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Book Review: A Diffident Witness To The Armenian Genocide

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  • Book Review: A Diffident Witness To The Armenian Genocide

    A DIFFIDENT WITNESS TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
    Sorcha Hamilton

    The Irish Times
    June 28, 2008 Saturday

    HISTORY: WRITING ABOUT the Armenian genocide is a sure way to get into
    trouble in Turkey. Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk received
    death threats and was brought to court for his comments about the
    murder of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.

    Bestselling writer Elif Shafak was prosecuted by the Turkish government
    for referring to the incident as genocide in her novel, The Bastard
    of Istanbul. Newspaper editor Hrant Dink, who spent much of his
    life campaigning against the government's denial of the massacres,
    was assassinated by a Turkish ultra-nationalist last year.

    To this growing chorus of counter-narratives comes a striking memoir
    by Fethiye Cetin. My Grandmother examines the real, human story behind
    Turkey's hidden past. It describes how Cetin, a human rights lawyer
    who represented the murdered journalist Dink, uncovered a tragic
    family secret.

    For years Cetin knew nothing of her Muslim grandmother's past - that
    her real name was Heranus, not Seher, and that she was a Christian
    Armenian torn from her mother's arms during the infamous death marches
    and adopted by a Turkish gendarme captain.

    Cetin grew up in the small town of Maden. When her father died,
    her family moved in with her grandparents. Cetin loved living in
    this busy household where she could watch her aunts and uncles doing
    their housework or spend hours at the big windows looking out over the
    market. Her grandmother took pride in her cooking and the cleanliness
    of her home, and was protective of her fatherless grandchildren.

    Once, when the river flooded and Cetin and her brother and sister
    were trapped in the cinema, her grandmother came to the rescue,
    braving the high waters alone to bring her grandchildren home.

    Cetin's grandmother was a devout Muslim but the type of strong,
    principled woman who dismissed the hoca religious leader when he
    said it was a sin for children to play the mandolin. Instead, she
    encouraged her granddaughter to play.

    It was much later, after her grandfather died, that Cetin's grandmother
    began to speak about her past. Her family fell victim to the forced
    deportations of 1915, when most of the men in her village were
    slaughtered in public.

    She remembers the bodies left on the side of the road during the
    death marches and how her mother raced after her when she was plucked
    from her arms by a man on horseback, who later took her into his
    Muslim home.

    It was only years afterwards, when she was married, that Cetin's
    grandmother discovered her parents had escaped to the US. While
    she never got a chance to meet her family again before she died,
    her granddaughter later visited them.

    Cetin describes how she and her grandmother would talk for hours,
    quickly changing the subject if anyone came into the room. There are
    some unforgettable details in this memoir, such as the way Cetin's
    grandmother, while speaking about the past, smoothed her hand over her
    skirt repeatedly "as if she were ironing her dress". Or the fact that
    the sweet, braided breads that her grandmother would offer guests was
    an Armenian tradition, almost like a secret code shared by neighbours
    or others with similar pasts. Or how she would say, almost chanting:
    "May those days go away and may they never return."

    This is a remarkable book. It contains all the fascinating details of
    a family history, with copies of photographs, letters and even one
    of her grandmother's recipes, while Cetin's simple, unsentimental
    style allows the story to speak for itself.

    "May she forgive us," Cetin cried at her funeral, almost like a plea
    on behalf of all Turkish Muslims to acknowledge their past. There
    is no doubt that this story of hardship passed through generations
    will have resonance among the estimated two million Turks who have
    at least one grandparent of Armenian extraction.

    Maureen Freely - who has also translated Orhan Pamuk - describes in
    the introduction how Cetin wanted the book simply to bear witness to
    the Armenian experience.

    Cetin avoids the controversies over figures and the exact number of
    dead or the politics of genocide recognition, which remain highly
    divisive topics in Turkey. Instead, she seeks a more personal
    truth. And perhaps it is only in stories like these - the tragic
    secret passed from grandmother to granddaughter - that real histories
    can begin to emerge.
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