And when night was already descending from the sky, when the night of grandmother and grandson was about to lower the sky here and there - on the way to the red sunset, the poor group of wretched people turned up. They noticed, or they noticed long ago, or they knew they were there, because no matter how mercilessly they smashed and looted the upper villages, God always sent some wisdom for the inner camps. They noticed and moved, and that was the end, if of course the animalistic devotion of great mothers has an end and if the adolescent life embodied in our fit bodies so easily leaves the calves of our bodies.
- Run away, my child, let me die at your feet, get lost.
Did the grandmother say these Armenians, Tajiks, Kurds? Later, they learned Armenian in the colonies, and in the colonies they understood that they are not Ottomans, they are Armenians. Or in such cases, they don't say, they don't speak - they are driven to ravage and ravage with the savage squealing of a cinephile parent, until darkness falls and the child loses its track and smell, to make it their own. I don't know. I only know that this is a story that has been revised forty times, that when the luxurious, deceitful, daring, gorov, joker life met the boy and the incident was placed in the harmless distance of years, it has been told many times and has been witnessed many times with gold.
"Open your mouth," he said, "let me die on your tiny teeth, squeeze your edges," he said, "get lost, run away from my manch, don't look back." - And with the rituals of a lucky and intelligent gentleman, a grain of gold was brought from the halls of the deep, which the grandmother pressed into her grandson's teeth at that distant sunset. - Run away, I'll die you deer toys, get lost, don't look back.
The peoples are enslaved, they turn on each other, they displace each other, and once the people are torn from their place, they are already a scourge on the world. I assume that those camps in southern Cappadocia were Ashirets deported from the Balkans in the 12th war, or Turkmens torn from Western Armenia in the 1978 war, or the North Caucasian people of Shamil - already five years and fifty years completely deprived of their home and place, they were an irreplaceable means of striking, ignoring the Armenian caravans, erasing them from the face of the earth, so that the pack of wretches and dogs must have dragged the body and clothes of that villager, down to the last thread and the last pin, all down to the flesh and bones, from the road.
I know that the opposite also and perhaps even more has happened, will happen: if it happens in the silent world of animals, it will also happen in our world of humans - we will hold our babies and free our poor heads - but there is no word or story about us, those who left us, because those who were supposed to live in our place and ring our selfless love, have been torn apart in the clutches of animalized wretches, and we have saved us, we surrendered ourselves to the animalistic silence of harems and conversion and slavery.
This story was told to me by my artist friend, who paints a lot of Masis and trees, he is a rich man from Argentina, Uruguay or America.
- Run away, my child, he said, I will die, your strong tots, you run away, my legs are tired.
In their conversation, the words of that successful artist and successful trader, who spoke a little before our black 1988, even entered into a tone of joke: "Mr. Rich, said the artist, I am giving you a very pro-Armenian, very patriotic proposal. buy me an island in the ocean, our nation of Armenians will have two wealthy island owners instead of one", etc., and those lucky Armenians laughed heartily in the luxurious security of what they had left behind their lost past - seventy years from the place of the incident and the evening, separated by mountains of gold, the great Soviet country and the whole civilized world.
And this was compiled from the testimonies of Stepan Zoryan, Nvard Tumanyan and, I think, Tigran Hakhumyan. I would like, I really wish that it hadn't happened, that it hadn't been witnessed, that I hadn't read it, that I wouldn't have seen Tumanyan confused, but it happened, but from the flood of panic, stupidity, madness, courage, hope and faith, this very broken Tumanyan at the Gharakilisa station stands out. Heart-piercing, the clothes, the sound, the color, the scent are close enough to envelop you, and the landscape is family-like - that Kingly Mountain, that Lonely Tree, the apple orchards, the red tile roofs, that muted roar of the spring tributaries that fills that valley with a lazy and kind tale.
Also, at his urging, Simon Vratsyan's rebels put their swords in their sheaths, leave the country through the Garnu valley, the Sharur-Nakhijevan road is closed, the other one returns to Tiflis through the Dilijan valley, the Alekpol line is closed. That's what Armenia is: a couple of valleys and a dirty, gray, poor Yerevan. The people of Simona leave with a flag, with rituals, an honorable retreat, but never with the trumpets of defeat, he also leaves proudly in authority - all Armenians consider his mission as a poet, almost a saint, successful. Ritual or thief, depressed or proud in authority, Tabriz or Tiflis - whatever it was, it's one and the same, they were leaving the country, they were leaving Armenia. He does not know what will happen next, nor did the Simonians know.
