Reflections on Armenian Language Learning’s Impact on the Armenian-American Experience

Special to the Armenian Weekly 

I don’t know whether it was a fluke or by design, but the Armenian Weekly’s Aug. 26, 2017 issue included three articles about the role Armenian-language knowledge plays—or doesn’t play—in one’s Armenian identity: Marie Papazian’s “A Generational Question: ‘If You Don’t Speak Armenian, Are You Really Armenian?’”; Garen Yegparian’s “Language vs. Spirit”; and Rupen Janbazian’s “‘Where Are You From?’ and the Huge Pile of Complexes.” Those articles were followed by the Weekly’s Oct. 6, 2017 online posting of Ani Bournazian’s “How Do You Measure Armenian Identity?” I read each with interest, and here I offer my reflections that resulted from those readings.

“The journey to language proficiency isn’t easy. But it’s worth taking, even as the journey starts with Armenian identity firmly in hand, head, and heart.” (Photo: The Armenian Weekly)

Although scholars conclude that national or ethnic identity is built on common touchstones—including language—we’ve reached a point in our corner of the Armenian Diaspora where Armenian identity does not require Armenian-language knowledge. We all know Armenian Americans who identified as Armenian but went from cradle to grave not speaking much Armenian at all. They experienced their Armenian ethnicity in a way that was different—but not quantitatively “better”—than an Armenian with Armenian-language proficiency.

In my third-generation experience growing up in an Armenian-American community, the very fact that we spoke a certain level and kind of Armenian informed and continues to influence a unique and beautifully fraught Armenian-American condition. And yet, Armenian identity survives, and people take the affirmative step of naming themselves Armenian, whatever their Armenian language skills.

But that’s not the end of the conversation. We have a problem. Too many have concluded that because Armenian identity survives a lack of Armenian-language knowledge, Armenian language learning is not necessary. It’s a reason why student enrollment in our Armenian-language one-day schools continues to decline steadily: Those schools increasingly have to cater to children who come to school already understanding the language; thus, unintentionally, they marginalize hundreds of non-Armenian-speaking children whose academic needs can’t be met well in today’s traditional Armenian school classroom.

When are we going to ask the question that we still haven’t adequately answered, even after all the years that have led us to today: How can we teach Armenian as a Second Language in a safe and systemic way and convince thousands of families that have abandoned the language to return to the classroom so that they and their children can deepen their Armenian experience, and in doing so strengthen the Armenian Nation?

The journey to language proficiency isn’t easy. But it’s worth taking, even as the journey starts with Armenian identity firmly in hand, head, and heart.

***

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m in class at Mourad Armenian School, Providence, R.I. My classmates are Armenian American-born peers and we are reading textbooks filled with many difficult and mysterious words not heard at home. We are among the last generation of children whose genocide survivor grandparents are living, so we hear Armenian regularly and even speak it to older generations. At annual year-end hanteses (concert), we recite poems and perform roles in plays, not completely understanding what we are saying and hoping we don’t embarrass ourselves and our families by stumbling and mispronouncing words in a language we have been taught is sacred and precious. A language whose erosion is a sign of assimilation, waste, and loss. We try to make our parents and grandparents proud.

***

I’m in Lebanon with five other college students from the United States who have been selected by the Eastern Armenian Prelacy to spend six weeks in Bikfaya learning Armenian language, history, and culture. Our stay has been underwritten by Kevork Hovnanian. A trip to Syria by way of Ainjar (Anjar) takes us to Aleppo, Damascus, Der Zor, and Kessab. In Aleppo, a fellow student and I are assigned to stay with a family that includes three sisters and a female visiting cousin. We seem to be interacting well and the family hosts us all for a pleasant dinner on our last night in the city. My roommate gets sick and goes to bed early. I follow later after everyone has left. The sisters and cousin crowd in the bedroom doorway. They ask me questions that I try to answer in my expanding, but still child-level Armenian. The atmosphere turns when the cousin responds, “Jib, jib, jib,” at my efforts and the mocking begins. I start to cry and tell them in Armenian that they’re breaking my heart, that we are the same, that we are all Armenian. But we are not the same and my baby Armenian words don’t move them. I tell them to leave me alone, and after they leave I weep for the loss of something I can’t identify.

