Author: Kalashian Nyrie

New York Times
Dec 29 2004

New Hope of Syrian Minorities: Ripple Effect of Iraqi Politics

By KATHERINE ZOEPF

QAMISHLI, Syria, Dec. 28 – The Iraqi election next month may be
evoking skepticism in much of the world, but here in northeastern
Syria, home to concentrations of several ethnic minorities, it is
evoking a kind of earnest hope.

“I believe democracy in Iraq must succeed,” Vahan Kirakos, a Syrian
of Armenian ethnicity, said recently. “Iraq is like the stone thrown
into the pool.”

Though Syria’s Constitution grants equal opportunity to all ethnic
and religious groups in this very diverse country, minority activists
say their rights are far from equal. They may not form legal
political parties or publish newspapers in minority languages. More
than 150,000 members of Syria’s largest minority, the Kurds, are
denied citizenship.

Minority issues remain one of the infamous “red lines,” the litany of
forbidden topics that Syrians have long avoided mentioning in public.

But in the year and a half since Saddam Hussein was removed from
power in Iraq, that has begun to change, with minority activists
beginning to speak openly of their hopes that a ripple effect from
next door may bring changes at home.

And here in Syria’s far northeastern province of Hasakah, which
borders Turkey and Iraq, there are signs of a new restlessness.

In March, more than 3,000 Kurds in Qamishli, a city in Hasakah
Province on the Turkish border, took part in antigovernment protests,
which led to clashes with Syrian security forces and more than 25
deaths.

In late October, more than 2,000 Assyrian Christians in the
provincial capital, Hasakah City, held a demonstration calling for
equal treatment by the local police. The demonstration, which Hasakah
residents say was the first time Assyrians in Syria held a public
protest, followed an episode in which two Christians were killed by
Muslims who called them “Bush supporters,” and “Christian dogs.”

Nimrod Sulayman, a former member of the Syrian Communist Party’s
central committee, said Hasakah’s proximity to Iraq and demographic
diversity meant that residents of the province were watching events
in Iraq and taking inspiration from the freedoms being introduced
there.

“This Assyrian protest in Hasakah was caused by a personal dispute,
but the way the people wanted their problem solved was a result of
the Iraqi impact,” Mr. Sulayman said. “They see that demonstrating is
a civilized way to express a position.”

“Since the war in Iraq, this complex of fear has been broken, and we
feel greater freedom to express ourselves,” he added.

Mr. Sulayman noted that members of minorities in Hasakah had also
been energized by a sense of brotherhood with their counterparts in
Iraq.

“For example, when Massoud Barzani announced that Kurdish would be
officially recognized as one of the main languages in Iraq, the Kurds
in Hasakah were out in the streets celebrating, expressing their
joy,” Mr. Sulayman said, referring to the leader of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party in Iraq.

Taher Sfog, the secretary general of Syria’s illegal Kurdish
Democratic National Party, suggested that in some sense, Iraq and
Syria were mirror images of each other, as they shared a roughly
similar ethnic composition and a political heritage of Baathism, the
secular Arab nationalist policy of Mr. Hussein and Bashar Assad, the
Syrian president.

“Kurds in Syria feel relieved when we see Kurds in Iraq getting their
rights and holding news conferences,” Mr. Sfog said in his home in
Qamishli. “Democracy there will lead to a push in Syria, too.”

In fact, the Hussein government had long been estranged from Syria’s.
Before the American invasion of Iraq, many Iraqi politicians who
opposed Mr. Hussein made their homes in Damascus. Basil Dahdouh, a
member of the illegal Syrian Nationalist Social Party who represents
Damascus in Syria’s Parliament as an independent, said renewed
contact with Iraq, as well as the chance to observe the changes
taking place there, was leading many Syrians to actively question
their own political ideals. “The Iraq question has raised the idea of
what kind of state we want,” he said.

Emmanuel Khosaba, a spokesman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement, a
political party representing Iraq’s Assyrian Christian minority, said
Syrian political life could not help but be influenced by Iraq.

