Marash Girl met Hovhannes Garabedian, her long-time neighbor on Lowell Avenue (and apparently distant relative), in the parking lot of Whole Foods yesterday.
He started chatting about life when he used to live in Aleppo in his teens, about 50 years ago. He remembered that whenever Israeli planes flew overhead, he and the Armenians in his neighborhood would wake up in the morning to find a curved sword painted over the top of their front door with a cross painted under it -- a sword and cross painted with blood red paint. When he went to the police, they said, "You know it's just the charajijis -- the folks that want to start trouble. You know your neighbors don't feel that way."
Talking further, Hovhannes remembered that his grandmother, Lucia Der Hohanessian (nee Bilezikjian) used to say, "You know what they say whenever a Bilezikjian son is born? "God says to the baby boy, I'll see you in about 97 years!" He went on: "You're father died at around 97, right? Do you remember when Uncle Levon Bilezikian was getting prepared to marry for the second time, in his 70's? I questioned him about the wisdom of marrying at that age and Uncle Levon answered, "You know what they said in Marash whenever a Bilezikian son was born? God says to the baby boy, I'll see you in about 97 years! I have a good 27 years more to go!" And he did!
You mean, uncle Levon's third wife! And it turned out not to be wise.
ReplyDeleteuncle Levon was an interesting and courageous man. Somehow, he had escaped to Aleppo just prior to the outbreak of the battle for Marash. Aleppo is a city in northern Syria, which meant it lay ust beyond the curve of the Turkish scimitar, whose blade had cut a swath through Armenian orchards of men and women, reaching no further than the Turkish border with Syria. He had escaped, somehow. He had made it through the rivers of blood. He had survived the mountains of bodies piled high next to river beds. When the news reached him, safe in Aleppo, he turned around. By night he walked, by daylight he sought the cover of darkness in a cave, a hillside, wherever light could not reach him and betray him. He made it back in time to be counted among the fighters resisting a 10,000 regular troops of Turkish soldiers fighting to exterminate the survivors of the genocide, a marash population of old men, women, and children.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know this? Did he tell you? Amazing!!!!
DeleteGilbert told me.
DeleteStrong stock, you Marash descendants!
ReplyDeleteUncle Levon fled to Paris after the war, and made his living as a tailor. He did well enough so that 20 years following this story he could afford to take his family on a week or two summer vacation. He and his family were on vacation in June of 1944 in Normandy. When the American troops broke through to his village in Normandy, he was selected by an armored platoon lieutenant to sit upon the lead tank to point them in the right direction. Why was he selected? He was the only one who spoke English in the village.
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