***

I’m in Radnor, Penn., at the home of poet Vahe Oshagan and my fiancé, Hayg, son of Vahe and grandson of Hagop Oshagan, the revered Armenian literary critic and novelist. I’m listening very hard to Hayg’s conversation with his father, paying attention to words, idioms, inflections, and tenses, and saying as little as possible. I cannot participate fully in this high-stakes dialogue, full of nuance and fast and fluent observations in Armenian. I rehearse sentences and try to fit them into conversation when I can. I watch for signs and prompts. By the end of the evening, I’m exhausted. This construct repeats over the years.

***

It’s my wedding day, and I’m dancing with my new father-in-law at the reception. He asks, “You’re going to speak Armenian?” It’s a statement wrapped in a question. “I’ll try,” I promise in Armenian.

***

Hayg and I are walking back to our apartment on the University of Wisconsin Madison campus, and I’m three months pregnant with our first child. I have chosen this day to fulfill my promise to speak Armenian. This is the day I start to build the capacity that will allow Armenian to be the language of our home, the language of our family, the language of our firstborn. Hayg says something to me in Armenian and I respond in Armenian. And we continue from there.

***

After several weeks of conversation, my Armenian comes out of my mouth more fluently, if not always perfectly. I can better recall and use the Armenian words buried in my brain. I still talk to myself to practice what I’m going to say, to try out that more precise word, to elevate my expression. I make mistakes and feel anger and shame when corrected, but I carry on to keep the promises I’ve made to others and myself. For my family’s sake. For my sake.

***

Years pass and my Armenian is stronger. Vocabulary is situational, so mine revolves around home, school, work, and meetings. I’m conversant in Armenian, and know my share of 25-cent words. I read the Hairenik Weekly—using the Armenian school lessons of decades past—to build vocabulary or correct pronunciation of certain words, seeing the spelling. My children speak Armenian and attend Armenian school. For an Armenian whose family has been in the U.S. for nearly 100 years, I’m satisfied with my achievement, but never completely relaxed using the fruits of that achievement.

***

I’m at a community event that has babies and toddlers everywhere, and Armenian is in the air because Armenian is the language spoken to small children, by instinct and impulse. Pari (good),char (naughty), yegour (come), voch (no), gatig (milk). In this moment, these are not baby words. They are gold among the tin of English. The Armenian words are few, but they are present and they resonate, said with love and memory. For some parents and grandparents, these words and others like them are all that is left to say. But they are beautiful and meaningful to the listening children who will only pass on these few remnants of Armenian themselves without more Armenian language learning opportunities.

***

I’m at Detroit’s Armenian Relief Society (ARS ) Zavarian Armenian School on opening day and see five-year-old Sevana Derderian enrolling for the new school year. It’s her first Armenian-school experience, and I watch her as I speak to her mother. There are few non-Armenian-speaking peers in the room, and the parents of Sevana’s friends have chosen not to enroll their children. I wonder how Sevana will feel about herself in the dynamics of a class filled mostly with children from homes where Armenian is spoken regularly. Will she crack a code that others already know innately? I silently make a wish that she won’t learn to connect Armenian-language learning with negative feelings that hurt her heart and spirit.

* * *

Xenoglossophobia. This is the fear of foreign-language learning. It’s my theory that thousands of Diasporan Armenians suffer from this phobia, which teachers of second languages debate and discuss.

University of Texas Austin foreign-language educator Elaine Horwitz says that, for many, foreign language learning can be filled with anxiety and can negatively impact learning.

“I think that there’s some amount of inherent anxiety in language learning, because A, it’s just difficult, time-consuming and complicated, and B, I think that for some people it’s a threat to our self-concept,” she told Inside Higher Ed. “We can’t be ourselves when we speak the language. We have to be limited just to whatever it is that we can say.”

Second-language scholar Alexander Z. Guiora has written that learning a second language is “a profoundly unsettling psychological proposition because it directly threatens an individual’s self-concept and worldview.”

Armenian-American parents who have bad memories of Armenian school and have not sent their children to avoid their negative experiences will recognize Guiora’s additional observation that students learning a second language—even when it is the language of their ancestors—“experience apprehension, worry, even dread. They exhibit avoidance behavior such as missing class and postponing homework.”

***

There has been much discussion in the Armenian press recently about reconciling differences between Western and Eastern Armenian and protecting Western Armenian generally as we continue reflecting on the meaning of our nationhood in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide’s centennial observance and in the run up to the 100^th anniversary of the first Armenian Republic’s establishment.

