Operation Nemesis brought justice to the Armenian people. We should all be proud.

One day when I was about 10 years old, my father introduced me to Arshavir Shiragian. I remember this encounter in the hall of our church in New Jersey very clearly because Dad insisted I shake his hand.

“You just shook the hand that killed the Turks,” he said.

I found out what he meant when I read Shiragian’s memoir The Legacy a few years later. He was one of the volunteers who tracked down and executed Turkish officials responsible for the Armenian Genocide.

The best known of the avengers was Soghomon Tehlirian, who gunned down Talaat Pasha on a Berlin street in 1921. One of Turkey’s ruling triumvirate during the First World War, Talaat is considered the chief figure in the scheme that claimed at least 1.5 million Armenian lives.

At the war’s end, Talaat and his comrades fled the nation they’d led to defeat. They were tried, convicted and sentenced to death in absentia. But those sentences posed little threat as the victorious French and British soon withdrew from Constantinople while the vanquished Talaat found safe haven among his former allies in Germany.

By 1920, Turkey was again convulsed in violence as Mustafa Kemal’s nationalist army reclaimed lost territory and took aim at the Caucuses. Just months before the Republic of Armenia collapsed under dual assaults by Turks and Russians, the Armenians launched their one shot at justice.

The plan to execute the nation’s arch enemies had to be carried out secretly and at arm’s length because Armenia was still clinging to hope that its Big Allies would stand by their commitment to protect its sovereignty while punishing the Genocide’s perpetrators.

In fact, the British knew where to find Talaat but did nothing. They also knew that Talaat and the others were plotting a return to power in league with their ally Kemal. This didn’t seem to bother the British or the French but the prospect both terrified and infuriated Armenians.

Any chance of finding and executing the targets depended on rapidly recruiting and deploying a dedicated network of spies and killers. The story of that effort, and its improbable success, is the subject of a new book by Eric Bogosian: Operation Nemesis.

The author is better known to most Americans than any of the book’s characters. He’s a talented writer and actor who has won praise for his stage, screen and television work as well as his novels. He’s best recognized from his long-running role on TV’s Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Operation Nemesis is a striking departure, a serious nonfiction work that demanded long and intense research. I’d love to tell you Bogosian succeeded brilliantly because his name on the cover guarantees wide exposure well beyond the Armenian community. I think this is a story that deserves to be told boldly and without apology.

Unfortunately, Bogosian appears ambivalent at best on that central point.

To Bogosian’s credit, he deals forthrightly with the Genocide, which he portrays accurately and in brutal detail. He leaves no doubt that the slaughter of the Armenians was planned and carried out by their rulers.

Other interesting chapters deal with the highly publicized trial of Tehlirian. Bogosian shows that his arrest was very much part of the plan in hopes that a trial would allow a full airing of the Armenian case for justice.

The defense's portrayal of Tehlirian as a man driven by grief after witnessing the death of family members was calculated to gain sympathy for him and for the greater cause. In fact, Tehlirian was abroad in 1915 when his home was raided and his mother murdered. But his grief and revulsion were real, and they compelled him to find and kill the man he held responsible.

The trial strategy worked. Tehlirian was acquitted by the jury, and the German public was exposed to the enormity of its war-time ally’s crimes.

Unfortunately, Bogosian interrupts the tale repeatedly to offer observations and historical allusions that tend to diminish any sense of heroics on the part of Tehlirian and his colleagues while distancing the author from the vast body of Armenians of the time who embraced them.

He clearly understands why Armenians wanted Talaat and the others dead but he is just as clearly uncomfortable with the means of execution. At one point, he wonders if the Genocide stirred a “bloodlust” in the survivors.

The best critique I’ve read is by author and political cartoonist Lucine Kasbarian. She takes issue with Bogosian's efforts to frame the operation as a political assassination plot rather than an attempt to bring convicted killers to justice.

Bogosian is entitled to his point of view, of course, but Kasbarian identifies many errors and misinterpretations in the text, notably in the author’s attempt to draw a parallel between Genocide’s perpetrators and Armenian patriots who fought against them by citing “a shared code of violence.

