Author: Ekmekjian Janet

Saturday Review: Travel: Back to Baku: Veronica Horwell on an
extraordinary tale of reinvention: The Orientalist by Tom Reiss
432pp, Chatto & Windus, pounds 16.99:
VERONICA HORWELL
The Guardian – United Kingdom; Jun 18, 2005
Baku, on the Azerbaijan shore of the Caspian sea, was the most
modern city on earth at the beginning of the 20th century. East was
outrageously east there, and west was wild, and the twain met often,
their fusion fuelled by the city’s power source: oil. Baku was the
first petroleum metropolis. Crude, brokered by barons, financed a
unique civilisation. Like everybody in the Caucasus, the barons had
arrived from elsewhere to take advantage of frontier forgetfulness.
Among them was Abraham Nussimbaum, one generation away from the Russian
pale of Jewish settlement, and his shtetl-raised wife, whose youthful
suicide was a chosen exit from the clash of her revolutionary fervour
with Nussimbaum’s prosperity.
She had produced a son, Lev, born aboard a strikebound train to
Baku in October 1905, when riot and ruckus, provoked by Russia’s
massive failure in its war with Japan, were raised in the region. The
Orientalist is a biography of Lev.
His childhood was a short course in reality – mother soon gone,
Armenians massacred, Cossacks charging, terrorists of all and no
allegiances assassinating. It was also a long dream season. When
he could get out, albeit guarded against kidnap, Lev haunted the
Muslim quarter and the palace of its khans, or sat on the family roof
rhapsodising on fantastic desert and mountain dwellers.
Magic realism was a pragmatic response to Baku between 1905 and
the 1917 revolution, and Lev was grounded in it; his belief that he
could instigate marvels was confirmed, during post-Soviet exile in
central Asia and Persia, by his escapes – connived yet miraculous –
from Bolsheviks, bandits, buggery and bullets. Abraham and Lev were
sundered and reunited, sometimes destitute, sometimes flush. Once
they were housed in a cinema, because it was clean and had a loo.
Such an unsentimental education should have shaped Lev into a
novelist and very eventually it did. Ali and Nino , published 1937,
was the love story of a Muslim boy and a Christian girl, or, rather,
the romance of Lev and vanished Baku. But the novel, which spellbound
Tom Reiss in 1990s oil boomtown Baku, was credited to “Kurban Said”.
As Reiss slowly discovered through his original research for The
Orientalist , Kurban Said was more of a fiction than Ali and Nino .
Said was Lev’s second self-invented persona.
He had created his first alternative identity, Essad Bey, as a
pfennigless exile in Berlin in the early 1920s. (Lev and Abraham
had by then scarce unpacked their suitcases in Constantinople, Rome
and Paris in turn, flotsam on a first wave of asylum-seekers.) Lev
attended Russian high school in the afternoon and enrolled for
oriental studies at Berlin university the rest of the day. Any teen
geek fantasist might have done that, but few would then have learned
the languages, read the tomes, converted to Islam, with name-change,
and promoted themselves as an expert Orientalist at the age of 22.
Lev-Essad played a dual game from then to the end: acquaintances knew
he was Lev, shabby son of Abraham, racked about rent, but they didn’t
contradict the mensch when he asserted he was Essad, heir of a noble
Arab father and Russian aristo mother. As Essad Bey, he made a Weimar
name for himself: journalist, biographer and cultural analyst, starting
with Blood and Oil in the Orient. He was challenged all along as a
fraud, by anti-semites and born, as opposed to born-again, Muslims.
Reiss attributes Lev’s refusal to abandon the imposture to
his determination not to be classified by the era’s fatal racial
taxonomy, and to his belief that he could imagine his way out of a
locked room, even when the closed space was Nazi-dominated Europe.
Perhaps Lev-Essad was even more complicated that that; he decided to
return from America, where he could have stayed with his scalp-hunting
wife and wealthy inlaws for long enough to have claimed permanent
sanctuary from the Third Reich, screenwriting for an income as did
his closest friend. (Reiss mentions Casablanca in connection with
the refugee artist circuit; how much richer the movie’s script would
have been if the writers had known about the former Ottoman empire
as well as the importance of money, papers and a ticket for the last
Lisbon flight.)
For a long time, Lev-Essad fled from the freedom to tell made-up
stories, other than the one about his origins. In fact, his first dozen
books, including biographies of Stalin and Muhammad, were nonfiction,
and in them he seems to have told fewer lies, especially to himself,
than did his contemporaries.
Only when Lev’s wife resented the non-Valentino aspects of Essad’s
sheikhdom (sexual reality was beyond his grasp), left with a rival
and blabbed to the tabloids, abandoning Lev on a continent where Jews
could no longer write or publish, did he formally essay fiction. And
first he had to create “Kurban Said”, meaning “joyful sacrifice”,
to write Ali and Nino , a character less a safe alias than a golem –
an artificial being animated by magic, the enchantment of Baku. The
invention didn’t save his career, and his life was soon after forfeit
to a disease that rotted him from the feet up. He languished in the
half-haven of fascist Italy, proposing, until his death in Positano
in 1942, to write a biography of Mussolini.
Reiss, through obsessed sleuthing, has retrieved a believable liar and
revealed a secret, the last notebooks of Lev-Essad-Kurban, purportedly
a novel called The Man Who Knew Nothing About Love . He decently
respects the connections inconsequence can make, from the Interpol
officer who hooked him on Ali and Nino to the chance arrival at his
Manhattan dinnertable of the last heir to the Ottoman sultanate. And
his descriptions of cities of exile resonate so in a time of transit
that I hope his next book will be a history of diaspora capitals.
To order The Orientalist for pounds 15.99 with free UK p&p call
Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. guardian.co.uk/bookshop

