What Would Noah Think?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: I’m writing this in Abu Dhabi. When the hotel desk clerk told us our room was on the 36th floor, I said, “Oh lovely—a high floor.” She looked sheepish. “I’m sorry, we didn’t have any high rooms available. Thirty-six is midway. But you can visit the observation deck on the 74th floor.”
Feel free to imagine that wide-eyed emoji of shock and surprise inserted here.
What Would Noah Think?
A number of years ago, I read a book by Chris Bohjalian, called The Sandcastle Girls. Some of you may remember his breakout novel from 1998, Midwives. SUCH a good book; it made me a fan.
Anyway, when Sandcastle Girls came out in 2012, he said it was the book of his heart, the one that meant the most to him, the one that told his family’s story. It was both beautiful and harrowing, and took me on a deep dive into the history of Armenia. I’d had a vague sense that the tiny country of Armenia had a troubled past, but I didn’t know much about it, so I wanted to learn more, and of course, I wanted to see it for myself. Because I always do.
Fast forward more than a decade, and I finally got there. While we were in Yerevan, I read a couple more books, one of which I highly recommend if you too are curious about this beleaguered place: a memoir, The Black Dog of Fate, by the poet Peter Balakian.
A few basic facts: the people who are now known as Armenians were the first nation to adopt Christianity as an official state religion, in the year 301. They were eventually absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, which was, for centuries, a vast tapestry of ethnicities and religions. Armenians apparently carried on, maintaining their identity and forming a distinct thread in that tapestry that was (and is) Central Asia.
But by the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had fractured and contracted. Those of you who remember your WWI history will know that the break-up of the Ottoman Empire was one of the big factors in that global catastrophe.
The central seat of Ottoman power, by that time, was the region now known as Turkey, which has its own difficult, complex history.
And here’s the point I’m getting to: I love Turkey. Lee and I have spent months there in our travels. We first visited on a cruise, more than a decade ago, and I was smitten. The history runs deep—you can see the layers, reach out and touch the past. The food is incredible. The hospitality, the culture of sociability and extroversion—I’ve always said my favorite thing about Turkey is that the people love to laugh, even when times are hard. That laughter makes me comfortable.
When we were in Yerevan, we were about 25 miles from the Turkish border. On a clear day, we could see Mt. Ararat (reputed to be Noah’s last stop), which is now in Turkey—and which is the national symbol of Armenia. Commemorations of the 1915 tragedy are everywhere, from small plaques on houses to the huge national memorial on the edge of town. Somewhere between 600,000 and 1.2 million Armenians died in 1915-1916.
Turkey refuses to say that it was a genocide. Armenia demands that Turkey say it was a genocide. And that is an impasse.
I think the thing I struggle with most in this nomadic life is my shifted perspective on conflict. I find it impossible now to see any group of people as a faceless mass of ‘other.’ At this point, chances are good I’ve met someone in whichever group is being labeled ‘enemy.’ I probably have precious memories of faces and smiles and small acts of kindness.
I refuse—refuse—to accept that any ethnic/religious/nationality group are inherently bad.
And that makes the sadness of Armenian history even harder to bear. Perhaps evil would be easier to comprehend, to ignore, if I had the mental capacity to shrug off large groups of people as lesser, or different, or ‘other.’ But they’re not—no one is.
Sometimes good people do bad, bad things, and that is, somehow, even worse.
Take care,
Lisa
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