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Armenian History Reinterpreted Serge Momjian's 'Memories Of The Past

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  • Armenian History Reinterpreted Serge Momjian's 'Memories Of The Past

    ARMENIAN HISTORY REINTERPRETED SERGE MOMJIAN'S 'MEMORIES OF THE PAST' AIMS TO PRESERVE HIS PEOPLE'S CULTURAL HERITAGE
    By Annie Slemrod
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    Daily Star
    http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=12 2070#axzz16zRYCrkY
    Dec 2 2010
    Lebanon

    BEIRUT: It isn't easy to narrate the story of a people that dates
    back over 2,000 years. This is what Serge Momjian has attempted to
    do, in a slim 190 pages, with "Memories of the Past." This mix of
    history and fiction sets out to inform the reader about Armenian
    history and culture within the frame of the story of one survivor of
    the Armenian genocide.

    The narrator and protagonist of "Memories" is Vartan Apelian, an
    older man who recounts his life story and that of the Armenians.

    During the Armenian genocide, young Vartan flees his hometown of Urfa
    (now Sanliurfa in Southeastern Anatolia) with his uncle Hovsep and
    lands in Cairo.

    He eventually finds himself in Michigan. While waiting tables and
    studying landscape architecture, Vartan begins visiting an Armenian
    cultural center and meets other members of the local Armenian
    community.

    Through an improbable series of coincidences, Vartan meets a man named
    Latif Odoglu, who turns out to have been a "military official who was
    responsible for carrying out the deportations and killings [in Urfa]."

    Vartan confronts Odoglu with stilted dialogue - "to deport and kill
    innocent people, that's bullshit" - and, within a few pages, Oduglu
    commits suicide by jumping out of his hotel window. Vartan is arrested,
    tried and acquitted of murder.

    At the book's conclusion, Vartan discovers that his mother is still
    alive and living in a Kurdish village in Eastern Turkey. After a
    short reunion, he returns to Michigan, stating with a curious lack
    of emotion, "You know, my mother is an old woman now, and while she
    feels she belongs there, I feel I belong here."

    According to press materials released by Austin & Macauley Publishers,
    Momjian is the author of three previous books, "Conflicting Motives"
    (1994) "The Invisible Line" (2000) and "The Singer of the Opera"
    (2004). These works largely appear to have passed beneath the radar
    of the English-language press.

    Nearly 100 years after it occurred, the Armenian genocide is still
    a controversial topic. Scholars and politicians tend to agree that
    between 1915 and 1916, at least hundreds of thousands of Armenians died
    during their deportation from Eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Turks.

    Estimates vary widely on exactly how many Armenians were murdered,
    or died from starvation or disease. The Turkish state puts the number
    at 300,000; the Armenian government and many scholars suggest the
    number is closer to 1.5 million.

    More than 20 countries have formally recognized the events as
    genocide, and in March 2010 the US House Foreign Affairs Committee
    voted to label the killings genocide. Turkey temporarily withdrew
    its ambassador from Washington in response.

    Turkey denies that what has been referred to as the "Great Calamity"
    was genocide. It claims there was no premeditated plan to eliminate
    the Ottoman Empire's Armenian community.

    In eliminating much of the Armenian population, the Ottomans
    effectively destroyed the personal histories and memories of families
    and entire towns.

    Momjian is bent on correcting this state of affairs.

    There are some problems with the book that emerge from his efforts.

    English-language readers will find Momjian's labor has not been well
    served by its sloppy copy-editing, which is credited to Austin &
    Macauley. But there are more essential difficulties here.

    Vartan catalogues aspects of Armenian history from their beginnings
    as documented by Herodotus, the formation of the Armenian language,
    and the gods worshipped by pre-Christian Armenians.

    The problem is that it is often difficult to discern whether Vartan's
    stories are myth or history, as he cites the stories of St. Gregory,
    the patron saint of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church and Vartan
    (the general and saint) as if historically verified truth.

    For the most part, Momjian has chosen to detail Armenian history
    via Socratic dialogues between Vartan and his wife, Alice, and their
    children, Kevork and Vera. These are long speeches, with his family
    members serving as Socratic-style yes-men.

    This is a bit problematic, as the reader does not know which aspects
    of Vartan's tales are fact, and which are fiction. Even history takes
    on a mythical quality and some of Vartan's statements about Armenian
    history are simply too simplistic to be believed by historically
    informed laymen, let alone professionals.

    When his son Kevork asks why the Armenians were driven out of Urfa,
    Vartan replies, "Because they wanted to take our land."

    The Armenian genocide was indeed part of a land grab by the Ottoman
    leadership, but the Young Turks also considered the Armenians to be a
    fifth column and a potential liability in a new "ethnically Turkish"
    state.

    There is nothing wrong with historical fiction. When resting on a
    bed of solid historical research, the genre can serve to make past
    periods and people come alive for the general reader in way that dry,
    inaccessible academic prose cannot.

    A major problem with the notion of historical fiction of the
    Armenian genocide (indeed, of Armenian history generally) is that
    hard documentary history of the events is left wanting - especially
    when compared to the exhaustive institutional and personal histories
    that have been generated about the other major group extermination
    effort of the 20th century, the Nazi Holocaust.

    Because European Jewry's horrendous collision with the 20th century
    is so well documented, fictive and fictionalized treatments of that
    experience have thrived in numerous popular media. From the Art
    Spiegelman's renowned graphic novel "Maus" to a range of Hollywood
    movies - somber bio-pics such as Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List"
    existing alongside ahistorical fantasies like Quentin Tarantino's
    "Inglourious Basterds."

    For various reasons, academic histories of Armenia and the Armenians
    during the Ottoman genocide are far more rare. Consequently, when
    artists have attempted to present work that leapfrogs documentary,
    the reception has been ambivalent. A good case in point is Atom
    Egoyan's 2002 film "Ararat."

    This masterful piece of cinema uses the complex of genocide
    recollection and representation as a means to examine stories of
    personal grief and, ultimately, peoples' need to inscribe meaning upon
    death and loss. Yet because it didn't treat the Armenian genocide for
    itself, it was not necessarily warmly received within the Armenian
    diaspora.

    "Memories" falls within this conundrum. Not quite historical fiction,
    it wants to be both history and fiction. Without any real evidence
    of the author's credentials or source materials, its authenticity is
    hard to take at face value.

    "Memories of the Past" is published by Austin & Macauley. It can be
    purchased online at Amazon.




    From: A. Papazian
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