BATAL: FIGHTING FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE ARMENIAN WAY
by Tsolin Nalbantian
Jadaliyya
Dec 7 2012
When I first moved to Beirut to start my doctoral research, I would
spend hours at the apartment of my mother’s family in the neighborhood
of Zarif. Sometimes I would bring work with me and sit on the chair
reading as clouds of smoke from my aunts’ cigarettes and nargila varied
in intensity around me. My attention would drift between conversing
with my cousins and their mothers, and the reading at hand.
I visited them almost daily. I did this, even though I had not grown
up with them. I wasn’t one of those Lebanese returnees – I mean I was,
but not in what might be termed the traditional sense. I returned,
but I was older than most people are when they make that journey and
I was alone. My parents didn’t accompany me: we never did summers
“bi Beirut,” or visited “even though there was war” (two taglines I
consistently heard my other Lebanese friends say who grew up outside
of Lebanon). Rather, I came to meet my mother’s family and to make
her memories of her birthplace my own.
Through my visits and my fieldwork during that time, I became
familiar with Zoqaq al-Blat, a neighborhood in central Beirut
about a fifteen-minute walk northeast of Hamra, the neighborhood in
which my mother was born and raised. I learned that some forty to
fifty years ago it had been home to many Armenians, as had been the
adjacent quarter of Zarif. During the 1950s and 1960s, most Armenians
attended local neighborhood Armenian grade, middle, and high schools
until college. If they were able to continue their education, most
attended the American University of Beirut and Haigazian University
(the first Armenian university established outside of Armenia, in
1952), as their Arabic language training was not strong enough to
enable attending the public Lebanese University. Accordingly, many
Armenians largely interacted only with one another. Such relationships
were bolstered by membership in Armenian scouting troops, political
youth groups, and sporting teams, along with the attendance of weekly
Armenian Church services that all took place in the area. Additional
socio-economic connections augmented these activities, as Armenians
in these neighborhoods patronized Armenian-owned bakeries, pharmacies,
hairdressers, butchers, car mechanics, and clothing sellers.[i]
The attachments that many Armenians shared with each other may have
been connected to the circumstances that brought their families to
Lebanon. The vast majority of Armenians had arrived to Lebanon as
refugees from southern and southeastern Anatolia in the wake of the
Armenian Genocide of World War I. The French mandatory government
of Lebanon extended citizenship to these Armenians in 1924 (thereby
buoying the Christian population of Lebanon) and by the time last of
the French troops left in 1946, about 75,000 Armenians were recognized
within the official eighteen sects in Lebanon (Armenian Orthodox and
Armenian Catholic were each their own category; the smaller population
of Armenian Protestants fell under the larger Protestant grouping).[ii]
Yet the relationship of Armenians to Lebanon was also evolving. My
mother’s generation was the first generation categorized as Lebanese
citizens by birth. And by the time my visits to my family and Lebanon
became habitual in the mid 1990s, my family’s daily interactions were
no longer as insular. As a result of the 1975-1990 Civil War and other
economic hardships, many Armenians had moved away from Zoqaq al-Blat
and Zarif to areas northeast of Beirut in the North Metn, to Antelias
and Naccache. Others left Lebanon permanently, emigrating to the United
States and Canada. For those who remained in Zoqaq al-Blat and Zarif
however, like my family, their interactions and relationships with
non-Armenians increased. They still frequented their local pharmacy
and area clothing stores, but conversed with their now non-Armenian
owners in the broken Arabic acquired from such social interactions
and television. They began to employ Arabic on a daily level and in
situations that used to be conducted in Armenian. My aunts still
remained familiar with neighbors, inviting them for coffee from
the balcony as they walked by, but the passers-by weren’t their old
familiar Armenian coffee partners. These former neighbors (if they
even still lived in near Beirut) would arrive at their apartment at
a prearranged time by car, on their way to somewhere else in the city.
My two aunts, Armenian language teachers in Armenian grade schools,
grew accustomed to having non-Armenian students in their classes.
Accordingly, the Arabic of my older aunts greatly improved. I
noticed my younger cousins spoke native Arabic, often correcting
older relatives.
My family adapted to their neighborhood’s shifting demographics and
landscape. Yet given their declining numbers (difficult to ascertain
as there hasn’t been an official census in Lebanon since 1932),
Armenians in Lebanon continue to be – if not increasingly so –
represented in the Lebanese government. Six out of 128 deputies in
parliament – up from five during the pre-Civil War period – and one
out of fourteen ministers in the cabinet is Armenian. Still, I often
felt that my family and other Armenians I interacted with felt that
their continued presence as Armenians in Lebanon was under threat.
