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Thursday, July 3, 2008
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IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE
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Armenians who find me unreadable are my most faithful readers. Figure that one out if you can. My only explanation is that like all perennial losers, they have accumulated so many unsettled scores against the world that they take it out on anyone that is available, provided of course he is defenseless and therefore in no position to retaliate.
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When asked why I bother writing for readers who hate me, I say, the challenge is not writing for civilized and intelligent readers who may well be ahead of me, but for barbarians who are infatuated with their own limitations. Another reason is that once in a while I receive a phone call or an e-mail apologizing for having been rude to me in the past. Which proves that, like the worst Turks, the worst Armenians are first and foremost human beings and as such not beyond redemption. Besides, it has been the fate of all Armenian writers to be verbally abused by their fellow Armenians. Some of our most celebrated medieval historians, among them Yeghishé and Khorenatsi, have been called hirelings of warlords with dynastic ambitions. Some of our greatest poets and writers, among them Siamanto and Zarian, have been called plagiarists. Accused of nationalism, Charents was betrayed to Stalin's thugs and committed suicide in his cell.
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There is nothing typically Armenian about this phenomenon. In times of crisis the scum rises to the top and speaks with the approval of the dominant minority. The verbal abuse hurled against such writers as Sartre in France, Thomas Mann in Germany, Solzhenitsyn in Russia, Kazantzakis in Greece, and more recently Pamuk in Turkey, are cases in point that come readily to mind. If giants like these have been maligned and insulted, why should midgets like me be spared? In a way, I am even tempted to be flattered for being singled out.
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Perhaps I should also point out that not all Armenians hate me or disagree with me. If they are afraid to express their agreement openly it may be because they don't relish the prospect of being targeted by hooligans. Finally, to those who say the reason why I call those who disagree with me losers, barbarians, and hooligans, is that once upon a time I was no better. I have always maintained that as products of the same historic conditions and experiences, all Armenians are brothers under the skin, and all analyses begin with self-analysis. If I understand losers it's because I am one. If I understand resentment and venom, it's because “Bovary c'est moi.”
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Friday, July 4, 2008
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ONE-LINERS
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As long as Armenians and Turks are educated by their own historians, justice, understanding and consensus will elude them.
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Propagandists cannot define good and evil in the same way that compulsive liars cannot define truth.
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Ideologies and orthodoxies teach us to think that we are thinking.
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“There are better writers than you here,” a reader informs me. I consider that cause for celebration if only because misery likes company.
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I have learned about us more from odar sources than our own. So much so that I no longer believe anything I am told by Armenians.
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Whenever I speak about our failings, I am told all nations have them. With one important difference however. We hate discussing ours, and whenever someones dares to do so we silence him, and failing that, we bury him beneath an avalanche of verbal manure.
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To prove that he is civilized, an Armenian will behave like a barbarian. He will become intolerant in defense of tolerance and fascist in defense of freedom; and all with the self-confidence and unawareness of an inborn moron who is convinced of his superior intellect.
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Patriotism means supporting one group against another. The opposite of patriotism is not treason but “all men are brothers.”
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When Raffi said wealthy merchants are the lowest scum on earth, a wealthy merchant proved him right by hiring a Kurdish assassin.
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Saturday. July 5, 2008
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FAMOUS LAST WORDS
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“Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.” After discovering this terrifying truth, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian) spent the rest of his life avoiding it by writing love stories, which made him a darling of our establishment figures. Shortly before he died, he is quoted as having said: “I die alone.”
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Those who brag about our survival should be reminded once in a while that our best and brightest did not survive. The massacre goes on....
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We speak of pride to cover up the fact that we have many more reasons to speak of humility.
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To undertake the impossible is another way of doing nothing.
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There is something fundamentally wrong in a community where the old are radicalized and the young entrenched in the status quo.
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