“Leftovers of The Sword”
Book review in Today’s Zaman of ‘My Grandmother: A Memoir’ by Fethiye Cetin
As a girl, Turkish lawyer Fethiye Çetin knew her grandmother as an adored Muslim matriarch by the name of Seher. Then she learned that Seher had been born an Armenian Christian, Haranus, who, several decades before, had been seized from the clasp of her mother by a World War I Turkish gendarmerie corporal officiating over a column of Armenians being marched out of Anatolia. 
“My Grandmother,” now out in a translation by novelist Maureen Freely, is Çetin’s compelling account of her gradual discovery of the deep contradiction between her proud nationalist education and the realities buried deep in Turkish society. The bare narrative offers few moral and historical judgments, few dates, no maps, no politics. There is also no discussion of whether the disappearance of the Armenians of Anatolia was the result of a genocide or massacres or civil war. Surprises abound: for instance, Seher came to feel great affection for the corporal as a new father. Asked why it all happened by Çetin, all the grandmother can ask back is, “What should I know?”
The fast-selling original of the book is part of a genre in modern Turkish literature that tries to make amends for the gaping hole left by the Armenians in the country’s public history. The theme is dominant in both Orhan Pamuk’s recent “Snow” and Elif Safak’s “The Bastard of Istanbul.” Cetin’s book is already required reading for students in progressive Turkish institutions like Sabanci University in Istanbul. Along with occasional recent exhibitions and conferences about the lost Armenians, these are part of a trend in Turkey that is grappling with a history of denial, nationalism and fears of political consequences.
Altogether eight Armenian girls ended up as new-minted Muslims in the small Turkish town where Çetin’s grandmother found herself. Even her brother Horen survived to become known as a shepherd called Ahmet. Initially working as domestic servants, then as free wives and mothers, they kept alive customs like colored candy-bread, which they would share at Easter without letting the children know why; they labored under discrimination enough already. Everyone in town knew they were of Armenian origin. Their official papers registered them as “converts,” but they were mocked in the streets as “converts’ sperm” or the “leftovers of the sword.” The family is convinced this was why one talented relative was unable to take up a place in a good military school.
Translator Freely, in a valuable introduction, reckons there could today be 2 million such descendants of Armenians among Turkey’s population of 75 million. More than 30 other ethnicities still survive, and this new proof of the impossibility of repressing its inherent multi-ethnicity helps explain the shrillness and sometimes schizophrenia of Turkey’s one-nation ideologues. Çetin argues that all in Anatolia are of “impure blood.”
The pain of the Turkish Armenians is not yet over. As a lawyer, Çetin represents the family of murdered Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink, cut down in January 2007 by a young man inspired by this same deep-rooted nationalism, and hailing from Trabzon, an eastern Turkish city with a history of ethnic trauma. As Çetin’s grandmother warns her children, telling them not to be afraid as they pass by a cemetery, “Evil comes from the living, not the dead.”
“My Grandmother: A Memoir” by Fethiye Çetin , With an introduction by Maureen Freely, Published by Verso, ISBN: 978-1844671694, $14.71 in hardcover 02.06.2008 Arts & Culture
HUGH POPE
Damn straight, and there’s nothing wrong with it — we are what we are. Now would these Zaman authors please tell the editors of the Turkish edition to stop ‘outing’ people they dislike as Armenians or having Christian roots? I don’t keep track of these things but even as recently as a few weeks ago, I noticed a column advocating the investigation of people’s roots on the occasion of the death and funeral of Leyla Gencer. That kind of stuff has repercussions that go further than mere badmouthing of their political opponents — the so-called ‘white’ folks. It also legitimizes the practice of inferring people’s ‘desirability’ from their ethnic roots. Since we know they do exercise editorial interference from their refusal to print the Alatli piece on the headscarf issue, perhaps it wouldn’t be asking too much.
As for the events and the motivations relevant to the emergence of a desire to establish a nation state here, I think the effects of the immigration from the Caucasus and the arrival of Turks/Muslims driven out from the Balkans as the empire shrank are being underplayed.
Remember the small storm Yusuf Halacoglu caused a few months ago when he said there were a couple of hundreds of thousands of Armenian converts on official records (with addresses and all)? I mean he said that much. Also, I believe Kazim Karabekir himself instituted an orphanage in the eastern war zone.
Not to be apologetic, but two quick observations, questions:
1) How is one to reconcile the two propositions of ‘history of denial’ and ‘leftovers of the sword’? I mean, how when the latter is used as openly as in street mockings?
2) I also wonder whether those street mockings were intended to hurt, taunt, offend, or exclude. In Anatolian/Turkish life and culture, there is some Appalachian (?), or some matter-of-factly quality to townsfolk’s ways or language. An example doesn’t occur to me readily, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some other group, family, or people were found to refer to themselves by such self-deprecating (offensive if used by others) terms. I don’t think that to be likely for the ’sperm/seed’ epithet, but something similar to ‘leftovers of the sword’ used for self description can quite possibly be found.
Thanks for the review — I had not heard about this book yet. I just idolize Freely for her translations of Pamuk. Look forward to reading this!