DER ZOR DIARY: A PILGRIMAGE TO THE KILLING FIELDS OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By Lucine Kasbarian
Online Journal
Sept 10 2010
“My heart is like shattered homes and broken pillars thrown asunder .
. . Wild birds will nest in our ruins . . . Let me throw myself into
the water and be food for the fish’s babies . . . White waves lap
upon the black sea about us and do not mix . . . In this melancholic,
bewildered state, what can my darkened heart do?”
— Lyrics translated by Armen Babamian from “Homeless” (Andouni),
composed by Gomidas Vartabed in honor of Armenians broken and exiled
by the Genocide
Why would I seek out the Der Zor desert — the most infamous of the
killings fields in the premeditated extermination of the Armenian
people carried out by the Turkish government beginning in 1915?
Most of my extended kin did not survive the darkest period in
our people’s history: 1915 to 1923. My four grandparents survived
the ordeals but lost virtually everyone else, or, in some cases,
their entire clan. All but one grandparent lost their spouses, yet
managed to remarry and raise second families in the United States. My
parents, born and raised in the safety of America, were products of
those second marriages. My brother and I followed, brought up in
a home where Armenian was spoken almost exclusively. Recognizing
the value of what had been lost, our three generations vigilantly
practiced Armenian customs passed down from our ancestors. In exile,
we retained a love for the natural beauty of our ancient native land
of Western Armenia, and longed for that land, even as it lay within
the borders of present-day Turkey.
How could I let our departed ancestors know that they had not been
forgotten and were, in fact, with us in spirit every day? How could
I feel closer to them and identify with what they had gone through as
they were driven — barefoot and stripped naked, starving and fearful
— along wild mountain ranges, all the way to a desolate place where,
if they were still breathing, the Turks intended them to die agonizing
deaths? How could I let my forebears know that — as I recalled those
Armenians whose tongues and teeth were torn out and feet cut off —
that we, the grandchildren of survivors, 95 years later, freely and
mindfully used our tongues to speak our native language, our voices
to sing the folk songs of our elders, and our feet to perform the
dances of our native villages? How could I let our ancestors know
that the Armenian soul and our dreams of liberty, even in exile,
did not die with them?
When I learned that a pilgrimage was being organized to visit the site,
formerly in the Ottoman Turkish Empire, where caravans of Armenians
were driven to oblivion, a voice inside said that it was time for
me to walk in the footsteps of those who perished in or miraculously
survived what is now the northern Syrian desert of Der Zor. So I joined
other Armenian Americans, led by Vicar General Anoushavan Tanielian
and Deacon Shant Kazanjian of the Armenian Prelacy in New York to
visit people and places in Lebanon and Syria that were spiritually,
historically, and culturally significant to the Armenian nation.
Cellular memory
As we were landing at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri Airport, the clusters
of beige stone houses rising out of the hillsides reminded me of our
Western Armenian towns such as Kharpert — less than 650 kilometers
away in eastern Turkey — before their destruction. These Lebanese
hill dwellings transported me to a place that before this voyage had
existed for me only in historical photographs of Western Armenia and
in the recesses of my mind.
What exactly is Western Armenia? Armenia can be thought of as having
two parts: the eastern part, represented today by the Republic of
Armenia and Artsakh/Karabakh; and Western Armenia, consisting of
the eastern portion of Turkey as well as the northwest corner of the
Mediterranean (known as Cilician Armenia), also occupied by Turkey.
During the Genocide, Turkey liquidated the Armenians of Western
Armenia and attempted to do the same to the Republic of Armenia. The
descendants of the survivors of the Genocide are often referred to as
“Western Armenians.” Most live in diasporan Armenian communities,
though large numbers of them also reside in the Republic of Armenia.