This is the weak foundation for Bogosian’s further attempts to connect the Nemesis executions with the killings of Turkish officials by Armenians in the 1970s and the 2007 murder of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul by a Turkish extremist.

It’s all quite strained at best. I wonder why Bogosian thought any of it was necessary, or even interesting? I sense the heavy hand of a mediocre editor with a political agenda. A better editor would have sharpened – or preferably deleted – the author’s muddled attempt to summarize his thoughts about Operation Nemesis.

Bogosian notes that the agents of Operation Nemesis “did not see themselves as terrorists” and certainly believed they were responding to a higher calling than mere retribution.

“That does not make what Operation Nemesis did legal. One question that surrounds these assassinations is this: If you desire a world where justice prevails, then you must rely on laws. If you rely on laws, they must be universal. Laws cannot be superseded simply cause some feel that they are wrong or because a person ‘knows’ he has the right to break them.”

(Note to the publisher: You might at least hire an editor who knows what a question is.)

The author correctly states that many Armenians feel cheated by not having had a Nuremberg, the city where Nazis were tried by a special court set up by the Allies after the Second World War. His readers might have been better served, and his observations better formed, if Bogosian had explored the experience of the people most affected by those trials.

Of the many Nazi leaders involved in the persecution and murder of Jews, only 10 were executed as a result of Nuremberg. Others were sentenced to prison, but many more escaped prosecution and a number found refuge in other countries. As in the case of the Armenian Genocide, the world’s powers were eager to move on. Responsibility for tracking down the most vicious fugitives fell to Nazi hungers like Simon Wiesenthal and the Israeli government.

It took 15 years to locate the ugliest of all, Adolf Eichmann, who planned and directed the transport of European Jews to Nazi death camps.

Like Talaat, Eichmann had taken advantage of post-war chaos and powerful friends to elude justice. Arrested by the Allies in 1945, Eichmann escaped from American custody. This man responsible for the deaths of millions was living comfortably under an assumed name in Argentina when Israeli agents with the help of Wiesenthal were tipped to his whereabouts in 1960.

The Israelis could not risk seeking Argentina’s cooperation because Eichmann might be alerted, or even helped to escape once more. So no attempt was made to extradite him. Instead, Eichmann was kidnapped, flown to Israel on a government jet and tried for crimes against the Jewish people.

We know now that a good deal of consideration went into this plan. The Israelis believed a trial in Israel would have far-reaching effects in a world where the Nazis horrors already seemed to many like ancient history.

They were right.

Like the trial of Tehlirian, the trial of Eichmann – televised live– was about much more than one man’s guilt or innocence. Dour and unrepentant, Eichmann personified the Nazi death machine far more vividly than any grainy war-time newsreel. He was found guilty, sentenced to death and hanged.

To me, that sentence seems justified and overdue. But how was it legal?

Eichmann had committed no crimes in Israel, which didn’t exist when he fled Germany. The Israelis had no jurisdiction in Argentina, which protested the violation of its sovereignty. Although he was charged with violations of international law, Eichmann was never turned over to international authorities.

These objections were raised by legal scholars, including some Israelis. They echoed similar objections raised at the time of the Nuremberg trials. Among the prominent Americans who deplored the Nazis but challenged the legality of their post-war trials was Ohio Sen. Robert Taft. “We cannot teach liberty and justice in Germany by suppressing liberty and justice,” he said.

I think we can safely declare the good senator wrong based on a half-century’s hindsight and our knowledge of Germany’s emergence from both Nazis and Communists as a liberal democracy.

In trying the Nazis at Nuremberg, the world reached a vital consensus that the law of statutes and court opinions is always subordinate to the higher law that gives us all the right to live freely. Defendants at Nuremberg argued truthfully that they were following orders. That did not save them from the gallows.

In capturing and killing Eichmann, Israel followed its principles rather than any code book or treaty. Eichmann’s pivotal role in the Holocaust demanded the ultimate punishment, and there was no other realistic way to carry it out.

