My Grandmother Heranus
She tells of her grandmother, who was the Armenian Mrs. Heranus from the Habab village of the Palu district (then called Maden) of the eastern province of Elazig...
Heranus was forcibly taken away from her mother during the 1915 Armenian deportation. Her name was changed to "Seher," she was brought up as a Muslim girl, got married, had children and grandchildren.
She lived for 95 years without seeing her family, brothers and cousins, who lived in the United States, but never lost hope. She was born an Armenian and was buried after a Muslim ceremony.
Fethiye Cetin did not know for years that her grandmother was born an Armenian. It was after many years that she found out the meaning of the "you've taken after us" phrase.
It was after many years that Cetin understood the meaning of the tea breads offered during visits to friends' houses, and the advice that she should not be scared of cemeteries but of the living instead. And the fact that it is a family characteristic that the back of her head sweats...
Lawyer Fethiye Cetin tells of her grandmother in her book. But this life is the story of one of those "sword leftover" children. Tens of whom I know I, and thousands of whom I know exist.
Cetin explains the expression "sword leftover" on page 79 of her book." During another of our meetings, Hasan told me that people like me and my grandmother were called 'sword leftovers.' That people said, 'He's a sword leftover too,' when speaking of someone like us."
"I felt like my blood was freezing up. I had heard of this expression before. But it hurt so much to find out that this expression was being used so cool-bloodedly for people like my grandmother. My optimism, which was formed with memories of tea breads, turned into a pessimism."
"Seyfo" is the word Assyrians use to define the emigration which led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people. The meaning of "seyfo" is a "sword." It cannot be a coincidence that the same word "sword" has been chosen.
There could not be a distinction between Armenians and Assyrians at the time, while even today, the sectarian or even religious differences of non-Muslims cannot be known. For that reason, the emigration had included the Assyrian "giaours" as well as the Armenians.
Cetin also wrote in her book about how she found her relatives after her grandmother died. In the Armenian Agos newspaper published on February 11, 2000, she wrote her grandmother's real name in her obituary, her birthplace, the names of her parents and what she lived through. She wrote that she was looking for her relatives with the last name of "Gadaryan."
"We are hoping to find our relatives through this announcement. Those relatives that we could not find during her lifetime. We are hoping to share our pain and want those days to go away and never come back."
The announcement was taken up in a critical way by the "Harac" newspaper in France. Archbishop Mesrob Asciyan, who himself happened to be from the village of Habab and a relative of the Gadaryans, notified the family members.
That's how the two grandchildren began writing to each other. Cetin went to the United States and met her grandmother's sister and her own cousins. She visited the tombs of her great-grandparents. On the cover of her book is the photograph of the tombs of the parents of her grandmother.
One of the reasons this book is important is that it is one of the very few books told by someone that lived through the emigration.
Besides the fact that very few of those people who lived through the emigration are alive, the fact that they avoid talking about it leaves the issue in the dark. Also, the stories of those who talk about what they lived through was never published in Turkish until recently.
Others should also tell of and write about what they've been through... So that the wound is scratched open and the puss within is dripped out.... (YK/NM/EA/YE)
* My Grandmother, Fethiye Cetin. Metis Edebiyat Publishing House, 116 pages, 6 million 500 thousand Turkish liras (USD 4.5).