As we journeyed about Lebanon to Armenian neighborhoods, community
centers and churches, all of which retained a distinct Armenian
character despite the passage of time, we seemed to be traveling
in a virtual labyrinth, spiraling inward, closer and closer to Der
Zor. We were not only homing in on where the unspeakable occurred. In
visiting vibrant Armenian communities along the way, some of them
settlements that existed long before the trials of Der Zor, we
were also drawing closer to the native lands of the Armenians —
and my body instinctively knew it. It was as if everything about
these territories — particularly later in Syria — had been seen,
touched, tasted and lived on by the ancient lifeblood within me.
Inside the Cilicia Museum in Antelias — a district of Beirut — we saw
rare clerical vestments, chalices, relics and documents rescued from
churches in Western Armenia. Most of these treasures were brought
to Lebanon through great personal sacrifices and under difficult
circumstances during and after the Genocide. These treasures —
including meticulously embroidered burgundy velvet vestments and
carnelian, garnet and ruby-encrusted relics — seemed to embody
a style that I had long embraced as my own. These engraved silver
belts, crosses and prized possessions revealed a decorative flair,
refinement, craftsmanship and love of animals and nature that I had
always instinctively sensed as being “Armenian.” The timeless style
of these treasures spoke to my tastes. It occurred to me that these
designs were not just my personal preferences but emblematic of a
national character belonging to our people and somehow genetically
ingrained in me.
The Armenian essence: Bourj Hammoud and Anjar
In such surroundings, I did what came naturally — speaking with my
fellow travelers, as well as Armenians we met, almost exclusively
in the Western Armenian dialect. It was our mother tongue and common
language, even if speaking it is becoming less frequent in America’s
melting pot.
As we rode along in our travels, I was entertained by Aroussiak,
a woman who, as situations arose, recalled just the right, hilarious
Armenian proverb. And in the seat ahead sat Azadouhi, whose family,
like part of mine, hailed from Dikranagerd, Armenia — today’s
Diyarbakir, Turkey. She knew of my interest in the endangered
Dikranagerd dialect, and would feed me remarks and phrases from it
each time she saw something on the road for which she knew the term.
As much as the pilgrimage was a solemn voyage for me, moments
like these, when the flames of our language and culture rose tall,
gave cause for joy and celebration. Before I knew it, surrounded
by majestic mountains leading to the magnificent Jeita Grottoes of
Lebanon, the Vicar and I were singing Lerner Hayreni (Mountains of
my Fatherland), an Armenian song of exile. Again and again, I stood
up in the aisles of the bus, craning my neck to see more and more of
the terrain. The lands were unmistakably calling out to me, saying,
“We are approaching where you come from.”
Our group spent an afternoon in Bourj Hammoud, a suburb of Beirut with
a sizable Armenian population. In the years following the Genocide,
survivors from Der Zor who plod into Lebanon were permitted to build
shacks in what was then swampland.
Today, Bourj Hammoud is one of the most densely populated districts in
the Middle East. It teems with barbers, cobblers, and sellers of food,
clothing, music, books and souvenirs — nearly all of them Armenians.
Here we found Armenian churches, compatriotic, athletic and cultural
organizations, meeting halls, and the offices of local Armenian
newspapers and radio stations. During the Lebanese Civil War, the
Armenian community remained neutral. As a result, parts of Bourj
Hammoud — now mostly repaired — endured repeated shelling by those
who resented that neutrality.
For those who live in “BH,” as it is known for short, it is natural to
hear the Armenian language spoken in the streets and Armenian music
playing outside. For Armenians visiting from anywhere except Armenia
(or, perhaps, Glendale, California), it’s an astonishing experience.
Storefront signs appear in Arabic, Armenian, and English or French.
Streets are named for cities in Western Armenia such as Adana,
Marash and Sis. Perhaps most amusing to an outsider are the scads of
identically dressed young Armenian men in their designer t-shirts,
jeans, dark sunglasses and five-o’clock-shadows, weaving through
thick traffic on their motorbikes.
