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

If I were younger I’d get baptizedIn his narrative, Ruhi constructs an opposition betweenIslam and Christianity, East and West, Turksand Armenians, choosing to identify with the latter,even though both he and his mother form partof a Turkish/Muslim family: “I defend my mother’sidentity everywhere with pride. So what if mymother is Armenian? Germany developed Turkey;the Christian world developed it. If I were youngerI’d go to church and be baptized without hesitation.Because I don’t feel any sympathy towardsIslam. Which religious doctrine, which religiousconscience can justify what my mother wentthrough?”When his mother died, the family brought herback to Turkey for burial. Yet Ruhi persists in hisdesire to discover his mother’s family name and tohave her reburied in a Christian cemetery: “I wentto Trabzon, but was frightened. My mother’s houseis a hundred meters above. Why shouldn’t her recordsbe there? But I didn’t dare. I’m also from Trabzon,but my people are intolerant. I want to go toBatumi, to find my mother’s records and her identity.Here she is, my mother! This is her name! Thisis her surname! She’s from here! I want to discoverthis. My mother officially lost her identity, butI made it possible for her to live like a human being.I also wanted to bury her in an Armenian cemetery.If I were more clever back then, I’d have taken my mother to church and have her baptized again.‘Mother’, I’d say, ‘this is your place.’ I wish I’d said this to my mother. If I had more money today, I’dlike to do what I couldn’t do then. I’d try to move her grave. These kinds of things are important if oneis wounded inside.”Ruhi’s mother lives on in her son’s imagination, and it is in his imagination that she becomes the Armenianwoman he longs her to be, so that he can become the son who overcomes the accident of his birthto choose an alternate civilization he idealizes, laying aside the burden of guilt he has inherited.46