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

half for me.’ But what do our Muslims do? They beat him good and send him away. They didn’t give himfive cents.” And some Armenians come and take their gold “without letting anybody know.” Nevertheless,neither the treasures end, nor their stories: “They still remain in the land of Van. Wherever new estatesare built, treasure is found when the hammer hits the ground.” Treasure promises progress as wellas sudden wealth: “The Armenians say ‘When the doors of the houses in Van are made of gold, and thewindows of silver, then we will say that they have discovered all of our treasures.’” The stories about“Armenian spells” only serve to reinforce the mystery. The gold on which Armenians have put a spell,“make some faint, and others die”.We’ll cover the castle of Van with a red clothThe Armenians as imagined by Zübeyde do not only want the treasures hidden in the land of Van or intheir old houses back, but the entire city: “They want Van since eternity. I swear that they always wantedit; this side belongs to the Armenians. The Armenians have always said, ‘If we conquer the castle ofVan, we’ll cover it from top to bottom with a red cloth to shade it from the sun’.” Armenians’ attachmentto Van is a source of fear for Zübeyde. While their houses and gold possess a mysterious charm,the image of the Armenian who will return one day to take his house and gold along with the city heonce owned spreads fear. Every issue, even the Kurdish issue is explained in reference to this image:“Why would a Turk kill a Turk otherwise? Why would a Muslim kill a Muslim? The Turks and Kurds arebrothers, brothers in religion if it were not for the Armenians. I swear that the Armenians do it. Therewasn’t anything with the Kurds. They used to fight among themselves, they’d shoot each other and killeach other. They didn’t have problems with Turks.”Besides the Armenians of the time of seferberlik who live in stories or the Armenians of an unknown futurewho will return to take back their city, there are also Armenians who live in the present. Zübeyde,who differentiates communities on the basis of religion, distinguishes her Islamicized Armenian neighborsfrom the Armenians in her stories. According to her, the Islamicized Armenians are “just like us”:“There was my neighbor’s mother, she also passed away. She had had a child, forty days old. Armeniansbecame captives among Turks. The father of our neighbor here took one. One of his sons was left behindby the Armenians. Now we don’t call him Armenian. He became Muslim like us. He used to pray andfast. He didn’t drop the rosary from his hand.”The Armenians in Zübeyde’s memory are mythical figures who oblige her grandfather to migrate, whomigrate when it is their turn, putting a spell on and then burying their gold. They still want to return totake the city, and push the Turks and Kurds into war. They certainly don’t resemble Zübeyde’s neighbors.Why is there such pervasive fear in Zübeyde’s narrative, when Armenians and Turks alike havesuffered in Van, and Turkish victory prevailed?61