On Saturday evening, June 14, 2014, noted historian Richard Hovannisian, presenting at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts, commented, "I thought I could never go to the land of my people -- the Armenian people -- it would be too sad for me. But I finally did go." Speaking about the once Armenian city of Gesaria and its many villages, villages which surround Mt. Argeos -- a mountain of 13,000 feet, snow-covered year round, Hovannisian emphasized the fact that each village had been a village unto itself -- with its own special character and its own style of speaking Armenian -- yet each village had been connected by its relationship to Mt. Argeos, a mountain that had always been there, will always be there. Richard Hovannisian paused:
"They destroyed our churches, they destroyed our towns, but they couldn't destroy the mountain."
I don't think richard gets it. The people were the mountain.
ReplyDeleteSpot on: We are our mountains: Մենք ենք, մեր սարերը.
DeletePerhaps that is what Richard meant, metaphorically, as he knows Armenian well, but as Marash Girl was not familiar with the expression, she didn't know that that is what he was saying!
DeleteThere is a certain eschatological position which argues convincingly that Turkey will be the site of The Antii-Christ. If that is true, it makes more understandable the attempt to wipe out twice within twenty years the only remaining christian minority in the ottoman caliphate.
ReplyDelete