Upon entering the Bekaa Valley, 50 kilometers northeast of Beirut,
a sign overhead announced, “Welcome to Anjar” in Arabic, Armenian
and English. Anjar is populated by descendants of the Armenians of
the Mediterranean region of Musa Dagh (now In Turkey) who outlasted
murderous assaults by the Turkish army in 1915. The Armenian defense
stand became a global symbol of resistance memorialized by author
Franz Werfel in his renowned “Forty Days of Musa Dagh.” In 1939,
Anjar was gifted to Armenians rescued from Musa Dagh and enabled
them to begin their lives anew. As our group was introduced to the
Anjar community that today clings tenaciously to its proud history
and identity, I was overwhelmed that an endangered piece of Western
Armenia — Musa Dagh — had been, in a very real sense, relocated and
preserved here. During a conversation with the remarkable Reverend
Father Ashod Karakashian, I revealed my sorrow about our Armenian
condition. His response was inspiring: “The heroes of Sassoun [another
Armenian region that endured Turkish assaults] were outnumbered and
fought off marauding Turks through their absolute will to survive
and live on their native soil in dignity. Where would we be if these
Armenians had given up at the first sign of duress?”
Haleb
As our tour bus ambled along a highway en route to Aleppo, I recognized
the tree before me: the slender perennial that is depicted in paintings
that hang in Armenian homes throughout the world. In these paintings,
two of these trees grow upright in the foreground of the twin peaks
of Mt. Ararat — the universal symbol of Armenia, even if the mountain
today happens to be within the boundaries of Turkey.
This tree is the Mediterranean Cypress, planted centuries ago by
conquering Romans extending their empire. I could not help but conjure
Armenia in my mind upon seeing thousands of these trees in our travels.
The northwestern Syrian city of “Haleb,” as Armenians call Aleppo.
There was something unmistakably familiar about the northwestern
Syrian city of “Haleb,” as Armenians call Aleppo: The dense and
vibrant Armenian-speaking neighborhoods; the Armenian churches
constructed in our traditional architectural style; the narrow,
winding, cavernous cobblestone streets; structural motifs that were
decidedly “Orientalist;” stone houses that were at once ancient and
environmentally conscious; the arid climate; the fruit, nut and olive
orchards; the camels, donkeys and bazaar merchants — all these things
had an air of familiarity. The absence of over-industrialization
which allowed the natural beauty of the terrain to shine through and
the lack of blatant consumerism and pop culture were just a few more
reasons why Haleb in particular seemed much more native to me than
New Jersey or Boston do.
And it’s no wonder. The very first Armenian presence in Haleb dates
back to the 1st century b.c., when Armenia’s King Dikran I subjugated
Syria and chose Antioch (later a chief center of early Christianity)
as one of his four capital cities. After 301 a.d., when Christianity
became the official state religion of Armenia, Haleb developed into an
important center for Armenian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. And
in the 12th century, when the boundaries of the Armenian Kingdom
of Cilicia were not far from Haleb, Armenian families and merchants
settled there in large numbers and established their own businesses,
residences, schools and churches. I was, in a very literal sense,
hitting close to home.
My eyes grew wide as we were led into the center of the Old City to
one of the oldest and largest castles in the world: the extraordinary,
towering Citadel of Aleppo. As it turns out, stone inscriptions in
this medieval fortified palace tell us in Greek that Armenia’s King
Dikran captured it when he took Haleb.
It was often the case that when people heard someone in our group
speaking Armenian they would approach us to simply say welcome. This
time, it was a tourist from Barcelona inside the Citadel who had come
to visit his Syrian relatives. Recognizing our vernacular, he wanted us
to know how proud he was that his grandfather had hidden and protected
Armenians during the Genocide. As we expressed our gratitude for his
grandfather’s righteous deeds, he posed for a photo with members of
our group.
It is said that some of the underground passageways built under the
gigantic moat surrounding the Citadel lead to the 40 Martyrs Armenian
Cathedral more than a kilometer away. It was upon visiting this
hauntingly beautiful 15th century Cathedral that I witnessed a most
inspiring scene. During the Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Church,
it is customary for the Nicene Creed, also known as “Havadamk,” or
“We believe,” to be recited as an Armenian declaration of belief
in Christ’s single nature with human and divine attributes. Here in
the Cathedral, hundreds of worshipers attending mass at the height
of summer joined the clergy to recite — in Armenian, of course —
this credo in perfect, melodic unison. Chills went down my arms as
I remained mute to appreciate the sacred feeling of communal and
spiritual oneness that permeated the room. Thus did the echoes of
Armenia continue to embrace us.
