Speaking to One Another - The International Raoul Wallenberg ...

Through these networks, we were able to conduct interviews with ordinary people from different ethnic,religious and class backgrounds and from different genders and generations. Our own identities, and ourpersonal relationship with the interviewees played an important role in the outcome and success of theinterviews. We asked our interviewees to tell us what they knew about their family history, and the historyof their place of origin. Constructed as open-ended conversations, the interviews were exercises inactive listening rather than question-and-answer sessions. Our goal was to create an atmosphere whichwould make it possible for interviewees to structure their own narratives.We conducted interviews in regions where Armenians had a strong presence in the past. We worked inIstanbul, Central Anatolia, Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia in particular. Our intervieweeswere diverse in terms of region, class, generation and gender, including individuals who identified asTurkish, Kurdish and Armenian. Over one hundred interviews were recorded, transcribed and archivedfor this project.In this section, we present the stories of thirteen individuals based on their own accounts. While eachindividual is unique, we tried to represent the different kinds of people we interviewed, as well as themain emerging themes in the narratives to the extent possible. As some of our interviewees demandedanonymity, we use pseudonyms throughout. Similarly, the photographs that accompany the text arenot portraits in the conventional sense but rather attempts to evoke the spirit of each interview.ThemesIn our interviews, we asked individuals to speak about their family history, including their place of origin.These accounts include material culled from a variety of sources, such as their own memories,memories transmitted by previous generations (postmemory), history, and the media. The narrativesinclude detailed information about the lives of the interviewees, their parents, grandparents and sometimesgreat grandparents. This makes it possible to analyze the way interviewees reconstruct the recentpast.As arguably one of the most traumatic events in the history of 20 th century Anatolia, 1915 was mentionedby most interviewees even before we introduced the subject ourselves. In addition to its catastrophicoutcome for the Armenian population, 1915 had a tremendous impact on the spaces/placesand peoples of Anatolia, the effects of which can still be felt today. Remnants of material culture suchas crumbling churches, homes, cemeteries, innumerable objects such as copper trays, sewing machinesor pianos are everywhere. Local stories also keep the memory of Armenians alive. Stories about particularindividuals, local events involving Armenians, and buried Armenian treasures are transmitted fromgeneration to generation. Armenians even haunt the living in their dreams and through the curses andspells they are said to have placed upon the landscape of their homeland.18