As a community and nation, we may also want to focus on the survival of Western Armenian’s use throughout the Diaspora and on ways to rebuild an Armenian-language learning infrastructure that will teach Armenian as a Second Language using a strong, relevant, and systematic curriculum that meets children where they are and builds to a satisfactory and satisfying language-proficiency level.

“One shot” classes that have Armenian as a Second Language learners for a year or two and disband because of teacher or student discontinuity, together with piecemeal approaches in integrated classrooms, only perpetuate both the current atmosphere of parent abandonment of our Armenian one-day schools and the derision and eye-rolling that greets the question, “Are you sending your child to Armenian school this year?”

Continuing patchwork solutions to halfheartedly teach Armenian to non-Armenian-speaking Armenian children will only continue to keep Armenian Americans away from most of today’s Armenian schools. Parents will not send their non-Armenian-speaking children to a place where their understanding of themselves as Armenian may be threatened. The emotional connection between the non-Armenian-speaker’s language-learning discomfort and their Armenian identity may create the conflation that leads to that destructive question: Am I a “real” Armenian if I don’t know Armenian?

The sooner we implement and advance an Armenian-language learning environment for non-Armenian-speakers that deepens their Armenian experience in a safe and supportive space, the sooner the lingering divisions in our communities based on language and experience with language will blur, especially as the influx of fresh native Armenian speakers diminishes throughout the eastern U.S.

Until that happens, old debate questions about identity and language will pit us against each other and serve as a distraction, until we come together and confront the real danger we face together: the absence of a meaningful plan to shape the destiny of Western Armenian’s relevance, learning and use in our eastern U.S. communities, and the mindset of too many Armenian Americans who have concluded in the full embrace of their Armenian identity that it is not worth learning and using the language of their ancestors.

Hamparian: ‘In Defense of Christians Is America’s Answer to a Century of Indifference’

In Defense of Christians 2017 Summit Kicks Off with Press Conference Featuring Key Religious Leaders and Program Sponsors; Ecumenical Prayer Service at Saint Matthew’s Cathedral

WASHINGTON—Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Executive Director Aram Hamparian commended In Defense of Christians (IDC) on a year of progress in protecting Christian communities across the Middle East, and called on U.S. leaders to elevate America’s response to global suffering, threats to faith, dangers to democracy and diversity worldwide—from the field of politics to the plane of morality.

ANCA’s Aram Hamparian offering remarks at the opening press conference of the In Defense of Christians 2017 Summit in Washington (Photo: ANCA)

Hamparian’s remarks came during Tuesday’s inaugural press conference for IDC’s 2017 Summit, “American Leadership and Securing the Future of Christians in the Middle East,” cosponsored by the ANCA, The Philos Project, Religious Freedom Institute (RFI), The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), and the Lebanese Information Center. The press conference began with poignant remarks by His Beatitude Moran Mor Bechara Boutros al-Rai, the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and all the East and His Beatitude John Yazigi, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, moderated by IDC Vice-President and Senior Policy Adviser Andrew Doran.

“We are great when we are good. We are great because we are good,” said Hamparian. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And this is a city full of folks who will try. We need not choose between being strong or just. We can, and must, be both.”

Hamparian’s complete remarks are available on the ANCA YouTube page:

The complete press conference is available on the In Defense of Christians Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/indefenseofchristians/.

Following the press conference, IDC summit participants gathered at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle for an Ecumenical Prayer Service for Christians in the Middle East. His Excellency Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., served as celebrant of the prayer service, which included the participation of Patriarch al-Rai; Patriarch Yazigi; His Eminence Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan, Prelate of the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America; and Most Rev. Nicholas James Samra, Bishop of the Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Newton. The Service also featured evangelical ecumenical representatives, including Rev. Berdj Djambazian, Minister to the Union of the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America, and Rev. Johnnie Moore, Founder and CEO of the Kairos Company, along with numerous Apostolic Church Prelates, other clergy, and religious leaders.

His Eminence Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan’s reading is available below.

Rev. Berdj Djambazian’s reading is available below.

Internationally acclaimed Lebanese singer Mrs. Abeer Nehme performed moving renditions of Christian hymns in Arabic and Aramaic, a 5,000-year-old Coptic funeral procession song, and angelic performances of Giligia and Der Voghormia (Lord Have Mercy).

Mrs. Nehme’s rendition of Giligia is available below.