Kessab
The Armenian presence in the Kessab region of Syria (about 100
kilometers west of Haleb) predates Christ. Here in Kessab’s village of
Kaladouran, the air, the soil, the foliage, the homes, the people and
their traditions are Armenian to the core. The Armenians of Kessab,
a coniferous forested region that faces the Mediterranean Sea, had
endured centuries of persecutions and Turkish attacks. Those unable to
resist were death-marched to Der Zor in 1915. In the post WW 1 era,
Kessab endured further attacks from Turkey. In 1939, Turkey unjustly
annexed part of Kessab’s Cassius Mountain range. This included the
Barlum Armenian Monastery, farms, fields, properties, laurel tree
forests and grazing lands that belonged to the native Armenians.
Locals say that in the annexation Turkey managed to capture enough land
to ensure that it possessed the pristine, sandy beaches surrounding
the Kessab region and not the rocky ones, which were left to Syria.
It was only through the efforts and perseverance of the Armenian
Catholic Patriarch of Cilicia Cardinal Krikor Aghajanian and Remi
Leprert, the Papal representative in Syria and Lebanon, that Kessab
remained under Syrian jurisdiction. From Kessab, Turkey is a mere
3 kilometers to the north, and Musa Dagh 50 kilometers further. A
bright spot in the annals of Armenian history is that a vibrant,
Western Armenian way of life, and Kessab’s unique Armenian dialect,
still thrive in this coastal town and surrounding villages. Let us
rejoice that Armenians freely live and prosper in a remnant of the
majestic lands of the Armenian Cilician Kingdom.
Seeing magnificent Kessab again was a homecoming. Twenty years ago
as a college graduation present, I was permitted to come to Kessab
to rebuild the then nearly vanished Sourp Stepanos chapel with the
organization named Yergir yev Mushagouyt (Land and Culture). Today,
as I stepped out of our group’s van, entered the finished sanctuary
and marveled at its rustic beauty, I knelt down, prayed, and then
kissed the beams of the chapel, grateful to witness a miracle:
a restored piece of Western Armenia that others and I had in some
small way helped to make a reality.
And yet, in a moment of grief, I lamented aloud the burdens we
Armenians bear. A resolute voice among us, Reverend Father Datev
Mikaelian of Aleppo, again brought reassurance: “Gather your strength
by looking at Kessab’s mountains and breathing deeply. Think of all
our compatriots who resisted, sacrificed their lives, and are buried
under these mountains. We cannot falter.”
Der Zor: The killing fields
As we circled closer and closer to Der Zor, and with each community we
visited, we went deeper and deeper into the Armenian consciousness. In
mid-August, we reached the epicenter — to which countless thousands
of uprooted Armenians had been driven to their deaths.
The killing fields.
I stood on Der Zor’s blanched desert sands with nothing visible
around us. Every fact and figure I had read, learned and memorized
about the Armenian Genocide seemed to vanish. I could think only of
the bleakness, the barrenness, the blinding sun and searing heat of
August — and how sentient beings had been deliberately herded to
this inferno of nothingness to suffer and expire.
As I stood apart from the group, the atmosphere held a transcendent
significance. We had been given the rare opportunity to viscerally
sense the thirst, hunger and agony that our martyrs and survivors
had endured. The reverence I had for the tormented souls who had
their final release here left me oblivious to physical discomforts
in the present. In fact, we arrived just two days shy of the 95th
year of British statesman Viscount Bryce’s reporting that caravans
of Armenians started to arrive in Der Zor.
Many voyagers in the modern day have scratched and sifted the surface
of Der Zor and found the skulls and bones of the murdered Armenians.
