Antonina Mahari's example of courage and hope through years of Soviet torment makes me feel very lucky but also a bit ashamed

We’ve all seen James Bond films, so we’re familiar with the character of the evil genius who threatens the world.

I doubt such villains really exist. The great threat to life and liberty is more likely an idiot who has acquired the trappings of authority: a title, a uniform or, God forbid, a gun.

I was reminded of this as I read My Odyssey by Antonina Mahari. It is a pain-filled account of the author’s life journey from Lithuania to Armenia by way of Siberia beginning in 1944 when she was 20 years old.

Her native land lurched between Russian and German occupations while she was a teenager. She was a law student at Vilnius University when the Russians returned with a vengeance.

Antonia was arrested on suspicion of being an anti-Soviet agitator, although how or why she had fallen under suspicion was not clear. Such things were never clear.

She endured nightly assaults by a screaming interrogator standing beneath a portrait of the ever-smiling dictator Joseph Stalin. Although beaten and humiliated, Antonina did not confess to any imaginary crimes so the interrogations continued.

All of the women who shared her airless cell experienced the same horrors.

“Every night, women who were beaten during the interrogations were thrown into our cell half dead,” she wrote. “A Polish woman died. Her kidneys were crushed. A seventeen-year-old Lithuanian girl named Genute went mad . . .”

Antonina wondered what the torturers could possibly have meant to accomplish, as prisoners knew confession would likely result in a visit to Vanya the executioner. In the years that followed, she experienced a great deal more pain and witnessed many pointless deaths.

She came to understand there was no sense in any of it.

Eventually judged incorrigible, Antonina was consigned to Siberia. There she toiled and shivered among a multitude of other suspected free thinkers from all the captive nations: artists, musicians, doctors, lawyers, scientists, military officers.

Many of them had been good Communists, or thought so until they were dragged from their homes. They had the talent and intelligence to rebuild their shattered homelands but those very attributes made them a danger to their rulers.

In this topsy-turvy world, complaint was forbidden. A sigh in the company of an informer could lead to further torture. Everyone was expected to sing songs in praise of Stalin, even as his minions drained their lives of joy and purpose.

It was in this stifling atmosphere on a collective farm in 1952 that Antonina fell in love with Gurgen Mahari, who sang folks songs of his native Van as he worked. He could smile because Stalin was absent from the lyrics, and because he could sense humor in the irony of his miserable circumstances.

One of Armenia’s greatest writers, Gurgen was forced to herd pigs.

“Now, those who once raised pigs write poems, and we have taken their place with the pigs,” he told Antonina.

Mahari had been arrested in 1937. He was hardly a subversive, much less a revolutionary, but his love for Armenia showed boldly enough to make his work incompatible with Soviet internationalism.

The state prescribed 10 years of confinement to improve his exuberance for Communism. Within a year of his release, Mahari was arrested again and sentenced to life in Siberia.

But this did not keep Mahari from his work. Exhausted and bone cold, he wrote each night by the fire in his tiny log hut even though none of his poems or stories could be published.

The writer and his work might have been buried together in the tundra except for a great stroke of luck: Stalin died in March 1953, and the torments he fostered stopped along with his cold heart—for a while, at least.

Antonina and Gurgen, now married, were released in 1954 and given an apartment in Armenia’s capital. The great writer was once again celebrated not only by the public but by his fellow writers, who visited often and joined him in spirited literary dialogues.

Antonina worried that the great volume of cigarettes and vodka he consumed during these sessions would shorten his life but these excesses merely weakened him. It was his friends who finally killed him.

In 1966, Gurgen Mahari published his master work. The novel Burning Orchards was set in Van and followed events leading up to the siege of 1915 when the Armenian population was slaughtered and their homes reduced to rubble.

The author’s close friend, Paruyr Sevak, another of Armenia’s most honored writers, denounced the book. He argued that Mahari had portrayed Armenian revolutionaries in a way that blamed them for inciting the Genocide. He made a speech calling his comrade “a traitor and a servant of the Turks.”

Other writers joined Sevak, and a crowd burned the book in front of Mahari’s home. The Writers Union demanded Orchards be rewritten. Mahari complied despite his wife’s objections but his concessions did not improve his standing.

No one spoke in the author’s defense because no one dared to. Mahari became deeply depressed, and his wife kept close watch as he threatened to jump off the balcony. “Antonina, there is nothing worse than seeing your literary creation being dragged through the mud and to know that your friends, your beloved countrymen, are doing it.”

He died in 1969, broken by the unrelenting torrent of hate.

