Too Close, Yet Too Far - A Trilogy By Adom Saboonchian

Too Close, Yet Too Far
                                        A Trilogy
                                 By Adom Saboonchian

Introduction
Part I: Too Close yet Too Far
Part II: When I was 17 (My Vanetsi Grandmother)
Part III: My Father

                                        Introduction
I am looking around and witnessing the rapid assimilation of our younger generations in the
western cultures. Yes, they join us rather actively in demonstrations for the Centenary of the
Armenian Genocide and similar activities. However, I should say that this participation is
largely emotional and not based on solid knowledge and deep interest in the Armenian
history, politics and culture. The dominant language in our younger generations is the
language of our host country, English. And language, as you would know, is not a neutral
means of communication. Language is an active agent forming our worldview and way of
thought and social character.

When I was growing up in the 70’s in Iran, within our Armenian community, fascination with
the western culture was also a strong tendency within my generation. I had many friends
wishing to continue their studies in the west, especially in America, some of them even then
and at that age already had decided to stay there. This tendency was emerging within the
context of a world moving towards becoming a “Small village”-using Marshal McLuhan, the
famous Canadian scholar’s word.

Despite all these our identity was clearly Armenian. We used to talk in Armenian to each
other. There were clear-cut borders between the large Iranian social context and our
Armenian community. One might say that we were much too conservative in avoiding social
and cultural contacts with our host society. I tend to agree with this. However, we could
confidently say that there was stability in our community life. We could confidently speak of
continuous rising of Armenian younger generations interested in Armenian Community life
and Armenian nation as a whole. Armenian older generations, mainly brought up in the
Middle Eastern countries and Cyprus is now the backbone of Armenian community life here
in London and other Western countries.

Things are obviously no longer the same in the younger generation of British-Armenians.
Honestly there is no guarantee that this will continue when our generation leave the scene.
Why? Can we only say time has changed and mitigate ourselves? Is this a persuading
answer? Not, in my view.

I do not want to create the impression that everything was perfect in our community back
then. However, there was an important element present in our community life at that time,
which is now lacking here. Learning and discussing about the Armenian history, culture and
politics in diaspora was a serious and routine matter, at least, in a section of our generation.
Of course, you will say, there are also bright and interested young Armenians also passionate
about Armenians and Armenia. I know and respect a number of them. You can also say there
are similar activities for younger generation here in London. But these activities are not in a
scale that we used to enjoy in Iran and most probably in other Middle Eastern countries in the
seventies when we were growing up.

I do not want to be excessively cautious. However, the existence of Armenians in diaspora
and even to some extent the existence of Armenia as a country in future depends on diaspora
younger generations interested in Armenian history, culture and politics and love of Armenia.
When this is not being regenerated this is alarming.

Witnessing the current situation makes me think that if I want to play a positive role in
bringing a change in this situation, first, I myself have to be well informed about Armenian
history, culture and politics to be able to transfer it to new generations. Furthermore, on our
community scale, we have to work out new means of communication between generations
and perhaps become equipped with different and more creative methods of teaching
Armenian language, culture and history.

At this stage of my life my mind is preoccupied with the mentioned main issue and the
following related questions: Why the Armenian History and knowing about it should be
important for us? How, history of one’s nation and one’s family is present in his or her
current life? What are the components of our Armenian National identity? Are there limited
to the Armenian history, culture and art? Why is so important to preserve national identity
and transfer it to younger generations? Have we been really successful in preserving the
national identity in our younger generations? Have we educated and affected the minds of our
new generations in a way that they genuinely are keen and interested to preserve their
national identity and to continue the chain?

So unless a considerable number of our youth can develop solid their knowledge about
Armenian culture, history and politics and their “Armenianness” is based on emotional bais,
we cannot see any real changes in the existing situation.

After writing the following three pieces, I was shocked by the strong and overwhelming
presence of words such as migration, exodus and refugee. The least such mass movements
can do is causing cultural discontinuity and the need to start from the beginning. Diaspora
Armenians have done this many times over the last 100 years. This is exactly what that
makes the transfer of the culture to younger generation a much more difficult task.

Part I

                             Too Close, Yet Too Far

I am seated in a balcony in Yerevan writing these lines and the capturing and splendid
landscape of Mount Ararat overlooking the city is in front of me in the far distance.

Ararat is the symbol of the Armenians. One can hardly find an Armenian home in the world
without a painting or a picture or an artefact decorated by the familiar outline of this glorious
mountain. Geographically speaking Ararat was situated in the heart of historical Armenia, of
which the existing Armenia is only a small fraction. During the horrific years of 1915-1923
for the Armenian nation, especially in Western Armenia, the millenniums old habitants of
this ancient land became victims of the ethnic cleansing plot of the “Young Turks”. After
wars and retreats and advances finally Ararat was taken away from the exhausted Armenians
by the big powers. They drew the border between Armenia and Turkey very close to Mount
Ararat, the latter in the Turkish side, somethings that, as Iranians say, is pouring salt on the
wound.

The strange feeling of having a national symbol outside the national boarders becomes much
                                                more tangible when one visits “Khor Virab”
                                                (Deep Pit) and the church built on it.