Today, the land is still bare and unoccupied on the surface, and
misery seems to cling to the dry, hot air. I thought about how the
beaten bodies of our ancestors found eternal respite here, even if
their spirits did not. I stared at the sand and, through my tears,
quietly sang “Hahnk-jeh-tsek,” or “May You Rest,” an Armenian repose
of the souls. Turkey continues to claim that it had merely “relocated”
Armenians to Der Zor. Yet who could survive in this abysmal place?
Relocation meant death, just as Turkey intended. Before we scrambled
back on the bus, I collected sand and tumbleweed so that my
contemporaries back in America could recall Der Zor in a tangible way.
Ghosts of the Euphrates
Several kilometers from the Der Zor desert, our group gathered on
a suspension bridge over the Euphrates River where many Armenians
had met their end. A dozen or so local Syrian boys seemingly seeking
amusement and relief from the heat had perched themselves about 25
meters above the water, on the rails and cables of the bridge. As
we ceremoniously tossed flowers into the Euphrates, these boys
began to jump into the river. Their acts recalled for many of us
the Armenian girls and women who, during the Genocide, committed
suicide by flinging themselves into these very waters to avoid rape
and abduction by Turks. Remembering this and seeing the boys jump,
I could barely get the words out as the Vicar led our group in song:
Gooys aghcheegner (Armenian virgins) Eeraroo tzerk purnetzeen (holding
each others’ hands) Eerenk, zeerenk (as they in unison) Yeprad Kedn
nedetzeen (threw themselves into the Euphrates)
Could these local boys, the eldest of whom were just teenagers,
have known the significance of what they were doing? Or was it just
a coincidence? To their families and the local authorities’ great
regret, several youths had in recent years died from making such
colossal leaps. Were these feats somehow intended to honor our dead
or were they just youthful bravado? I was too unsettled by what we
were witnessing at the time to ask more than a handful of people,
who did not know.
To somehow mitigate my heartache over what I had seen, I walked further
along the bridge, my arms clinging to my torso for solace. As I leaned
over to peer through my tears at the river below, some postcards of
rescued Armenian treasures from Cilicia fell from my diary and sailed
down the Euphrates. At the time, I felt I had unwittingly littered
the River. But later, it occurred to me that the postcards may have
had a mind of their own and sought to trail after and comfort the
souls who had not been saved.
There is a saying that the Euphrates looks clear and bright to everyone
but Armenians who, when they gaze upon it, see only murky greens and
browns. As an Armenian who has now been there, I can vouch for that
saying. Even so, I suppose I should feel grateful that the Euphrates
did not appear to run red from the blood of murdered innocents flung
there during our ordeals.
Bones at the Der Zor Memorial Museum.
It was only much later that my thoughts turned to personal connections
to Der Zor: as a young girl my maternal grandmother Armaveni buried
her own mother in those sands. And my paternal grandmother Lucia
helplessly watched her two infant daughters perish in this wasteland.
In the days that followed our pilgrimage, I gradually collected my
thoughts about all we had seen. I recognized that the Armenia of our
ancestors was present all around us in the Levant. Two of the regions
we visited in Syria — Kessab and Haleb — are long established,
ancient Armenian communities. Lebanon’s Anjar and Bourj Hammoud are
communities established in the early 20th century, though there have
been Armenians who have lived in those regions for centuries.
On the deepest level, puzzle pieces of a dismantled Western Armenia
were staring back at us: In Anjar, I found the soul: the Armenian
struggle for survival and dignity. In Haleb and Bourj Hammoud, I
found the spirit: the lively, vibrant Armenian community. In Kessab,
I found the body: Our homelands. And in Der Zor, I found the core:
The tormented remains of our ancestors.
Faith and renewal
Many pilgrimage sites contain shrines where miracles are said to have
occurred. If someone asked me what miracles I observed, I would first
say that it is nothing short of a miracle that any Armenian survived
the death marches into Der Zor. The second miracle was the existence
of Armenian outposts in Lebanon and Syria where the Western Armenian
culture, practically extinguished, persists. Bearing witness inspired
me to rededicate myself to the Armenian struggle for justice. And it is
my hope that by 2015 — the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
— every Armenian who has not yet gone will make the pilgrimage to
Der Zor.