URUGUAY FOR HISTORICAL TRUTH
A1plus
| 20:58:04 | 16-06-2005 | Politics |
At the event initiated by the Hnchak party of Armenia Vice President
of Uruguay Rodolfo Nin Novoa confirmed Uruguay’s position on Hay
Dat and called upon the European Union to urge Turkey to acknowledge
the Armenian Genocide before opening negotiations with Turkey, press
center of the party reported.

Azeri pressure group slams authorities for “inaction” over Karabakh
polls
MPA news agency, Baku
16 Jun 05
Baku, 16 June: The Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) has adopted
a statement over “parliamentary elections” in the so-called Nagornyy
Karabakh republic, MPA reports.
The statement says that Nagornyy Karabakh is an inseparable part of
Azerbaijan and elections held there cannot have a legal effect. The
KLO also expressed its concern with the inaction of the Azerbaijani
authorities and international organizations.
Under the current circumstances, it is just not enough to send
observers to the region and to issue declarations on non-recognition
of these “elections”, the statement said.
By confining themselves to these measures, international organizations
and the Azerbaijani authorities actually promote the strengthening
of the occupiers’ positions on the occupied territories. The KLO
believes that the Azerbaijani leadership should alert international
organizations to the issue and reconsider relations with the states
which will send their representatives to the “elections”.
“The Azerbaijani authorities should either start the war themselves
or not prevent the people from waging it,” the KLO statement says.

TENFOLD INCREASE IN DRUG ADDICT NUMBER IN ARMENIA SINCE 1986
YEREVAN, JUNE 16. ARMINFO. The number of people addicted to drug and
alcohol has grown almost tenfold in Armenia since 1986, says the head
of the organization and methodology department of Armenia’s health
care ministry Seda Jamalyan.
In Armenia there are almost 5,000 real drug addicts against official
183 ones. 40% of them are people from 40-59 who tried drug for the
first time at the age of 14-15. The recovery course at a special clinic
lasts 24 days – 5,600 AMD per day while those wanting to be treated
openly enjoy free treatment. The clinic has also registered 3,544
alcoholics with 755 ones already treated. Most of the patients are men.
The clinic representative Gayane Vardazaryan says that only 5%-10% of
the patients are recovered with the rest taking to the booze or dope
again. She says that with heroin one can become an addict from the very
first time while other drugs take effect slower but as effectively. The
consequences are very serious – for a drug addict can do anything to
get dope and often drowning himself pulls many others. Society should
regard drug addiction as a chronic disease while parents should be
always on the alert with their children, says Vardazaryan.
“It has got into my blood and will go out of me only with my soul…
I am tired, goodbye and wish me health,” says an anonymous alcoholic
of 40-45 before entering the clinic for hope.
Reliable sources say that in Armenia one gram of heroin costs
$120-150. A daily doze for a heroin addict is 2.5 grams.

Armenians’ Union in Russia marks 5th anniversary
16.06.2005, 14.03
MOSCOW, June 16 (Itar-Tass) – The Armenians’ Union in Russia observes
its fifth anniversary this Thursday. The union absorbed several hundred
small national organizations that exerted efforts to preserve national
Armenian culture in Russia.
Ara Abramyan, the president of the Armenians’ Union in Russia,
told a news conference at Itar-Tass, “A new stage set in in the
life of Armenians in Russia from the moment the All-Russian national
public organization of Armenians formed, the stage linked with the
consolidation of the age-old national traditions.”
Abramyan said, “The union faces a difficult task of promoting the
integration of hundreds of thousands of Armenians who came from
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia into the linguistic, social, economic
and cultural medium of Russia.”
“We also aim for the further consolidation of relations between Russia
and Armenia,” Abramyan said.
The highlight of the celebration will be a concert of the Armenian
song and dance ensemble at the International House of Music in Moscow
on Thursday evening.

