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

ly, nor do we tell it to our children because we don’t want our children to feel hatred towards the societythey live in. This was what my father thought.” However, Dikran had heard some stories from his father,but it was a while before he could see the big picture: “My father and our relatives used to talk about theseferberlik [mobilization]. Details were not told. And I used to think that this happened only in our village.Then I realized that what had happened in our village had also happened in Muş, Van, and in other places.I was an adult when we finally began to learn about the Armenian genocide.” This is a “thorny” storyof roots and rootlessness. It explains why he doesn’t receive anything from his homeland, while his Turkishfriends are sent apricots from Malatya, watermelons from Diyarbakır: “I don’t receive anything fromanywhere because I don’t have anybody. I don’t have roots, nor do I have a past. We didn’t come out of theearth; I mean, we came from somewhere. See, we don’t have this ‘somewhere’. Our past is very short; I canonly speak about my grandfather when I talk to you. Well, where was he born, but I can’t go beyond that.I can’t tell you about it because those people don’t exist. I can’t tell you anything about them; I don’t haveanybody in my father’s homeland. Because it doesn’t exist. They tore me from my father’s land.”We didn’t come from somewhere, we were hereDikran uses the very same story to explain that he didn’t come from anywhere; that he was here in thefirst place. As an Armenian in Turkey he is used to being asked where he comes from: “Who was hereback in 1070? It wasn’t an empty field. There were Armenians and Greeks; I mean, we are them. We’vebeen here for five thousand years. We didn’t come from anywhere. And you do feel resentment sometimes.You know they call you ‘stranger.’ For instance, I am doing my military service, I will be demobilizedin a few months, we’re on guard with a sergeant. And we’ve been serving together with that sergeantfor almost a year. ‘My lieutenant,’ he says ‘why is your name Dikran?’ ‘Man,’ I say, ‘I am Armenian.’‘Oh,’ he says, ‘where did you come from?’ They often ask about this. I said, ‘We didn’t come fromsomewhere, we were here.’ I gave him a short summary. He was surprised, he stared at me for a while.We’ve been serving for one year; the guy doesn’t know that I’m Armenian. He doesn’t know what an Armenianis, these are strange sorts of things.”This is the way Dikran tells the story of his family:“Our history begins with my grandfather. My grandfather is actually from Gürün, which is a district ofSivas. When the seferberlik happens—let’s use softer terms not to cause ourselves more pain—my grandfatheris serving in the military. Seferberlik ends and my grandfather comes to Gürün. Before his militaryservice my grandfather is an ironsmith, he has an iron workshop there, he’s also a tinsmith. He comes tohis workshop, but there are things going on. I don’t really know what. I mean, he’s anxious while comingback, he knows something is going on in his homeland. He comes and sees that nobody’s there. Hisapprentice carries on with the shop. He asks, ‘What happened, my son?’ ‘Master,’ he says, ‘nobody fromyour community is here.’ The apprentice is also anxious, because the master might take the shop fromhim. And my grandfather says, ‘My son, it is already yours, I will be leaving.’”72