I see the Operation Nemesis in the same light.

To me, it’s this simple: Talaat and his murderous gang did not deserve to die in bed – and Armenians deserved justice. Operation Nemesis achieved both goals, and the people who carried it out should be venerated.

Would Bogosian feel the same way if he’d been lucky enough to shake hands with Arshavir Shiragian?

At Armenia's Genocide memorial, the nation's glory and tragedy are fused in a single vision

Robyn and I arrived in Yerevan about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday April 22, hoping for relief from the damp cold of London and Paris.

I’d started sniffling the week before, and now I was sneezing. I needed sunshine and rest so I could work up enough strength to dislodge the cold that was clearly finding the space between my ears a bit too cozy.

My sub-tropical fantasies ended with the first chilly steps outside the airport terminal. On the way to our hotel, my wife asked our driver if he thought the weather would improve for that Friday’s commemoration of the Genocide's centennial.

“No,” he said. “It rains every April 24. It’s the day God cries for the Armenians.”

Dawn unfurled just enough clear sky to encourage a stroll through the city streets later that morning. We got a close-up look at preparations for a series of extraordinary events that were already drawing crowds to every hotel in Yerevan and knotting traffic at most intersections.

Two of these were scheduled for the next day. First, the 1.5 million martyrs of the Genocide were to be canonized as saints of the Armenian Church, followed by a heavy-metal concert performed by System of a Down. If you don’t sense a connection, you’re probably unaware that the band known to zillions of fans as SOAD is not only all-Armenian but deeply committed to raising awareness of genocide around the world.

Soldiers, flags and flowers lined the avenues as vendors positioned their carts to hawk ice cream cones, sodas and sandwiches. It appeared that everyone in the city was better prepared than we were.

Our last-minute travel decision had left no time for tactical planning. We tried to arrange a drive to the cathedral at Etchmiadzin for the canonization only to learn that the roads would be closed. It wasn’t clear how much of the 10-mile distance we’d have to walk, or whether we’d have a saint’s prayer of getting into the cathedral.

So instead we joined a throng in Republic Square, where the service was shown larger-than-life on a high-definition screen. We both shivered at the sound of the heavenly choir, and we kept on shivering as God’s tears fell with the full force a century’s sadness.

The hi-def screen in Republic Square was remarkably clear.

Robyn and I were drenched by the time we headed back to our hotel, but we were the only ones who left. The crowd continued to build as SOAD prepared to take over the square. An estimated 50,000 people spent the next several hours rocking, cheering and singing along in a driving rain.

We were not among them.

I cracked open the window of our hotel room and let the stage amps a block away do the rest of the work. Interest in the concert was so great that Rolling Stone magazine streamed it live, and I managed to click in with my iPad so we could see as well as hear the band. 

I did my best to rock along as Robyn, Aram and I sipped Armenian pomegranate wine, which warmed me up but not as much or as soon as I’d hoped.

I woke up the next day feeling miserable, which was appropriate on April 24 but still inconvenient. Robyn brought me a cup of tea and persuaded the housekeeper to round up every available box of tissues. I spent the day in the room emptying a couple of boxes while watching the commemoration ceremonies on TV.

At least I stayed dry while Robyn and Aram toured mountainsides shrouded by fog and mist. By the time they returned that evening, Robyn and I were sneezing in harmony. 

We authorized Aram to represent us in the annual torch-and-candle procession from Yerevan to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex on a hilltop overlooking the city. The procession started at 10 p.m. and reached the memorial at 12:30 a.m.

By then, thank goodness, I was well on my way to my first semi-decent night’s sleep in days. As a result, I picked up a little strength by Saturday while Robyn hadn’t yet lost all of hers. We hired a driver and guide and we set out for Tsitsernakaberd, where dignitaries from around the world had gathered the day before. Our visit turned out to be anything but anticlimactic.

