Arshalouys
Bagdasaryan
“As long as I remember, because of the massacre and
the fight, the Turks would raid the houses and kill people and make them get out
of the country. We would go from city to city and we continued from different
places to different places, which the names of the cities I can’t remember very
well one by one, but we used to move around like gypsies for a very long time.”
Arshalouys Bagdasaryan is a
well-rounded woman; she looks like a Russian babushka. “I came to America with
my husband and kids in the year 1979 and we moved here permanently. I am not
very happy to be here but my kids and grandkids are so when they are happy I am
happy.” She is 84 years old, a mother of four children, five grandchildren and 2
great-grandchildren.
“I was born in Ani, okay… in Ani city, which I can
hardly remember, now, on February 28th is when I was born.”
“About 88 years ago, in the year 1915, about 1.5
million Armenians were massacred. The massacre started in the late 1800’s, which
is when the Turks tried to make the Armenians non Christian any longer and turn
into fire worshipping Islamic people. Ani is where Arshalouys was born, “there
was a lot of churches and the people in Ani, where the people would go and hide,
and try to not get killed by the Turks. When the genocide started, the Turks
invaded my family, they killed my grandfather, my grandmother took us to another
city, Ikibir, and we left and passed Edjmiatzin, Biazet, different cities that
were located in Armenia. Later on we reached Baku, the border of Iran and
Armenia, and we passed the Araz River and got to Salmast, and stayed there.
Years later we moved again and went to the capital of Iran, Tehran.
As the story goes, told by my grandmother to me when
I was younger, it was a cold and dark night, when all of a sudden the door bust
open and the Turkish people invaded our privacy and took captivity of our every
belonging. We left the house and were forced to get away from all of the
horrible things that were happening, so we started to walk, not knowing towards
where we were headed. But back then anywhere except Armenia sounded like a great
place to be. “I saw the killing, the walking, and the caravan of people that
walked from city to city to find shelter with their belongings on their backs.”
It was terrible and no one did anything about it, we didn’t have any troops or
any governmental official to rule over the country and say what was wrong and
what was right, and to advise people what to do. We found somewhere to sleep,
put our heads down and slept. “There was no one to show us where to go and we
would meet some people and when it got dark we would sleep/rest in the
mountains, under the tress or someone that had shelter would feel sympathy and
let us sleep in their house for one day.”
Ever since I remember, other people tried to take
over the Armenian lands, my grandmother used to tell me stories about it all the
time. “In the beginning it was the Persians that wanted to change the Armenian
religion, then the Turks. The Greeks and the Armenians, since they didn’t have a
king or queen to rule over them lived their lives peacefully, but when the war
started, the World War, the Turks were strong, the Ottoman Empire was strong and
they had a strong army with troops and lots of guns. That’s the reason why they
were lazy people who didn’t like to work, the Armenians like to work and make
money, but their work was always destroyed by the Turks and the Kurds who always
invaded them and that’s why the Turks decided they’re going to take over houses
and our landed.”
I was four years old when I saw everything take
place, just four years old, I saw women get raped and killed, pregnant women get
their bellies slashed open so the Turkish man could have the pleasure of seeing
whether the child was a girl or a boy. “Oh ya I saw all sorts of things like
that.” Later on I also found out from my mom that my grandfather was burned to
death in a crematory. “My grandfather, a priest was thrown into an oven alive
and he burned to death, they took my siblings and tortured them and put them all
through hell. I had ten siblings, most of them were killed and we had only three
survivors including myself.”
Later on I found out I had siblings that were still
alive so we got into contact with one another, they live in Canada now and we
talk and write to one another sometimes. To tell you the truth I still don’t get
why the Turks wanted to kill the Armenians, they committed a horrible genocide
and they are not even admitting to it, all they did was kill. I guess they
really enjoyed doing that. “They didn’t do anything but kill, kill, kill, they
showed us no direction they just hunt us down with guns and killed.”
I
am terribly scarred for life, not that I have much longer to live, but it
affects me every day in my life. Whenever I see something that reminds me of the
genocide I break down and cry; the old woman I am, I sit and cry like a baby,
because my people were killed for no reason. “Whenever I read a book or remember
I sit and cry, it is a horrible thing to remember, anger, hate, and sympathy
come to mind. I wish none of it ever happened and it was well with everybody.” We can’t do much about it nowadays, but the Armenians
have a tradition that is still carried on. On April 24th we go to
either the city of Montebello, to a memorial created for the Armenian Genocide,
or we go to Hollywood and march around Little Armenia then to the Turkish
Embassy and protest. That is how we remember the 1.5 million people that were
lost. “On April 24th as a family we either go to Little Armenia in
Hollywood and march or we got to Montebello and spend our day reminding
ourselves what the Turks have put us through.”
Interviewed by Siranush Balasanyan