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On the Road to Exile: 100 Years Later in Bilecik
Special for the Armenian Weekly
The springs are flowing, but there is no one left to drink from them in Bilecik…
My soul listens to the death of sunset.
Your torture kneels down in a faraway land.
My soul takes in the wounds of the sunset and the soil…
And feels how tears come down as rain…
All the stars of shattered lives
Are so akin to failing eyes.
The fountains of my heart tonight
Wait without hope as stars dim away...
The poem “Dzarav” (Thirst) by Atom Yarjania
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Thank you, Aris, for this beautiful, melancholy piece.
Sad stories of our past.
Dear Aris Nalci,
I cannot thank you enough for this report from Bilecik. I have been looking for info on this village for years. Maybe I was spelling it incorrectly & I did not know the name, Golpazari. My Grandmother, Naomi Balabanian was born & raised there & was deported from there in 1915 to walk the Syrian desert at age 16. She met an older woman on the march & when they arrived in Aleppo in one piece, that woman’s son, Asador Shamagasian, found her. He had made his way from Turkey to Alexandria to the U.S. after witnessing the killing of his father & brothers when he was 8 in 1895. His mother told him she was a bringing a girl with her & he was to marry her. They were married 50 years & had 2 sons & a daughter, my Mother. Grandpop taught me to read/write Armenian, but I’ve lost it over the years. I took Grandmom back to Armenia in 1985 during the Blessing of the Muron, but of course, we couldn’t go to Western Armenia where she grew up. God Bless you for this information & esp the drawings & pictures of a village I’ve only imagined my whole life.
My mother in law Heranoush Semerdjian Gumuchian whom came from Adapazar East of Istanbul & her husband Loutfig Gumushgedyan, now changed to Gumuchian came from a Village south of Adapazar called Geyvay Orta Kar outside of Birejik whom both were survivors of the Genocide. It was nice to see a story on the Bilicik although the spelling I have is Birejik. Is this the same village or is Bilicik another village in Asia Minor?
Birecik is a village in Turkey just north of the Syrian border: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Birecik,+%C5%9Eanl%C4%B1urfa,+Turkey/@36.9735286,37.9526474,14z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x153181df8eb75b25:0xf33e785ebbae0f5d
This is where my paternal Grandmother Anna Terjanian, née Guerguerian, was killed.
Bilecik is in Western Anatolia, close to the Bosphorus.
Thank you Aris for another warm, heart wrenching story. Vartzkt gadar.
Dear Stephen T. Dulgarian, my grandmother is from “Geyve” too from Adapazar… Now I am translating a book from Armenian about the villages from there, writen in 1919 published in 1960 in Beirout… Hopefully let me send the armenian version of it to you…
And thanks Luanne Kip for your warm wishes…
Thanks for the correction on my In-Laws Village I thought was Birejik, but the Village name is Bilecik. I also have my In-Laws book in Armenian on Adapazar which is a big thick book. Thanks everyone on your answers. Stephan
my grandparents come from Kuplu, thank you so much!!