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Here's something from a newspaper article that really portrayed my feelings on the subject. You have to try and understand how 2nd generation Armenians feel when it was their mothers and fathers that went through absolute hell and escaping horrible deaths only to have their own loved ones die or be killed in front of them - children, mothers, fathers, everyone.
An Armenian Father's Song to his son: Forgive, don't hate
"You can't hate an entire people"
West Palm Beach, FL
by Douglas Kalajian
My father, Nishan Kalajian, had the misfortune to be born in the city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey in 1912, a desperate and convulsive time in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire.
He was 3 years old when the soldiers came first to take the young men, including his father, and then returned for all the other Armenians. The pattern was repeated in village after village.
The ensuing slaughter was eventually given a formal name: The Armenian Genocide. The ghostly survivors became almost as familiar to newspaper readers of their time as the refugees from Kosovo are today. The starving Armenians, as they were widely known, became an international cause.
And then they were forgotten so completely that the people who rule their land today can blandly deny that anything so awful ever happened. The 1.5 million victims are memorialized too. They are nearly all gone, including my father. he told me only a little of his sad and miraculous story before he died; when I was young, my mother made me promise never to ask because she hated to see him cry. I managed to pick up many of the threads over the years. I know that he was snatched from his dying mother's arms. That he was taken away to live with Kurds. That he was sent out into the world alone and hungry again a few years later.
He had, I thought, every right and reason to hate Turks and want revenge. Although my father became a deeply patriotic American after coming to this country at age 16, his Armenian soul was never masked. He couldn't tell the story he lived, but he enjoyed sharing stories about the kings and poets of his lost country. I felt the loss was mine. My Armenian friends were always my closest , and when we became even closer when we went off together to an Armenian summer camp in Massachusetts when I was 9 yrs. old.
I met plenty of kids from around the country whose parents and grandparents were less reluctant than my father to share their sad stories. We ate in a drafty mess hall beneath turn-of-the-century photographs of men wearing bandoleers, Armenian revolutionaries. We sang their marching songs and imagined we were marching with them. I went back every summer to sing the songs and kill imaginary Turks. I shot a thousand of them with tree-branch guns. When I was older, I shot tin can Turks with a real rifle. I was certain that some day I'd find the Turk that killed my grandmother and kill him on the spot.
Of course, I could never tell my father, but I felt certain he somehow understood. Until one night, when I was 15 years old, he invited two Turks to dinner. I'm sure I wasn't paying close attention when this first came up all I understood was that two musicians were coming. That wasn't unusual. My father loved music and people who made it. Musicians, mostly young Armenians, came by often for dinner and played into the night. My father sometimes sang along with them if he was in just the right mood. He sang most often when the songs were sad.
It was sometimes just before the Turks arrived that I realized from my parents' conversation that these guests were different. Why was I surprised? My father listened to Turkish music as much as to Armenian music. I twas, after all, the music he heard as a boy.
I had heard him say more than once that music has no nationality or politics, but those were just words until I saw the Turks sit down at our dining room table. I don't remember much about them except that one was tall and the other wasn't. Both had mustaches. They wore suits and ties. They spoke no English, but my father translated their greetings and compliments on my mother's cooking. Then one of them spoke to me. I'm sure it was a polite gesture, but I felt my throat close with anger. I threw my fork into my plate and ran upstairs to my room. My father followed a few minutes later.
It was the only time in my life, I believe, that I ever raised my voice to him. I screamed that he had no right to bring Turks into our house. No right to make my mother cook for them. No right to make me sit there and be polite to them. My father didn't raise his voice. He tried, very calmly, to explain that his guests deserved to be treated with respect.
But they're Turks, I reminded him, and we hate Turks. His reply was the most startling thing I ever heard him say: "I don't hate Turks." I was so shocked that, without thinking, I uttered the unmentionable. "You have to hate them," I said. "The Turks killed your mother."
My father looked suddenly sad. He said, very softly, "The Turk who killed my mother is dead. The Kurd who saved me killed him."
I felt ashamed then, and still do, to have said something so hurtful and stupid. Who was I to tell my father how he should feel about something I could never understand? I should have apologized, but I just stared silently. My father finished the conversation for me.
You can hate people who do terrible things, he explained, but you can't hate someone who wasn't there or wasn't even born. "You can't hate an entire people," he said. "You may want to, but it doesn't make sense."
He left me alone to think about what he'd said. I'm still thinking, more than 30 years later. I long ago stopped shooting at imaginary Turks, and I've made friends with at least a few real ones, but I can't say I truly absorbed my father's wisdom or pragmatism.
I know he was right, about music and about people, but I'm still angry for what he lived through. I can't hate an entire people, but I can hate anyone who says the century's first genocide never happened.
I never did go downstairs to apologize. After my father left, I lay on my bed with the door open. When the talking stopped, I heard and oud, the Middle Eastern proto-lute that has no frets to force the notes into a rigid, western scale. It's deep and quavering sound became more impossibly sad as the night went on. I could hear my father singing.
