Youth
Sahagian: Your Armenians, Not Mine!
“You’re Armenian? Well, I know you fought Azerbaijan and won,” a Scandinavian girl told me when we were first introduced a few years ago. I did not comprehend the value of those words back then.
Never had a stranger brought up that war as the first term of reference; usually the genocide was the only historical sign post. But she knew nothing of the genocide, which made me question the quality of education in Europe.
But over the years, as I dug deeper into the essence and history of
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Apo,why do you care what Eurobabes think of us? Last time it was some English chicks, this time it’s Swedish chicks. Take it from a professional brief-writer: this is just a device you use to open an issue. It’s stale.
2. The Genocide was a tad worse than five bad years. Even worse than the White Sox losing streak. Maybe you figured this out but all the lands, wealth, culture, buildings, places where we arose etc. hardly summarize the physical losses. To put it in your idiom: a tragedy comparable to Sweden without Swedes, where Swedes can’t go, where the current residents hate Swedes and kill them with impunity, where Swedish blood falls into silent Swedish earth and Swedish is heard no more. Now do you get it?
3. It’s a straw man to say that the Armenian self image or image of our history and culture is unremitting torture and exile. Armenians I know care deeply about righting an incalculable wrong, but that is not the core of the Armenian self image. The only people who, like you, think Armenians are defined as Genocide victims are Turkish Nazis.
4. Our faith teaches life over death, victory and resurrection. Look to these truths which molded 100 generations of Armenians to see who we are. Pay no attention to what 2014 “post Christian” Swedes think.
“That basic common history is waived off in favor of a cowardice nation that walked into its own slaughter.”
Yeah dude, it’s totally the Armenians fault the Ottoman government decided to kill them all.
No controversy this time
Yes, indeed, there’s more to “our 6,000-year-old history” than the Genocide. There’s also more to “our 6,000-year-old history” than the Genocide and the war with Azerbaijan. I don’t know if the Scandinavian girl should be expected to know that, but shouldn’t an adult Armenian with “a bachelor’s degree in government, diplomacy, and strategy”?
But, anyway, 6,000 years? Really? What exactly were the highlights of Armenian history from the 4th millennium B.C.?