While members of older generations often speak longingly about a
romanticized past, my family invoked the past as an era of refuge.
They felt shielded from pressures of assimilation and comforted
by their insular interactions between Armenians. They also equated
this time with a sense of the socio-economic and political prowess of
Lebanon’s Armenian community. They reminded me of how the mansion now
housing Future TV administration offices on Spears Street in Zarif was
once the headquarters of the Armenian Dashnak political party and that
the large community center complex of the Armenian General Benevolent
Union on Salim Boustani street was being demolished to make way for a
shopping center that would stretch towards the main street of Spears
(as went the latest rumor, anyway). Armenian presence in Lebanon,
they explained, was literally eroding.
Every afternoon, my family and I would assemble to attentively watch
the Armenian news broadcast in between the Arabic language news
and other station programming. I quickly noticed, however, that we
didn’t seem to watch the Armenian news for content. We already knew
the news–we had just watched the Arabic version. Plus, if we missed
notice of an important event, we would consistently reconvene during
the evening Arabic news hour. In addition, both broadcasts were shown
on the same Lebanese channel (presumably forwarding the same political
position(s)). They rarely, if ever, differed. The only variance was
that the Arabic version went into more detail, as its programming
was half an hour longer.
I once asked my family why we were such faithful viewers of the
Armenian news after we had, once again, watched both Armenian and
Arabic cycles. My aunts and cousins all responded similarly: “If we
don’t watch the Armenian news, who will?” We’ve already lost so much,”
they would say, a reference to the diminishing Armenian population
and material visibility in Lebanon. They also anticipated a day when
Lebanon would no longer broadcast the news in Armenian. “We only get
fifteen minutes anyway, and if we don’t watch it, they’ll take that
away too.” I never got who this “they” referred to (or what the “too”
meant), but I decided not to point out that Armenian news on Lebanese
TV was a relatively new development. I also didn’t bother to correct
them that the news program ran for thirty minutes, not fifteen. More
significantly, the Lebanese media was increasing its focus on the
Armenian community. All of the major Lebanese TV channels covered
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day commemorations on April 24 and
TeleLiban broadcast Armenian Christmas mass on 6 January every year.
Future TV began broadcasting news in Armenian in 2000 with OTV
beginning in 2008. In addition, all Lebanese news outlets avidly
followed the voting actions of the Armenian inhabitants in the
Metn district during the 5 August, 2007 by-elections that resulted
in the defeat of Amin Gemayel and the victory of Camille Khoury,
the candidate backed by both the Dashnak party and General Michel
Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. Lebanese newspapers in Arabic,
English, French, and Armenian reacted to the racist statements
made by Lebanese politicians Gabriel Murr and Amin Gemayel in the
election’s aftermath, when both accused Armenians in Bourj Hamoud
of corruption and vote-rigging. The apologies of Gemayal and Murr,
along with statements in defense of the Armenian community offered
by the Hizballah leadership, resulted in continuous reporting on the
Armenian community in Lebanon in August 2007. The press also profiled
many Armenians who returned to Lebanon to vote in the countrywide
parliamentary election in June 2009.
For my family (and for many Armenians in Beirut as I came to find out),
watching the news in Armenian was perceived as a national duty.
By watching the program, even when it was a replica of the Arabic
version they had just seen, they defended Armenian identity against
assimilation into a greater Lebanese identification. Failing to watch
the program became akin to forsaking the Armenian nation. This sense
of responsibility was also interconnected with a sense of being
deserted by the Lebanese government, as many Armenians in Beirut
explained to me that they had to protect the Armenian nation, or the
Armenian footprint in Lebanon would be gone forever. Having fulfilled
our national obligation for the day, we would then continue watching
whatever else was lined up on station programming.
Well, almost anything else. Certain Arabic programming was boycotted:
my family would never watch the Turkish soap operas dubbed in Arabic.
