THE ARMENIAN-SPEAKING MUSLIMS OF HAMSHEN: WHO ARE THEY? (PART 4)
By Vahan Ishkhanyan
Hetq.am
March 20, 2012
(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 )
Hamshesnak: The Hamshen Armenian Dialect
– How do you say ‘bat’ in Armenian? Harun
asks in Turkish
– Chghtchik, Khachik answers, and you?
– We say mashkatev
– Interesting, mashk (skin) and tev (arm), I say.
Harun is surprised. The word mashk is no longer used in the Hamshen
dialect, only appearing in the word for “bat”.
Due to Anahit’s condition of being yerkutak (Armenian for “two-folded”)
we caught on that the Hamshen version of pregnant is ergutak. Cemil
and Harun call their language Hamshesnak or Homshesnak. Homshetsma
is the accepted form in most academic research.
As I listen to the Hamshen dialect, I can’t understand a thing.
It’s a foreign language to me. I had the same experience in
Abkhazia. There, however, the Hamshen Armenians also knew literary
Armenian. When I went in 2004, there were 38 Armenian schools. You
could converse with people without the need of a translator’ as if you
were talking to someone from Armenia. The Hamshens of Krasnodar don’t
know literary Armenian, but you can converse with them in Russian. In
Hopa, you’ll need a translator. After my ten day visit I was sure I
could grasp the basics of the dialect if I stayed for a full month
and interacted with the Hopa-Hamshens.
The day when girls didn’t go to school is over. These BaÅ~_oba 13
year-olds have already decided what they want to be. Betul Karagyoz
wants to teach Englsih and Aybin Jaaogli wants to be a paediatrics
doctor. BaÅ~_oba School: Children are not allowed to speak Hamshesnak
When I really pay attention, I can make out Armenian words and
gradually get a feel for the flow of the dialect. With some difficulty,
I can even understand a sentence or two
For example: birthday – dzin or, moon – lousinka, stove – pechku,
star – astakh, there is – go, it’s blowing – pcha gou, they took it
– darin, in front of – arshin, tomorrow – kam or, village – kyagh,
he’s not a man – mart cha, seashore – dziap, forest – tsakh, where
are you coming from? – ousti goukas or ousten goukas? where are you
going? – nor gertas?, center – ag, God gives us rain most of all –
menashade asdvadz chakh gouda mez, I am looking – pout genim, good –
soy, headscarf – yazma, how are you? – soyes ta?
In Yerevan, they also conversationally use the term outoush-khmoush
for eating-drinking. I had heard the word outoush used in the Hamshen
dialect once or twice and it turns out that the “el” suffix of a
predicate is “oush” in the Hamshen dialect – porel/poroush (to dig),
yergel/gonchoush or ganchoush (to sing), sovorel/gartoush (to learn)
and the imperative form of to sing is gonchi.
Ajaryan in his “Study of the Hamshen Dialect” writes that before an
“m” or “n”, the letter “a” becomes an “o”. “This is so widespread
that it also impacts Turkish words. Tavan>tavo (scythe)[1]
As a child, my parents would often travel to the village of Loo
near Sochi for the summers. The village was 80% Hamshen. I didn’t
understand a thing. My father would tell me that if I listened hard
I would learn. For example, I would ask him what does “eshtom Lo gom”
mean? It means, “I’ll go to Lo and come back”.
The “a” turns to “o” in both cases.
BaÅ~_oba School
But the “a” doesn’t always become an “o”. They call a boy manch in
Hopa villages but monch in KemalpaÅ~_a.
Ajaryan’s research only dealt with the dialect of the Christian
Hamshen. In the preface he writes that the first study was conducted
in Trebizond in 1910 and in Gagra, during the Soviet period.
Sergey Vardanyan has complemented Ajaryan by studying the dialect
of the Hopa-Hamshen. In his work Kronapokh hamshenahayeri barbaru,
banahuysutyunu yev yergarvestu, (“The dialect, folklore and music
culture of the Hamshen religious converts”), Vardanyan writes there
are two branches of the Muslim Hamshen’s dialect based on the valley
of residence: Hopa Valley residents or Ardeletsi, i.e.
residents of villages around Ardala (EÅ~_mekaya), and KemalpaÅ~_a
Valley residents or Turtsevantsi, i.e. ‘outsiders’ (probablyturs +
avants’i’out-of-towner’).