In addition to a soaring monument and tranquil gardens, the memorial grounds house The Armenian Genocide Museum, which had been under renovation since 2011. Our visit occurred on the day it reopened to the public, and the public turned out in numbers that spoke eloquently of the Genocide’s utter failure to eradicate the Armenian people.

Again, the roads were closed but our driver persuaded a security guard to let him ferry these weary Americans to the memorial’s front gate. 

Thousands of others walked much greater distances, not only from Yerevan but from outlying villages: classes of school children, troops of scouts, military units, families spanning generations.

Nearly all came bearing flowers, which they carried to the memorial’s eternal flame set at the center of a step-down chamber. 

When we arrived, the wall of flowers was already so high and deep that we couldn’t see the flame. We couldn’t even get a picture of it until my friend Aram, much taller than I am, hoisted the camera over his head and shot blindly.

The museum's displays of documents and photos were exceptionally well-presented. For me, the most powerful exhibit was the etched wall map tracing the Genocide’s path. Everyone walking past silently focused on his family’s village and wept.

For all this, our most emotional sighting of all was the image that looms permanently over Tsitsernakaberd, and really over all Armenians everywhere in the world: Mount Ararat.

You know the story of Noah’s Ark. Armenians take it literally, as we do so many things. We believe one of Noah’s descendants, Hayk, was the founder of the Armenian nation, which is called Hayastan. For us, Ararat is the symbol and source of everything Armenian.

Robyn and I got our first full view of the great mountain on this first clear day of our trip. You can see it head-on from the bluff at Tsitsernakaberd, standing brilliant and snowy white against the blue sky no more than 30 miles across the valley.

It’s tempting to employ a cliché and say you feel as if you could touch it, but Armenians know better. Mount Ararat is locked beyond a sealed border in Turkey. 

I asked our guide, the very smart and helpful Anna, how she felt looking at Ararat and knowing it wasn’t part of her country.

“It will be again,” she said without hesitation.

Until then?

“We say, ‘The Turks have the mountain, but we have the view.’ ”

Armenians have a marvelous ability to see beyond, or maybe around, the ugliest of realities. Given our history, what choice do we have? 

Armenian writers have a lot to show for their dedication to telling the Armenian story

I set off for the London Book Fair last month with only a shadowy idea of what to expect.

I knew mostly that books by Armenian authors from various countries would be  showcased at an exhibit called The Armenian Pavilion, and I’d have a chance to brag a bit about my fellow American-Armenian writers while showing off my own memoir.

The experience turned out to be far more enjoyable and enlightening than I imagined.

The pavilion resembled a makeshift gathering space in a small corner of a vast book shop. Hundreds of publishers, vendors and just about anyone else involved in the international book trade had gathered in the cavernous Olympia exhibition hall, and it seemed they were all talking at once.

Our pavilion without walls was open to the crowds, but also to the din. Conversation was challenging, and author readings were equally frustrating for speaker and audience. The whole thing might have been too much trouble, except I was learning a great deal and enjoying myself immensely.

The variety of books on the Pavilion’s shelves was impressive: historical novels, romance novels, children’s books, plus many memoirs and other nonfiction works. Clearly, Armenians think and write about much more than the Armenian Genocide.

But the Genocide was certainly the predominant topic, as the event took place a week before the 100-year commemoration. Regardless of topic, every word written by an Armenian author since the Genocide is homage to the writers who were silenced on April 24, 1915.

I met a number of truly thoughtful and talented people who have found interesting ways to tell the story of Armenian life before and after the Genocide. Three of my British counterparts deserve mention.

                                                                         ***

Eve Makis stood out because she is not Armenian. Her parents are Greek Cypriots who moved to England in the 1960s before she was born. She’s a journalist-turned-novelist who has moved between Britain and Cyprus several times.

I know too well that the Armenian Genocide isn’t widely understood in the United States, but I was surprised to learn that Eve knew little about it until a few years ago when she began outlining an idea for a new novel set in Cyprus. She knew of the Armenian community there and decided to add some Armenian characters.

