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

The psychology of girls changes fastAccording to Ruhi, while his mother did try to escape, she resigned herself to her fate as an Armenianwoman under those circumstances: “There was an Armenian family who wanted to help my motherescape. The man was a highly-esteemed artisan. If they didn’t kill him, it’s because of his artisanship.They heard my mother’s story and wanted to help her. But the bandit who’s supposed to be my fatherlocked my mother in the house. My mother tried hard to escape but she couldn’t. The psychology of femalechildren changes fast; she didn’t have any other option.”Of his siblings, Ruhi was the only one who identified with his mother’s suffering and took up her cause:“We were living eight people in a cottage. It could be demolished with one kick. We used to go barefootto school. A family of converts was living opposite us, they gave us leftovers. My mother loved me themost because I was the one who was beaten the most. My brother beat me, he tied my hands and feet.”Ruhi finally ran away, an exodus that would take him to Istanbul and many other places, including Germany:“The time my mother was slapped, the events concerning Armenianness and our poverty affectedme. I could not stay anywhere for a long time. I would start a job, but run away after a while. It wasalways like that in my childhood. I left home when I was fifteen. I worked as a porter in Istanbul. I had agoal: to go to America. I knew that Armenians were there.”After several years, Ruhi was forced to return to Trabzon, and, after the death of his father, the familycame to Istanbul to live with his mother’s uncle: “My mother’s uncle, who escaped in 1915, lived inBeşiktaş. When we found him we all came here packed like sardines.” Eventually, they moved to Germany,where Ruhi lived for several decades. His mother died there in the late 1970s: “The night of June 6 that quarter past two, my mother passed away in my arms.” Ruhi’s narrative suggests that his experiencesin Germany had a major impact on how he reconstructs the past, his relationship to his mother, andhis own identity: “I wasn’t idle in Germany. I acquired knowledge. I’m a person who knows the civilizedlife. If I hadn’t gone to Germany, I wouldn’t find all this odd. There we learned humanity. Ignorance isincomprehensible. I’ve said it wherever I could: My mother is an Armenian girl and what has been doneis a massacre. Leaving my mother on the streets when she was eight, handing her over to a villager whohasn’t heard of civilization, to whom she had no emotional attachment; these events cannot be easilyforgotten. I really should sue the Turkish government. I’d sue and win if I was in Germany. My life hasbeen turned upside down.”Yet he is aware of the risks taking a stand in Turkey still entail: “It takes courage to speak openly aboutthese subjects in Turkey. It’s the same thing if I burn myself with a gallon of gas or if I say ‘You killed mygrandparents, you seized their house, I demand compensation.’”45