“In Syria, gradually it’s becoming safer to talk about minority
rights and human rights,” he said. But he cautioned against seeing a
single “Iraq effect” on the very different aspirations of Syria’s
minorities .

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“The interaction between minorities in Iraq and its neighboring
countries really depends on how particular minorities view their own
situation,” Mr. Khosaba said. “For example the Assyrians in Syria are
seeking a national solution within a democratic framework, while some
of the Kurds seek separation.”

Despite their sometimes startling optimism about an Iraqi democracy’s
longer-term prospects, the Syrian minority leaders became more sober
when discussing the violence in Iraq. Not only is it painful to see
Iraq convulsed with strife, they said, but instability in Iraq is
causing problems closer to home.

Bachir Isaac Saadi, the chairman of the political bureau of the
Assyrian Democratic Organization, said that throughout Syria, anger
over the American presence in Iraq had set off a sharp rise in
Islamist sentiment, which was creating difficulties for Syria’s
Christian minority.

“Christians in Syria aren’t afraid of the government any longer,” Mr.
Saadi said. “They’re afraid of their neighbors.”

Though the increase in Islamist feeling is troubling, minority
activists say, fear of the government and of publicly discussing
minority rights has eased to a degree which would have been
unthinkable only a few years ago.

Mr. Kirakos, the Armenian activist, has even begun a bid for Syria’s
presidency, an astoundingly brazen gesture in a country where the
Assad family has ruled unchallenged for more than 30 years.

The Christian Mr. Kirakos’s presidential run – which he announced in
September on , a pro-democracy Web site – is illegal, as
Syria’s Constitution stipulates that the president must be a Muslim.
But though he lost his engineering job as a result of his activism
and his family has received uncomfortable phone calls from the secret
police, Mr. Kirakos is unfazed.

“I carry a Syrian citizenship which is not equal to Ahmed’s
citizenship,” he said, using the common Muslim name as shorthand for
Syria’s Sunni majority. “It is the Syrian Constitution that must
change. We should be writing a constitution that guarantees equal
rights for everyone.”

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan
Dec 27 2004

IDB PRESIDENT MEETS IDPS IN SABIRABAD
[December 27, 2004, 23:00:49]

The delegation of the Islamic Development Bank /IDB/ headed by its
president Ahmad Mohamed Ali met with IDPs temporarily settled in the
Galagayin tent camp located in Sabirabad region and got acquainted
with their living conditions and local school. IDB president said
that the main purpose of this visit is to learn of the plight of
people living in tent camps. The guest stated that he would bring the
truth on Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Garabakh conflict, plight of
IDPs to the world community’s notice and send a special IDB
commission to learn the needs of IDPs and, therefore, define the
amount of possible aid.

Deputy of the department of the Cabinet of Ministers Gurban Sadigov
updated the president on the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Garabakh
conflict, plight of IDPs and government’s efforts to ensure their
social protection.

The delegation composed of ambassador of the Saudi Arabia to
Azerbaijan Ali Hasan Ahamd Jafar and ambassador of Egypt to
Azerbaijan Yusif Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sharkari was welcomed and seen off
by head of the executive power of Sabirabad Ashraf Mammadov.

The Daily Star, Lebanon
Dec 27 2004

‘The Daydreaming Boy’ is a triumph for the truth of imagination
Novel deals with one man’s personal journey after the Armenian
Genocide

By Arpi Sarafian
Special to The Daily Star

LOS ANGELES: It is hard to think of another novel that represents the
horrors of war and of violence – or, more specifically, the horror of
the atrocities committed against the Armenian population of Turkey in
the 1915 Genocide – with such freshness and creativity, than
Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s debut novel, “Three Apples Fell from
Heaven” (2001).

Marcom’s new book, “The Daydreaming Boy” (2004), is as good but
deviates from more traditional narrative structures and ordinary
discourse to, once again, “history the unhistoried” and say the
“unsaid unsayable things.”

