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ON BOARD THE POBEDA
by Paolo Martino
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Dossiers/From-the-Caucasus-to-Beirut/From-the-Caucasus-to-Beirut/On-board-the-Pobeda-120354
July 25 2012
Italia
Vartuhi left Beirut in 1946, to reach Soviet Armenia aboard a ship
called "Pobeda". In Stalin's land, however, the survivors of the
genocide saw the dream of a homeland turn into a nightmare. Travelling
to the Caucasus on the paths of migrations. Fourth episode of the
story "From the Caucasus to Beirut"
"To overcome the censorship of the Soviet regime, we used code
messages. 'The bread is good' meant we were starving. 'The wardrobe
door is broken' meant persecution, imprisonment. If in a picture there
were people lying down, it meant someone had died, and so on". In her
apartment in the centre of Anjar - three thousand Armenians up in the
Lebanese mountains, Angel goes over the thread of family memories
dating back to over 60 years ago, when her sister Vartuhi left Lebanon
to move to Soviet Armenia. "Right from the early letters, all that was
written about was bread and wardrobes, then the pictures also slowly
started coming in. I realised that Armenia was not the heaven the
Russians wanted us to believe. And that I would never see my sister
again".
Following World War II, the Armenian diaspora was faced with yet
another challenge. Determined to rebalance the demographic gap left by
the millions of casualties from the war, the Soviet Union promoted
huge repopulation campaigns. Anxious to finally be in a "motherland"
of their own, American, European and Middle-Eastern Armenian
communities, moved en masse. Starting from 1946, trains, ships and
convoys with the red star moved thousands of children of the Armenian
diaspora to Yerevan, in Soviet Armenia. Seventy percent of Anjar's
inhabitants, 3.500 out of 5.000, chose to leave. Among these was
Vartuhi, Angel's sister.
"It was very hard, at the beginning. Lebanese Armenians were used to
moving, reading the newspaper, speaking their minds, so they were
immediately spotted by the merciless eye of the regime. Many were
shipped to Siberia, to concentration camps". Angel's memory moves
smoothly to distant seasons, sweeping through the immeasurable
geography of the diaspora as if no corner of the world were unknown.
"But Anjar's Armenians are thick-skinned. Slowly, they built their
lives, their homes, even a village, close to Yerevan". I interrupt
her. "Is this village still there?". Angel smiles: "Of course. It's
called Musa Dagh. Just like our native land. My sister lives there".
Enraptured by her memories, the old lady recounts the years of her
youth, of the irreversible choices, while in my mind, a blurred idea
is becoming clearer and clearer. While saying goodbye to Angel the
Lebanese way, with three kisses on the cheek, I take a picture of her
and make her a promise: "I will come back to see you, with a
surprise".
>From my diary. 3rd November
The stream of memory that links the Caucasus to the Middle-East flows
just under the surface of everyday life. The Inhabitants of Musa Dagh
who leave Turkey in 1939 to move to Lebanon travel to Armenia eight
years later. One-way journeys, decisions without appeal, but each
displacement marks the land, tracing a path that from the Caucasus
leads to Beirut and viceversa.
Vakif, the only one of the seven villages of Musa Dagh that chose to
remain under Turkish authority, still inhabited by Armenians; Anjar,
the Armenian jewel in the Bekaa valley, a pacific oasis in one of the
world's most conflict-ridden areas; the new Musa Dagh in Yerevan's
suburbs, a refuge for those who in 1946, after so much misery, thought
they had finally found the road to the Rising Sun of the Future.
Splinters getting lost in the tragedy of the genocide, in games
between powers, among the ruins of the wars of the Middle-East and the
Caucasus. The only way to get back to the human element, to understand
the choices of the many Vartuhis and Angels of this story, is to walk
on the paths of those migrations, measure them with one's steps, with
the rain and the monotonous horizons of the plateau and the desert.
"I'm going to Yerevan, I already have a ticket". Sitting as usual in
front of the shutters of the shoe factory, Rafi blows the dense smoke
of the Turkish pipe unperturbed. "I knew you would leave, one day or
another. You have become paranoid in your search for a rational logic
in the history of my people. In time, you will learn it's not worth
it". Rafi screams something in Armenian to a boy, who immediately
serves us arak, an aniseed liquor diluted with water and ice. A
one-dollar tip and the boy disappears, swallowed up in the chaos of
Burj Hammoud, the Armenian quarter in the heart of Beirut. "What are
you going to Armenia for?" While the night is falling on the alley,
Rafi listens to the story of Vartuhi and Angel, the sisters separated
by the Pobeda, the ship that in 1946 moved thousands of Lebanese
Armenians beyond the Iron Curtain. "I want to retrace those events,
feel the missing part in the story".