Turkish soap operas became increasingly popular in 2008, especially
after the commercial success of Nour (originally GumuÅ~_ in Turkish)
whose finale drew 85 million viewers, according to surveys by the
Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) channel.[iii] Watching
these shows apparently tested an Armenian’s loyalty. Once the soap
operas began, and only when they did, my family changed the channel to
the Armenian satellite station. While the soap operas were translated
into Arabic, the language change did not offset the “Turkishness” of
the program. Arabic acted as a vehicle to translate news to Armenians,
aiding in the project to support the Armenian nation, but could not
change Turkish character of an entertainment program. I often heard
conversations where people tried to measure each other’s commitment to
the Armenian Cause by simply asking, “Do you watch Turkish programs?”
This litmus test took a more public – and oddly enough more serious
– tone at the Armenian comedic play “Tshkoh Batal (Unhappy Batal)”
that I attended in Burj Hammoud last January. My cousin called me to
let me know she had landed one of the leading roles, and I thought I
should go and support her. In general, I like the theatre, but I had
my doubts about this production. I had seen one of this director’s
shows before and found the plot dim-witted and rife with bathroom humor
and childish sexual innuendo. Nevertheless, I estimated I could still
finish early enough to be back in Hamra meeting friends by 11 p.m.
Tshkoh Batal was sexist, shrill, and relied on gendered sexual humor.
And yet, even with the cheap laughs, I was grateful that it was at
least a comedy. That was a welcome change from my past experiences
at the Armenian theatre. From the time I was a child until just a
few years ago, going to an Armenian play usually included either a
dramatization of the violence during the Armenian Genocide, or (not
so oblique) references to the psychological trauma that it left behind.
The focus of this play was family dynamics. Two of the women were
sisters, and the third woman was the daughter of the elder sister.
Mother and daughter lived in the same house with their husbands,
and the sister/aunt lived next door with hers. The story centered
on the relationships between the three men who were related to each
other through their wives. Being the only commonality that brought the
men together, they would gather to complain about the women in their
lives – about their stupidity, their incessant whining, and that they
either oozed too much sexuality or not enough. The plot of the play was
simple and predictable: The woman and her husband who lived next door
must move into her older sister’s house temporarily. This upsets the
dynamics within the home, as there are already two couples (mother and
father, and daughter and husband) living there. They feel annoyed and
intruded upon by their neighbors, albeit members of their own family,
and spend the duration of the play (in vain) trying to get them out.
“Batal,” the star of the show, was played by the show’s writer,
comedian Pierre Chamassian. His grand plan to drive the third couple
out of the home by flirting with his wife’s aunt, unsurprisingly,
comes to naught.
Yet within this fairly obvious and slapstick play, Chamassian created
a condition to publically rebuke the Armenian viewers of Arabic-dubbed
Turkish soap operas. In the midst of an argument between Batal and his
sex kitten/idiot wife, Batal goes on a solo rant against the Turkish
musalsalat industry, calling its producers manipulative dogs. He
criticizes his wife for wasting her time with these television soap
opera serials while she should be taking care of him. And in the
midst of yelling at her, he shifts focus, and accuses all Armenians
who watch Turkish serials of suffering from a sickness that causes
them to commit treason.
Via a marital quarrel between Batal and his wife, Chamassian took
over the stage–and the play–to address what he considered to be a
“social disease” plaguing the Armenian community. As he continued,
getting redder in the face along with veins bulging from the
left side of his neck, he moved to shout directly to–and at–the
audience. Switching from the singular “you” to the plural form,
he shouted how shameful and disgusting it was that “you” (plural)
watched the Turkish musalsalatner (plural).
The same audience who had laughed playfully at jokes minutes before,
was now being accused of a social malady that culminated in treason. I
looked around at the audience members who could not have known
they would be taking part in some social court in the center of the
Armenian neighborhood that evening. But the charged accepted their
indictment. The audience, after a few moments of silence erupted
into loud cheers, whistles, applause, and many stood and clapped. We
(sex-kitten wife and guilty audience) were collectively reprimanded
for our crimes, and reminded of the Armenian tragedies perpetrated by
the Turks. The now slightly more tempered–yet still outraged–Batal
reminded us that whatever ordeal occurred in the Turkish television
serials, these were nothing compared to the tragedies “we” as Armenians
had suffered at “their” hands. “How,” he demanded to know, “can we
possibly sit around and waste hours feeling and crying for them?!”
This last statement was greeted with furious clapping and with many
audience members standing up and shouting back to Batal, “You’re
right!” Yes!” and “Bravo!” Others looked around at fellow audience
members and shouted, “He’s right!” “Exactly!” and accusingly began
to shout at each other “you must stop [watching]!”