Whereas “Three Apples Fell from Heaven” dealt with the disruption
caused by the brutalities of the Ottoman government to the lives of
innocent Armenians in Kharpert, Turkey, “The Daydreaming Boy” shifts
the setting to Beirut and deals with one man’s personal journey.

It is the story of the Vahe Tcheubjian, a middle-aged survivor of
Turkey’s Armenian massacres who spends the novel contemplating his
brutal past while losing himself in a series of adulterous trysts
that bring him slowly to a realization of the moral compromises he
has made.

Vahe is an orphan – in Marcom’s words, the least historied of the
victims of war – who, along with other children, was “loaded onto the
boxcars at Eregli [Turkey] and unloaded in Lebanon by the sea’s edge”
at The Bird’s Nest orphanage. A survivor who “would have liked to
remain unexisted,” Vahe is now a grown man living with his wife,
Juliana, also of Kharpert, in 1960’s Beirut in an apartment
overlooking the Mediterranean.

Rather than record the details of Vahe’s external life, “The
Daydreaming Boy” takes us to his interior scenery cycling through the
fantasies, the dreams and the memories of a man attempting to come to
terms with an impossible past.

The book moves back and forth between Vahe’s fantasy of making love
to Beatrice, the Palestinian servant girl; his imagining of his dead
mother’s body; weekly visits to the zoological gardens (perhaps to
free the caged beast inside of him); and memories of Vostanig,
another orphan (who later commits suicide) “left outside the walls of
the orphanage … deposited there in the middle of the night, by whom
we were never to know.”

Besides giving expression to the truth buried deep in Vahe’s
consciousness – Marcom’s primary concern – these repeated images
allow us to share the confusion of a man from whom a whole world has
disappeared.

Marcom writes with mellifluous, poetic tone – for instance, using
such clever linking devices as the sea, “the vast blue belt” of the
Mediterranean whose waves Vahe can still hear hitting the gray rocks
outside the orphanage dormitory windows. Vahe, Marcom writes, “only
loved the sea and to bathe in it. The sea was always his “solace, his
haven,” and also possibly a final resting place: “I want the sea
only, in perpetuity, impossibly.”

Vahe half attempts to commit suicide to return to the sea and its
“quiet eternal warmth.” To “unexist” seems to be the only way out of
the “eternal blackness” of living “in this world devoid of color.”

Vahe is a man haunted by his memories – by the torments he both
endured and visited upon weaker fellow orphans in an Armenian
orphanage; of his long-gone family and his pain at his separation
from them, especially his mother; of his infatuation with his maid,
which turns his wife against him and angers her even as he opens out
this narrative as if a confession.

Vahe survives solely through his fantasies. The fantasy of love makes
the daily bearing of the memory of “this stink-hole orphanage”
possible for him, “and of course there is only the bearing of it.”

Nonetheless, Vahe’s fantasies come right out of the collective
experience of a people “distanced from land and language.” The
journey inward thus taps into a clearly recognizable historical
context, the tragedy that befell a nation still “adrift because the
past is always unspoken heavy and ever-present.”

If Marcom uses fiction of the imagination to tell her story, it is
because only fiction can give expression to what is beyond the daily
conveyance of facts. The book picks up where the testimonies of
Armenian genocide victims left off.

What finally makes “The Daydreaming Boy” such a stunning text is
Marcom’s unfaltering commitment to her medium. She bends language to
coin new words and lulls the reader into a trance. At no point,
however, do her stylistic choices seem intrusive. “This notlistens
Vahe,” and “I unexisted them,” or “they must be intolerated” and “he
notspeaks” are perfectly adjusted to the disjointedness of the mind
of “this sad and desperate boy who’s become a sad desperate man.”

In Marcom’s hands, language becomes a powerful tool to shake us into
the significance of the crime, “the death of a race and our tongue,”
still awaiting acknowledgement. The precision of observation of “the
notroads,” “the spectered notflesh,” or “this notfeeling” is
startling.