Rafi orders some more arak. "Focus on this principle: in the
Middle-East, it is points of view that count, not facts". Burj Hammoud
is now empty, and Rafi's words snap like stones. "Take the story of
the Pobeda, for example. It stopped existing a long time ago. In its
place, what is left is the points of view of those who had an interest
in Armenians leaving, and of those who, instead, wanted them to stay.
And above all this, the Soviet Union". Rafi's allusion leaves no room
for doubt. "You mean the Lebanese Armenian community was split by the
Cold War too?". Rafi is at his third arak: "It was a fratricide. That
war killed hundreds of people right in these alleys. No one likes to
admit it, but the trail of blood has reached our days".
While I am walking away through the deserted alleys of Burj Hammoud,
the rosary is told by the splintered walls in front of my eyes. I
think back to Rafi's words, to the unresolved ambiguity of the civil
wars, to the warning that seems to come from the bullets thrusted on
the walls. "It was not the foreign occupant to open the fire, but the
neighbour, never forget that". Sprayed letters steer these thoughts:
"PKK", the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The movement born in Turkey in
the '80s fights for the independence of Turkish Kurdistan, the region
that was once the ancient Western Armenia. In the name of anti-Turkish
resentment, the children of the Armenian diaspora support the Kurdish
cause, even though they accuse the same Kurds of having been
accomplices of the Ottoman army during the genocide. The labyrinth of
these alleys is a metaphor for the intrigued stories of those living
here.
The plane takes off on time from the cement carpet in South Beirut,
where Shiite quarters fill every space before making room for the
first bits of greenery on the spur of the mountain. From the pile of
notes, e-mails and maps that I printed out in a rush before leaving,
the answer that Adakessian, the Professor at the Beirut Armenian
university, sent me a few hours ago pops out:
Dear Paolo,
I wish you the wisdom you need to discern the fine line and make
things better understood. Find the contact of Dr. Demoyan, the
director of the Armenian Genocide Research Insitute in Yerevan. This
is the Middle East, and the Genocide issue is one of the central
ingredients of this intriguing complex.
Regards, A.
Wisdom, insight, complex intrigues. Where am I going, exactly? The
night spent organising my journey has left me with doubts, more than
answers. And while the vast blue of the sky and the Lebanese sea makes
room for leaden landscapes, my mind is suddenly empty and my body
finds refuge in deep sleep.
From: Baghdasarian
by Paolo Martino
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso
http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Dossiers/From-the-Caucasus-to-Beirut/From-the-Caucasus-to-Beirut/On-board-the-Pobeda-120354
July 25 2012
Italia
Vartuhi left Beirut in 1946, to reach Soviet Armenia aboard a ship
called "Pobeda". In Stalin's land, however, the survivors of the
genocide saw the dream of a homeland turn into a nightmare. Travelling
to the Caucasus on the paths of migrations. Fourth episode of the
story "From the Caucasus to Beirut"
"To overcome the censorship of the Soviet regime, we used code
messages. 'The bread is good' meant we were starving. 'The wardrobe
door is broken' meant persecution, imprisonment. If in a picture there
were people lying down, it meant someone had died, and so on". In her
apartment in the centre of Anjar - three thousand Armenians up in the
Lebanese mountains, Angel goes over the thread of family memories
dating back to over 60 years ago, when her sister Vartuhi left Lebanon
to move to Soviet Armenia. "Right from the early letters, all that was
written about was bread and wardrobes, then the pictures also slowly
started coming in. I realised that Armenia was not the heaven the
Russians wanted us to believe. And that I would never see my sister
again".
Following World War II, the Armenian diaspora was faced with yet
another challenge. Determined to rebalance the demographic gap left by
the millions of casualties from the war, the Soviet Union promoted
huge repopulation campaigns. Anxious to finally be in a "motherland"
of their own, American, European and Middle-Eastern Armenian
communities, moved en masse. Starting from 1946, trains, ships and
convoys with the red star moved thousands of children of the Armenian
diaspora to Yerevan, in Soviet Armenia. Seventy percent of Anjar's
inhabitants, 3.500 out of 5.000, chose to leave. Among these was
Vartuhi, Angel's sister.
"It was very hard, at the beginning. Lebanese Armenians were used to
moving, reading the newspaper, speaking their minds, so they were
immediately spotted by the merciless eye of the regime. Many were
shipped to Siberia, to concentration camps". Angel's memory moves
smoothly to distant seasons, sweeping through the immeasurable
geography of the diaspora as if no corner of the world were unknown.
"But Anjar's Armenians are thick-skinned. Slowly, they built their
lives, their homes, even a village, close to Yerevan". I interrupt
her. "Is this village still there?". Angel smiles: "Of course. It's
called Musa Dagh. Just like our native land. My sister lives there".