Here are a few examples noted by Vardanyan in his research:
ankoghin/bargeldagh (bed) – Tatradz eni, medan bardeldaghe ou koun
aghan (They were tired, went to bed and slept)
vorsord/avji (hunter); napastak/daoushon (rabbit) – Avjin daoushon
tsvonets (The hunter killed the rabbit)
kourtzk/dzidz (breast) – Govoun dzidze gatov liktsadz er (The cow’s
breast was full of milk)
voghnashar/bochkelokh (spine) – Bochkelokhe charevadz a (The spine
was broken)K
koghm/semt (side) – Vor semtnious kenats? An semte (In what direction
did he go? In that direction)
tzayr/dzay, jot (edge, end) – Chvonin dzaye (jote) dou indzi (Give
me the end of the rope)
tcharp/yagh (fat, lard) – Adzoun yaghove gajerin mesadzin lerte
(They rub the sick man’s back with fat)[2]:
Mothers Pass the Hamshesnak Language
BaÅ~_oba School teachers
At Cemal Vayic’s home in Kayaköy, all present said that they
didn’t know Turkish before entering school. In fact, no one over
thirty understood Turkish before the age of seven; they only spoke
Hamshesnak. They learnt it in school. There are women 70 years and
older who still only speak Hamshesnak. They do not know Turkish and
have no need of it. These seniors never went beyond the bounds of
their village communities, never interacted with the world beyond.
Men, on the other hand, had to learn Turkish for employment purposes.
Harun says that a policy to assimilate the Hopa-Hamshens started in
the 1980s. School teachers are Turks, but there are always one or
two locals as well. These Hamshen teachers are instructed to go out
into the Hamshen villages and tell people that they must renounce
“that language of theirs” in favor of Turkish. The argument used is
that Hamshesnak holds the people back and prevents them from receiving
an adequate education.
“I clearly remember one of the teachers kneeling down and explaining to
me that I must learn Turkish because it’s the language used in school,”
says Harun, “They also put pressure on the families, telling parents to
teach Turkish to the children at home and not to speak Hamshesnak. My
father was quite a severe guy and he would use scare tactics in order
that I not speak Hamshesnak.
Nevertheless, my dad continued to speak it at home because he knew
it was the language I knew best. He still demanded that I only speak
Turkish.”
“And your mother?” I ask.
“She never pressured me to speak Turkish.”
In Ozcan Alper’s first film, Momi (Grandma), the old woman teaches
her son to count in the Hamshen language. At the Golden Apricot film
festival in Yerevan, Alper told me during an interview that he too
didn’t know Turkish before entering school and learnt Hamshesnak mostly
from his grandmother, who hardly knew Turkish. In his second film,
Autumn, Yusuf, the main protagonist, speaks Hamshesnak with his mother.
Harun Aksu: “There was never any pressure from my mother Director
Ozcan Alper at the 2011 Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan
(Photo: Inna Mkhitaryan)
Hovann Simonian writes that the mothers are the ones who basically
pass down the Hamshen language.[3]
Slowly, the use of Hamshesnak gave way to Turkish. Now, it’s rare to
find preschoolers who don’t already know Turkish. They say there is
one person left who still doesn’t know Turkish. A boy in Adapazarı
went deaf at the age of ten and never learnt the language.
A young man working at Hotel Heyamo says he mostly speaks Hamshesnak
with his mom and grandma; so as to appease their feelings.
“TV also played a play role in spreading Turkish,” says Harun,
“In the 1980s everyone had a TV and the language entered our homes.”
In Turkey, it is forbidden to speak a language other than Turkish.
On the one hand, education and modernization is pulling the Hamshens
down from the mountains onto the road of assimilation. On the flip
side, a new world is opening up to them in the process and they are
starting to search for their roots.
The school in BaÅ~_oba opened in 1952 and education became mandatory.
