IT'S YOUR SISTER, VARTUHI

[Yervant1]

IT'S YOUR SISTER, VARTUHI

 

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso

Sept 25 2012

Italy

 

'With time, the Countries we live in - Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq -

have become our home. Arabic has become our language. Unleavened bread

has become our food. But let's not forget it: we belong to a different

history'. In the twelfth episode of the series "From the Caucasus to

Beirut", Paolo Martino returns among the Armenians of Lebanon

 

Beirut. Eternal in the precariousness of the riddled terraces,

ephemeral in the glass skyscrapers mirroring an empty future. The city

is beat by a cutting rain announcing the coming of winter. Gurgling

in the manholes, a thick slime regurgitates smells that had gone

covered by months of draught. The great Armenian cornerstone in the

Middle-East, Burj Hammoud, is strangely silent, muffled by the grey sky

brushing over the rooftops. A tall and pale building, drooping over

the highway, is the seat of the Tashnag, one of the three Armenian

parties represented in the Lebanese Parliament. The porter announces

me through the interphone. "Please, Mr. Pakradounian is waiting for

you in his office on the fifth floor".

 

A middle-aged man, the deputy dominates from his leather chair.

 

Outside of the window behind him, the low houses of the Armenian

quarter fill the sight up to the low line of the clouds. 'I have

been told you have travelled extensively among our brothers of the

diaspora. I am guessing today you want to discuss the situation of

the Armenians in Lebanon'. Historically, the Tashnag is the party

with the most followers in the Armenian community, and one of the

most influential political bodies in the Country. The quarter of

Burj Hammoud has never had an MP that was not from its ranks. 'No,

I would like to talk about Syria'.

 

A few months after the first street demonstrations against Assad's

regime, the Syrian Spring assumed the likeness of a civil war. The

scream of youthful rage, started at the end of 2010 in Tunisia and able

to overturn two governments and make all Arab dictatorships totter,

is becoming stranded on the urban guerrilla in the Syrian provinces of

Hama, Homs, Daraa. As the other minorities in the Country, the hundred

thousand Armenians hold more and more marginal positions as violence

increases. The protest front line, less and less across-the-board,

is growing increasingly extremist, while the role of weapons grows

greater by the day.

 

'Armenians do not fear change'. Pakradounian speaks with the tone of

someone who wishes to justify a difficult choice. 'But they do fear

taking leaps in the dark, because they know how dangerous it can be.

 

Those like us, who have lost their home once, cannot risk losing

it again'. The genocide, the ever-lasting existential mark on the

identity of the Armenian diaspora, emerges with the force of a dogma.

 

'You cannot ask Armenians to do more, anyway. The role of our diaspora

in the Middle-East has never gone beyond the economic sphere, it has

rarely crossed politics'. When the Lebanese civil war broke out in the

mid '70s, the representatives of the Armenian community agreed absolute

neutrality between the fighting parties. Twenty years after the end

of the conflict, that choice is still felt as a moment of success.

 

'Besides political strategies, do Armenians believe in the objectives

of the Arab Spring or do they not?'. Pakradounian leans over his desk,

as if seeking greater intimacy between us. 'With time, the Countries

we live in - Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq - have become our home.

 

Arabic has become our language. Unleavened bread has become our food.

 

But let's not forget it: we belong to a different history. And our

objective lies somewhere else: re-gaining the rights lost on our

Fathers' lands'. The deputy is at ease again, as if he just got

a heavy truth off his chest. 'But besides that, we will always be

grateful to the Arabs for having welcomed us in their home.

 

Irrespective of whom is sitting on the leader's chair'. Behind

him, a map of Greater Armenia boldly stretches from the rising

Nagorno-Karabakh to the Anatolian plateau, from Southern Georgia to

the Azeri enclave of Nakhichevan.