“The Daydreaming Boy” is available at all good bookshops

Times of India, India
Dec 24 2004

J&K enjoys more freedom than PoK: Survey
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

WASHINGTON: The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has a greater
degree of freedom than Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the think-tank
Freedom House has said in a survey.

In a significant pronouncement in the Freedom of the World 2005
report, the think tank classifies PoK as “Not Free” compared to J&K’s
“Partly Free” status, thus diminishing military-ruled Pakistan’s
frequent charges of Indian oppression in J&K and calls for
“self-determination” for the state.

In fact, India, with a ranking of 2.5, is only country in South Asia
that is classified as “Free.” Pakistan at 5.5 is deemed “Not Free,”
which would suggest its status is worse than that India’s “Partly
Free” J&K.

Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal all rate better than Pakistan with
their “Partly Free” status. The annual ranking is based on political
rights and civil liberties, and Freedom House is evidently not
impressed by Gen Musharraf’s claims of democracy.

In an assessment of what Freedom House considers “disputed
territories,” only northern Turkish Cyprus is rated “Free.” J&K,
along with Nagorno-Karabakh (disputed between Armenia and Azarbaijan)
is rated partly free. PoK, Tibet, Israeli-occupied territories,
Palestinian-occupied territories, Chechnya and Kosovo are considered
“Not Free.”

According to the survey, 89 countries are Free. Their 2.8 billion
inhabitants (44 percent of the world’s population) enjoy a broad
range of rights. Fifty-four countries representing 1.2 billion people
(19 percent) are considered Partly Free. Political rights and civil
liberties are more limited in these countries, in which corruption,
dominant ruling parties, or, in some cases, ethnic or religious
strife are often the norm.

The survey finds that 49 countries are Not Free. The 2.4 billion
inhabitants (37 percent) of these countries, nearly three-fifths of
whom live in China, are denied most basic political rights and civil
liberties. The worst rated countries include close US ally Saudi
Arabia, Turkmenistan, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Syria and
Burma.

Most of Western Europe and the United States topped the freedom chart
with a ranking of 1. India with its 2.5 ranking was in the company of
Brazil, Philippines and Thailand, and below Greece, Japan, South
Africa, Taiwan, South Korea and Israel among others.

Israel Hasbara Committee
Dec 24 2004

JNF Gives Free Xmas Trees to Israel’s Christian Population
Christman Celebrations Begin

By Mayaan Jaffe

In Jerusalem Thursday morning (23 December 2004), the municipality
distributed free Xmas trees to members of the Christian community.
The trees were provided by the forestry department of the Jewish
National Fund. They were cut as part of seasonal thinning of new
growth forest.

Christmas Eve celebrations by Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protestant
communities will begin Friday. The Greek-Orthodox and Eastern
churches that still use the old Julian calendar will celebrate the
holiday on 7 January. The Armenian Orthodox community will observe
the holiday on 19 January.

The date of 25 December as Christmas is the result of attempts among
the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth.

The Julian calendar was created in 45 B.C.E. under Julius Caesar. 25
December on the Julian calendar is 7 January on the Western calendar.

Armenians believe Jesus’ birthday should be celebrated on the same
day as his baptism, which is 6 January. By the Julian calendar this
date would fall on the Western calendar’s 19 January.

STATE LABOUR DEPARTMENT TO OPEN

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
21 Dec 04

In the coming year the labour department will be opened in the NKR
Ministry of Social Security. According to minister L. Ghulian, there
are too many drawbacks in the relationships between the employer and
the employee and the creation of the department is determined by the
necessity of eliminating them. In this reference the government made
a decision which will be presented to the national Assembly within
the draft law “On Labour Department” in the first trimester of 2005.

SVETLANA KHACHATRIAN.
21-12-2004

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SUMMING UP

A1+
22-12-2004

Armenian foreign minister Vardan Oskanyan said Wednesday summing up
the 2004 in National Press Club he found the year not so bad with
its sudden surges and falls, its achievements and failures.

He presented a broad summing up saying more detailed report would be
made in the beginning of January.

Oskanyan said positive in Karabakh problem solution has outdone
negative.