                                                “Khor Virab” is very close to the border
                                                with Turkey. This is considered a holy place
                                                where “Grigor The Illuminator” was in King
                                                Trdad’s captivity for 13 years. Armenian
                                                history developed in a direction that an
                                                Iranian noble from the Parthian dynasty
                                                became the founder of Armenian
                                                Christianity. King Trdad, from Armenian
                                                Parthian or Arshakouni dynasty, in search
                                                for more independence from the Sassanid
Empire, finally turned to Christianity making Armenia the first country in the world Ararat
view from “Khor Virab”

In “Khor Virab” one comes so close to the glorious and splendid Ararat that one can imagine
stretching his or her hands will touch it. However, immediately, the line of barbed wires and
Turkish patrols moving along this line ruin this sweet dream. What follows this sudden
awakening is the deep feeling of sorrow for the separation of the national symbol from the

motherland.” Khor Virab” is a place where every Armenian can experience the paradoxical
feeling of joy and happiness for coming too close to this beloved mountain for us and at the
same time sadness and sorrow for being separated from what can so vividly be seen in near
distance.

                                           Part II

                              When I was 17
                        (My “Vanetzi” Grandmother)

I was not more than 17 years old when my grandmother on my father’s side passed away. She
was 22 years old, a young mother of a child, when Armenians of the city of Van were forced
to leave their homes and their city. In May 1915 after the retreat of Russian Tsarist Army,
                                  the Armenian voluntary forces were deprived of their
                                  support. Before that, they had heroically defended the
                                  Armenian districts of the city for more than a month
                                  inflicting heavy losses on Turkish invading forces.
                                  Anticipating the approaching inevitability of acts of
                                  vengeance and bloodshed by the Turkish Army, Armenians
                                  promptly decided to leave their city in haste, uncertain
whether they would be able to return to their ancestral homeland.

The Defence of Van

After years of wondering from city to city and country to country my grand-parents, with
their remaining three children, finally took refuge and settled in 1929 in Tabriz, Iran.

Now, I do vividly remember and understand very well that my grandmother was only
physically present and living in Iran, mentally she had been frozen in 1915’s Van. All the
time she was telling me her repeated stories about Van and its famous orchards and the
American prestigious school she used to go to. She was obsessed with these memories,
understandably as she was suddenly forced to flee from her homeland. She was in pain and
sadness as she had also been separated from her immediate relatives in Soviet Armenia
behind “Iron Curtain” thus loosing contact with them. Stuck in the past, remembering the
hardship of exodus, lost children on the road and missing her relatives, she was unable to be
in touch with life in Iran. I do remember she would ask me to buy those fruits that she
thought were already ripe and on sale in Tehran while her timing was adjusted with the
seasons in Van, which was not necessarily same in Iran. Although my father used to explain
this to her she did not understood it till the end of her life. She did not learn a word in Persian
after living there for half a century as a sign of her total alienation from that environment.
When she was watching TV she was constantly asking us to translate the gist of the TV
programme for her. Of course, my grandmother unknowingly was using some Persian words.
There are many Turkish words with Persian origin, that were used in “Vanetzi” dialect that
she used to speak.

                                    Bird’s Eye View of Van

My grandmother lost eight children during the wondering years of 1915 to 1929. Being on
the road for long time, extremely exhausted the family and made their newly born babies so
vulnerable and so weak in fighting against different fatal diseases. The non-stop cries before
their heart breaking death was the nightmare of my grand-parents who in hope to see an end
to this chain of deaths named their youngest daughter “Bave-las”, which means “It is enough

to cry”. However, this fragile daughter, with a sick hearth in her chest, also passed away
when she was only 20 in Tebriz. I remember the broken nail of my grandmother’s thumb.
She had tried to push it between Bavelas’s closed jaws to help her to breath.

In my teenage years I was really unable to understand the tragedies my grand-parents had
gone through. To be honest I was fed up with my grandmother’s stories finding them totally
irrelevant to my life at that time.

However, now viewing inexplicable sufferings and pain of Syrian refugees and the horror and
insecurity they have experienced and are experiencing now, reminding me more of the
Armenians’ exodus from Western Armenian. We can mitigate ourselves that Syrian refugees
due to omnipresent media and the existence of different organisations defending refugees’
rights and, in general, prevailing human rights ideas in the world, can get more support from
advanced countries, something which was denied from Armenian refugees hundred years
ago. By viewing images of the atrocities committed by Salafi terrorists and the plight of
Syrian refugees one can more tangibly feel the horrors and suffering of our ancestors, who,
indeed, were subjected to worse inhuman conditions.

Something else also brings me closer to my grandmother. It has been more than 30 years that
I have been living in London. From the very first years of my life in the unfamiliar
environment, my conditions helped me to understand my grandmother’s situation in Iran and
identify more with her and reach the depth of her sadness. I have come to London as student
and whenever I wish I can return home and be among my remaining close relatives there. I
can easily return to the locations that I am strongly attached to as have I spent my teenage and
youth years there. I have not left Iran under the threat of elimination but left with a
confidence that I can go back to my “past” whenever I wish. Nevertheless, sometimes I miss
Tehran and familiar spaces and nostalgic feelings and memories come to me.