An IDC Summit supporter since its inception in 2014 and cosponsor since 2016, the ANCA will be lending its voice to a series of policy-driven panel discussions and hands-on advocacy workshops, as well as meetings with Members of Congress on October 25th and 26th. The convention’s advocacy agenda features strong support for a just resolution of the Armenian Genocide and will include lobbying visits in support of H.Res.220, a bipartisan measure seeks to apply the lessons of the Armenian Genocide in preventing new atrocities across the Middle East.

A capacity crowd of religious leaders, journalists, and supporters of Christian communities in the Middle East at the In Defense of Christians Summit 2017 opening press conference in Washington (Photo: ANCA)

ANCA representatives will be making presentations throughout the conference, which will focus on the following advocacy priorities: security and stability in Lebanon; emergency relief for victims of genocide in Iraq and Syria; allies and accountability in the Middle East; recognition of the Armenian Genocide; and Legal punishment for ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other perpetrators of genocide.

The IDC Solidarity Dinner, to be held Wednesday evening, Oct. 25, will include keynote remarks by Vice-President Mike Pence and will offer special honors to longtime human rights champion Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.).

From Baku with ‘Blacklists’: For the Love of Azerbaijan, Just Shut Up Already, Mr. Hajiyev

Hikmet Hajiyev is on a roll these days.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s latest victim? None other than American food and television icon Anthony Bourdain, who was recently in Armenia and Artsakh to produce a segment on the region for his CNN television show, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.”

Bourdain was recently in Armenia and Artsakh to produce a segment on the region for his CNN television show

Speaking to Russia’s RIA Novosti, Hajiyev confirmed that Bourdain would be put on the now-infamous (and ever-growing) Azerbaijani “blacklist” for “illegally visiting the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.”

In 2013, Hajiyev’s Foreign Ministry issued a list, which disclosed the names of more than 300 individuals from more than 40 countries, who had visited the Republic of Artsakh “without Baku’s permission.”

They were listed as “persona non grata”—unacceptable and unwelcome in Azerbaijan. Today, that list—published right on Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry’s website—has ballooned to nearly 700.

Parliamentarians, scientists, academics, artists, journalists, entertainers (the list goes on)—all of them accused of undermining “the national sovereignty and territorial unity” of Azerbaijan.

Late last week, Hajiyev tried something new and personally attacked—and threatened—Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Executive Director Aram Hamparian in a series of tweets, accusing him of being a terrorist, racist, and a “mafia boss.”

“The Foreign Affairs [Ministry] is ‘punching down’ when it punches a lobby,” Hamparian said about Hajiyev’s latest move.

Dr. Henry Theriault Engages Community in Conversation on Genocide Studies

BELMONT, Mass. (A.W.)—The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lecture Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues presented “Setting the Agenda: Genocide Studies Today and the Place of the Armenian Genocide” on Sept. 21.

The program featured a conversation with Dr. Henry Theriault (L) and Marc Mamigonian (R) (Photo: The Armenian Weekly)

The program featured a conversation with Dr. Henry Theriault, who was recently elected president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) and is associate vice president for academic affairs at Worcester State University. Joining Dr. Theriault in conversation was NAASR Academic Director Marc Mamigonian .

In his introductions, Mamigonian said that the intention of the event was to start a discussion about the state of genocide studies today and the place of Armenian Genocide studies within the field, and urged audience members to engage in the conversation.

“As president of IAGS, I really want to think of ways to move the organization forward. We’re at a particularly difficult political time in the U.S. and globally,” Theriualt said in his opening, citing recent developments across the United States, Turkey, and Europe. “We’re seeing a return in some of the same issues that we thought we had made progress against in the last 50 years, 30 years, twenty years,” Theriault noted.

According to Theriault, IAGS is one of the many organizations that can have a real impact in terms of public education and advocacy in a difficult political climate domestically and internationally and opened the floor for comments and suggestions from the audience.

Theriault has served as founding co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Genocide Studies International, and he chaired the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group; he was lead author of its 2015 final report. His autobiographical narrative, “Out of the Shadow of War and Genocide,” was included in Advancing Genocide Studies: Personal Accounts and Insights from Scholars in the Field (2015), edited by Samuel Totten. After 19 years on the faculty in the philosophy department at Worcester State, in 2017 he became associate vice president for academic affairs there.

A scholar who has been a leading voice among of genocide studies over the past decade and more, and now as president of IAGS, a position to which he was elected in June 2017, Theriault is among those setting the agenda for genocide studies. In his IAGS inaugural address, he stated that “genocide studies has been at the forefront of recent human rights advances…. Demagogues attack the sensibilities [that] genocide studies engenders. Our work is a crucial challenge to their propaganda. IAGS must strive against this marginalization while innovatively expanding the field, especially creating space for emerging scholars particularly vulnerable to this backlash.”

