Quest for A Ravished Paradise in Chepni: Book Review

The trip allowed Madenjian to physically connect the various parts of the village with his father’s memories. He saw the newer Armenian church, built at the start of the 19^th century. The mayor told him he would like to restore it and keep it as a model of Armenian architecture, and maybe use it as a library or lecture hall. However, the district governor (kaymakam) was religious as was his government and got upset with the word church.

Madenjian was introduced to various Turkish elders, some of whom remembered fragments of information about Armenians of the village, the names of various Armenian families which owned certain properties, and even about various family members of Madenjian. One or two were suspicious. It turned out that one was the son of someone called “Bloody Man,” who had participated in the killings of Armenians. Some, even the mayor, wanted to know if he knew about where Armenians left their wealth and gold. Many mentioned that the Armenians were very hardworking.

Erdal said that he was told that the Armenians and Turks lived in harmony, and the Armenians even donated one of their churches to be used as a mosque (later Madenjian found out the church dated from 1526 or 1536). However, they eventually left to save their lives, and very few remained, he said, without saying why they had to leave. He and others noted that after the departure of the Armenians, the trees of the forests and vines all died and even the water of the rivulets dried up. The reason, he said, is that the people left there were lazy unlike the hardworking Armenians, and second, the “blessing/Bereket also passed” when the Armenians left. However, Erdal never mentioned why the Armenians left. Only once did Madenjian press the issue with Erdal and Utku but they remained silent.

Madenjian remained conflicted throughout his trip. On the one hand, he was proud of his ancestral village. He said, “It looked like a Swiss or Italian village with red roof tiles sand green trees in some places,” and he remembered his father describing the village as an earthly paradise. He saw things built by his ancestors, which even his parents had not mentioned to him, such as the spring of the Kalpaks. As he stood on the land his father, grandfather and grandmother worked and lived, he said, “It seemed to me that I could feel their breath on my skin.” However, he also saw sites connected with tragic events, such as the slaughter of Armenians in the Keklijek Valley.

When he went to formerly Armenian towns whose names were changed, he became upset. At Saimbeyli, the former Hajin, he loudly yelled Hajin, “so that the mountains could once again hear an Armenian voice,” he explained. At that moment, he said, “I felt much anger towards those barbarians, and one of them was next to me, although Utku was a nice young man. I liked him. He was kind and he respected me. He called me Amca (Amja), which means uncle.” Yet, he continued, “I wondered, if he had the opportunity, would he try to kill me.”

Retracing Deportation Routes

The second reason for Madenjian’s trip to Turkey, aside from visiting Chepni, was to get a sense of the harshness of the deportation trip of his parents in July-September. However, he was able to do this from the comfort of an airconditioned modern car driven by Utku. The two stopped in infamous gathering places for the deportations such as Kangal, or Hasan Chelebi, where the local population was harsh and unscrupulous with the Armenian deportees. They saw the site of the infamous Kırk Göz bridge on the Tohma River, which had been submerged after the Kara Kaya dam was built in 1986. Here according to one eyewitness huge numbers of Armenians were killed. Both Madenjian’s mother and another Chepni deportee talked about that place. Many children were left behind alone by their families, who were tricked by the false promise that they would be placed into orphanages and taken care of.

On the road trip, they also visited historic cities like Urfa, Aintab and Sis, and Madenjian unfailingly provides the historical background of all such significant places along with incidents connected with the genocide and earlier massacres. This portion of the book has less original material than the part about Chepni but still has some interesting anecdotes. Madenjian takes soil from various places to give to Armenians from those towns now living in the US.

Periodically, Madenjian gives excerpts from various oral histories of Armenians from the villages he visits, primarily in the Chepni area.

When Madenjian finally leaves Chepni, he declares to Erdal, “I came here like a tourist. I am leaving against my will. I found that this is where I belong, the country of my parents. I hope to return some day.” In return, Erdal says that if Madenjian returns, he would build a house for Madenjian and his wife in his garden, and added that anyone who came in his name is welcome in Chepni. Madenjian described his departure at the Kayseri airport, finally convinced in the sincerity of the Erdal family’s affection for him despite his mistrust of Turks in general: “Even many years later, I will always remember how they stood with me until I boarded the airplane. It was an emotional separation between a Turk and an Armenian, both hugging each other. Was their desire to wait to the last minute for my security or just politeness? I am sure it was for my safety among Turkish passengers in Kayseri…They knew the Kayseri Turk was fanatic.”

At the very end of the book, Madenjian relates a story told by Erdal about his great-grandfather, Ömer Kaa. It is unclear whether this was related during or after Madenjian’s trip, but it makes clearer the root of Erdal’s affection towards Armenians. Ömer Kaa was hired to guard a caravan of Armenian deportees from Chepni in 1915 and opposed an attack by local thugs to kidnap young Armenian girls. The thugs, learning of this, beat up Ömer badly on the second day of the march. It took him a long time to recover, but when he did, he went to find his aggressors and beat them up one by one. When he finished, he said, “Thanks to Allah, I took my revenge and that of the Armenians.”

While this book contains a fair number of typographical errors and linguistic infelicities, and is written in a colloquial tone, it holds the reader’s interest and is a useful source of information on local Armenian and Turkish history. There are some interesting photographs but, at least in this reviewer’s copy, the quality of their reproduction was not high.