The story of my book “The Survivor” covered my entire being from the day I recognized people around me.
As I saw my grandmother’s quiet and lonely face, I understood that I had no grandfather, aunts or uncles. By the time I listened to fairy tales, I also learned the tragic story of my grandparents who were the victims of the Armenian Massacre of North West of Persia-Iran.
Although my parents never talked about the massacre to anyone, somehow I learned about it. I sometimes caught unfelt tears in the eyes of my mother and grandmother. I grasped words here and there. I tried to learn from the rare survivors who were more open to talk about the subject.
My father was a poet, author and teacher of the Armenian language.
Many times I asked him to write the story of my grandmother, but he never did. I was hoping that someone would write about this horrible massacre of the Armenians who lived in the North Western cities of Persia-Iran for centuries.
No one did.
But the story never faded in my mind.
What I Saw
I remember well, whenever I had a high fever I always saw scenes of the war on the walnut surface of our closet door. I saw children being pulled away from their parents, men and women being killed by cruel soldiers, and I cried for help.
Only the delicate hands of my grandmother, who was placing a cold, damp cloth on my forehead, tried to lower my fever. She reassured me that all was just a nightmare.
When I saw my mother getting old, approaching the end of her life, I also saw simultaneously a young orphan child watching the assassination of her father, living her life alone with a young mother without being loved and protected by a father.
My Time Ebbing
Then I saw my own years passing by with no justice done towards our family, especially to my grandmother and mother who had suffered so much because of the cruelty that was inflicted on them for no reason.
We all lived and survived bravely all the difficulties. But deep in our hearts, everyone suffered profoundly, and differently, in quiet.
The psychological effects of loss were always present in us, but we learned from our grandmother to continue our lives with a smile and by spreading love around us.
Only Silence
No one wrote or mentioned about the Armenian Massacre of North West of Iran. Even when they talked more about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, no one mentioned about so many victims just yards out of the Turkish borders.
One day, I realized that when I die the story of my grandmother and thousands of the victims of the massacres of the innocent Armenians of the cities of Khoy, Salmas, Makou, Rezaieh, and numerous surrounding villages will die with me.
All these years I waited for my father or others to write their story. But now I felt that God had given me the knowledge and all the possibilities and time to write it myself.
Once I started writing I was surprised to see how fast the words composed sentences.
The day I finished putting down the last word, I felt that a heavy load has been taken off my shoulders.
One More Obligation
As we did not have pictures of our family, I decided to paint 12 paintings, creating our family album for the first time.
During the painting I felt as if I had lived and seen the city of Khoy, and that I knew every one and witnessed all the horrors.
When “The Survivor” was presented in the Abril bookstore for a booksigning, my mother was only proud that her daughter was an author.
After Mr. Osheen Keshishian introduced me and talked about the book, I also introduced my mother who was present in the audience.
Mr. Keshishian asked her to say some words about her life.
Quickly Forgotten
My mother started talking to a large crowd about her memories for the first time. She was very excited. Weeks later, she told me that she was surprised at herself facing the public and talking about her past. In fact, she said she did not remember a single word of what she said.
As she was not very fluent in English to read the book, she asked more about its content. And I could see that she remembered more of the past events herself.
Drawing Closer
But whenever she came to our house, I could see her looking deeper and deeper at the paintings. She was happy that finally her childhood had been reconstructed.
Now she could see her father on the famous horse that her mother had talked about, but of course with no face.
In the paintings, some people do not have faces. We never saw them. We had no pictures of the victims to reconstruct their faces.
In my mind, all the individuals in the paintings were representing all the victims, men, women and the children who were killed during the Massacre of Iran in 1918 by Ottoman Turkish soldiers.
Horrid Memories Return
One day my mother who was looking at the painting, that shows the last minutes of her father’s existence, being dragged by the tail of a horse.
With a broken voice and in tears, she told me that “Finally, at the age of 80, I realize the reason that I was so much afraid of horses, donkeys and mules all my life.”
I looked at my mother’s wet eyes with sadness and again saw the little girl who was witnessing the assassination of her father quietly at the age of three.
I told her: “Mama, now you can accept when I tell you from the day I started writing the book that you were not two and a half but three years old. Your mother wanted to protect you by putting in your head that you were only two and a half. This way she told you that a very young child could not remember anything. Now you know you were three. I am very sure that you have registered more memories. I am sure you can remember more if you go back to that period.”
(To be continued in Monday’s edition)
Dr. Rosemary Hartounian Cohen, who lives in the Fairfax District, received her Ph.D in sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris. She lived in two other countries before moving, with her husband and children, to Los Angeles in 1984. She has published three books in America and is working on her fourth. Since 1985, she has operated Atelier de Paris, an international art business, on Robertson Boulevard. Her email address isRosemary@atelierdeparis.com