Enraptured by her memories, the old lady recounts the years of her
youth, of the irreversible choices, while in my mind, a blurred idea
is becoming clearer and clearer. While saying goodbye to Angel the
Lebanese way, with three kisses on the cheek, I take a picture of her
and make her a promise: "I will come back to see you, with a
surprise".
>From my diary. 3rd November
The stream of memory that links the Caucasus to the Middle-East flows
just under the surface of everyday life. The Inhabitants of Musa Dagh
who leave Turkey in 1939 to move to Lebanon travel to Armenia eight
years later. One-way journeys, decisions without appeal, but each
displacement marks the land, tracing a path that from the Caucasus
leads to Beirut and viceversa.
Vakif, the only one of the seven villages of Musa Dagh that chose to
remain under Turkish authority, still inhabited by Armenians; Anjar,
the Armenian jewel in the Bekaa valley, a pacific oasis in one of the
world's most conflict-ridden areas; the new Musa Dagh in Yerevan's
suburbs, a refuge for those who in 1946, after so much misery, thought
they had finally found the road to the Rising Sun of the Future.
Splinters getting lost in the tragedy of the genocide, in games
between powers, among the ruins of the wars of the Middle-East and the
Caucasus. The only way to get back to the human element, to understand
the choices of the many Vartuhis and Angels of this story, is to walk
on the paths of those migrations, measure them with one's steps, with
the rain and the monotonous horizons of the plateau and the desert.
"I'm going to Yerevan, I already have a ticket". Sitting as usual in
front of the shutters of the shoe factory, Rafi blows the dense smoke
of the Turkish pipe unperturbed. "I knew you would leave, one day or
another. You have become paranoid in your search for a rational logic
in the history of my people. In time, you will learn it's not worth
it". Rafi screams something in Armenian to a boy, who immediately
serves us arak, an aniseed liquor diluted with water and ice. A
one-dollar tip and the boy disappears, swallowed up in the chaos of
Burj Hammoud, the Armenian quarter in the heart of Beirut. "What are
you going to Armenia for?" While the night is falling on the alley,
Rafi listens to the story of Vartuhi and Angel, the sisters separated
by the Pobeda, the ship that in 1946 moved thousands of Lebanese
Armenians beyond the Iron Curtain. "I want to retrace those events,
feel the missing part in the story".
Rafi orders some more arak. "Focus on this principle: in the
Middle-East, it is points of view that count, not facts". Burj Hammoud
is now empty, and Rafi's words snap like stones. "Take the story of
the Pobeda, for example. It stopped existing a long time ago. In its
place, what is left is the points of view of those who had an interest
in Armenians leaving, and of those who, instead, wanted them to stay.
And above all this, the Soviet Union". Rafi's allusion leaves no room
for doubt. "You mean the Lebanese Armenian community was split by the
Cold War too?". Rafi is at his third arak: "It was a fratricide. That
war killed hundreds of people right in these alleys. No one likes to
admit it, but the trail of blood has reached our days".
While I am walking away through the deserted alleys of Burj Hammoud,
the rosary is told by the splintered walls in front of my eyes. I
think back to Rafi's words, to the unresolved ambiguity of the civil
wars, to the warning that seems to come from the bullets thrusted on
the walls. "It was not the foreign occupant to open the fire, but the
neighbour, never forget that". Sprayed letters steer these thoughts:
"PKK", the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The movement born in Turkey in
the '80s fights for the independence of Turkish Kurdistan, the region
that was once the ancient Western Armenia. In the name of anti-Turkish
resentment, the children of the Armenian diaspora support the Kurdish
cause, even though they accuse the same Kurds of having been
accomplices of the Ottoman army during the genocide. The labyrinth of
these alleys is a metaphor for the intrigued stories of those living
here.
The plane takes off on time from the cement carpet in South Beirut,
where Shiite quarters fill every space before making room for the
first bits of greenery on the spur of the mountain. From the pile of
notes, e-mails and maps that I printed out in a rush before leaving,
the answer that Adakessian, the Professor at the Beirut Armenian
university, sent me a few hours ago pops out:
Dear Paolo,
I wish you the wisdom you need to discern the fine line and make
things better understood. Find the contact of Dr. Demoyan, the
director of the Armenian Genocide Research Insitute in Yerevan. This
is the Middle East, and the Genocide issue is one of the central
ingredients of this intriguing complex.
Regards, A.
Wisdom, insight, complex intrigues. Where am I going, exactly? The
night spent organising my journey has left me with doubts, more than
answers. And while the vast blue of the sky and the Lebanese sea makes
room for leaden landscapes, my mind is suddenly empty and my body
finds refuge in deep sleep.
From: Baghdasarian