So what were people doing before that?
Kadir Aksu: “Let me make it short and simple. We aren’t people who
would deny our roots”
“They weren’t learning,” says 60 year-old Kadir Aksu who has served as
the school’s principal for forty years. “There are still old folk who
can’t read the modern Turkish alphabet and just know a smattering of
Ottoman Turkish (Arabic script). When Ataturk changed the lettering,
they started to build schools in the cities, but the villages remained
without.”
Village children weren’t taken to the schools in the towns.
Nobody had the financial means to give their kids an education.
Everyone was poor.
When Kadir was a youngster, school was for five years. One had to
go to the charshi (market/city) at a middle school. In Kadir’s case,
he left in the middle of the five years and relocated to Arhavi where
he completed high school.
Today, there’s a kindergarten and a nine grade school in the village
of BaÅ~_oba. The school has one hundred pupils and is famous for its
academic achievements. To get a high school diploma, students have
to go to Hopa.
“Are all the pupils Hamshentsi?” Even before my question could be
translated, the female pupil waitress nodded her head in agreement. So
she understood my Armenian. Only two of the twenty-six teachers
are Hamshentsi.
It is forbidden to speak Hamshesnak in the school.
“We don’t let them speak it. Besides, the other teachers don’t
understand the language,” says Kadir Aksu.
“And if you see anyone speaking it? Will you tell them to stop?
“That’s the law. But, hey, we aren’t dictators going around shutting
people up.”
“In class, are the pupils told they are Hamshentsi?”
“We don’t teach them about such things. However, if a pupil asks ‘where
do we come from?’ as an educator I am obliged to enlighten them.”
“So what do you tell them?”
“We tell them something in a convincing manner.”
“Who are the Hamshens in your opinion?”
“You sing the song of whoever’s horse you are riding. We are a people
who have been subject to assimilation. We are here and our grandfathers
were born and lived here. Talk to the villagers. We all know that we
came here from somewhere else. My father used to tell me stories and
later on I heard things from others. That’s how I formed an opinion.”
And what opinion have you reached?”
“Let me make a long story short. We aren’t the ones who would deny
our roots.”
Hopa-Hamshens during the Soviet Era
Chagh goukar ou kenatser ander / It was raining and you left, ander
Tsoun gouka bor menatser ander / It was snowing, where were you, ander
Ersoun ochkharin ama ander / For thirty sheep, ander
Gurjistan menatser ander / You remained in Georgia, ander
Hava and Nargiza
This song is about those married couples separated due to the closing
of the Soviet-Turkish border. The woman is lamenting the loss of her
shepherd husband, who took his flock into Georgia and now cannot
come back home. The Soviet-Turkish border is closed, resulting in
the separation of relatives from the same nationality living in
different countries.
– The province of Artvin again reverted back to Turkey as a result of
the 1921 Treaty of Batum. Most of the Hopa-Hamshen communities passed
under Turkish dominion as well. Six villages remained on the Soviet
side of the border. In the 1930s, when border crossing restrictions
were tightened, sisters were separated from brothers and parents from
their children.
– According to a 1944 decision by Stalin, 1,385 “Khemshin”, along
with other Muslims (Turks and Kurds), were exiled to Kyrgyzstan and
Kazakhstan as “unreliable population”. It was only after the death of
Stalin that they were granted passports noting their nationality as
“Khemsil” or sometimes Turk. [4]
– In the 1980s, Sergey Vardanyan met with Habib Koshanidze, a hemshil
living in Kirgizia, who told him: “I am Armenian in origin and
blood but Muslim in religion. My language is Armenian, the Hamshen
dialect. Even though while at school I demanded that they register
me as an Armenian, in my passport it reads khemshil. My first name is
Arabic and my surname is Georgian. The authorities tricked us saying
that if we change our last names we wouldn’t be deported. I was born in
Kirgizia and went to a Russian school. I speak fluent Kazakh, Kirgiz,
but do not know literary Armenian. What a world this is. What a people
we are. What a fate. [5]
– According to Vardanyan’s research, in 1987 there were about 3,000
Muslim Hamshentsi in the Soviet Union.
