Book Review: Working through the Past to Embrace the Future

Turning to the “orphan generation,” the author reviews the abundant accounts left by those robbed of their families in the Genocide; these are the street children in Damascus, reduced to filthy beggars, or the little ones fortunate enough to be housed in primitive conditions in the orphanages of Aleppo or Constantinople. Again, Peroomian delves into the psychological dimension of the tragedy. In the autobiographical work of Musegh Ishkhan, who was orphaned twice, at the ages of 1 and 5, Peroomian identifies the victim’s apparent detachment from horrifying events. The memory of those traumatic experiences however returns in nightmares, in what psychologists call “hypermnesia.” Another psychological phenomenon observed in victims who had experienced the trauma of losing their mother is the “separation anxiety disorder” (p. 132), whereby the victim experiences profound fears of separation from loved ones. In the literary response, such emotions are expressed in the yearning for the lost homeland or for the mother.

This generation of writers also related how their despair could lead to total psychological breakdown, self-destructive tendencies and the annihilation of the moral order, as in the works of Vazgan Shushanian. “The Turkish atrocity did not end with the destruction and murder alone,” she writes; “it completely subverted the survivors’ world of moral order and robbed them of their ability to conduct normal human relationships” (pp. 170-171). Thus, Shushanian took up the theme of incest, while he and others also treated unconventional brother-sister relationships. Often men who had suffered the humiliation of deportation and witnessed the rapes and murders of female relatives tended to view all women as “sisters.” As for the identity dilemma, the “orphan generation” of writers offered two different approaches: either assimilation or a flight into the past.

In her third chapter Peroomian considers in detail the plethora of personal memoirs produced over the past 30 years, the “stories of blood and tears” (p. 232). The 12 authors she considers in depth were motivated often by a sense of duty to set the record straight; John Minassian, for example, had been told by targeted Armenians that, if he survived, he had an “obligation to tell the whole world how it happened and why….” (p. 243). Others, like Dirouhi Kouymjian and Bertha (Berjouhi) Nakshian K’etchian, were urged by their children to record their experiences.

Often their children were engaged in the second generation’s efforts to fight denial and the survivors thus saw their eyewitness testimonies as an effective tool in that effort. A few survivors, like Hrant Sarian, had even kept diaries which only decades later appeared in print. Significantly, it was the act of putting their recollections into words on a page that served a quasi-therapeutic function, “exorcising the trau- ma” (p. 336). Many survivors carried the burden of guilt and shame in their hearts in total silence for the rest of their lives, guilt for having had to leave behind a family member, or for having been forced to submit to humiliations they would never ever reveal. Typical of such per- sonal recollections are descriptions of the home town in the Old Country and of the extended family members. Then come the accounts of the slaughter: how the men were taken away and killed, how the deportation orders came, how townspeople were herded like cattle into the death marches, how women in despair chose suicide rather than slavery while others were

abducted, how women clinging to the bodies of their starved children went insane and so on. All the stories are different, yet they all bear similarities and Peroomian points out that “these commonalities testify to the truth of the Genocide” (p. 330). Furthermore, the detailed descriptions of the Armenian homeland prior to 1915 provide precious testimony to the extensive civilian infrastructure of Armenian communities, with schools, churches, agricultural and industrial activity.

The “happy ending” — if one can dare to call it that — appeared for the few lucky ones in the form of survival, considered a “miracle,” and migration to America, which they experienced as “a dream come true.” In these stories, the figure of “the good Turk” may appear, the discreet individual who intervened despite all odds and perceivable danger to save Armenians. In her final remarks, “in lieu of a conclusion,” the author speaks with bold candor of her own experience with the subject.

“I tried to study the Armenian literature of atrocity,” she writes, “as much as I could, to read as many stories as my nerves could tolerate. No, it is not easy to read these stories. These macabre scenes of cold-blooded murder and rape, starving children and unspeakable orgies of Turkish officers feasting on Armenian maidens, can leave the reader depressed and bewildered for a long time” (p. 394).

Although her readers encounter the stories at a certain distance, so to speak once removed from the totality of the narratives, still the emotional and psychological impact is weighty. It is, as I said at the onset, not easy nor pleasant to read this book. Yet it is extremely important as a means of liberation, and therein lies the reward. It is not only a personal experience, but also a political message. As Peroomian redefines it, “I see this literature, responses to the Armenian Genocide, as a monument erected to the memory of that Genocide, to the Armenian aspiration to become a nation again, not a nation of victims but one with a tragic past that has been acknowledged and duly redressed. That is the way to resolve the burden of the past in order to make national survival and perpetuation possible” (pp. 394-395).

We can only be grateful to Peroomian for having assumed the painful task and the burden of working through the extensive literature of atrocity and facing the emotional and psychological challenge it represents. She has succeeded in mediating the struggle of Armenian authors to deal with the Genocide, and in transmitting the substance and tenor of their struggle, with courage, honesty and that special quality of insight accessible only to those who have engaged in the same struggle on a personal level. Thus, in completing her book, the reader is neither depressed nor overwhelmed, but, on the contrary, experiences a certain sense of therapeutic relief, and hope in the future.

(Muriel Mirak-Weissbach is the author of Through the Wall of Fire: Armenia — Iraq — Palestine: From Wrath to Reconciliation, 2009, and Madness at the Helm: Pathology and Politics in the Arab Spring, 2012. She can be reached at mirak.weissbach@googlemail.com and www.mirak-weissbach.de.)