She followed her journalist’s instincts and interviewed Armenians to get a realistic picture of their community. That’s when she learned they’d come to Cyprus after being expelled from Turkey. When she understood the scope of the disaster, she committed to making it the center of her story, and she delved deeper into Armenian lore and culture.

The result was The Spice Box Letters, a novel about a journalist who sets out to learn the story of her recently deceased grandmother. She begins with a few scraps of paper found in a spice box. They were written in Armenian, an unfamiliar language from an unfamiliar place.

Her discoveries about her grandmother, her family and her own life reflect the theme of loss and silence that I explore in my own book. The Spice Box Letters is smart, engaging, and often funny – and the author’s observations about Armenians are remarkably on target.

                                                                          ***

R.P. (Rubina) Sevadjian grew up in Ethiopia, where her family settled in the Armenian community that began to develop before the Genocide as a result of previous waves of persecution under Ottoman rule.

Sevadjian had several important goals when she wrote In the Shadow of the Sultan. She wanted to memorialize the culture of Western Armenians that is fast disappearing even in the diaspora while also showing that the destruction of that culture began before 1915.

Most of all, she wanted to introduce this culture and history to young readers—a challenging target for any author, but a special challenge when the subject matter is so brutal.

The story, set in 1896, is simple but powerful: A boy is thrust into manhood when his father is killed by a Turkish neighbor. He has no time to mourn, as Turkish swords are in the air throughout his village. He sets out to find his mother but finds only devastation and is forced to make choices about his own survival and the survival of his nation.

I’m a few years beyond the demographic of choice, so I don’t know how a young adult reader would react. But I like the book an awful lot, no doubt in part because I like the author—and I deeply admire her commitment to historical accuracy and to telling an important story that  is too often ignored.

                                                                           ***

George Jerjian

I was aware of the Armenian connection to Ethiopia, but I was floored to find that George Jerjian was born in Khartoum, Sudan, which to me existed only in
black-and-white movies of the 1930s.

The circumstance fits perfectly with the experience of a people scattered around the world, but his family’s location was the product of extraordinary achievement rather than sudden displacement.

George’s paternal grandfather, George Djerdjian, was born in Arabkir in 1870. His parents sent him to college in Erzerum, and he did so well he won a scholarship to continue his studies in Zurich. He returned in 1900 with a doctorate and a camera.

While teaching at Sansarian College in Erzerum, Dr. Djerdjian returned to Arabkir each summer to take photographs. A chemist, he was able to develop his film and he carefully preserved the glass-plate negatives. He stored them in Alexandria, Egypt, when fellow Arabkir natives offered him a job in their Sudan business.

Dr. Djerdjian died in 1947, and the plates were eventually shipped to his family in Khartoum. They somehow survived several more moves. The journey of the plates and the family continued into George’s day, as unrest in Sudan led to relocation.

When George’s father died in 2003, the plates turned up intact in a box in the family’s London apartment. George recognized their importance. He has donated them to the Genocide Museum in Yerevan, and has now compiled 100 of the prints in a book: Daylight after a Century.

The word remarkable is overused but it is appropriate in this case. These photographs, crisp and well-focused, document not only a community but a way of life that no longer exists. We see people in their homes, their schools, their churches. We see their faces, and we can glean a good deal about their lives while knowing what they couldn’t know about what lay ahead.

You can see many of these photos and hear George’s narration on YouTube. I saw the video at the book fair and had the added pleasure of meeting George. Although I returned from London with a long reading list, I was so engaged by his thoughts that I clicked another one of George’s books into my Kindle as soon as I got home. 

The Truth Will Set Us Free: Armenians and Turks Reconciled, tells the story of George’s grandmother, who was saved during the Genocide by a Turkish official. The story became more powerful when he learned that the official was responsible for the deaths of many other Armenians.

The book goes on to lay out the history of the Genocide, sharply and directly. He argues that Turkey should acknowledge the truth, and explains why he believes that will happen. I thought the reasoning and writing were both powerful. Also impressive: the foreword was written by former Sen. Bob Dole, who has long been friendly to the Armenian case.

