being armenian

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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BEING ARMENIAN
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“What's wrong with assimilation?” an assimilated Armenian once asked me, and I could not give him an answer.
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In everything I say I speak not as an Armenian but as a human being who has done his utmost to go beyond political, racial, national, or tribal labels.
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“You repeat yourself,” a Turcocentric ghazetaji who publishes a weekly anti-Turkish tirade once informed me. And when I said, “How many different ways are there of saying Turks are guilty of genocide?” he insulted me.
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An Armenian who gets involved in Armenian affairs acquires two sets of unsettled scores: (one) against Turks, (two) against fellow Armenians who disagree with him.
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Armenians use insults like voodoo pins – for long-distance murder.
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A friend (may he rest in peace) once delivered the following dictum: “The only way to survive in this world is by adopting a form of insanity.” And I can't help thinking that the words of a dead man have a finality that the living cannot match.
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The fate of the book hangs on the first paragraph, the same way that “the fate of the house depends on the wedding night” (Balzac).
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Q: “Should I write every day or only when I am inspired?”
A: “If you have something to say, every day; otherwise, once or twice a year should be sufficient.”
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Thursday, January 15, 2009
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GETTING AT THE SOURCE
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The closer you get at the truth, the more enemies you make.
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It is in disagreement that an Armenian exposes his true nature.
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An intellectual's first enemies are not politicians but pseudo-intellectuals who rise not in defense of god and country but grub and ego. Their role model is neither Abovian nor Zarian but Talaat and Stalin. Their unstated aim is the extermination of the intellectual class. Verbal abuse comes more easily to them then a simple assertion of disagreement.
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Sooner or later we must all come to terms with the fact that we belong to a nation that has been victimized not only by foreign but also by domestic enemies, and of the two, the domestic have been more dedicated and persistent.
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The hardest thing for an Armenian to admit is that the enemy may not always be the other but himself. Only when we are willing to admit this, may we begin to understand the source of our tribalism and divisiveness.
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To those who think I have no right to speak for them, only for myself, allow me to reiterate that I have at no time denied the fact that my analysis of the Armenian psyche is rooted in self-analysis. It is this realization that has saved me from applying for membership in one of our mafias. I have at no time felt the need to join a criminal organization to be a perpetrator.
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The miracle is not that we have survived, but that there are still more or less smart and decent human beings willing to identity themselves as Armenian even when they are half-Greek, half-Russian, or half-Jewish.
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Friday, January 16, 2009
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WHAT IS LITERATURE?
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In his WRITING IN THE DARK: ESSAYS ON LITERATURE AND POLITICS (New York, 2008), David Grossman says, what made him decide to be a writer was the urge to invent stories. I thought of Scheherazade who invented stories in order to postpone her death. One could say that we too, like Scheherazade, write to postpone the death of the nation. But unlike Scheherazade, we don't write to entertain our masters but to expose the lies of their propaganda. This may explain why Scheherazade succeeded in realizing her goal and we have failed.
Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany, and Bolsheviks in the USSR lied to the people too and they were exposed not by writers (who tried very hard but failed) but by the reality principle. Italy and Germany lost a war and the USSR went bankrupt.
How to explain the fact that our lies have had a much longer lifespan?
We were a nation1500 years ago and we like to believe we still are. But are we? In the 20th century alone we experienced three genocides, one “red” (in the Ottoman Empire) and two “white” (assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland).
We have become a beggar among nations and at the mercy of – in the words of Avedik Issahakian (not exactly a critic or dissident) -- “earthquakes, bloodthirsty neighbors, and brainless leaders.” You may now guess which of these three “curses” (Issahakian's word) have been emphasized by our “brainless leaders” and their propagandists.
For every writer that mentions “brainless leaders,” we have dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of academics, historians, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers who do their utmost to cover up the corruption, incompetence, and divisiveness of our leaders and to emphasize our “bloodthirsty neighbors and earthquakes.” And here is where intellectuals come in – to uncover that which is hidden from us.
I repeat myself?
And what do you think our propagandists do?
Another question: Has anyone ever complained that our propagandists, ghazetajis, speechifiers, and sermonizers repeat themselves? And what about our panchoonies? How many different ways are there of saying, “Mi kich pogh oughargetsek.”
To those who say, notwithstanding our prophets of doom and gloom, we have endured and we shall continue to endure, I ask: What if most of us, especially the best and the brightest, did not endure and will not endure?
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Saturday, January 17, 2009
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DIARY
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A Palestinian mother in Gaza: “My children can no longer play in the street.”
A suggestion: Why don't they take their damn war somewhere like Sahara or the Gobi desert?
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Memo to myself: “Depressing thoughts are carcinogenic agents. You think too much about Armenians.”
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My dissenting views are so extreme, it seems, that even our dissenters disagree with me.
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If our past were a poem, it would be a lamentation to some, and a triumphal march to others.
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When a reader insults me, I think, at least he has read and reflected on what I have written, and that's good enough for me. Beggars can't be choosers.
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It is widely known among citizens of a democracy that politics is the second oldest profession and that in many ways it resembles the first. Fascists agree but they think this does not apply to them.
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