al-nahiya) to detain these girls until they came back for them. This chief was Sa‘ad’s great uncle, Khatab ‘Abdallah al-Fadhl, who hailed from a notable family of the Jabour tribe. In fact, this position of district chief had been held previously by Khatab’s brother ‘Ali, the narrator’s grandfather at one time. According to the grandfather’s account, when the gendarme left, Khatab, knowing that these girls were destined for the killing fields outside of Shaddadeh, informed his family and the surrounding residents of the ominous future awaiting the girls. The village quickly hid as many as they could among the local families. It was only later, in 2008, that I would visit the actual site of rescue, the mound called Tel Shaddadeh, where three of Sa‘ad’s male relatives rescued Armenian girls from this spot; one of the rescuers, ‘Ali, would later marry Khanimeh.

Although Sa‘ad wasn’t clear on the date of this event, his family’s story matches survivor narratives like that of Dikran Berberian, who was deported from Aintap to the desert near Shaddadeh. “From the banks of the Khabour, we saw drifting a hundred corpses attached to one another at the arm, some of which were dismembered. These corpses were the last traces of victims of the Shaddadeh massacre.”(4) Thus, Berberian referred to this quiet place as the “abattoir [sic] of Shaddadeh.” Sa‘ad’s account of his grandmother’s rescue in the desert complements Berberian’s, as he emphasized how young the girls rescued on the hill were: very young and far from puberty. Berberian describes “girls less than ten years old thrown into the Khabour.”(5) Sa‘ad was told by his grandfather that the girls from Tel Shaddadeh were destined for the caves in the desert; this was confirmed later when he found their dead bodies in a ditch nearby a cave. His grandfather ‘Ali took him into the desert, taught him where this cave and its ditch were located, and thereby preserved the family story for nearly a century.

Survivor accounts detail that girls were hidden in homes by Arabs living in the deserts around Der Zor. In fact, Odian writes that Armenian survivors would walk by Arab homes and hear women having conversations with one another in Armenian. Sometimes the women would say a few words out the window if they heard Armenian being spoken in the streets.(6) It is impossible to know the details of how Sa‘ad’s grandmother came to marry his grandfather. According to Sa‘ad, his grandmother was not married to his grandfather right away as she was too young to marry when she was rescued. Some survivor accounts say that these girls were reared only later to marry male family members; this seems to match Khanimeh’s being married to a clansman once she reached maturity. Sa‘ad described the way his grandmother disguised herself among the local population by tattooing her face traditionally like the Bedouin, yet she lived in fear of being discovered once again by Turkish officials. In our many conversations, it was not clear whether or not Khanimeh was in a single or plural marriage. Sa‘ad joked in front of his wife that “Aintap men only take one wife,” as he himself has not married more than one wife despite his wealth and status. But I did learn that his own father had multiple wives when I visited his mother, Zahaya, the surviving daughter of his Armenian grandmother in 2008.

In describing Zahaya, I am at a loss of words. Like her son, she is strikingly beautiful despite her advanced years and illness. She is unable to walk, but instead sits reclined on a bed with blankets on her lap. Her beautiful blue-grey eyes look even more radiant against the whiteness of her hair and the paleness of her skin. This is in contrast to many of her children and grandchildren, whose faces are bronze and even reddish in complexion as if sun kissed. I felt emotional when I met her, and she was confused by that. I had just finished an entire trek through the desert with photojournalist Kathryn Cook from Aleppo to Shaddadeh, and the village near Tel Shaddadeh was really the climax of this journey; knowing that a few miles from there was the cave where the final massacre took place was overwhelming. My emotions took over when I heard her daughter say, “Why are they here? Why is this so important to them?” I realized that despite Sa’ad’s efforts to preserve his family history, its significance was lost on some members of the family.

I asked Zahaya about her mother and what she could tell us about her rescue on the hill that was clearly visible from the family home, the home that belonged to her mother’s rescuer. She had little to say, noting that her mother never told her much about the rescue in the desert. When she was asked about her tattoos, she spoke more readily. Her tattoos were shaped like a cross along her chin and when asked if there were other tattoos, Zahaya lifted her robe to show us that she had cross-shaped tattoos on each thigh. “My mother did it,” she said. Even though I was not able to get much information about her mother, the tattoos clearly marked Zahaya as belonging to an Armenian Christian mother who through traumatic circumstances was forced into a new environment where she lived in concealment.