He is convinced some progress is seen in Karabakh conflict settlement
process. In his opinion, today we are at more advantageous position
than were in 1997.

The minister says Armenian leadership, demanding Karabakh to
participate in talks as a negotiating side, today found itself in
dilemma: not to enter negotiations, if Karabakh isnâ~@~Yt included
in the process as side, or continue the talks.

In his words, the authorities are leaning toward the second way.

Oskanyan stressed extraordinary importance of political stability in
Armenia saying it is impacting the negotiation process.

It is remarkable that the minister thinks the opposition is hobbling
democracy in the republic by boycotting parliamentary sessions.

–Boundary_(ID_t5CqtsRUSoC3O55AIrFxMg)–

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS PIPELINE PERKS FOR RUSSIA IN ARMENIA-IRAN ENERGY DEAL

Eurasianet
Samvel Martirosyan 12/21/04

Iran has moved closer to gaining a strategic foothold in Caucasian
energy markets with the start of work on a gas pipeline to Armenia
that has been heralded by Yerevan as bringing “definite changes in the
region.” The project has the potential to undercut Russia’s control
of Armenia’s energy supply, yet two new gas projects could act as
potential deal sweeteners for this longtime Armenian ally. Plans were
recently announced for an increase in Armenian orders for Russian
gas and a possible role in the Iranian pipeline project for Russian
energy giant Gazprom.

Construction on Armenia’s section of the 142-kilometer gas pipeline
began on November 30, with $30 million in costs for the 42-kilometer
strip from the Armenian border town of Agarak to Kajaran, south of
Yerevan, picked up by the Iranian Export and Development Bank. Upon
completion in late 2006, the pipeline will supply the tiny South
Caucasus state with 36 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas over the
next 20 years. Gas from Turkmenistan is also scheduled to be delivered
to Armenia via the pipeline.

At an official ceremony to mark the project’s debut, Armenian Deputy
Prime Minister Andranik Margarian stated that the pipeline, in the
works since 1992, would bring economic benefits to Armenia as well
as foster regional stability. “This project has been implemented
throughout Armenia’s political and economic sufferings,” Armenian
media reported Margarian as saying. “In Armenia’s years of hardship,
Iran has stretched out its hand to help us.”

Expanding Armenia’s energy sources is a critical goal for the
administration of President Robert Kocharian – for both economic and
political reasons. Chronic energy shortages contributed to much of
the country’s economic decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
and Armenia’s economic woes continue to attract the criticism of the
country’s opposition. Speaking to reporters about Armenia’s energy
deal with Iran, Kocharian commented during a December 2 visit by
Iranian Energy Minister Habibollah Bitaraf that “[w]e are ready to
do everything possible to support the current level of cooperation,”
according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

In exchange for the gas, Armenia will eventually deliver up to
1,000 megawatts of electricity to Iran with the construction of two
high-voltage power lines between the countries. Additional electricity
projects are also in the works. In 2005 or 2006 Armenia hopes to
start construction on two hydropower plants on the banks of the Arax
River between Armenia and Iran, according to Margarian.

Oil could reinforce Tehran’s ties with Yerevan still further. At a
December 4 meeting between Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian
and Iran’s Armenian Ambassador Alirza Hagigian, plans were discussed
for construction of a 60-kilometer oil pipeline from the Iranian town
of Julfa to the Armenian border town of Meghri.

Geopolitics, though, rather than the attractions of the Armenian energy
market, appears to drive much of Iran’s push for partnership. With
American troops stationed in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq and
Iran’s nuclear energy program under intense international scrutiny,
the country’s ruling clerics have taken steps to assure the outside
world that the Islamic Republic is a force for stability in the
region. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s September 2004 visit
to Armenia, a close US ally, reinforced that campaign with a “good
neighbor” message that “Iran is interested in peace and stability in
the South Caucasus.”

