Optimist in will, pessimist in mind
Talin Suciyan
First you made me into a tessera in your mosaic of cultures just to be able to put up with me. But soon you found that too static and then you resorted to the image of ebru. Whether an ebru or a tessera, you all agreed that I was ‘a color of Anatolia.’ Yet, I’m neither your ebru nor your tessera, nor am I a color of your Anatolia. I know that I can acquire a color only if I’m dead and gone, mute and traceless; more colorful I become as you further destroy my history.
By Ayda Erbal and Talin Suciyan
The Armenian Weekly
April 2011 Magazine
The history of the Ottoman Armenians in the 19th century[1] is a history of great promises but also of greater abandonment. More than 200 Ottoman-Armenian intellectuals who were arrested the night of April 24, 1915 and the two weeks that followed possessed the damning knowledge that they were left alone. Zohrab’s Unionist friends, with whom he had dined and played cards, would choose not to stop his assassination. But abandonment will not abandon the Armenians. The survivors in the camps of Mesopotamia were alone, as were those hiding in the secluded mountains or villages of Anatolia. And those who survived through conversion or forced concubinage were left alone not only in the summer of 1915, but also in the hundred years that have followed.
The surviving Istanbul-Armenians who staged a book-burning ceremony were on their ownUgur Ungor
“Leave all your belongings—your furniture, your beddings, your artifacts. Close your shops and businesses with everything inside. Your doors will be sealed with special stamps. On your return, you will get everything you left behind. Do not sell property or any expensive item. Buyers and sellers alike will be liable for legal action. Put your money in a bank in the name of a relative who is out of the country. Make a list of everything you own, including livestock, and give it to the specified official so that all your things can be returned to you later. You have ten days to comply with this ultimatum.”[1]
—Government promulgation hanged in public places in Kayseri, June 15, 1915.
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