Tel Shaddadeh keeps telling stories. The disappearing Khabour River lies immediately next to it. During Odian’s survival in the desert, he drank from this river to quench his thirst.Now there are only a few puddles left and they happen to be on the neighbor’s side of the bend.(7) In order to continue cultivating, the neighbor had run a loud generator to pump the existing water out of the puddles to water his crops, while members of the al-As‘ad clan looked on helplessly. There continues to be no planting on their land due to the shortage of irrigation water.

Although Sa‘ad told his story first, his wife Ghazaleh’s story was just as remarkable. It is important to note that her grandfa ther, ‘Abd al-Muhsan al-Sa‘ud al-Fadhl, was a cousin to the two al-As‘ad brothers mentioned earlier and married one of the surviving girls from Tel Shaddadeh. Ghazaleh remembered her Armenian grandmother clearly, even knew her full Armenian name—Nazili Hovsep Shamilyan—and believes was originally from Mardin. Her grandmother clearly maintained her Armenian heritage throughout her life by informing her grandchildren of her real name rather than assuming a Muslim name. Ghazaleh remembers that her grandmother tried to teach her and the other children Armenian, and she still remembers some of the Armenian names for parts of the body that she learned growing up. Her grandmother also read an Armenian Bible quite often, and since her death, this Bible has become a major point of contention among the grandchildren, as they have disputed over who gets to keep it. Ghazaleh claims that the Bible is a thousand years old, making it even more precious to her. During one visit, she began calling relatives to see if she could get the Bible to show it to me. I found Nazili’s story remarkable as she really worked to maintain her own identity and introduce it to her grandchildren.

Ghazaleh, unlike Sa‘ad, had even more clues about her heritage, as she once received a letter written in three languages—Arabic, Turkish, and Armenian—from her relatives who lived in Istanbul. She allowed me to photograph this undated letter, which included an address in Kadikoy, Istanbul, and was signed by Hovsep Shamilyan, Nazili’s brother. It was a profound piece of evidence linking Ghazaleh to the Armenian side of her family tree. This letter, written by a brother to his long-lost sister, is precious to her as she still hopes to find her Shamilyan relatives, whom she believes have since moved to Montreal, Canada. She has asked me to contact them, and I have tried to find them to no avail. I would love to fulfill her dream by finding the Shamilyans, if only to repay the family’s endless generosity they have shown me though out the years.

On one of my more recent trips to Shaddadeh in 2007, we revisited the caves in the desert. Sa‘ad had trouble finding his way to the cave this time, in part due to a debilitating struggle with diabetes; he and Ghazaleh both have diabetes and suspect that it may be something they inherited from their Armenian grandmothers. On this trip, Sa‘ad’s vision was so poor that we could not find the cave he had taken me to on previous visits. There was a strange irony in the scene of a nearly blind man walking through the desert in search of a cave he had guided so many Armenian pilgrims to over the years. He has been the guide in this morbid tourism for decades, to a historical site that’s unprotected, unpreserved, and somewhat unrecorded except in memories. I realized this may be one of our last trips to the site since Ghazaleh is increasingly protective of his health (rightly so as a scrape on his foot could take months to heal with his diabetes). As I began to fear that his knowledge of this tract of desert would be lost, a soldier stationed in a nearby post pointed us in the right direction. He also informed us that technically we weren’t supposed to be trespassing on this land because of the military outpost or oil interests in the area. Yet, the fact that the cave is common knowledge to the locals reassured me that the memories of this place will never be forgotten by the Arabs of the desert, who in many cases carry with them both the stories of their grandmothers and their rescuers.

Sa‘ad is the most passionate of his fellow siblings about his Armenian heritage, and his wife is equally passionate. They are devout Muslims, but also embrace their Armenian ancestry and take pride in it. Sa’ad does what he can to preserve the memory of the event that shaped his family by constantly welcoming Armenian pilgrims into his home and serving as their guide into the desert behind his home. His dream is to go to Armenia and visit the genocide memorial outside of Yerevan; he has expressed this wish to me almost every time I have seen him, and we talk to each other often. Although he is certainly Arab and Muslim, he sees himself as connected to the Armenian people in a very profound way, through a set of memories passed onto him by his grandparents—memories shared by all descendants of the survivors.

ENDNOTES

1. United States Official Documents on the Armenian Genocide, vol. 1, ed. A. Sarafian, 1993, pp. 148–149.

2. Hilmar Kaiser, At the Crossroads of Der Zor: Death, Survival, and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915–1917 (Reading, UK: Taderon Press, 2002), pp. 66, 68.

3. Yervant Odian, Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919, trans. Ara Stepan Melkonian, intro. Krikor Beledian (London: Gomidas, 2009), p. 154.