An Armenian Father's Song to his son: Forgive, don't hate
"You can't hate an entire people"
West Palm Beach, FL
by Douglas Kalajian
My father, Nishan Kalajian, had the misfortune to be born in the city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey in 1912, a desperate and convulsive time in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire.
He was 3 years old when the soldiers came first to take the young men, including his father, and then returned for all the other Armenians. The pattern was repeated in village after village.
The ensuing slaughter was eventually given a formal name: The Armenian Genocide. The ghostly survivors became almost as familiar to newspaper readers of their time as the refugees from Kosovo are today. The starving Armenians, as they were widely known, became an international cause.
And then they were forgotten so completely that the people who rule their land today can blandly deny that anything so awful ever happened. The 1.5 million victims are memorialized too. They are nearly all gone, including my father. he told me only a little of his sad and miraculous story before he died; when I was young, my mother made me promise never to ask because she hated to see him cry. I managed to pick up many of the threads over the years. I know that he was snatched from his dying mother's arms. That he was taken away to live with Kurds. That he was sent out into the world alone and hungry again a few years later.
He had, I thought, every right and reason to hate Turks and want revenge. Although my father became a deeply patriotic American after coming to this country at age 16, his Armenian soul was never masked. He couldn't tell the story he lived, but he enjoyed sharing stories about the kings and poets of his lost country. I felt the loss was mine. My Armenian friends were always my closest , and when we became even closer when we went off together to an Armenian summer camp in Massachusetts when I was 9 yrs. old.
I met plenty of kids from around the country whose parents and grandparents were less reluctant than my father to share their sad stories. We ate in a drafty mess hall beneath turn-of-the-century photographs of men wearing bandoleers, Armenian revolutionaries. We sang their marching songs and imagined we were marching with them. I went back every summer to sing the songs and kill imaginary Turks. I shot a thousand of them with tree-branch guns. When I was older, I shot tin can Turks with a real rifle. I was certain that some day I'd find the Turk that killed my grandmother and kill him on the spot.
Of course, I could never tell my father, but I felt certain he somehow understood. Until one night, when I was 15 years old, he invited two Turks to dinner. I'm sure I wasn't paying close attention when this first came up all I understood was that two musicians were coming. That wasn't unusual. My father loved music and people who made it. Musicians, mostly young Armenians, came by often for dinner and played into the night. My father sometimes sang along with them if he was in just the right mood. He sang most often when the songs were sad.
It was sometimes just before the Turks arrived that I realized from my parents' conversation that these guests were different. Why was I surprised? My father listened to Turkish music as much as to Armenian music. I twas, after all, the music he heard as a boy.
I had heard him say more than once that music has no nationality or politics, but those were just words until I saw the Turks sit down at our dining room table. I don't remember much about them except that one was tall and the other wasn't. Both had mustaches. They wore suits and ties. They spoke no English, but my father translated their greetings and compliments on my mother's cooking. Then one of them spoke to me. I'm sure it was a polite gesture, but I felt my throat close with anger. I threw my fork into my plate and ran upstairs to my room. My father followed a few minutes later.
It was the only time in my life, I believe, that I ever raised my voice to him. I screamed that he had no right to bring Turks into our house. No right to make my mother cook for them. No right to make me sit there and be polite to them. My father didn't raise his voice. He tried, very calmly, to explain that his guests deserved to be treated with respect.
But they're Turks, I reminded him, and we hate Turks. His reply was the most startling thing I ever heard him say: "I don't hate Turks." I was so shocked that, without thinking, I uttered the unmentionable. "You have to hate them," I said. "The Turks killed your mother."
My father looked suddenly sad. He said, very softly, "The Turk who killed my mother is dead. The Kurd who saved me killed him."
I felt ashamed then, and still do, to have said something so hurtful and stupid. Who was I to tell my father how he should feel about something I could never understand? I should have apologized, but I just stared silently. My father finished the conversation for me.
You can hate people who do terrible things, he explained, but you can't hate someone who wasn't there or wasn't even born. "You can't hate an entire people," he said. "You may want to, but it doesn't make sense."
He left me alone to think about what he'd said. I'm still thinking, more than 30 years later. I long ago stopped shooting at imaginary Turks, and I've made friends with at least a few real ones, but I can't say I truly absorbed my father's wisdom or pragmatism.
I know he was right, about music and about people, but I'm still angry for what he lived through. I can't hate an entire people, but I can hate anyone who says the century's first genocide never happened.
I never did go downstairs to apologize. After my father left, I lay on my bed with the door open. When the talking stopped, I heard and oud, the Middle Eastern proto-lute that has no frets to force the notes into a rigid, western scale. It's deep and quavering sound became more impossibly sad as the night went on. I could hear my father singing.
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