When I relayed those thoughts to George the other day, I was still digging through back issues and catching up with chores that piled up while we were away. Soon after, I came across a recent story in the Armenian Weekly about a visit to America by Ragip Zarakolu.

The story explained that Zarakolu is a Turkish intellectual, publisher and human rights activist who has long been at odds with his government. He served time in prison in the 1970s after being declared “subversive.”

The sentence didn’t deter him from campaigning for freedom of speech in Turkey. He not only spoke publicly about the Armenian Genocide, he did something even more incendiary: He translated The Truth Will Set Us Free into Turkish and published it. 

He was convicted of “insulting the state” and again sentenced to prison. The sentence was eventually reduced to a fine but he is still appealing his conviction.

I know quite a few authors, some very successful in the ways we usually think of success. George is the first author I’ve met who wrote a book so powerful that someone was willing to risk time in a Turkish prison so others could read it.

I can't think of a greater achievement, or more fitting homage to our martyred writers.

 

As young men, we dreamed of going to Armenia. We finally made it, just a few years later than we'd planned.

 “I knew we’d get to Armenia together. But I didn’t think we’d be old men when we got here. How did this happen?” – Aram Aslanian in Yerevan, April 22, 2015. 

There was no magic moment, at least that I recall, but Aram and I must have been nine or 10 years old when we first started talking about going to Armenia together. 

We grew up in suburban New Jersey, but Armenia was a powerful and constant presence in our lives – the idea and ideal of Armenia, at least, if not the country itself.  We learned its history and myths at Armenian school on Saturdays, and we chanted its hymns in church on Sundays.  

Our parents took turns driving us to Camp Haiastan in Massachusetts each summer so we could sing songs of national liberation as we hiked across woods and fields we imagined to be the Armenian Highlands 

As we grew, so did our circle of Armenian friends and our involvement in Armenian activities. When we were old enough to drive, we’d cruise up and down the East Coast from New York to Boston to Philadelphia to Washington or wherever there was an Armenian dance or a basketball game – any excuse to be with Armenians. 

So of course we wanted to go to Armenia, to be in Armenia. It was perfectly natural. It just wasn’t practical. 

There really was no country called Armenia back then. The name appeared on maps only in the descriptive introduction to a Soviet “republic” that appeared as cold and grim as the rest.  The Armenia we sang our camp songs about was separate but equally uninviting, still under Turkish dominion and bereft of the people and culture our grandparents knew. 

Of course, we could have gone to either place, as many Armenians from around the world did. Our checks and Visa cards would have been welcomed by hotels and tour guides on either side of the Soviet-Turkish border. We'd be standing on the land of our ancestors, regardless of the current tenants. 

In truth, reality was less appealing than our childhood fantasy, as reality usually is.  We continued to talk about going to Armenia as we got older, but there were always other realities to deal with: work, home, family. Aram became Dr. Aslanian, professor of psychology. I became a reporter, editor and author. It’s not that we didn’t notice the fall of Soviet communism and the rebirth of independent Armenia in 1991—but, well, we were busy.

We retired about the same time a few years back, but even then we weren’t quite ready to fly across the world. I really didn’t want to walk across the street to the pool. My ideal retirement here in Florida involved nothing more strenuous than opening the patio door. Aram was only a bit more energetic: He retired to Maine, so he kept in shape by shivering all winter. 

When he finally warmed up in the spring of 2014, Aram phoned. “I’m going to Armenia and I’m not going without you,” he said. I asked for time to think about it but Aram has always insisted on being spontaneous. “We’re going in the fall, so get ready.” 

Aram spent the next couple of months planning, but he didn’t plan on being sidelined by a bum foot. It’s the sort of thing us old guys are learning to deal with but not exactly getting used to.  So the trip was delayed, which turned out to be a very good thing because Aram also didn’t plan on a sudden detour to have a stent inserted in his heart. 

