Encounters with Unsung Armenians, Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, February

[Yervant1]

Encounters with Unsung Armenians

 

http://www.keghart.com/Tutunjian-Unsung

Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, February 2013

 

In the 20th century, after the Bible and Shakespeare, the most

published books were that of British mystery writer Agatha Christie.

In the `20s and the `30s she took part, along with her archeologist

husband, in several expeditions to Syrian and Iraqi archeological

sites. The below excerpts are from her 1946 memoir `Come, Tell Me How

You Live'

 

`And then Aristide [Armenian], in his gentle, happy voice, with his

quite cheerful smile, tells the story. The story of a little boy of

seven, who with his family and Armenian families was thrown by the

Turks alive into a deep pit. Tar was poured on them and set alight.

His father and mother and two brothers and sister were all burnt

alive. But he, who was below them all, was still alive when the Turks

left, and he was found later by some of the Anaizah Arabs. They took

the little boy with them and adopted him into the Anaizah tribe. He

was brought up as an Arab, wandering with them over their pastures.

But when he was eighteen he went into Mosul and there demanded that

papers be given him to show his nationality. He was an Armenian, not

an Arab! Yet the blood brotherhood still holds, and to members of the

Anaizah he still is one of them.

 

`I am struck as often before by the fundamental difference of race.

Nothing could differ more widely than the attitude of our two

chauffeurs to money. Abdullah lets hardly a day pass without

clamouring for an advance of salary. If he had his way we would have

had the entire amount in advance, and it would, I rather image, have

been dissipated before a week was out. With Arab prodigality Abdullah

would have splashed it about in the coffee-house. He would have cut a

figure! He would have `made a reputation for himself.'

 

`Aristide, the Armenian, has displayed the greatest reluctance to have

penny for his salary paid him. `You will keep it for me, Khwaja, until

the journey is finished. If I want money for some little expense I

will come to you.' So far he has demanded only fourpence of his

salary - to purchase a pair of socks!

 

[At the end of trip, in Beirut, when his British tourist customers ask

Aristide what he would do with the money he had earned while

chauffeuring], the Armenian driver says, `It will go towards buying a

better taxi.'

 

`And when you have a better taxi?'

 

`Then I shall earn more and have two taxis.'

 

I can quite easily foresee returning to Syria in twenty years' time,

and finding, Aristide, the immensely rich owner of a large garage, and

probably living in a big house in Beirut. And even then, I dare say,

he will avoid shaving in the desert because it saves the price of a

razor blade.'

 

--From `A Surveying Trip' by Agatha Christie in her `Come, Tell Me How

You Live' memoir (1946)

 

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

In the early `30s famed British novelist, Evelyn Waugh, travelled to

Ethiopia to report on the coronation of its emperor. In Addis Ababa he

hired an Armenian interpreter. Upon his return, Waugh wrote a `Remote

People' - a travel book about his trip. This is what he wrote about his

Armenian interpreter:

 

` And doubt I might have had about which to patronize was dissolved ,

as soon as we turned into the main street, by a stout little man in a

black skull-cap, who threw himself at my bridle and led me to the Leon

d'Or. During my brief visit I became genuinely attached to this man.

He was an Armenian of rare character, named Bergebedgian; he spoke a

queer kind of French with remarkable volubility, and I found great

delight in all his opinions; I do not think I have ever met a more

tolerant man; he had no prejudice or scruples of race, creed, or

morals of any kind whatever, there were in his mind none of those

opaque patches of inconsidered principles, it was a single translucent

pool of placid doubt; whatever splashes of precept and disturbed its

surface from time to time had left no ripple; reflections flitted to

and fro and left it unchanged.

 

`Everywhere he went he seemed to be welcome; everywhere he not only

adapted, but completely transformed, his manners to the environment.

When I came to consider the question I was surprised to realize that

the two most accomplished men I had met during this six months I was

abroad, the chauffeur who took us to Debra Lebanos and Mr.

Bergebedgian, should both have been Armenians. A race of rare

competence and the most delicate sensibility. They seem to me the only

genuine `men of the world'.'

 

`On the ship back to England, Waugh met a Turkish traveler. He told

the Turk about his experiences with the two Armenians in Ethiopia.

`The warmth of admiration for Armenians clearly shocks him, but he is

too polite to say so. Instead, he tells me of splendid tortures

inflicted on them by his relatives.'

[Arpa]

Great find Yervant.

 

In the 20th century, after the Bible and Shakespeare, the most

published books were that of British mystery writer Agatha Christie.

In the `20s and the `30s she took part, along with her archeologist

husband, in several expeditions to Syrian and Iraqi archeological

sites.

We know that Dame Agatha Christie slept at the Hotel Baron in Aleppo when she was working on her mystery novel Murder on the Orient Express;

 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/asia/syrias-hotel-for-the-famous/2006/11/06/1162661588735.html

 

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=18547&hl=baron

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_on_the_Orient_Express

 

Originally the Orient Express was built from Vienna to stambol

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient_Express

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orient-Express_Historic_Routes_(en).svg

 

Later on it was extended all the way to Baghdad,via Alepppo.

The Baghdad Railway German: Bagdadbahn, French: Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Baghdad), was built from 1903 to 1940 to connect Berlin with the (then) Ottoman Empire city of Baghdad, where the Germans wanted to establish a port in the Persian Gulf,[1] with a 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

Funding and engineering was mainly provided by German Empire banks and companies, which in the 1890s had built the Anatolian Railway (Anatomist …

---

Many of our ancestors, including my own were conscripted to “work” on that railroad where they were also murdered.

This is eerie. As a child in Aleppo our house was less than a 100 meters from those tracks. One of our entertainments was throwing rocks at the trains and watch them ricochet back. Not at the passenger cars, mind you.

http://zimana.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/orient-express.jpg

http://zimana.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/orient-express.jpg

At times the engineers would respond in kind throwing chunks of coal back at us.

We would also place nails on the tracks and let the train press them to look like daggers.

 

Please note that the French Chemin de Fer/Iron Road is translated to the Armenian as Yerkathoughi.

Edited March 3, 2013 by Arpa