'We are all Armenian' By Atom Egoyan

'We are all Armenian'

The murder of a journalist in Turkey has reopened the discussion about genocide and its denial, filmmaker ATOM EGOYAN says

ATOM EGOYAN

The first book I ever read about the Armenian genocide was written by an Austrian Jew. Franz Werfel's epic novel Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Viking Press, 1934) created a sensation when it was published. Meticulously researched and written with an astute sense of psychological detail, the novel was intended as a wake-up call to European Jewry. If it could happen to Armenians in 1915, it could happen anywhere.

But what exactly happened to Armenians in 1915? The enduring value of Werfel's great book is his ability to render all aspects of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire with a startlingly vivid clarity and nuance. Very much in the tradition of the works of Thomas Mann (they were contemporaries), every character is observed with a sense of psychological magnification and kaleidoscopic vision.

Faced with certain death at the hands of the Turks, an Armenian village mobilizes itself into action. Five thousand are led into the impenetrable mountain area of Musa Dagh, where they heroically defend themselves. The plot is linear and straightforward, yet each of the main characters is infused with marvellous complexity. Werfel presents the terrible events of 1915 with grandeur and scope, yet fills every detail with precision and tenderness.

A defining aspect of the Armenian genocide is the methodical and highly efficient denial of its perpetrators. Many scholarly works have been published on this subject, including the Turkish academic Taner Akcam's A Shameful Act (Henry Holt, 2006). The most succinct and compelling explanation of this history is offered in Robert Fisk's recent The Great War for Civilization (Fourth Estate, 2005).

Fisk has been in the forefront of the Middle East's conflicts for 30 years, and this monumental work is a passionate and heartfelt indictment of the lies and deceit that have defined the politics of the region. In many ways, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire -- and the subsequent dividing of its spoils by the West -- set the stage for the instability of the entire region. Fisk devotes an entire chapter (titled The First Holocaust) to the Armenian Question.

In fewer than 50 pages, Fisk brilliantly sets out the brutal machinery of genocide, chronicling Hitler's familiarity with the mechanics and -- just as ominously -- its denial. He clearly explains how the issue of the Armenian genocide began to fade from European and U.S. attention after the First World War, despite the huge amount of attention the massacres received at the time.

Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was murdered in Turkey three weeks ago, used this point as a way of explaining the event to his Turkish countrymen. Turkey has been able to suppress "the Armenian Question" because the West has allowed it to do so. Even with a growing number of countries (including Canada) recognizing the genocide, it still runs counter to general Western interests to pursue the matter.

When MGM tried to make a film of Forty Days of Musa Dagh in the mid-thirties, the Turkish ambassador filed a protest with the U.S. State Department. If the film were to be made, Turkey would ban all U.S. films from entering the country. After a year of exchanges between the two governments, the State Department acquiesced to the Turkish demand, and the project was dropped.

Peter Balakian, in his highly charged memoir Black Dog of Fate (HarperCollins, 1997), wonders how Franklin Roosevelt's State Department could care so little about artistic freedom, especially in light of what was about to happen to the Jews of Europe. Like Fisk, Balakian is obsessed with the question of how a catastrophe that loomed so large in the U.S. consciousness could slip from collective memory (his most recent book, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, explores how and why the Armenian crisis became for the United States, its first international human-rights movement.

Balakian is a wonderful poet, and if I were to suggest one book that combines carefully researched history with an emotionally charged journey into the contemporary Armenian soul, this is certainly the one to read.

Black Dog of Fate presents Balakian's upbringing in the optimistic years of 1950s and '60s U.S. suburbia. With warmth and affection, Balakian describes an adolescence of athletic seasons (football, basketball, baseball), Sunday feasts of Armenian food and beautiful evocations of his family and relatives. Balakian is a great lover of carpets, and he weaves his words and highly charged imagery in a masterful way. The unexpected discovery of how his grandmother made an actual legal claim against the Turkish government after the First World War is unforgettable. Balakian sets up his beloved grandmother's fragmented dreams and whispered stories, disarming the reader with a poetic sense of melancholic reverie.

Balakian then presents a dry legal document he discovers that lists the family she lost to the genocide (husband, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews), as well as a complete itemization of the plundered goods of the family business. The plaintive claim for compensation is simply devastating.

Balakian's grandmother, signing this legal document on Jan. 31, 1920, states, "The Turkish government is responsible for the losses and injuries. . . . I am a human being and a citizen of the U.S.A. and under the support of human and International law." Needless to say, there was no response to this claim.

Last month, thousands of Turks poured into the streets of Istanbul after Hrant Dink's murder, yelling, "We are all Hrant Dink. We are all Armenian." In the face of such confusion, pain and hatred, there is an urgent human need to find empathy. Great literature strives for this generosity of spirit, and these three authors will leave a lasting impression on the reader.

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