I put the trip out of mind until my interest was sparked by another unexpected turn of events two month ago. An opportunity to attend the London Book Fair with other Armenian authors was too interesting to pass up. We had only a few weeks to decide and make plans, but Robyn and I were both struck by the same thought: If we’re on the far side of the Atlantic anyway, why not continue on to Armenia? 

With the timing of the fair in mid-April, we could be in Yerevan for the 100-year commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. I called Aram, who didn’t hesitate. We were very lucky to get flights and book rooms in short order. 

 

Robyn and I got there first. Aram arrived hours later. We found each other in the lobby of our hotel, a couple of old men who got to be kids again for a little while. And this is how we came to celebrate Aram’s 63rd birthday in Yerevan after a half century of dawdling.

 

I’ll have much more to say about our experience in Armenia, but what’s important for now is that we finally had one.

Filling in for Doug Kalajian, this is his daughter Mandy...

My father is currently in Yerevan, Armenia so I am guest blogging to share a segment he was the subject of on Huffington Post Live's World Brief. It aired, live, Friday, April 24th, 2015 – the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.

In the roughly nine minute segment – featuring archival family photos, historic genocide photos, and video from this week's historic events in Armenia – my dad is interviewed, live, from Yerevan via Skype. He explains his father's narrow escape from the Genocide as a small boy, his grandmother's murder, and his memories growing up as a second-generation Armenian American in the silent shadow of the Genocide. He also discussed Turkey's continued denial that the massacres of 1915 were just that: genocide. He describes the more-than three decade process that resulted in his memoir Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me, which is available on Amazon. This, his latest work, is the result of recollections and, mostly, years of research to fill in the painful voids in our family's oral history.

In addition to the visibility on Huffington Post Live, he has received critical praise from Kirkus, which had this to say: "His polished, sometimes even poetic prose evokes a sense of curiosity and lament. In response to his family’s silence—and to the silence of a whole people still shellshocked by their grim treatment—Kalajian has become a professional storyteller and an excellent one at that." Kirkus Reviews

This is a great literary work by a talented Armenian-American author at a critical time in our history. I hope you’ll buy it today!

Iris Chekenian's remarkable achievement: Restoring her father's voice for a new generation of readers as well as for herself

I first read the book My Name Is Aram when I was a boy. After I finished, I told my father I wanted to be just like William Saroyan–the best Armenian writer in America.

 

“The best Armenian writer in America is Aram Haigaz,” he said.

When I asked him to explain, my father pointed to his shelves of impenetrable Armenian books.

“When you learn to read Armenian, you’ll understand.”

I never did, but the name stayed deep in my memory until after my father died and I began my long search through his books and papers for clues to his thoughts and life. In a very old and tattered copy of The Armenian Review, I found one of the few Aram Haigaz stories that had been translated into English.

It was a tale of two Armenian boys who survived the Genocide by converting to Islam in order to take shelter with a Kurdish tribe. Their experience paralleled what I knew of my father’s life after his grandmother snatched him from her dying daughter’s arms and gave him to a Kurdish chief.

Through this autobiographical story, Haigaz let me peer into a mysterious realm that was absent from the many Genocide histories I’d read. It also offered powerful testimony that that the Armenian identity may be obscured but it can never erased as long as any of us survive.

When I wrote my own memoir about my father, I included an extended reference to this story and its author and then tucked the name back into my memory. It jumped out again a few weeks ago as I began preparing to represent the newly formed American-Armenian Writers Guild at the London Book Fair.

One of the just-published books to be featured at the fair’s Armenian Pavilion is Four Years in the Mountains of Kurdistan by Aram Haigaz, translated into English by his daughter Iris Chekenian.

It is a remarkable book with an even more remarkable story behind its publication nearly 30 years after the author’s death.

Aram Haigaz is the pen name of Aram Chekenian, who was 15 when Turkish troops approached his native Shabin Karahisar in June 1915. The Armenians climbed to a mountain fortress and held off the attackers for nearly a month.