 

>From my journal. December 5

 

>From Yerevan to Beirut, from the Caucasus to the heart of the

Middle-East. By land, to measure the size of a history that is not

keen on being framed on a map. The journey through the lands of the

Middle-Eastern Armenian diaspora has been accomplished, but almost all

the questions I posed myself on its eve still go unanswered. The only

conclusion that I note down on my journal is that, as far as this

adventure goes, History cannot provide answers: on the contrary,

History is the steaming battlefield where the enemy is chased,

vengeance is sought and trenches of wrath between Man and his dreams

are dug deeper and deeper.

 

The Bekaa valley is covered in the tenuous colours of autumn. Hrayer

is driving along the bare rows evaluating the work that he is going

to do in the fields. 'Pruning and ploughing, so the land is at rest

during the cold months'. Anjar, the village founded in 1939 on the

Lebanese mountains by the Musa Dagh Armenian refugees, appears at

a distance, framed by the blue of a sky that rarely gives itself

to Beirut. 'Before leaving for Armenia, I made the promise that I

would show you the flag of the Musa Dagh combatants'. The boy, met

on these hills almost a year ago, smiles savouring what he is going

to say next. 'Good thing you have come today'.

 

Anjar's priest takes us through the Church and into the vestry. Among

the sacred images that embellish the vault, a series of frescoes tells

the dramatic passages that have marked the history of the community.

 

The battle against the Ottoman troops in 1915 and the headlong flight

on a ship; the arrival to Port Said and life on a refugee camp; the

first terrible winter in the tents on the Bekaa plateau. With measured

gestures, the priest opens the door to a storage room. The look is

attracted by a white drape hanging on the wall, protected by glass.

 

Coarse seams draw a huge red cross in the middle of a rectangle.

 

'It's made with pieces of sheets and rags'. The priest looks at the

flag with familiar eyes, as if it were an old acquaintance. 'It was

hoisted in 1915 by the combatants of Musa Dagh after a resistance of

over a month on the mountains'. Pushed to the end of their strength,

the Armenians found refuge on the last possible defence line: Musa

Dagh, the highest mountain. Unable to break the siege of the Ottoman

troops, they settled the flag on the top, hoping some ship transiting

in the near Antioch Gulf would see it. 'Fortune was on their side. In

the middle of the night, the survivors were able to reach the shore

and board a French ship. Of course, they took the flag along'. His

hand brushes against the glass. In the garden surrounding the church,

a monument gathers the ashes of the eighteen martyrs of the battle.

 

While the cold wind that precedes sunset is taking over the valley,

Hrayer accompanies me on the last visit to his village. Angel,

the oldest woman in Anjar, is sitting in the same spot I left her

over a month ago. Her stories, 90 year-old memories, have been the

underlying theme of the journey tracing the Armenian diaspora through

the Middle-East. Behind her, at a distance, the thin mountain range

of the Anti-Lebanon is flooded with red light. Beyond those rises,

Syria lays mysterious and soldier-like.

 

'I have a surprise for you'. The woman's look nervously follows my

hands as I take a picture out of my backpack. Angel grabs it: in that

face so much like hers, it is as if she were looking at herself in

the mirror. In the wrinkles lining the face, she measures the depth

of hers. In those bright eyes, hers are reflected. 'It's Vartuhi, your

sister'. Angel answers without being distracted. 'I knew right away.

 

>From her eyes'. The woman remains absorbed till the sky turns dark.

 

Angel and Vartuhi have not seen each other since 1948, when they were

divided by a history that gave refugees only one-way tickets. Angel in

the mountains of Lebanon, Vartuhi in the flat countryside of Armenia.

 

>From my journal. December 8 No more pictures in my backpack. I

venture on my own to write the final chapter of this story. The taxi

to Damascus has comfortable chairs and the atmosphere among the

passengers is light. Increasingly small and farther away, for the

first time Beirut appears to me as a beautiful city.

 

http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Dossiers/From-the-Caucasus-to-Beirut/From-the-Caucasus-to-Beirut/It-s-your-sister-Vartuhi-122883