The transformation from play to court of law took place quickly. The
audience became the accused and accepted their guilt, and Batal
(meaning hero in Arabic), suddenly personified his name. Through the
use of the name and character of Batal, Arabic regained its positioning
as a vehicle that assisted Armenians in Beirut in forwarding their
national cause. Arabic could not counter the “Turkishness” of the soap
opera. However, similar to its role as the source of Armenian news on
the Lebanese channel, in the play Arabic helped preserve an Armenian
identification within Arabic and Lebanese society. Batal (he was never
called heros, or hero in Armenian) was the hero-prosecutor who was
trying to preserve Armenian victimhood by not allowing others–who
did not warrant the claim of being victims themselves–to sully it,
even from the fictional setting of a soap opera.
According to Batal and the audience members, by watching these shows
Armenians collectively diminished the legitimacy of the larger Armenian
Cause that fought to honor the memory of the victims of the Armenian
Genocide. In addition, the guilty audience seemed to readily accept
that they were represented by the dim-witted sex kitten. Was this to
symbolize the audience’s own foolishness their misdirected sympathy? By
following these Turkish fictional stories, they unknowingly challenged
their own victimization. The general exclamations of the audience
suggested an appreciation for both Batal’s ability to identify their
crimes and for his intervention on behalf of the Armenian nation.
Watching this scene, I wondered if the play was a new way to
communicate nationalist trope to a broader audience. Chamassian,
through “Batal” (be it the character or the Arabic use of the word),
rendered fictional Turkish television serials as the latest site of
struggle over memory and ownership of trauma. Is this how an Armenian
in contemporary Lebanon articulates a sense of Armenianness? After all,
these audience members thought they were coming to see a comedy–there
was nothing ostensibly political (or particularly real) about the
play. There was no hint that acting would suddenly be used to represent
a malady (as identified by the director) afflicting the Armenian
nation in Beirut. Was performance art–be it the vehicle of the
Turkish soap opera or the theatre–the new site to declare positions
on Armenian-Turkish relations? Through Batal and Chamassian’s play,
watching Turkish serials in Lebanon and consuming them as entertainment
became a public measure of an Armenian’s devotion to the nation.
And yet, it was not merely about Turkish serials–it was also
their content. The main part of Batal’s diatribe against his wife
(representing an Armenian public) was that she sympathized with
the tragedies in the television shows, as if trumping them over
the “real” tragedy, the Armenian Genocide. And this trauma, Batal
seemed to say, was owned by Armenians, as if others, especially
Turks, did not have the right to display or represent trauma or
tragedy, even in its fictional and entertaining form. His nationalist
interjection–seemingly out of place, though entirely expected on some
level–was a pointed policing of how and what Beiruti Armenians should
watch. The play became a public conversation about owning tragedy. By
using the simulated platform of theatre, Batal was critiquing the
real-life actions of the audience. And they agreed with him. In fact,
I witnessed the battle cry: “we” Armenians are not going to let those
soap operas “do” tragedy better than us. Tragedy is ours (and ours
alone). Dealing with the legacy of genocide was relegated to a simple
action of watching a soap opera or changing the channel.
Then Batal gently smiled and showing no signs of fury (aside from
redness of the face that quickly began to fade) turned and once again
began to conspire with his love-struck sex-kitten on how they would
get the unwanted occupants out of the house.
——————————————————————————–
[i] Marriage and baptismal records of the era reflect this
aforementioned separation of the Armenian community. Marriage records
from the 1940s indicate that bride and groom were usually from the same
village or town in Anatolia. Similarly, Armenians from specific towns
and villages almost always attended the same church: for example, those
that were from Sis went to St. Sarkis Church in Nor Sis. It was only in
the late 1940s and 1950s that we begin to see “intermarriage” between
Armenian villages. The same holds true for baptismal records. Those
who were from the same towns and villages were married in specific
churches, and attended the same church to baptize their children. In
addition, the godfathers and godmothers of the children were more
often than not siblings of the parents, maintaining the insular
community of these churches. (source: Armenian Marriage Records,
Armenian Prelacy of Lebanon, located in Burj Hammoud.)
[ii] Nicola Migliorino, (Re)Constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria:
Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee
Crisis (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 89.
[iii] Alexandra Buccianti, “Turkish soap operas in the Arab world:
social liberation or cultural alienation?” Arab Media & Society
(Issue 10, Spring 2010).
http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=735
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8831/batal_fighting-for-truth-justice-and-the-armenian-