| йсянвей аеяялепрхъ. AN IMMORTALITY PIECE: HRANT MATEVOSSYAN |
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Here we have lived
In the evening of grandma and child, on the road of sunset, the poor outcast mob appeared. The mob noticed or they have already noticed or they knew without noticing that <they> existed, because even though the upper villages slaughtered and pillaged effectively, God always sent a piece for the lower camps too. They noticed -- and this was the end, if there is an end to Mother▓s animal devotion and if our toddler life comfortable in our bodies so easily leaves them through our legs. - Run, kid, I would die for your feet, get out! Grandma said this in Armenian, Tartar, or Kurdish? They learned Armenian later on, in the Colonies, in the Colonies they realized that they were Armenians rather than Osmanlis... Perhaps one doesn▓t say anything in such situations - there is only female parent▓s wild call and attack to slaughter and to be slaughtered, to disorient the mob, before the darkness falls and kid▓s trace and smell are lost. I don▓t know. I know only that this story is edited many times. When the extravagant, deceitful, arrogant, delicious, joyful life has approached the boy and when the event has been situated in the security of years▓ remotedness, this story has been continually told and proved by gold. - Open your mouth,- she said. - I would die for your small teeth, shut up your jaws,- she said. - Get lost, run, my son, don▓t look back. And from the deepness of the chambers, with the ritualized gestures of a lucky and clever host he would bring that piece of gold which the Grandma had put in between of the teeth of the Grandson at that sunset. - Run, I would die for your feet of a deer, get lost, don▓t look back. Peoples are made herd, put on each other, displace each other, and if one people is displaced once it becomes a calamity for the world. I suppose those camps in Southern Kappadokkia were the ashirets forcibly migrated from the Balcans because of the war of 1912, or the Turkmens who run from the Western Armenia because of the war of 1878, or they were Shamil▓s Northern Caucasian people. Five years and fifty years fundamentally deprived of home and place, they were an indispensable attacking force for pillaging the Armenian caravans and annihilating them from the surface of the earth, so that the pack of mob and the dogs must have cleansed off the road the body and the belongings of that civil khanum, down to the last bead and last pin, all of it down to the meat and bone. I know that there have happened the opposite too and perhaps not less but even more. It should have happened if it happens in the silent world of the animals; it should have happened in our humans▓ world too: to offer our kids to them and to spare our heads... But, see, there is no word and story about us, who deserted, because those who would live instead us and who would strike the bell about our self-sacrificial love were torn apart in the clutches of the animalized mob, and we -- those who have spared ourselves -- have given us to the animal silence of harems, conversion, and slavery. I was told this story by my artist friend. He draws a lot of Massis mountains and trees. He was told it by an Argentine- or Uruguay- or American-Armenian millionaire. - Run, kid, - she said. - I would die for your strong feet, you run, my feet are tired. When they were talking √ a talk of a successful businessman to a successful artist, a little before our dark 1988 √ there has even been a slight overtone of a joke entered their talk. ⌠Mr. Very Rich Man■, the artist has said, ⌠I propose you an extremely Armenian-loving, an extremely patriotic deal: buy for me an island in the ocean. Then our Armenian nation will have two Very Rich Men Who Have Their Own Islands■. They have wholeheartedly laughed, those successful Armenians, in the luxurious security of their gain, leaving their loss to the Past, on the other side of the gap between them and the places of those events and of that evening of a Grandma and a Grandson; a gap of 70 years, of the mountains of gold, of the glorious Soviet country and of the whole civilized world. And here is another story witnessed by Stephan Zorian, Nuard Toumanian, and I believe also by Tigran Hakhumian. I would want very much that this would have not happened and have not been witnessed and I would have not read it, I would have not been forced to see Toumanian confused. This has, however, been happened, and this is what comes <to my mind> from the stream of panic, stupidity, courage, hope and belief <when I try to think about or understand those events>: broken Toumanian at the Gharakilisa station. He is close to me unspeakably, his dress, voice, color, and smell are surrounding me. The landscape is also a familiar one: that Tagavoranist mountain, that Menavor tree, those apple gardens, those roofs of red tile, that hollow chearp of spring streamlets, which fulfil that wet valley with a lazy fairy tale. It was also due to his appeal that Simon Vratsian▓s rebels put the swords back in the sheaths and left the country via the Garni ┘ |