The Armenian Genocide in Feature Films

With the recent release on DVD of the major motion picture “The Promise,” greater numbers of people will be able to gain insights into aspects of the Armenian Genocide. The film, starring Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac, and Charlotte Le Bon, was directed by acclaimed filmmaker Terry George, who had been involved in the production of “Hotel Rwanda,” about the 1990s genocide in Africa.

“The Promise” was an unorthodox production in several ways: financing ($100 million provided by Armenian-American Kirk Krikorian); massive numbers of pre-film release reviews that were either extremely negative or highly praising; and significant challenges and even genocide denialist-imposed obstacles in distribution.

“The Promise” is the most recent in almost a century of efforts to portray in feature films the horrors of genocide. Most of these films have appeared in recent decades and all are attempts to “describe the indescribable.”

A still from Terry George’s “The Promise” (2016) (Photo: Survival Pictures)

Among the more notable of the feature films that deal with the Armenian Genocide are “Ravished Armenia/Auction of Souls” (1919), “America, America” (1963), “Nahapet” (1977), “Forty Days of Musa Dagh” (1982), “Mayrig” (1991), “Ararat” (2002), “Lark Farm” (2007), “The Cut” (2014), “1915” (2015), and most recently “The Promise” (2016). Often, those films are based on survivor memoirs or historical novels.

What is little known publicly today is that a pioneering Hollywood film from the silent-film era dealt with the Armenian Genocide. “Ravished Armenia/Auction of Souls” is the biographical account of a young orphan girl, Arshaluys Mardigian (later renamed Aurora Mardiganian), who, having witnessed most of her family being killed, managed to flee the massacres and later immigrated as a teenager to the United States. Her biography, titled Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian: The Christian Girl Who Lived Through the Great Massacres, was first serialized in the Hearst newspapers and later published as a book in 1918. The memoir was then turned into a film.

And ad for “Ravished Armenia,” also known as “Auction of Souls,” in the Times-Republican of Marshalltown, Iowa

The historical  85-minute movie was a silent film (with subtitles). It portrayed the mass deportations, rapes, and massacres of Armenians. It had Aurora Mardiganian herself as the lead character. Remarkably, the movie also featured in actual person Henry Morgenthau, the former US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The film was shot in California in 1918 with a cast of thousands of extras. Initially titled “Ravished Armenia,” the movie was renamed “Auction of Souls.” It was, in all likelihood, the first major Hollywood picture to portray genocide. In a number of ways, it was a pioneering film. To cast a genocide survivor as the lead actress is rare. As a post-WWI film, it certainly challenged conventional mores regarding violence, rape, and nudity. It also raised the censorship issue, both morally and politically. Turkish opposition in later years reinforced the latter.

The U.S. film premieres took place in Los Angeles and New York in 1919. Although film screenings were initially numerous and well-attended, the frequency of airings diminished. Over time, copies of the film were lost or destroyed, or they deteriorated. No known remaining full copy exists today. The history books on the early silent film era have mostly ignored the movie “Ravished Armenia/Auction of Souls.” What had been an often seen and cited movie that helped to raise crucial humanitarian relief funds for Near East Relief was now mostly ignored either by accident, bias, or malevolent design.

The Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan has an important section of its exhibition devoted to Aurora Mardiganian, her memoirs, and the film. For some, Aurora Mardiganian is the “Anne Frank of the Armenian Genocide.”

American film “Auction of Souls” playing at the Princess Theater in Milwaukee, Mich. in 1919. The theater was decorated for the film, and the ushers wore Armenian garb. The photograph was published in the July 19, 1919 issue of Motion Picture News.

Franz Viktor Werfel wrote the novel “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” which dealt with the siege of the villages of Musa Dagh during the Armenian Genocide. The novel tells the story of one of the few examples of armed resistance by the Armenians to the deportations and killings by the Young Turk regime. The episode is also one of the few historical examples of foreign power humanitarian assistance arriving in timely fashion. French naval ships in the Mediterranean saw the besieged civilians and escorted them to safety in British-controlled Egypt. Efforts by the major Hollywood studio MGM to make a film version of the novel between the 1930s and 1970s were all unsuccessful—largely as a consequence of significant foreign pressure and interference by the Turkish government, supported by the U.S. State Department. Decades later, a lower-budget version directed by Sarky Mouradian was filmed in 1982, but achieved very little distribution.