We pilgrims owe a debt of gratitude to the people of Lebanon and Syria,
who welcomed us this summer. Their governments were notified of and
approved our pilgrimage. They permitted us to freely travel to sacred
Christian sites and to worship and commemorate as we chose. We had
full access to our own churches and community centers, which are in
Armenian possession. These same nations took in refugee Armenians at
the time of the Genocide, 95 years ago. Then, our exiles were permitted
many rights that had been denied to them in their own native lands:
to safely identify themselves as Armenians, freely speak their native
language, practice their customs, honor their dead, earn a living,
and build homes, schools and churches.
Counterfeit pilgrimage
What can we expect now that Turkey has organized an alleged pilgrimage
for Armenians around the world, to occur on September 19? A one-day
religious service will be permitted at the newly renovated 10th
century Armenian Holy Cross Church on Aghtamar Island in the Van
region of present-day Turkey.
To promote its image of being tolerant of its minorities, Turkey
has recently reopened this church as an income-generating secular
museum and tourist attraction. As evidence of its alleged intention
to “reconcile” with its genocidal past, and instead of providing
restorative justice, Turkey has made known that Armenians must, in
effect, pay for visitation rights to Aghtamar’s appropriated church
on appropriated land.
The exquisite Holy Cross Church, studded with bas-relief sculptures
of biblical scenes, was confiscated when Van was emptied of its
Armenians during the Genocide. In the years that followed, the Church’s
exterior became riddled with bullet holes made by local gun-toting
Turks. Left to rot, Holy Cross had somehow escaped total eradication
or conversion to mosques or animal stables like most other Armenian
churches in Turkey.
Van was, at one time, the capital of Armenia. The Holy Cross Church
was the seat of an Armenian Patriarchate from the 12th to the 19th
centuries. As the Der Zor Memorial Museum states, “In 1915, the
province of Van had 197,000 Armenian inhabitants, 33 monasteries, 75
churches, and 192 schools. The city of Van alone had 32,000 Armenian
inhabitants and 8 churches.”
Unlike our recent pilgrimage to Der Zor and the Armenian churches
along the way, this “pilgrimage” the Turks arranged for the Armenians
to our captive Aghtamar insults the entire Armenian nation, not just
those Armenians that Turkey itself victimized and dispossessed.
In the wake of Der Zor and our dreams for Western Armenia, perhaps
Vicar Tanielian summarized the rebirth and mission of the Armenian
people best in one of his sermons: “As with the death of Jesus
Christ, the lands and the people of Armenia were lost to us. They
each suffered, were crucified and buried. But in the end, Christ and
Armenia were both resurrected.”
And so our struggle continues.
Lerner Hayreni (Mountains of my Fatherland)
Oh, how I have longed for you, Proud mountains of Armenia, Upon your
bosoms I have run and grown tired, My mountains, mountains, mountains
of my fatherland.
>>From your peaks, clouds could have slid Like sheep descending into
a valley.
Now I wish to be in your midst.
To again embrace you, mountains of my fatherland.
Emerald mountains, I left my heart with you.
And instead took with me the fragrance of your rose.
In my veins is the strength of the mother soil, My mountains,
mountains, mountains of my fatherland.
— Music by A. Mirankoulian. Lyrics by V. Aramouni
Lucine Kasbarian is a second-generation American-born Armenian writer
and political cartoonist. She is the author of “Armenia: A Rugged
Land, an Enduring People (Dillon Press/Simon & Schuster). An Armenian
folk tale, retold by her, will debut in 2011 by Marshall Cavendish
publishers. To read more about Lucine’s trips to Lebanon and Syria,
visit: Armenian American Pilgrims Pay Homage in Lebanon, Syria and
Der Zor and The Lure of the Levant.
From: A. Papazian
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6307.shtml