No one could blame his widow if she had moved back to Lithuania but she didn’t because her beloved Gurgen had begged her to stay in Yerevan. “You are the only person who can tell the truth about me.”

He told her to write about their cruel experience in the fool’s paradise. “Write, and have no mercy on anyone. It is very important for history.”

So she wrote, and she waited. Although Stalin was gone, obedient comrades still sang to his memory and saluted his statue. The secret police and their informers still made notes of sighs and whispers. People still disappeared into the Siberian wilderness.

So Antonina guarded her notes and the papers Gurgen left behind, and she finished My Odyssey in secret. A manuscript was smuggled out of Armenia and an abridged version published in Beirut in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Armenia was finally free, but no publisher there would touch it.

“All the publishing houses were filled with former comrades,” she wrote. “They were holding their posts and settled very comfortably.” None of these brave editors thought it would be a good idea to stir up unpleasant memories—and none thought it would be wise to point fingers.

Antonina persevered until Armenia was finally ready to read her story. Her memoir was published there in 2003. The following year, she had the good fortune to meet Ruth Bedevian while Bedevian was visiting Yerevan.

Bedevian had learned about Gurgen and Antonina Mahari while researching an article on Armenian writers. Antonina subsequently asked Bedevian to help have her memoir translated into English, and Bedevian agreed.

It was not a simple request to fulfill. Bedevian assembled an impressive group of experts who were able transcend literal translation by lending context to unfamiliar times and places.

The result is anything but a conventional memoir. The chapters don’t follow common structure or order. The book is filled with obscure references. Most striking to me is the unfamiliarity of the central subject: Have you ever read anything by Gurgen Mahari?

I haven’t, but I found his life story fascinating—inspiring, depressing, infuriating all at once. I felt privileged reading the book, and I felt ashamed thinking about how often I complain because my computer is acting up or because my den is a bit too warm or because someone’s making a racket mowing the lawn.

Now when I have such silly thoughts I will think instead about Gurgen writing by weary hand in his Siberian hut, and Antonina wrapping her manuscript in an old swim suit and folding it into the bottom of her suitcase to hide it from the secret police.

It is wonderful to live and write in America. We certainly have no shortage of idiots, but they can’t send me to Siberia for sighing deeply at the thought of them. 

Shish kebab may not sound Armenian but it makes me happy -- and that's what counts.

Do you own the food you eat?

I’m not asking to see the receipt for the Big Mac and fries you wolfed down at lunch. I’m talking about ownership in the broad, cultural sense. I’ve heard the question asked a number of ways—occasionally profanely—since my wife and I created TheArmenianKitchen.com seven years ago.

Our goal was simple: to preserve the recipes we treasured while touting the glories of Armenian food. Our definition of Armenian food was just as simple: anything Armenians eat.

In my case, that would include lasagna and hot fudge sundaes. But I’ve always shown more discipline in writing than in eating, so we’ve been able to focus on the dishes that bring back memories of our mothers’ and grandmothers’ kitchens.

That still adds up to a long and incredibly varied menu. Armenia’s history of repeated invasions brought the tastes from many pots to the homeland while scattering refugees across the globe.

Traditional Armenian recipes evolved in different ways in all those places. So did Armenians’ palates, and so did Armenians themselves. We hear almost every day from readers with Irish or Italian names who want help recreating a dish they remember their “Armenian grandmother” used to make.

What better way to stay connected to each other as well as to our shared past?

For me, and for many Armenians, there’s no food memory more powerful or more mouth-watering than shish kebab. My family ate Armenian food almost daily when I was growing up, but shish kebab always signified a special occasion.

Or maybe it just made any occasion special. It’s a far simpler dish than many that Mom made more often but the ritual involved all of us.

The meat had to come from an Armenian or Syrian butcher who knew lamb and had the skill to cut it properly. My mother was in charge of seasoning and marinating the meat overnight, then skewering and salting it just before cooking.

When I was old enough, I got into the act by making the fire, always starting with kindling wood because Dad said lighter fluid ruined the taste of the meat no matter how long you waited for it to evaporate. And make no mistake, the kebab had to be cooked outdoors over a flame, never in the oven.

Rain might delay the meal but it was never an excuse to cheat. My wife remembers her father moving the grill into the garage as they tried to chase the smoke out the open door. I remember my father hoisting ours into the back of his station wagon and finishing the kebab as we drove home from the park in a downpour.