4. Dikran Berberian, “Le Massacre de Deir-Zor,” in A. Andonian, Matériaux pour l’histoire du genocide, pp. 12–15. The English is my translation, while the original French text is posted on www.imprecriptible.fr/rhac/tome2/p2t51.

5. ibid.

6. Odian, 213.

7. ibid., 168.

[gamavor]

«մարմնի վրայ բնական նիշ, ծին, տճ. պէնկ» **

խալ. ունին միայն ԱԲ. եւ ՓԲ. յաւել: (origin:) պրս

.

In addition to the above the Armatakan goes further, that the word is used to mean blemish, even such as a spot on one’s clothing. That the word خال*** is used by many of our neighbors, Kurds etc..

** How many Armeniaians do you with a family name of “benglian”?

***Also note that the Persian dict. says it is of Arabic origin.

 

 

Benk:)

 

That's exactly right, Arpa. One of my ancestors had a perfectly round speckle in the middle of his back. Each generation has it with exactly the same size and exactly on the same spot. I'm spared of it, but close relative proudly wear's it. and in the process the "g" was dropped (I don't know when and how). Besides, the family name that you mentioned above also meant "noticeable".)))

[Nvard]

since the Topic's name is Tattoo, why don't we continue on that one....

What about an "Armenian tattoo"? would you get one or already got one?

[Arpa]

http://asbarez.com/97928/%e2%80%98grandma%e2%80%99s-tattoos%e2%80%99-a-riveting-film-about-the-forgotten-women-of-genocide/

 

‘Grandma’s Tattoos’:

A Riveting Film About the Forgotten Women of Genocide

 

http://asbarez.com/App/Asbarez/eng/2011/09/0901khanoum.jpg

 

http://asbarez.com/App/Asbarez/eng/2011/09/0901khanoum.jpg

 

"Grandma Khanoum"

-----

 

Director: Suzanne Khardalian

Producer: HB PeÅ Holmquist Film

Length: 58 min, Sweden

Date of release: September, 2011

STOCKHOLM, Sweden—“Grandma Khanoum was not like every one else. As a child I remember her as a wicked woman. She despised physical contact. This was a grandma who never hugged, gave no kisses. And she wore those gloves, which hid her hands and the tattoos. They hid her secret.” This is how Suzanne Khardalian describes her grandmother.

Khardalian is the director and producer of riveting new film called, “Grandma’s Tattoos” that lifts the veil of thousands of forgotten women—survivors of the Genocide—who were forced into prostitution and were tattooed to distinguish them from the locals.

”As a child I thought these were devilish signs that came from a dark world. They stirred fear in me. What were these tattoos? Who had done them and why? But the tattoos on grandma’s hands and face were a taboo, they never spoke about it,” explains Khardalian.

“Grandma’s Tattoos” is a journey into the secrets of the family. Eventually, the secret behind Grandma Khanoum’s blue marks are revealed.

“Grandma was abducted and kept in slavery for many years somewhere in Turkey. She was also forcibly marked, -tattooed – as a property, the same way you mark cattle. The discovery of the story has shaken me. I share the shame, the guilt and anger that infected my grandma’s life. Grandma Khanoum’s fate was not an aberration. On the contrary tens of thousands of Armenian children and teenagers were raped and abducted, kept in slavery,” explained Suzanne Khardalian.

In 1919, just at the end of WW I, the Allied forces reclaimed 90,819 Armenian, young girls and children who, during the war years, were forced to become prostitutes to survive, or had given birth to children after forced or arranged marriages or rape. Many of these women were tattooed as a sign that they belonged to abductor. European and American missionaries organized help and picked up and saved thousands of refugees who later were scattered all over the world to places like Beirut, Marseille and Fresno.

The story of Grandma’s Tattoos is a personal film about what happened to many Armenian women during the genocide 1915. Filmmaker and writer Suzanne Khardalian makes a personal journey into her own family to investigate the truth behind Khanoum, her late grandmother.

This is a ghost story; the ghosts of the tattooed women haunting us. It’s a mystery film, where many taboos are broken. As no one wants to tell the real and whole story, and in order to bring the pieces of the puzzle together , the director makes us move between different time and space, from today’s welfare Sweden all the way to Suzanne Khardalian’s childhood in Beirut.

In the film we meet Grandmother’s sister, 98-year-old Lucia, who lives in Hollywood. Lucia too has those odd tattoos. She is willing to tell us only a part of the story. We also meet with Aunt Marie, grandma’s only still living child in Beirut. But Aunt Marie doesn’t know the whole story either. Grandma has never told it to her. It was forbidden to talk about the “unspeakable.” Aunt Marie too has the same unpleasant memories as the rest of the family.