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT MEETS WITH CSTO SECRETARY GENERAL
YEREVAN, June 15. /ARKA/. RA President Robert Kocharyan held a meeting
with Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) Nikolay Bordyuzha. The RA presidential press service reports
that the sides discussed issues put on the agenda of the CSTO sitting
to be held in Moscow, Russia, on June 22-23, as well as the problems
and ways of resolving them. Bordyuzha informed the RA President of
the drug and human trafficking control activities, as well as of
antitrerrorist measures in conditions of growing challenges.
The sides also discussed issues of military-technical cooperation
within CSTO. P.T. -0–

German lawmakers to press Turkey to confront Armenian massacre
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
AP Worldstream; Jun 15, 2005
German lawmakers have prepared a cross-party motion urging Turkey
to re-examine the disputed killing of an estimated 1 million ethnic
Armenians about a century ago, according to a copy obtained by The
Associated Press on Wednesday.
The motion, to be put to a vote in parliament Thursday, demands that
the German government press Turkey to investigate the killing and
foster reconciliation with Armenians, including “forgiveness for
historical guilt.”
Parliament is “convinced an honest historical review is needed and
represents the most important basis for reconciliation,” the motion
said. “This is particularly true in the framework of a European
culture of remembrance which includes openly debating the dark side
of each nation’s history.”
Armenia accuses Turkey of genocide in the killings as part of a 1915-23
campaign to force Armenians out of eastern Anatolia. At that time,
Armenia was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey remains extremely sensitive to the issue. It denies that the
killings were genocide, says the death count is inflated and that
Armenians were killed or displaced along with others as the Ottoman
Empire tried to quell civil unrest.
Officials from the governing Social Democrats and the main conservative
opposition said they expected strong support for the motion _ partly
because it makes no mention of Turkey’s bid to join the European
Union, according to Christoph Bergner, an opposition lawmaker who
helped draft it.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has been one of Turkey’s strongest
backers in its membership bid, but the opposition _ which hopes to
win expected elections later this year _ has argued that it should
be offered a lesser “privileged partnership.”
Still, “freedom of expression should be viewed as a minimum standard
for Europe,” Bergner said.
A draft debated in the German parliament in February drew criticism
from Ankara’s ambassador in Berlin, who said it contained “prejudices,
factual errors … and one-sided expectations.”
The final version said “numerous independent historians, parliaments
and international organizations describe the deportation and
destruction of the Armenians as genocide.”
But Bergner said it avoided adopting that language as its own in an
attempt to encourage Turkey to allow a proper discussion.
The motion calls for the establishment of a commission of Turkish,
Armenian and foreign historians to examine the killings and complained
that Turkish authorities were stifling debate at home.
It said reconciliation could help normalize relations between Turkey
and Armenia, which have no official diplomatic ties, and bring
stability to the Caucasus region.
The motion said Germany had a special responsibility to bring Turks
and Armenians together because the German Reich had turned a blind
eye to the actions of its Ottoman ally during World War I, and urged
the German Foreign Ministry to release its records of the period.

PEOPLE HAVING ARMENIAN RELATIVES DISMISSED IN BAKU
Pan Armenian News
15.06.2005 03:19
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ By order of Minister Eldar Makhmudov several
employees of the Azerbaijani Ministry of National Security were
dismissed. According to a source, the dismissal is conditioned by
the Armenian nationality of one of the parents or close relatives
of these people. When commenting on the information, head of the
department for public relations of the Ministry of National Security
Arif Babayev said, “We live in Azerbaijan, that is why we can not
have people of Armenian origin on service.” To note, such kind of
cleansing has been carried out for the first time in the MNS. Former
Minister Namik Abbasov admitted in one of his interviews that people
of Armenian origin work in the system but he is not going to dismiss
them, 525 Azeri newspaper reported.

RA DEFENSE MINISTER MET CSTO SECRETARY GENERAL
Pan Armenian News
15.06.2005 04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Today Secretary of the Security Council under the
RA President, Defense Minsiter Serge Sarsgian met with Secretary
General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolay
Bordyuzha and the delegation headed by him, RA Defense Minister’s
Press Secretary, Colonel Seyran Shahsuvarian reported. During the
meeting the parties discussed the issues included in the agenda of
the CSTO sitting to be held in Moscow 22-23 as well as settlement of
problems available within the CSTO and future plans.

SEVERE HAIL IN GEGHARKUNIK REGION, ARMENIA, DAMAGES ROOFS AND CROPS
YEREVAN, JUNE 14. ARMINFO. A severe hail (diameter 4 sm.) in
Gegharkunik region has damaged roofs of houses and crops. The
press-service of the Emergency Situations Department informs ARMINFO
that on June 12 the severe gail damaged the roofs of 20 buildings and
crops in the villages of Chambarak, Getik, Ttu Jur. According to the
source, the same day another severe hail was recorded in Lori region.
Besides, June 12-13 night, in the village of Chin-Chin the wind and
lighting partially destroyed a house.