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

against one another. The feet of the field ants were ripped off so that the black ants could kill them. Thefield ants were the fılla. Fılla means Christian. This stuck in my mind.”In 1982, one of Ayhan’s uncles migrated to Istanbul, settled in Kurtuluş and opened a store. His fatherfollowed soon after and Ayhan found himself in the city. Migration meant not only entering a new spacebut also a new language: “People speak Turkish on the streets. When you go to the store, you say ‘bread’in Turkish. So you want to learn Turkish.” His father wanted to send Ayhan to the Armenian school, butthey were handed a list requiring “Ten pairs of socks, twenty pairs of underwear, a sweat suit, regularshoes, training shoes.” Since his father couldn’t afford the items on the list, Ayhan went to the publicschool two streets over.Crossing myself, I confuse right and leftEven if he couldn’t go to the Armenian school, Ayhan was sent to the Kınalıada summer camp for Armenianchildren from low-income families. This time he encountered another language: “Te means tea,I shall keep this in mind, learn Armenian.” In the camp, there were also religious practices to whichAyhan needed to adjust: “We prayed before meals, but it’s a different prayer this time and we crossedourselves. Up and down, right and left. I always confused right and left. First right or left? I was alwayswatching someone and doing as they did.”Kurds at home Turks at school Armenians at campAyhan experiences a similar difficulty in religion classes at school: “I was trying to memorize the prayersin middle school. I tried to write them down but I could not memorize the Arabic words. My mother usedto pray but she never told us that we should. Even though our identity cards say we are Christian, myfather never said we should go to church.” Ayhan and his cousins, who move between languages andidentities, make a joke of their situation: “What are we, brother?” They define their identities by context:“We are three things. We are Kurds at home, we speak Kurdish. Second, we are Turks at school, wespeak Turkish. Third, we are Armenians at the camp, we speak Armenian. We are Armenians in summer,Turks in school in winter and Kurds at home. We felt most comfortable being Kurdish.”As he discovered the Kurdish movement at university, his Armenian identity emerged out of Kurdishness:“What I have to do first of all is to claim my Kurdish identity. I claimed it emotionally. Then I beganto claim my Armenian identity. I realized that there was an identity problem and that I had becomeassimilated from Armenianness to Kurdishness and from Kurdishness to Turkishness.” Assimilationseems like the price of surviving 1915: “I consider myself Kurdish because of this event. I learn that I’mnot, but don’t know if this loss can be redeemed.”57