It’s finally Suzanne’s mother who tells the story about Grandma Khanoum, and about the Kurdish man who was supposed to help grandma escape the killings but instead decided to abduct her and keep Khanoum as his concubine. Grandma was only a child then. She had just turned 12 The words “Mummy, mummy help me” is the sentence that haunts Suzanne and her family.

About the Director:

Suzanne Khardalian is an independent filmmaker and writer. She studied journalism in Beirut and Paris and worked as a journalist in Paris until 1985 when she started to work on films. She also holds a Masters Degree in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tuft’s University and contributes with articles to different journals. She has directed more than twenty films that have been shown both in Europe and the US.

Producer:

PeÅ Holmquist Film is a production company established in 1973.The company has been producing films mostly for Scandinavian TV channels often with Scandinavian co-producers. Several films have been sold all over the world.

Suzanne Khardalian Selected Filmography

Back to Ararat ( 1988);

Unsafe Ground 1993);

The Lion from Gaza (1996);

Her ArmenianPrince (1997);

From Opium to Chrysanthemums ( 2000);

Where Lies My Victory (2002);

I Hate Dogs ( 2005);

Bullshit ( 2006);

Young Freud in Gaza(2009).

Asbarez will provide more coverage on this film and its director in upcoming editions.

Should you ask what "Khardal(ian)" means ,look here;

 

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=19754&pid=283961&st=0entry283961

Edited September 2, 2011 by Arpa

[Nvard]

that's a completely different thing...those are the tattooes that were made to indicate the fact that those poor women belonged to the Muslim nomades...My friend's grandmother had some on her face, it looked horrible..

[Arpa]

that's a completely different thing...those are the tattooes that were made to indicate the fact that those poor women belonged to the Muslim nomades...My friend's grandmother had some on her face, it looked horrible..

Dear Nvard, please forgive me for digressing and perhaps going off topic inserting the above story about the tattooed Grandmother. It was an attempt to show why we are leery of the practice. There may be a reason why most Armenians have an aversion of tattoos.

 

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=17143&st=0&p=218516&hl=tattoo&fromsearch=1entry218516

Except at pilgrimage to Jerusalem they would get tattoos with Christian themes to show the fact that they are sanctified. I can’t find it now, some time ago Johannnes told us that the Armenian (sur)name “kmhdes/makhdes/ makdes (ian) from the Arabic “mukkades” to mean “sanctified”, i..e has visited Jerusalem ( Arabic kudus/holy city) ** in pilgrimage. Those men and women were often nicknamed “hajI” from the Arabic “haj/pilgrim(age). In fact some children were named “hajI”

At one time there was a store across the main gate of the Armenian Convent in Jerusalem which in fact was a tattoo studio.

 

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=PnB0AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA362&lpg=PA362&dq=jerusalem+armenian+tattoo&source=bl&ots=UQAoTJ8ER4&sig=XmQ2gWZzsNgBAJbDuICr9H_WVqw&hl=en&ei=W0NiToufAurx0gGv7NCwCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&sqi=2&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=jerusalem%20armenian%20tattoo&f=false

 

You will notice above that someone interpreted “mah-desi” as “I saw death”.

WRONG!!!!

Cheap amateurish linguistics.

 

http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php?topic=5844.5;wap2

 

Salpy: It is customary among Armenians to get cross tattoos when visiting Jerusalem. M᠍y great grandmother had one on the back of her hand.

There is an interesting story about these religious tattoos in my family:

My grandmother's two first counsins, Zabel and Araxie, had tattoos of the Face of Christ put on their arms as small children when they visited Jerusalem, before the Genocide. During the Genocide, they were separated after their parents were killed. Zabel wound up in an orphanage and eventually joined her relatives in the United States as an adult. Araxie was taken in and adopted by a Turkish family, who did not want to see her killed.

For years after the Genocide people would send letters to Armenian churches all over the world looking for lost relatives. The letters went something like "My name is _______. My parents' names were _____. I am from the village of _________. etc." These letters would be read after the Liturgy and people would stay and listen to them to see if they could find lost relatives. One day Zabel, who was living in the Eastern United States at the time, heard a letter from a woman who sounded like she could be her sister. She wrote back to the woman, saying "Tell me nothing else about yourself, just draw a picture of what is on your arm and send it to me." The woman sent Zabel the picture of the Face of Christ which was on both their arms. The two of them were thus reunited.

 

** At one time Armenians would name their children, male and female “kudsi” to mean “holy-/sacred/ Jerusalemite.”

[Nvard]

I just love this one...