Like all Armenian fathers, mine was in charge of the actual kebab cooking, turning the skewers regularly so the meat seared evenly. Mom, meanwhile, prepared the bulgur pilaf and salad but I never wandered far. I’d stay by the fireside breathing in the smoky aroma of roasting meat, onions and tomatoes while waiting to taste the first piece and pronounce it done.

Then I’d watch Dad slide the meat off the skewers using a ragged chunk of bread as a cushion. Every Armenian father did the same, and every Armenian kid kept his eye on that bread as it swelled and softened in the juices at the bottom of the pot. 

I know siblings who fought over it every time. I was never luckier to be an only child than at kebab time.

Whenever I make my own kebab, my head swells with memories of these countless childhood barbecues and picnics – and, of course, of my parents. My wife has the same reaction. Making kebab together is a very real and wonderful way of sharing our early lives as we tell kebab stories until we’ve swallowed the least bite.

Apparently lots of folks share this experience or, perhaps, wish they did. Back in 2010, I posted a video on YouTube titled How To Make Shish Kebab. I got an email the other day notifying me that the video had passed 100,000 views. 

This astounds me as much as it pleases me that I somehow lured 100,000-or-so people away from the latest zombie movie or Wheel of Fortune rerun to watch me broil lamb the Armenian way.

Because YouTube allows comments, I know lots of folks found the video informative and enjoyable. Many added their own thoughts about seasonings or cooking techniques – all to the good. As I say on the video, every family has its own ideas about the “right” way to make kebab, and I’m happy to sample them all.

But while the reaction from most has been quite positive, some of it was downright nasty. A handful of comments were so ugly that I deleted them to keep the site family friendly. The gist of the crankiest complaints was that shish kebab is not Armenian and that Armenians “stole” not only the name but the very idea of skewering meat from Turks.

It’s clear some of the rowdies hadn’t watched the video. In my narration, I explain that shish kebab is known as khorovatz in Armenia. But how many views would I have racked up with a video called How to Make Khorovatz?

What's the origin of the common name? I’m no linguist, but I can use a dictionary pretty well and I’m a master Googler. The etymology is usually explained as a fusion of Persian kebab and Turkish shish (skewer) – and please don’t bother “correcting” the spelling. Both were long ago anglicized and adopted into American usage.

If you travel, or like to sample various ethnic restaurants, you’ll need to broaden your kebab vocabulary. It’s shashlik to Russians, lahm mishwy to Arabs, souvlaki to Greeks – all remarkably similar in concept, although the type of meat varies by local tradition, availability and religious practice.

Armenians historically favored lamb, but cheaper and more abundant pork is common fare at khorovatz stands in the homeland today. As Muslims, Turks shun pork in favor of lamb, so their kebab is more to my taste. 

The idea of skewered meat is generally ascribed to ancient soldiers who used their swords to butcher and roast stray sheep over a campfire. Whose army was first to be so fortuitously hungry and inventive at once?

The Persians make a strong case, while Turks are quite insistent that Turkic tribesmen were wielding shish as well as sabers when they thundered out of Central Asia.

   

Nobody can be certain, as kebab predates Instagram so we have no photos. But there are drawings that support Greek claims to have invented what appears to be the main ingredient of a souvlaki platter. (I can’t be sure, but I believe the inscription actually says, “No substitutions.”)

Archaeologist have even dug up ancient Greek barbecue grills with holes for skewers.

Until the case (or the kitchen) is closed, I’ll back my own peeps. I believe the legions of King Dikran were first to feast on sizzling swords of lamb seasoned with wild mountain onions and marinated in Armenia’s celebrated red wine.

The less-than-amusing subtext to all this is the international food fight being waged by various nations over claims to the origin of popular dishes. Making a successful legal claim can mean big profits for marketers as well as enhanced prestige for the cuisine’s chefs.

Someone came up with the clever name gastronationalism to describe the intense competition. In recent years, Greeks have successfully put their stamp on feta cheese, as the Lebanese and Israelis grind away at each other over the proper provenance of hummus.

Armenia has joined the battle in response to repeated taunts from Turkey and Azerbaijan. Between them, they’ve claimed just about every dish on the traditional Armenian menu as their own.

After 600 years of occupation, it’s hardly a surprise that Armenians share many food names and customs with Turks, just as we do with Persians, Greeks and other neighbors. But it’s a mistake to automatically attribute Turkish origin to any common dish or technique.

In fact, Armenian chefs were an important presence in Ottoman kitchens until the First World War. There’s no doubt Armenians influenced what’s now known as Turkish cuisine in important ways, just as they influenced other aspects of Ottoman culture.

