Lena sitting next to me. Oops she left. I was going to say wishing she were logging. The Turkish keyboard is giving me even more trouble than the Croatian. I cannot find a comma. and the letter i is in a different place... Anyway we are in Adana with Jack. and her parents plane is takıng off any second now to take them back to Yerevan. This is not an elderly friendly part of the world. so we have split up now that they have seen Marash and Sis.
So. Last I wrote I was in Marash at an internet cafe by myself. After I finished the guys there who were about my age offered me some tea - and spoke some English. so even though I was pooped. I accepted. (I still can not fınd the comma or apostrophe!) We eventually went out for beers and talked quite a bit about all sorts of things. including the genocide. The guy who spoke the best English at first called it the events. but then was more specifıc and agreed it was illegal and wrong. This was so refreshing and inspiring. One of his friends was Kurdish but typing is hard so I will spare you the details...
So the next day I was looking forward to finding Lenas dads house with the few clues we had. We found the neighborhood and went there. Marash is now a city of over 300000 (Adana by the way is bigger than Yerevan!) but it was relatively close to the hotel. We have a rented car in any case. so getting around has been very convenient. When we got to the neighborhood we started askıng (her parents speak Turkish which was key since virtually nobody speaks English and of course all the Armenians seem to have disappeared...). So one guy was telling us there were never any churches and when we asked others he kept following. We found an old man the exact same age as Lenas dad and he said there had been 4 or 5 and this other schuck kept butting in to say there werent any. To make a long story short we spent much of the day doing this and this guy would always pop up and get in the way. So at night we went to the bazaar and got some souvenirs then went back to the hotel pooped and disappointed.
That is when the police showed up at me and Jacks door and asked if they could search the room and our car! We said sure so 4 guys came in and went through everything... it was like the movies and I told him so. I was asking why however and he could not tell me yet. I was reading Hewsons Historical Atlas of Armenia when they walked in. So they looked at all my digital pictures and were asking about the church pictures from Gessaria. We asked if we were being searched for asking questions about Armenian churches and if it was because we were Armenian. He was adamant that it was nothing like that. So down at the car there were even more police (all of them plainclothes). They found the Jezzve and lanterns we got at the bazaar and asked about them. We told them we bought them 3 hours ago at the bazaar and this is when they told us they had recieved a call that we had been overheard discussing taking artifacts out of Turkey the previous night. This made absolutely no sense. but I am assuming he was telling the truth and it was a language barrier. So they wrote a report in Turkish and asked us to sign it. I refused to sign a Turkish document so I wrote what he told me it said in English and signed that instead. Now while the others wrote the Turkish report I talked to him in English...
He was a quarter Armenian it turns out and from Van. I asked what happened to all the Armenians and said I would understand if he could not answer. He answered there had been a war and many Turks were killed too. I smiled. He said Armenians abroad made problems and lies and lobbied. I continued to smile. He asked why? What did I think? I asked if he really wanted the answer or if I should be diplomatic... he said the real answer. So I told him what the Armenians abroad said was true and that the whole world agreed and that he could not know since it is a taboo subject in Turkey and he could not access anything his government did not censor. That it was wrong of the government but not the fault of ordinary Turks. To this he did not really have a chance to respond. But he told us where to ask old people for help in finding where the old churches used to be.
So this morning we decided to give the house hunt one more try. We found one old guy who took us to another and found where a church used to be. Nobody knew the name and it had burned down and a house had been built but we sat with the Turkish family and talked and ate and drank tea. They were very nice and I left wıth a mint root I will grow in Yerevan. This was as close as we would come in our hunt so we drove to Sis next. Sis is now called Kozun and has 60000 people. Like every other town we visited so far it was being built up quickly and very ugly and very lıttle old remained... certainly no churches. So we headed back to Adana where we dropped off Lenas parents and are spending the night...
So. Last I wrote I was in Marash at an internet cafe by myself. After I finished the guys there who were about my age offered me some tea - and spoke some English. so even though I was pooped. I accepted. (I still can not fınd the comma or apostrophe!) We eventually went out for beers and talked quite a bit about all sorts of things. including the genocide. The guy who spoke the best English at first called it the events. but then was more specifıc and agreed it was illegal and wrong. This was so refreshing and inspiring. One of his friends was Kurdish but typing is hard so I will spare you the details...
So the next day I was looking forward to finding Lenas dads house with the few clues we had. We found the neighborhood and went there. Marash is now a city of over 300000 (Adana by the way is bigger than Yerevan!) but it was relatively close to the hotel. We have a rented car in any case. so getting around has been very convenient. When we got to the neighborhood we started askıng (her parents speak Turkish which was key since virtually nobody speaks English and of course all the Armenians seem to have disappeared...). So one guy was telling us there were never any churches and when we asked others he kept following. We found an old man the exact same age as Lenas dad and he said there had been 4 or 5 and this other schuck kept butting in to say there werent any. To make a long story short we spent much of the day doing this and this guy would always pop up and get in the way. So at night we went to the bazaar and got some souvenirs then went back to the hotel pooped and disappointed.
That is when the police showed up at me and Jacks door and asked if they could search the room and our car! We said sure so 4 guys came in and went through everything... it was like the movies and I told him so. I was asking why however and he could not tell me yet. I was reading Hewsons Historical Atlas of Armenia when they walked in. So they looked at all my digital pictures and were asking about the church pictures from Gessaria. We asked if we were being searched for asking questions about Armenian churches and if it was because we were Armenian. He was adamant that it was nothing like that. So down at the car there were even more police (all of them plainclothes). They found the Jezzve and lanterns we got at the bazaar and asked about them. We told them we bought them 3 hours ago at the bazaar and this is when they told us they had recieved a call that we had been overheard discussing taking artifacts out of Turkey the previous night. This made absolutely no sense. but I am assuming he was telling the truth and it was a language barrier. So they wrote a report in Turkish and asked us to sign it. I refused to sign a Turkish document so I wrote what he told me it said in English and signed that instead. Now while the others wrote the Turkish report I talked to him in English...
He was a quarter Armenian it turns out and from Van. I asked what happened to all the Armenians and said I would understand if he could not answer. He answered there had been a war and many Turks were killed too. I smiled. He said Armenians abroad made problems and lies and lobbied. I continued to smile. He asked why? What did I think? I asked if he really wanted the answer or if I should be diplomatic... he said the real answer. So I told him what the Armenians abroad said was true and that the whole world agreed and that he could not know since it is a taboo subject in Turkey and he could not access anything his government did not censor. That it was wrong of the government but not the fault of ordinary Turks. To this he did not really have a chance to respond. But he told us where to ask old people for help in finding where the old churches used to be.
So this morning we decided to give the house hunt one more try. We found one old guy who took us to another and found where a church used to be. Nobody knew the name and it had burned down and a house had been built but we sat with the Turkish family and talked and ate and drank tea. They were very nice and I left wıth a mint root I will grow in Yerevan. This was as close as we would come in our hunt so we drove to Sis next. Sis is now called Kozun and has 60000 people. Like every other town we visited so far it was being built up quickly and very ugly and very lıttle old remained... certainly no churches. So we headed back to Adana where we dropped off Lenas parents and are spending the night...
posted by Raffi K. at 10:55 PM
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