But in drawing closer to Iran, Yerevan has risked alienating another
longtime ally – Russia. Though Russian Deputy Prime Minister Boris
Alyoshin assured reporters in Yerevan earlier this year that the
pipeline deal with Iran would only provide additional business for
Russian-operated electricity stations in Armenia, the deal has been
scrutinized with some trepidation. The Russian company United Energy
Systems controls 40 percent of Armenia’s electricity generation
facilities, while heavy hitters Gazprom and Itera control 55 percent
of ArmRogazprom, currently Armenia’s sole natural gas supplier.

When the Iranian pipeline is complete, however, Armenia will no longer
need to depend solely on Russia for its natural gas needs. In Yerevan,
Kremlin concerns about the prospect of Armenia providing a conduit
for Iranian gas to Europe, a key Russian market, are widely believed
to have resulted in a reduction of the pipeline’s size to a width
too narrow for exports.

Yet Russian energy companies have not been idle in defending their
interests. The Russian news agency Interfax reported an unidentified
Armenian government source as saying on December 8 that Gazprom may
be invited to build and repair one part of the Armenian-Iranian gas
pipeline, between Kadjaran and Ararat, at a cost of $90 million. As
payment for its work, Gazprom would receive the No. 5 generating unit
at the Razdan power plant, Armeniaâ~@~Ys largest heating and power
plant, which supplies 20 percent of the countryâ~@~Ys electricity
needs. Armenian President Robert Kocharian had earlier dismissed
reports of such a deal.

Still other sweeteners are in the works. On December 11, ArmRogazprom
CEO and General Director Karen Karapetyan announced plans to increase
gas supplies to Armenia by roughly 31 percent during 2005 to some
1.6-1.7 billion cubic meters. A $27 million expansion of Armenia’s
gas pipeline from Russia is planned to handle the increased flow. “I
am convinced that the problem of Armenia’s energy security will be
solved soon,” the Russian news agency Novosti reported Karapetyan as
saying, “given the forthcoming opening of the alternative Iran-Armenia
gas pipeline.”

For now, the government line out of Yerevan is that what benefits Iran
benefits Russia. At a May 13-15 summit in Moscow with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, Kocharian took pains to stress that the pipeline deal
with Iran would not damage Russia’s own energy interests in Armenia
or result in a fall-off in Armenian orders for Russian gas. Gazprom,
Itera and United Energy Systems will all collect “major dividends from
the deal,” Kocharian said, Novosti reported. “They will benefit, too.”

Editor’s Note: Samvel Martirosyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
political analyst.

–Boundary_(ID_RDC0vqePYfecS/w/Vx5AQA)–

The Armenian Diaspora
By Etyen Mahcupyan

Zaman newspaper
5 December 2004

We can say that diaspora groups live everywhere in the world in an
environment where they feel ‘out of sorts.’

It is not easy to be the object of a state of permanent and mandatory
guest-hood where they painstakingly learn the language and culture
of a society and as they do, get alienated from themselves.
Especially if one has, like the Armenians, a past
filled with pain, if one has been forcefully torn away from their
homeland and have been so heartbroken as to consider the possibility of
return a sort of non-issue; then being in the diaspora translates into
a very heavy emotional burden. To sum up in a single sentence, the
Armenian diaspora today is ‘the East within the West…’ These people
who were forced to depart from their homelands had to quickly adapt
to modernity of the Western countries they arrived in. This state of
being torn away led to an unavoidable process of individualization,
standing on your own feet, getting into multiple relations with the
people and institutions in the arrived countries. The requirements
of the workplace and especially the needs of children often eroded
the patriarchal codes of the family and a type of normlessness was
experienced in relation to how much the West lured the children away.
Consequently, the destiny of the Eastern diaspora in
the West is necessitated by the fact that the individualization
experienced in the socio-economic sphere does not correspond to
anything in the cultural sphere; more explicitly stated, they have to
sustain their identity within the alienation of the culture offered
them there…

Consequently, in order to retain their own identity, the Armenians had
to reform their communities in the Western world. Their identities
that had been fragmented at the individual level were reproduced anew
over such togetherness. And for this reason, from the viewpoint of
diaspora Armenians, ‘identity’ turned into a characteristic that
could be supported not as an individual but only as a community.
While communal activities became the only functional realm holding
them together, the expression of identity politics was also abandoned
to the charge of the aforementioned organizations… The communal
diaspora organizations acquired immunity and sometimes even a kind of
sacredness in the work they undertook because of the implied meanings
of identity. Hence, while the ‘individual’ implied a subject bounded
by personal life, societal participation was sought and lived through
the ‘community.’

