Shared Lives

by Salpi H. Ghazarian
Saturday, 20 September 2008 17:45

In My Grandmother (Verso Books, 2008) Fethiye Cetin recounts the life of her grandmother,
and mine. Sort of. It turns out we were the cousins divided at birth.

A young girl, living in Anatolia, Eastern Turkey, separated, violently, from parents at an age too
young to remember. That’s the story of her grandmother. That’s the story of my grandmother,
too. Neither had schooling. Neither had a profession, other than grandmother.

Raised by well-meaning captors, they were the children who were saved, at least physically,
while their parents were forced onto the deportation route.

The children grew up. Raised in the desert, they did not forget the names of their mothers and
fathers. They did not forget their own names – screamed by their parents as they were torn
away -- nor abandon the expectation that somewhere, somehow they would be reunited.

It was not to happen. In my grandmother’s case, there was no trace of the parents. She was
raised by a family that sold her off to an Armenian merchant. Through the sands of Syria to the
orphanage in Aleppo, she made a new life for herself, her daughter and the Diaspora that they
comprised.

Fethiye Cetin’s grandmother Seher was married off to the son of the family which cared for her
and adopted her. For her, there could have been a reunification. But when her long-lost mother
and father were located in a not terribly distant Aleppo, Seher or Heranush, dared not risk
insulting her husband and his family, and did not take a trip, albeit a short one, to reconnect with
parents and siblings. Her family was again lost, now forever. But for this noble, some would say
misplaced sense of responsibility, there might have been a different ending to this story.

Instead, the story goes like this: After raising obedient and loving children and grandchildren,
and old enough to fear that her story might go with her to her grave, Seher or Heranush shared
her story with her granddaughter. She did so partly with the hope that at this late stage some
family might still be found. But she also opened up in order to begin the settling of accounts that
each of us will do, before the books are finally closed.

In the Diaspora, dozens of students and scholars discovered that such final reckonings are
useful to the recounting process. Stories otherwise too painful to tell now required listeners.
Survivors who for decades would not speak, now sought an audience in order to share their
improbable, matchless stories.

Some 2000 survivors from France to Canada and the US have recounted their tales of
deprivation, struggle and survival. Some cursed the Turks, others yearned for the days when
they lived together as neighbors. Most did both.

No one remembered the estimated two million Turks whose grandparents too had stories,
similar to Heranush’s.

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Shared Lives

by Salpi H. Ghazarian
Saturday, 20 September 2008 17:45

Hrant Dink used to say that he’d get several calls a week from Turks who had just discovered
that they were, after all, also Armenian. One such call came from Fethiye Cetin, Hrant’s own
advocate and a human rights attorney.

The story Fethiye Cetin told Hrant is in this slim 100-page book. It is painstakingly and elegantly
translated into English by Maureen Freely, who is also Orhan Pamuk’s translator. (There are
two translations into Armenian as well.) Although it’s called a memoir, Ms. Cetin writes an
easy-to-read unavoidable tear-jerker. A confessional of sorts, she breaks the silence on a most
open secret – that there were Armenians in Turkey several generations ago, and their
descendants live in Turkey still. This is a message for Ankara.

But this is not a book of politics and ideologies. It’s a simple story of two women – a 90+
year-old who broke her own silence only when she knew she had no choice, and her
courageous granddaughter who chose to break the silence that could no longer be sustained.
How else to explain to sisters and nieces about the grandmother who made interesting sweet
breads in the spring – the Easter cheoregs that reminded her of a life lost? How else to deal
with the phone call that came from America when Heranush’s death notice was published in the
Istanbul daily Agos and read 10,000 miles away by the new children of the parents who had
survived, moved to the other side of the ocean, but never forgot the daughter they left behind.

The silence has been broken. The Fethiye Cetin generation will support Hrant Dink’s call to talk
to each other and listen to each other. Now, the Diaspora generation of victims’ descendants
must exhibit the dignity, capacity and willingness to also talk and listen.

The Armenian Reporter

September 20, 2008

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