A still from Sarky Mouradian’s “Forty Days of Musa Dagh” (1982)

The Greek-American Elia Kazan penned an autobiographical book about the suffering of his extended family, along with fellow Greeks and Armenians, under Turkish rule. In 1963, he turned the book into the epic film “America, America.”

“Nahapet” (1977) (Patriarch, also released as “Love Triumphs” ) is a Soviet-era film based on a novel by Hrachya Kochar and describes how a genocide survivor (Nahapet) attempts to rebuild his life amid the rugged mountains of Soviet Armenia. One of the recurring scenes in the film directed by Henrik Malyan involves scores of red apples falling from a tree, rolling into a river, and floating en masse downstream. The scene is a painful symbolic reminder of the multitude of Armenian bodies thrown into the Euphrates by the Young Turk regime during the genocide.

A scene from Henrik Malyan’s “Nahapet” (1977)

“Mayrig” (Mother) is the title of a 1985 semiautobiographical French-language novel by Henri Verneuil (born Ashod Malakian,) a French-Armenian author and filmmaker. The story is about a multigenerational family’s efforts to survive post-genocide exile and is a powerful account of the lingering intergenerational effects of genocide, even decades later.

Stills set from Henri Verneuil’s “Mayrig” (1991)

“Ararat” (2002) by Atom Egoyan is a multilayered, complex drama. Egoyan’s actual film portrays a fictional director making an historical drama about the heroic Armenian people’s resistance to the Turkish military siege of the city of Van in 1915. A young Armenian boy and his beloved mother endured dreadful conditions during the bombardment and siege. She later dies as a refugee, and the young boy eventually emigrates to the United States, changes his name, and becomes the prominent artist Arshile Gorky. His melancholy twin paintings “The Artist and His Mother” are iconic and play a key role in the film. “Ararat” dwells on these works of art to convey the anguish and grieving for a deceased mother and a fractured family life. Among the reoccurring threads woven into film are the enormous impact of genocide, intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the continuing pain of ongoing Turkish denial. The closing hymn “Oor es, mayr eem/Mother, where are you?” sung by international soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, is heart-breaking.

Christopher Plummer in Atom Egoyan’s “Ararat” (2002) (Photo: Serendipity Point Films)

The novel “Skylark Farm” by Italian-Armenian writer Antonia Arslan was made into a film under the title “The Lark Farm” (Italian: “La masseria delle allodole“) (2007) by directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. A multi-country co-production, with a cast that included Arsinee Khanjian, the film describes intergenerational transmission of traumatic memories of the author’s extended family. It portrays a diaspora Armenian living in Italy who hopes to reunite with his Armenian family in Anatolia. But with the onset of WWI, the Young Turk dictatorship closed the border, with Ottoman Armenian civilians trapped inside to face mass deportations and slaughter. A great many perished, but some Armenian family members survived the long and perilous death marches into the Syrian Desert and eventually reached safety in Italy.

“The Cut” (2014) by Fatih Akin follows the painful odyssey of a young Armenian man who is conscripted, along with fellow Armenians, to do forced road labor, and barely survives the Turkish cutting of the throats of the unarmed Armenian workers. Now mute from the cut, this lonely survivor endures further hardship and danger and gives up hope that any in his family is still alive. He travels from one place of exile after another, eventually ending up in the United States, where to his surprise he reunites with part of his surviving family.

Garin Hovannisian’s and Alex Mouhibian’s film “1915” was released on the 100^th memorial year of 2015, and the story is based on a director’s and his actress wife’s staging a play in Los Angeles about the Armenian Genocide. The historical play draws protest demonstrations outside and mysterious incidents and apparitions inside. The ghosts of the genocide from the past press powerfully onto the present in this hauntingly powerful film.

A still from “The Lark Farm” (Photo: Flach Film)

Terry George’s “The Promise” (2016) tells the story of an American reporter who befriends two young Armenians, and the three form a complex love triangle. With the onset of WWI and increasing dictatorial rule by the ultranationalist Young Turk military regime, the foreign journalist bears witness to the mass deportations and massacres of Armenians. Among the scenes portrayed is the self-defense resistance at Musa Dagh. Unlike the fate of most of their fellow Armenians, many of those inhabitants survive with the help and rescue of nearby French naval ships.