Starting in the 1970s, they began to move to the Belorechensky and
Apsheronsky districts of Krasnodar in Russia. Due to the clashes with
nationalists in 1989 in Central Asia, the exodus of Muslim Hamshentsi
to Krasnodar became widespread. [6]
In the late 1980s, with the weakening of the Soviet border, the two
segments of the once divided Hamshen people once again found each
other. The passage of seventy years wasn’t enough to break all the
ties. They once again exchanged brides. But it was enough for the
two segments to have adopted new traditions that appeared foreign to
one another.
Nargiza Mamoushevan only knew her future husband, Mumi Yılmaz,
from a photo. Later she asked if he was a Turk. “If he’s a Turk,
I don’t want to marry him.” They assured her he wasn’t a Turk but
a Hamshentsi and that his people were just like them. “I asked her
what was she, a Russian? She answered, ‘No, I too am not Russian but
a Hamshentsi.'”Mumi relates.
Mumi’s mother Gyonul sings a lullaby for Elisultan
In a way, Nargiza was lucky to have been born at a time when a bride
at least was expected to find favor with her prospective husband,
even if through the means of a photograph. It wasn’t that long ago
when engagements were arranged sight unseen, and the girl only saw
the man she was destined to marry on the wedding day.
Rather than send a photo, Mumi would go the region of Apsheronsk in
Krasnodar to see Nargiza. The only thing preventing him wasn’t any
custom but Turkish law, Mumi had spent several years in a Turkish
prison and now he couldn’t leave Turkey for the next four years.
Today his brother is in prison as well for hitting a policeman.
The two brothers wouldn’t have met their wives if Cihan hadn’t gotten
into an accident in Krasnodar.
The Yılmaz family is from the village of EÅ~_mekaya (former Ardala).
Mumi proudly refers to himself as “Ardalatsi Mumi”; they are
drivers. Two years ago, while driving near Sochi, Cihan lost control
of his car and crashed. Some Homshetsma speaking people, whom he did
not know, came to his assistance. They turned out to be from the same
clan. “He’s the grandson of my grandma’s sister,” Mumi relates.
The house of Mumi Yılmaz
During the two weeks he stays in Apsheronsk, they introduce Cihan
to his future wife, Hava Karacogli. “We met and liked what we saw,”
Hava says.
Jivan returned and requested permission from his brother to marry.
The Hamshen have a tradition whereby if the eldest brother hasn’t yet
married, a younger brother wishing to marry must ask for his consent.
In 2010, the wedding of the two couples, the brothers from Hopa and
the girls from Apsheronsk, takes place. 40 year-old Mumi Yılmaz is
to marry 20 year-old Nargiza Mamoushevan, and Cihan Yılmaz is to
wed 16 year-old Hava Karacogli. There are two wedding celebration,
one in Apsheronsk without Mumi and according to the traditions of
the Soviet Hamshens, and the other in Hopa.
“No, we aren’t Armenian. It’s just that our language is similar,
like Kazakh and Uzbek, or Kurdish and Persian. The same with
Hamshen and Armenian is from the same group,” says 53 year-old Fayk
Karaibrahimov. He relocated from Krghizia to Rostov, and then moved
the family to KemalpaÅ~_a, Turkey, in 1995.
Hava already has a child and Nargiza is an expectant mother.
“I told them that I was still young, that I wanted to finish school
and go on to college. They said ‘get married’, so I had no choice. You
have to follow the words of the elders,” says Hava, who has just
turned 17. We are in the Yılmaz family home in EÅ~_mekaya. “Even
if girls continue their education, after getting married, husbands
don’t allow you to learn. That’s the custom with us,” Hava adds.
She tells us that in Krasnodar you won’t find women who have gone
to school and who work. Hamshen women in Hopa have enjoyed much more
freedom when it comes to education.
BaÅ~_oba School Principal Kadir Aksu says that back in his time,
girls didn’t even receive a high school education and would marry
quite young. Today, girls are now being accepted into colleges in
the big cities.