Like other Armenian achievements, however, much of our culinary inventiveness has been obscured. With so many outside influences, it’s sometimes hard even for Armenians to know if we’re eating our own food.

At least now there's a serious effort underway among experts in Armenia to identity and promote Armenian cuisine. I wish them luck but I won’t be taking part because I’m not equipped – and besides, I’m more interested in eating than in arguing.

I have some lamb marinating right now, and I’m going to fire up the grill just as soon as I finish typing. I can’t think of a better incentive to keep this short.

Armenians in America know the power of a flag to unite a people, or shatter a community

How can so much emotion be stirred by the Confederate battle flag some 150 years after the Civil War’s final fusilade?

I have my thoughts as an American, and as a Yankee. But while reading the current spate of news stories, I also found myself thinking as an Armenian about the unique and extraordinary power of emblems that some hold dear and others fear.

I grew up with reverence for the red, blue and orange symbol of a nation that ceased to exist 32 years before I was born.

I remember taking my turn raising the Armenian flag at Camp Haiastan (Camp Armenia) as we sang the Armenian national anthem. I didn’t understand a word until I read a translation. One verse remains linked to the image of that brilliant-colored flag fluttering from its white, wooden pole.

Behold, brother mine, the holy flag

Which I fashioned with my hands.

Sleepless I went for dreary nights.

I washed it with my tears.

I pictured a weary Armenian freedom fighter carrying a crudely fashioned banner into the fight. To my young mind, honoring one was the same as honoring the other. 

I assumed all Armenians felt the same way – but like many of my youthful assumptions, most of what I thought I knew about the Armenian flag turned out to be wrong.

Armenians did carry flags into battle, but none I’d recognize. In its 1955-56 winter issue, the Armenian Review magazine published an article about Armenia’s flag history. It noted that different banners, some quite ornate, were adopted by various monarchs and armies since ancient times. A few images survive on coins and etchings. Colors are mostly guesswork now, although royal purple was certainly featured.

After centuries without an independent country, Armenians were left with no flag until 1885 when the Armenian Students Association of Paris commissioned one to display at the funeral of Victor Hugo.

The students turned to Father Ghevond Alishan, who experimented with several color arrangements. His tinkering led to the first tricolor insignias worn by Armenian soldiers through the First World War.

They were yellow, red and green.

When the first Republic of Armenia took shape after the war, the government wanted a flag with historical significance. So it reached back more than 600 years to the Rubenian Dynasty, which favored red, blue and yellow. Almost immediately, the yellow was changed to orange “because it easily merged with the rest of the colors and presented a more pleasing composition.”

Not only did the flag have a shorter history than I imagined, it had a short life as the national emblem. The Tricolor flew over the Republic for barely two years before being hauled down in 1920 and trampled along with the nation and its leaders. Armenia’s new Communist rulers feared the yerakooyn enough to shoot anyone didn’t follow orders to destroy it.

That made the flag even more precious to Armenians beyond the reach of Red terrorists. They flew it proudly wherever they gathered – in community halls, at church picnics, in holiday parades – as a message of defiance and hope.

At least, this was true of the Armenians I knew.

I discovered later that in the weird parallel universe of “other” Armenians in America, the Tricolor had become almost as toxic as it was in Soviet Armenia. In fact, it was oddly responsible for the division of Armenian-Americans into two distinct communities.

While most Armenians in the diaspora were immune to Communist pressure, the Armenian Church remained vulnerable because it was tethered to the homeland. Even the primate of North America had to be wary.

So when Archbishop Levon Tourian was called to bless the Armenian Day festivities at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, he insisted that the flag of the republic be removed from the viewing stand and replaced by the Soviet hammer and sickle.

The crowd erupted in catcalls and fistfights that spread to Armenian communities across America. At year’s end, someone shoved a butcher knife into the archbishop as he walked down a church aisle in New York. His death only made the tumult worse.

By the time I came along a couple of decades later, things had settled into a standoff. Unable to reconcile their political differences, Armenians simply divided each community into two churches – one administered in Armenia, the other outside. 

One of the few notable differences was the presence of the Armenian flag at one church and its absence at the other. So for many years, Armenians in America had no unifying banner. It took a change in the balance of world power to correct that.

Among the many images that emerged from the disintegrating Soviet Union circa 1990, I recall a photo in a news magazine of a street demonstration in Yerevan. It was a color photo, so there was no mistaking the red-blue-orange flag being held aloft by marchers.

The Tricolor had survived 70 years of gulags and death squads. I knew instantly that Armenia would be free again, and we'd all be flying one flag in its honor.

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.