Chekenian and his mother were among the few who lived through the siege, only to be forced to march toward the desert and certain death. At his tearful mother’s urging, Chekenian saved himself by declaring his new-found faith in Allah and adopting a Muslim name. Like the boys in the story I read, he began a new life as a Kurdish shepherd.

His masters were certain the boy’s conversion was sincere but they were wrong. He ultimately escaped and made his way to America. There he began yet another life, but this time with two distinct dimensions and identities.

To his American friends and neighbors, he was Aram Chekenian, hard-working father and husband who earned a living as a photoengraver at the New York Daily Mirror. To Armenians around the world, he became Aram Haigaz, whose writing stood as lasting testimony to the truth of the Armenian Genocide.

He ultimately wrote 10 books, but only the first was published in English way back in 1935. He wrote all the rest in Armenian. As I read about the new English-language edition of his memoir, I was startled to discover that his daughter Iris was among the many American-born Armenians who’d never read the book while her father was alive.

Like me, she didn’t read Armenian – and like my father, hers didn’t tell his story easily. So Iris went about her own very busy life of accomplishment as a Hollywood story editor and public relations professional knowing little about the events her father chronicled.

In an interview with journalist and author Deborah Kalb, Iris recalled standing in her father’s library after his death in 1986. She couldn’t so much as read the titles of the books he’d written.

Determined to unlock the literary and historical treasure her father had left, she began to study the Armenian alphabet but soon discovered that her conversational Armenian skills didn’t prepare her to understand her father’s idioms and obscure references to Turkish and Kurdish culture.

In reading as much as she could, Iris became convinced that her father’s work was important documentation of largely untold history. She devoted years of study, research and consultation necessary to translate his most important book for a far wider audience.

I started reading it this morning but I’m already certain Iris was correct in her estimation of its importance.

Scholars are just beginning to assess the unknown number of Armenians who survived the Genocide by allowing their identity to be obscured. Many grandchildren of those children live today as Turks or Kurds, some knowing their roots but still afraid to reveal them.

Four Years is a rare document by one who survived as an Armenian with the determination to speak the truth and the ability to express it eloquently.

I was hoping to finish reading the book before I leave for London later this week, but it is too rich to rush through. I’m overwhelmed not only by the story but by the scope of what Iris has accomplished.

For many Armenians, her father was the voice of his generation. Now that voice can be heard by every generation of Armenian-Americans to come.

 

The short but powerful film Straw Dolls is set for a most appropriate premiere date: April 24

I wrote an item last July about director Jon Milano’s ambitious plan to make a film called Straw Dolls based on the memories of an Armenian Genocide survivor.

Milano’s task seemed daunting. Then a graduate student at Chapman University, he proposed to raise enough money through a crowd-source website to produce a short film showcasing the story in a way that would garner support for a feature-length version.

A mere nine months later, the initial iteration is complete and set to premiere on April 24. A full schedule of screenings is still taking shape, but Milano’s film has been accepted by the Ridgewood Film Festival in his native New Jersey.

Making such progress in so little time is certainly to Milano’s credit but hold the applause until you’ve seen the film. I have, and I assure you this is an extraordinary accomplishment.

The story is compact but powerful: A father and daughter are preparing to flee their farm when their path is blocked by Turkish soldiers escorting Armenians who are destined for deportation. The daughter hides, while the father poses as a Turk to avoid the fate of his neighbors. Much of the film’s sparse dialogue consists of conversation between the father and the Turkish captain. It becomes clear that both know deportation means death.

Just over 17 minutes long, the film shows Milano to be an astute story teller who understands the power of suggestion. We are told little about the characters, yet we learn a great deal from their motions and glances.

This approach wouldn’t work without a cast capable of conveying great emotion wordlessly yet subtly. Save some of that applause for Marco Khan and Mary Apick, both highly skilled and experienced actors—and both, by the way, born in Iran of Armenian descent.

Please watch for Straw Dolls as it rolls out across the country. You don’t have to be Armenian to be touched by this story, but you should bring some extra tissues to the theater if you are.