Hava was born in Apsheronsk and knows that her parents are from
Central Asia. Nargiza was born in Kyrgyzstan and was six months old
when the family relocated to Krasnodar. It was only when they came
to Hopa that the two women found out that their grandfathers had been
exiled from Batumi. At, home, no one talked about these things.
“My parents only told me that a war broke out in Kirgizia and that
we fled to Krasnodar,” says Nargiza.
Hava’s family in Apsheronsk has an Armenian neighbor and when they
converse in their native tongue they understand much.
“It’s my belief that Armenians and the Hamshen are the same
people,” Hava says. Nargiza has a different opinion. “No, we are
different. Armenians are Christian and we are Muslim.”
In Hopa, they only speak Homshetsma. No one understands their
Russian. Their dialect and the one spoken in Hopa have remained
basically the same, just some vocabulary is different. “Just a
few words here and there are completely different. For example,
they say mashina for a car and we say tilezhka. We say makina for
a sewing machine but here it’s used to describe a laundry machine,”
Nargiza explains.
But the customs are different. Nargiza continues: “Here, the women
are all covered up and always with a head scarf. Unmarried girls must
always cover their head. It’s not so rigid with us. If husbands allow
it, wives can walk around without covering their heads. It’s only
the older women that must cover up.”
In turn, the Hamshen from Turkey view their Soviet cousins as
conservative. As Cemal Vayic would point out, the Soviet Hamshen
custom is for men and women to eat separately, unlike in Hopa.
It’s true, walk into any Hamshen home in Hopa and the women will
come up and shake the hand of a male stranger. Some women will even
embrace close male friends and sit together at the table with them.
Nargiza says that they are much more conservative when it comes
to family relationships. “The daughter-in-law doesn’t speak to the
grandfather. If he wants her to talk, the grandfather will buy the
girl a present. There’s no such custom in Hopa. I get the impression
that people here go to the mosque more often. The Hamshentsi here
are similar to the Russians when it comes to religious faith.”
The two young women brides are lucky to have wound up in the same house
as brides. One consoles the other when they get homesick. They also
visit other brides who have come from Krasnodar. Nargiza tells me that
there are 43 women from Apsheronsk who have married into Hopa families.
“I told my husband that I’m getting bored sitting around the
house. There’s nowhere to go and I have no relatives here. I dropped
a hint about finding some work,” Nargiza says. “But he forbade me to
work and says he can provide everything. Back home, my mother doesn’t
work either. My father won’t allow it for the same reason.”
>From the Hopa Black Sea coast, these women long for the Russian shores
where life was more active and free. The towns there have many cafes
and parks and women, just like men, can freely stroll around.
The way weddings are celebrated is the most striking difference
between the two Hamshen communities. For those who were raised under
Soviet rule, the passion for drinking and having fun at a wedding far
surpassed any religious convictions. Feasting to the accompaniment
of hard liquor was a mainstay at any wedding. As for the Hamshens of
Turkey, despite the fact that they live in a nominally secular country,
they remain more faithful to religious tenets. While they prepare a
wedding table, hard alcohol is absent. It’s only after the wedding,
when friends and family retire to the house of the groom, that the
drinks are poured.
“We’d party all night at our weddings. The food and drink flowed
freely. Not here. All they do is dance. There’s no outoush-khmoush
(eating-drinking). Only after the wedding do they drink at home,”
says Nargiza. “Our wedding was celebrated both ways. There, we partied
with food and drink, here, there was no banquet table.”
(to be continued)
Khachatur Terteryan assisted in the research work.
Photos by Anahit Hayrapetyan Translated by Hrant Gadarigian
_________________________
[1] Hrachya Ajaryan, Knnutyun hamsheni barbari (ASSR Academy of
Sciences, 1947)
[2] Sergey Vardanyan, Kronapokh hamshenahayeri barbaru, banahuysutyunu
yev yergarvestu (YSU, 2009)
[3] Ibid
[4] All information regarding the Soviet Hamshen is taken from:
Sergey Vardanyan, Kronapokh hamshenahayeri barbaru, banahuysutyunu
yev yergarvestu (YSU, 2009)
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid