A Sad Story for a Sad People (On Impotence)
It's snowing hard. This is odd because it's the end of April. I'm wearing a thick coat and climbing stair after stair. The slope is gentle, but the path is long. And it's cold. It's not supposed to be cold.
I make it to the top of the hill. There are thousands of people in front of me. The sun is hanging low but hasn't set yet.
There's a wall to my left with words carved in Armenian:
Marash, Sis, Hajen, Mush...
Cities that my grandparents once called home, alongside more cities others has once called home.
I continue walking toward the memorial in the distance. There's a crowd at the entrance. Television crews interviewing anyone they deem interesting.
I'm large, have a bright red beard, and look nothing like an Armenian so of course Armenian news media always finds me interesting.
Covered in snow, they pull me aside. I can see gears switching in her head. There's a small pause, then she asks in English "Why do you come to the memorial?"
The microphone slowly finds its way toward my face. To her momentary shock, I respond in Armenian. I tell her I'm there to remember my ancestors, and all the people who died.
Satisfied, she moves on to the next person of interest, and walk toward the flame within the memorial. I feel tears starting to form. Not your usual sad tears. These were tears of unresolved anger.
That was 2007.
My whole life the Armenian Genocide has loomed large. In my earliest memories of school I can recall being taught to hate Turks, that someday our country will be free again, and that Ararat will magically return within our borders. And there was promises to return to the motherland if it was free, and so on... And so on... And so on...
As a child the Armenian Genocide was abstract to me. I was unable to visualize or comprehend its breadth. The genocide may have well been a fiction, a sad story for a sad people.
It took nine years to parse why I was angry that day.
As I passed by the names of the villages emptied, each with its own innocent population either killed or forced to march through desert, lost in confusion, weak and thirsty, separated from family, murdered and raped, under the supervision of the remorseless and cruel.
How terrible it was to die in those marches, or worse, to survive.
Upon arriving wherever those somber roads led, did the survivors consider themselves lucky? Were they able to breathe a sigh of relief; able to forget who and what they had lost along the way? What scars must they have endured on their souls to continue on, and what a burden to carry knowing you had to continue on.
Theirs is a torture difficult to imagine, a 101 year old shat upon legacy.
Walking along that path, looking at that wall, reconstructing in mind the scope of what was lost, the fiction had become fact.
And when that young reporter asked me "Why do you come to the memorial?", I should have answered:
"Because the world sold us out and played us for fools. Because no matter how much we cry out 'Injustice" they laugh back with 'Fuck you'. So I march solemnly, lighting incense and laying flowers as my only recourse; because when faced that overwhelming suffering of our collective past, I am impotent to resolve it."
I make it to the top of the hill. There are thousands of people in front of me. The sun is hanging low but hasn't set yet.
There's a wall to my left with words carved in Armenian:Marash, Sis, Hajen, Mush...
Cities that my grandparents once called home, alongside more cities others has once called home.
I continue walking toward the memorial in the distance. There's a crowd at the entrance. Television crews interviewing anyone they deem interesting.
I'm large, have a bright red beard, and look nothing like an Armenian so of course Armenian news media always finds me interesting.
Covered in snow, they pull me aside. I can see gears switching in her head. There's a small pause, then she asks in English "Why do you come to the memorial?"
The microphone slowly finds its way toward my face. To her momentary shock, I respond in Armenian. I tell her I'm there to remember my ancestors, and all the people who died.
Satisfied, she moves on to the next person of interest, and walk toward the flame within the memorial. I feel tears starting to form. Not your usual sad tears. These were tears of unresolved anger.
That was 2007.
My whole life the Armenian Genocide has loomed large. In my earliest memories of school I can recall being taught to hate Turks, that someday our country will be free again, and that Ararat will magically return within our borders. And there was promises to return to the motherland if it was free, and so on... And so on... And so on...
As a child the Armenian Genocide was abstract to me. I was unable to visualize or comprehend its breadth. The genocide may have well been a fiction, a sad story for a sad people.It took nine years to parse why I was angry that day.
As I passed by the names of the villages emptied, each with its own innocent population either killed or forced to march through desert, lost in confusion, weak and thirsty, separated from family, murdered and raped, under the supervision of the remorseless and cruel.
How terrible it was to die in those marches, or worse, to survive.
Upon arriving wherever those somber roads led, did the survivors consider themselves lucky? Were they able to breathe a sigh of relief; able to forget who and what they had lost along the way? What scars must they have endured on their souls to continue on, and what a burden to carry knowing you had to continue on.
Theirs is a torture difficult to imagine, a 101 year old shat upon legacy.
Walking along that path, looking at that wall, reconstructing in mind the scope of what was lost, the fiction had become fact.
And when that young reporter asked me "Why do you come to the memorial?", I should have answered:
"Because the world sold us out and played us for fools. Because no matter how much we cry out 'Injustice" they laugh back with 'Fuck you'. So I march solemnly, lighting incense and laying flowers as my only recourse; because when faced that overwhelming suffering of our collective past, I am impotent to resolve it."
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