NAMAG
My Letter To My Grandfather Temo (Hacadur)*
Grandfather; I feel somewhat strange again these days.
Great fellows speak on televisions, I listen...
I always remember you...
I think about you...
What kind of a burden is this; too hard to carry...
No one wants to understand...
What kind of deafness is this, grandfather?
Reminding me of your eyes with cataract...
I feel your pain while you were talking about things you had witnessed between the ages of 12-15…
Great fellows speak, grandfather; most of all, they say “document”, “evidence”…
Those are the moments that I am confused the most, the moments I remember you…
You and I know the reason but they do not…
If I tell them your story, grandfather, do you think they will understand?
That you watched your family being assassinated from a hole in the haystack where you hid for seven days…
That they bayoneted the belly of your pregnant sister-in-law in the shape of a cross,
(they have been made to believe that they will go to heaven when they kill ‘haco’s, ‘haco’s should be killed with a cross)
That you watched one of your yet creeping cousins being separated into two by a ‘human’(!) who stepped on one of his legs while holding the other apart…
I feel pain, grandfather….a lot of pain…
You stay alive with the help of a lord who hid you…
You work for him for years, in exchange for food…
One day you see Emo near the fountain and you love her…
Emo; (Evan) She, too, is a massacre survivor…
(Much like BC and AC, you used to say “before massacre”, “after massacre” in order to describe the time of an event)
She has married a guy at the age of her grandfather and given birth to three children...
When you meet her, Emo is a widow, alone with her children...
You propose and you get married with a religious ceremony…
You cannot have an official marriage, because; you do not have a record, all the records have been burned…
According to official records, you are a non-living, non-existing person…
You have children...
You call them Ohannes and Araksi, in the father field, they write the name of Emo’s son Yakup (Keko Yako), from her first husband
Since you are not living(!), you cannot give your name to your children…
After all that you had witnessed during the “Massacre” time, you never stepped into a government office again…
Even your son-in-law from Sason could not understand this fear of you, they did not understand, grandfather…
American ships had come to pick up survivors but you said; "this is our country, our land, everything is now over" and did not leave the land you were born in…
You did not go…
Years later, children and grandchildren moved to Istanbul one by one.
You and Emo still did not leave your Diyarbakir...
One night Emo slept and did not wake up...
She was buried to the land that she loved…
You had no other choice left, but to move to Istanbul…
You unwillingly left your beloved -in spite of all the pain you had- Dikranagerd… Your Diyarbakir…
Your story would not end in Istanbul…
You were grieved one more time a few years later, when your son Ohannes decided to move abroad…
You were an Anatolian man, living with your daughter would mean living with your son-in-law.
You could not accept it, and got sick shortly after your son moved to Belgium…
They put you in Surp Pirgic Armenian Hospital…
Every time your daughter Araksi came to visit you (every day, she used to visit her father after taking her daughter to school),
You used to say "Let me go to my son and die"...
"Just let me go"
You stayed in the hospital for a year...
You son-in-law from Sason tells about your situation to one of his friends –who is a police officer- that he knows from the years he served as a "tahagan".
"There is a law" he says, "for haymatlos (stateless), that they have a right to get a passport just for once”
The means of taking you to your son has been found…
The photographer is brought to the hospital, your photograph is taken, your passport is issued and you go to your son…
You leave the land, where your ancestors have lived for thousands of years, with a passport on which there is a “stateless” stamp…
And what you said comes true as you had wished for a year…
The news of your death reaches us one month after you reach your son…
I came to visit you last March grandfather, you sleep side by side with your son; in Brussels city of Belgium…
What am I supposed to do now, grandfather?
Great fellows say “DOCUMENT” on and on, grandfather…
When they say "DOCUMENT", I think about you…
And do you know, grandfather, what I too want from these great fellows?
To document that they are “HUMAN”
I too want “DOCUMENT”, grandfather!
I want “DOCUMENT”!
Anjel Dikme
Paris
*Translated from original Turkish version by Ilda Tanoglu
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