The meaning of this is that it led communal politics to possess force
to create hegemony over the individual. On the other hand the Armenian
community continued to sustain a spiritual hierarchy within itself
because of its communal logic and its Ottoman past. Yet the secular
societies of the West were not made up of a character that would
permit the spiritual leadership to assume, as it did in the Ottoman
case, a political leadership as well… Hence today this political
vacuum is being filled by the political elite heading the communal
organizations in the Armenian diaspora. Yet the political elite of
the Armenian elite that had weak democratic traditions in its own
inception and that still reproduced itself anew within a patriarchal
mentality can be transformed into a type of political oligarchy….

And political oligarchy reproduces itself anew and fortifies its
position through radicalism, for radicalism contains this image that
implies it defends Armenian culture much more. In so far as no one
can claim that Armenian culture should be defended less, radicalism
naturally becomes the only politics… And what emerges is a nationalist
stand that centers on the absence of consideration that is in reality
without any ‘political backbone.’ While the diaspora imagines itself
to be engaged in politics, it actually remains contained by hardening
intra-community politics. The protective instinct created by sudden
change of living space creates, in the end, a reactionism that freezes
time, fixes the community, and obstructs politics by pushing it into
irrational channels.

–Boundary_(ID_afQEgtsAqv5mRuDzqpNxcA)–

Los Angeles Times
December 19, 2004 Sunday
Home Edition

BOOK REVIEW; Features Desk; Part R; Pg. 10

First Fiction

by Mark Rozzo

The Sucker’s Kiss
Alan Parker
Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s: 352 pp., $23.95

The British film director Alan Parker (“The Commitments,”
“Mississippi Burning”) tries his hand at fiction in this rollicking
tale of a San Francisco pickpocket and his picaresque journey through
early 20th century America. The cutpurse in question is Tommy Moran,
an Irish kid with a droopy left eye and magic hands able to probe
strangers’ pockets without detection. As Tommy describes his talent,
“I could slide in and out of a sucker’s purse like melted butter.”
Left a virtual orphan after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he
zigzags back and forth across the country, landing in such archetypal
settings as Rudolph Valentino’s wake, the Kentucky Derby, a Jack
Dempsey fight, Niagara Falls and Coney Island. But much of “The
Sucker’s Kiss” (the title alludes to an especially challenging
face-to-face pickpocket maneuver) reads like a mash note to San
Francisco. Parker re-creates the 1906 quake with the imagination of a
brainy school kid fascinated by the rush of history.

In subsequent years (the novel takes us up to the Depression), we
discover the city’s ethnic nooks and crannies: Tommy’s best friend is
Sammy Liu, who works in one of his uncle’s hoodoo joints in Mah Fong
Alley and grows up to be an accomplished gangster. There are the
Italian households and groceries of North Beach, teeming with
laughter, kids and fagioli beans. And then there’s Napa, where Tommy
falls for an Italian-Armenian beauty named Effie and tries to lead a
straight life amid dappled hillsides and a faltering Prohibition-era
wine industry. Can he do an honest day’s work? Is there any point,
when Wall Street fat cats are thieves too?

This is an entertaining, if overheated, allegory of American avarice.
Capitalism is pickpocketry, sleight of hand, a ripping yarn. True to
his cinematic roots, Parker juices up the message with murders, mob
activity, bootlegging, crooked priests, pornography, infidelity and
the like to make clear, as Tommy puts it, “what a screwed-up place
America had become since Prohibition.” Parker might lack his hero’s
buttery touch, but, like Tommy, he has a remarkable flair for getting
away with stuff.