Maybe the Russians, maybe the Turks who were sitting in Alekpol would take over. The worst of the bad Russians were the good Turks, the worst of the Turks was the anarchy. And the killer from the Russians, Turks, and anarchy was that Armenia was something outside of us that could be left, that could be left and not considered dead, that could be loved, that could be devoted to and expect gratitude from, from whom could be considered conquered or surrendered - Armenia was not ourselves, Armenia was not me, Armenia was "your Armenia". It was a place from which everyone retreated and thought that place still existed, a body from which one could stand apart, be above or below (only above), endow oneself with a mission according to it, and consider your mission successful or not so successful.
In 1921, Tumanyan, who lost his brother and son, and another brother, whose pop-up group was subduing the enemy in these same valleys fifteen years ago, Tumanyan, who bravely lost that brother, reached Vanadzor station and does not know how he will go to Tiflis. Witnesses say that the head of the Turkish mission, Bey Pasha, noticed his noble figure from the window of the diplomatic train Khars-Alekpol-Tflis-Baku-Moscow and invited him to the carriage. Here.
What did they say, what did they talk about? Did they talk? Or did the Bey already consider the invitation a violation of diplomatic ethics and was satisfied with providing a seat in one of the far compartments of the carriage? Or was he given tea to a respected person throughout the Caucasus, ordered to take tea to the great man? Did they talk about the Great Zulu? What did the Bey say? He said he was on the European front, wasn't he familiar with the events in Asia Minor, did he express his condolences, did he curse two of the previous rulers, did he say the loss of Armenians is first of all a great loss for the Turks, because you lost your brothers, we, the breadwinner, he said he has several close Armenians, all of them decent, all of them legal citizens, he said? Is what happened a painful misunderstanding, let's let bygones be bygones?
What did they keep silent, what did they say, what was Tumanyan doing, I don't know. The right side of the railway was the old mill of Tersants, Tersank was a branch of the great Tumanyan mountain range, the left side was the outlet of Dzoraget, then the old ancestral lands of Dzadigzor, the old beauty of Dseghi - the house was his, the host was the enemy, the guest was himself, the host was the enemy - what can I say?
Let me tell you, should he not throw himself into the mad slaughtering ground of the Armenians of the All-Unionist Armenians and the Allied Armenians, let them eat each other to the end, didn't he have anything to do with them, wasn't he them, weren't they him? Shouldn't he get on the wagon, turn his face away and ignore the Turk's invitation? Shouldn't I remember, shouldn't I put myself in uncomfortable situations?
And we simply do not remember and consider ourselves saved, and we throw ourselves into the military base of a powerful power and from there we remember and threaten, and we bypass a millennium and appear in times and places without Turks, and we fill our sails with the winds of global citizenship, and we settle our curly-haired wives and daughters in the cruel valleys of the civilized tomorrow - but the Turk is everywhere, in the past and in the future, in the north and in the south.
Now, with the nation and the state and not with the waves of beaten and ignored caravans, this is us standing in the face of redemption and salvation, this is not a memory of the distant eighty-year-old and no longer safe past in our luxurious mansions, this is today, this is not Tumanyan in the wagon-salon of a diplomat and a warrior, this is me sitting in front of my enemy in the present - shall I speak or not speak, shall I remember? or not to remember, to tell or not to tell?
I should not remember that I am an animal in front of him, I should remember that I am an enemy. They destroy the enemy, cattle are cattle. But the enemy is also respected because the enemy puts a limit on your parade of insolence. The enemy brings you back to you. If I do not remember, do not tell, do not speak, do not punish, I am betraying myself, everyone and myself - the enemy, the enemy - himself. Not remembering, not telling, not punishing, I make his insolence a punishment on everyone, and no one will thank me for it, and the enemy himself will not be grateful.
THIS IS MY HOMELAND. This is my homeland. I am the homeland. Homeland is my life's work in the time I live. There is no such thing, no such time, no such motherland in that time, no self. The scissors of history cuts those times of the homelands and we, with those times, did not exist and do not exist. The darkness of space is full of idle times of deserted homelands. you reach out your hand, but there is no one to take it, you shout, but your voice is lost, you throw a light, but nothing finds your light - not a face, not an incident.
How beautiful it is that my lights find burning images on those faraway roads, how good it is that I don't have to dwell on the past of eternity and eternity. Following their example, we will fill our time with our work and voice, we will leave our mark on our time, we lived here.
"Literary Newspaper", 01.05.1995