In this contemporary video-oriented era, feature films remain an important means to convey the deep and enduring impact of genocide. They can shed some light on an exceedingly dark era, but ultimately they are attempts to “describe the indescribable.”

Note: Portions of this article draw from several entries from Alan Whitehorn, ed., The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide (Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO Press, 2015).

They Have no shame---Reps. Stivers, Cohen, and Sessions Seek to Derail Growing Bipartisan Support for H.Res.220

WASHINGTON—In a highly offensive political move aimed at derailing H.Res.220, a bipartisan genocide prevention measure drawing upon the lessons of the Armenian Genocide, three of the U.S. House’s remaining enemies of Armenian Genocide remembrance have introduced “fake” legislation on Turkish-Armenian relations, controversially stripped of any mention of the Armenian Genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

In a highly offensive political move aimed at derailing H.Res.220, a bipartisan genocide prevention measure drawing upon the lessons of the Armenian Genocide, three of the U.S. House’s remaining enemies of Armenian Genocide remembrance have introduced “fake” legislation on Turkish-Armenian relations, controversially stripped of any mention of the Armenian Genocide (Photo: ANCA)

“A sick and cynical ploy: historically inaccurate and morally offensive. All the world knows that any improvement in Armenian-Turkish relations will need to start with Ankara openly acknowledging the Armenian Genocide and accepting its modern-day responsibility for the vast moral and material consequences of this still unpunished crime,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the ANCA.

“Reps. Stivers, Cohen, and Sessions—in stripping out language about the Armenian Genocide from a bill about Turkish-Armenian relations—are, effectively, carrying Turkish President Erdogan’s water in Washington, advancing his shameful denial campaign even as he’s doubling down on his government’s anti-American actions and attitudes.”

H.Res.573 was introduced by Ohio Congressman Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) with the support of Congressional Turkey Caucus Co-Chairs Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). Rep. Sessions spearheaded a similar resolution in the previous Congress, by all accounts at the urging of former Congressman Connie Mack, who, upon retiring, was retained by the Turkish Institute for Peace. That resolution secured a total of two cosponsors.

‘We Do Not Need You,’ Erdogan Warns US

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

ANKARA (Hurriyet Daily News) – Amid the ongoing visa and arrest crisis between Ankara and Washington, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Thursday that if the United States does not accept Turkey the way it is “then we do not need you.”

Calling on Washington to “return to reason,” Erdoğan repeated his claim that it was U.S. Ambassador to Ankara John Bass who prompted the current crisis.

“We are not a tribal state. We are the state of the Republic of Turkey and you will accept it. If you don’t, then sorry but we do not need you,” Erdoğan said, addressing a meeting of provincial governors in the capital Ankara.

“The decision taken by the U.S. Consulate and the statements made after it are not related to the truth or reality. A junta within the American bureaucracy that is related to the previous administration aims to sabotage relations between the new administration and Turkey,” he added.

Ankara and Washington are going through their worst bilateral crisis in years after U.S. Istanbul Consulate official Metin Topuz was arrested last week, prompting the U.S. to announce on October 8 that it has stopped issuing non-immigrant visas in Turkey. In return, Ankara imposed tit-for-tat measures implementing the same measures.

Erdoğan’s comments came a day after Ambassador Bass stated that the decision for visa suspension was taken by the U.S. government, which also confirmed that the decision was taken in coordination with the State Department, the White House and the National Security Council.

“Our ambassadors tend not to do things unilaterally,” State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said on October 10.

Nevertheless, the Turkish president again claimed that it was Bass who prompted the current visa suspension crisis.

“Let me be very clear, the person who caused this is the ambassador here. It is unacceptable that the U.S. has sacrificed a strategic partner like Turkey to a presumptuous ambassador,” Erdoğan said.

“If an ambassador in Ankara is governing the great United States, it is a shame. They should have told him he could not act like that to a strategic ally. But they could not do that,” he added.

In the same speech Erdoğan once again criticized Washington’s hesitation to sell arms to Turkey, while instead providing arms to the “terrorist organization” for free.

He also said Ankara will stand behind its decision to mutually suspend visa services with Washington “if the U.S. secretary of state and the president defend the ambassador’s step.”

“Turkey has acted based on the principle of reciprocity, following unjust and non-proportional steps taken against our citizens with the suspension of visa applications. Turkey is never a party that extends a problem,” Erdoğan added.

“Our wish for our interlocutors to return to reason and calm, abandoning steps that would harm our friendship and alliance,” he said.

