march/7

Sunday, March 04, 2007
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THE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES
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The only way to make Armenian and Turkish friends is to agree with them. Dare to disagree with them and you run the risk of insulting either Turkishness or Armenishness – two terms that as far as I know no one has ever bothered to define perhaps because they are indefinable — unless of course they mean everything that is good, moral, just, right, humane, civilized, and in general, positive in life. Which would make both nations paragons of virtue and role models to the rest of mankind. And now, imagine if you can, a world inhabited only by Turks and Armenians. It would be hell on earth for critics and dissidents, and heaven on earth for yes-men and brownnosers, who on occasion like to engage in cannibalism. My guess is, after centuries of cohabitation and intermarriage (or is it interfornication?), the pureblooded Turk or Armenian is a figment of our imagination. So must be, by extension, the concepts of Turkishness and Armenishness.
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The more you learn, the more aware you become of what you don’t know. Only the ignorant brag about their knowledge.
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Gaston de Levis: “Of all sentiments, pride is the most difficult to fake.”
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Barbey D’Aurevills: “It is that which we don’t understand that we try to explain.”
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Paul Léautaud: “I believe in dictionaries.”
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Monday, March 05, 2007
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FROM MY DIARY
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For two years a best seller in the Arab world, the YACOUBIAN BUILDING by Alaa Al Aswany is now available in English. In a glowing review of this novel in the SPECTATOR I read that the building of the title is named after Hagop Yacoubian, “an Egyptian millionaire and doyen of Cairo’s Armenian community.” The building itself is described as “a ten-storey block of apartments in Suleiman Basha Street.” I would like to hear from anyone who may know more about this fellow countryman.
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To policeman, lawyers, and judges, the word murder does not have the same meaning as it does to the victims’ family. Something similar could be said of our Turcocentric pundits and the word genocide. In their writing the word is depersonalized and despoiled of its original meaning. It is almost as if our pundits were collaborating with denialists by minimizing the seriousness of the charge.
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To be effectively brainwashed means to be totally unaware of the fact.
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Paul Valéry: “A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.” I think of Gertrude Stein in her old age looking like Picasso’s portrait of her in her younger days; and of Marlon Brando studying Renaissance paintings for expressions and body postures.
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Victor Hugo: “Some people have libraries the way eunuchs have harems.”
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Tuesday, March 06, 2007
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BETTE’S COMPLAINT,
AMONG OTHER THINGS
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When two readers insulted me, a third moved in for the kill by saying: “If one man calls you an ass, you may ignore him. But if two men call you an ass, buy a saddle.” And I couldn’t help thinking: Behold a self-satisfied ass and compulsive liar who pretends to enjoy universal popularity just because his mother loves him.
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A good slogan that speaks to the gut is a hundred times more effective that a thousand irrefutable arguments that speak to the brain.
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One of Philip Larkin’s lines reads, “groping back to bed after a piss.” Now, that’s what I call real poetry. As for “the eternal snows of Mount Ararat,” Turks can have it.
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In the same way that bad things happen to good people, bad people happen to good ideas. The nobler the idea or ideology or belief system, the more repulsive perverts it will attract – from Christianity and the Inquisition to Marxism and Stalin.
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Denis Diderot: “You may ask me to search for the truth, but not to find it.”
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Bette Davis in her old age as quoted in Penelope Mortimer’s memoirs: “I haven’t had a f*** in ten years.”
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Wednesday, March 07, 2007
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ON ARMENIAN SELF-ESTEEM,
AMONG OTHER THINGS
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If he is a loudmouth imbecile and enjoys throwing his weight around, he must be an Armenian. Please note that I am talking about myself now, or rather, the way I am perceived by some of my readers who invariably ascribe my failings to my identity as an Armenian. The implication being, had I been a Patagonian or Hottentot, I would have none of these defects. So much for Armenian self-esteem…
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I once met a patriotic Armenian whose only source of wisdom was popular Turkish sayings. Which reminds me of Zarian’s observation, “even their filth is picked up from alien gutters.”
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In an undemocratic or pseudo-democratic state or community, the people are like fish in a tank: they think they are free because they can’t see the walls. Freedom, real freedom, is not to do this, that, or the other. Freedom means participation in power.
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Balzac: “There are two kinds of fools: speaking fools, and silent fools. The silent are more tolerable.”
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George Braque: “Truth exists. One can invent only lies.”