In the recent years every time I have gone to Iran, more friends or relatives have left Iran for
good. With this current mass migration of Armenians from Iran as if my “past” is also fading
away and evaporating. This situation is lessening my sense of belonging to the familiar
Armenian community in Iran, when, I have not yet developed equally strong ties to my
current living place. Of course, I am trying to be active within my Armenian community in
London and hence develop more attachment to it.

However, the limbo-like and uncertain situation draws me further towards understanding the
alienation of my grandmother from her Iranian environment. This is what she suffered
throughout her life in Iran. She knew that familiar Armenian spaces in Van, where she had
spent her teenage and youth years, do not exist anymore and that made her feel empty and
sadder.

                                         ==========

                                           PART III

My Father

In later stage of his life, my father had developed an unsatisfying appetite for reading
historical books about Armenia and Armenians and about neighbouring dominant powers.
Powers such as Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire and Iran that have played major roles in the
courses that Armenian history has taken in the different periods.

At that time I could not understand the reasons of this great interest. Every time I asked him
about this unending interest, he could not provide me satisfying answers. It seemed to me he
was searching for something not so clear for himself.

My father used to love traveling to Armenia and his ancestor’s city, Van. He had travelled to
Van for number times together with our “Vanetzi” relative on their own. In addition to this
“The Society of Vanetzi Armenians in Tehran” has been organising tours to Vaspourakan
every year. My father was one of the regular customers of these tours.

In one of his journeys to Van he had succeeded in finding our family’s ancestral fragile
building on the road still named “Sabounchi Oghli”, meaning children of Sabounchi family.
Two Turks had began to be around and shown hospitality to my father and our relative. They
had even gone so far to condemn the “Massacres of 1915” and the brutality of their nation.
However, soon after, my father and our relative found out they are in fact treasure hunters.
Some Armenian Vanetzis, when leaving Van in haste in 1915, had left behind their wealth
under the soil. This did not apply to “Sabounchi Oghli” and the hospitalities soon ended.

My father also loved to travel to Armenia and stay there for a long time after Armenia’s
independence, though my parents had begun travelling there well before the Independence.
Most of his relatives, on mother’s side, had stayed in Yerevan after 1915. On my mother’s
side, my grandfather was an indigenous Yerevan citizen. As a state clerk and a member of
“Federation of Armenian Revolutionaries”, after the fall of the First Armenian Republic in
1920 in fear of persecution he fled to Tabriz and died in his early fifties. My father used to
love spending a lot of time with our relatives on both sides and enjoyed touristic sight-seeing
and historical tours.

After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, some of our relatives left “revolutionised” Iran with the
first wave of migration and settled in Europe and North America. However, this exodus never
                                                weakened my father’s determination to stay
                                                in Iran. Perhaps because he had seen the
                                                continuous migrations in his early childhood
                                                (with an impact on his psyche) as well as the
                                                situation of his mother in Iran, he did not
                                                want to be subjected to another migration in
                                                his older years. He preferred to stay in Iran
                                                and close to Armenia and Van. Of course, I
                                                guess he might have been interested to
                                                migrate to Armenia, after independence.
However, this is unknown.

Now, I am following his footsteps, while in my youth I did not have such a tendency. As I
am growing old, I am becoming more fascinated in the same subjects as my father was, while
like him I cannot explain its reasons. The urge to swim against the current is not stopping in
me and for inexplicable reasons, despite mass
migration of Armenians from Iran; I want to spend
more time in Iran and in Armenia. I also really want
to see Van and Istanbul. When I am in Armenia I
usually spend a lot of time on visiting various
museums and historical sites. I am fanatically trying
to find Armenian Classical music concerts in August
when, as you would know, it is not a good season for
such concerts in Yerevan.

I think the very common expression among us Armenians, i.e. “searching for the roots” is not
a satisfying and a persuasive answer to explain my situation. Those words remind me of
biology rather than something proper in the domain of human sciences.

I do remember vividly when for the first time I came across the Ararat Mountain in Armenia
I became emotional and drops of tears gathered in my eyes. Perhaps because I immediately
remembered that painting of Ararat which I have always seen hanged on a wall in our home
before coming to London. But as Iranians say, “Hearing can never be like seeing”. The
splendour of this mountain can really be felt
when one comes too close to it. I do remember
that a few years ago a couple of my close and
much younger relatives here had climbed
Ararat. To be honest, I do consider them more
British than Armenian as they have been here
from early childhood. Despite this, they told us
that when reached the peak they were very
emotional and were crying and dropping tears.

This is very same when one listens to Armenian
music and one cannot help not to be emotional and fascinated by, for instance, beautiful
melodies blended with colourful and vivid orchestration of Aram Khachaturian.

One of my big regrets in life is why I did not join my father in one of his travels to Armenia
or Van and be witness to his situation. Perhaps thus I would have gained more understanding
about these curiosities and searches that are common between me and him.