Erdoğan also stated that the detention process of the U.S. consulate officer Topuz “is ongoing within the constitutional framework.”

“The legal process on the individual working at the U.S. Istanbul mission as a local personnel, who is the citizen of our country and does not hold any diplomatic immunity, is ongoing within legal practices, agreements and the Vienna Convention,” he said.

President Erdoğan also referred to ongoing disputes between Ankara and Washington regarding the case of Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab, currently facing trial in the U.S. on charges of violating sanctions on Iran, in a case that has also embroiled former minister Zafer Çağlayan and state-run Halkbank deputy general manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla. Other points of contention are the imprisonment of Erdoğan’s personal security guards over their brawl with protesters in Washington in May 2017 and Ankara’s demand for the extradition of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, who Ankara accuses of masterminding the July 2016 coup attempt.

“On one hand you say you are the mainland of democracy but on the other hand you defend, in your own terms, the rights of an individual related to FETÖ who has no diplomatic qualification in your consulate. Meanwhile, you try also to save your pastor who has been arrested in İzmir, even though it is clear he has relations with FETÖ,” he said, referring to Andrew Brunson, a Presbyterian minister from North Carolina who has been imprisoned for almost one year.

“On the one hand, you arrest the deputy manager of my bank who has not committed any crime, but on the other hand my citizen [Zarrab] has been in prison in the U.S. for two years without crime, trying to use him as a confessor. Then it was decided to order the detention of my 13 guards, some of whom have never even been to the U.S. Is this democracy? Is this justice?” Erdoğan added.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REPARATION-102 YEARS IN COMING

‘The Universality of Translating Reparations for Mass Violence’ to Take Place Nov. 1 in Watertown

WATERTOWN, Mass. (A.W.)—The Armenian Weekly will present “The Universality of Translating Reparations for Mass Violence,” an evening with Dr. Henry C. Theriault and Alejandra Patricia Karamanian, on Nov. 1, at the Armenian American Social Club of Watertown.

It is through translation that works of a particular society and culture become universally accessible, and opportunities for the global movement of ideas and political outlooks become possible. When a work focuses on topics that have universal relevance, translation becomes an obligation to humanity. Yet, translation inevitably requires moving beyond what is originally given; that is, it requires interpretation by the translator. But translation is all the more a challenge when the translator is deeply committed to the human rights values underlying the work being translated.

The Armenian Weekly will present “The Universality of Translating Reparations for Mass Violence,” an evening with Dr. Henry C. Theriault and Alejandra Patricia Karamanian, on Nov. 1, at the Armenian American Social Club of Watertown

Dr. Henry Theriault, lead author of Resolution with Justice: Reparations for the Armenian Genocide, the Final Report of the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group, will have a conversation about such complexities with Alejandra Patricia Karamanian, the Argentina-based translator of the reparations report into Spanish.

“Armenians often boast about the great contributions made long ago, from archaeological finds regarding beer and shoes in the ancient world to architectural innovations and even David of Sasunbeing an inspiration for the King Arthur legends. We sometimes forget that perhaps our most important contribution has been and will be regarding what happens after mass violence victimization: How does a people survive and even come to thrive rather than fade out after a genocide weakens it so greatly?” Theriault said ahead of the Nov. 1 event.

“We have important contributions to make regarding the reparative process, but for those contributions to have any meaning for other groups looking for new ideas, they have to be accessible to those groups. Like it or not, Armenian is not a widely known language, and we depend on English, Russian, French, Arabic, and, notably, Spanish to communicate our ideas with the rest of the world. In our globalized society, multilingual reach is crucial. Fortunately, we have a vibrant global diaspora with native speakers in many of the major world languages of the 21st century, including the fast-growing one of Spanish,” Theriault added.

The evening, which is free and open to the public, will be the first of many similar events hosted by the Armenian Weekly in the future. “We are excited to host Dr. Theriault and Ms. Karamanian next month, in what promises to be a fruitful discussion about not only the need for reparations for the Armenian Genocide but also the significance of translating literature about reparations so that it may reach a wider audience,” said Armenian Weekly Editor Rupen Janbazian. “We hope that members of the community will join us to gain a new perspective on this pertinent issue.”

“The Universality of Translating Reparations for Mass Violence” will take place at the Armenian American Social Club of Watertown (76 Bigelow Ave. Watertown, Mass. 02472) on Nov. 1, at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.