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The Name of This Place

The Opening

Over the course of ten months in 2014-2015, I traveled to Turkey three times. I went to reconnect with the land where my grandparents had been born and the places they had fled—my grandfather after the Adana Massacres in 1909 and my grandmother after the Armenian Genocide of 1915. 

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Nancy Kricorian

Nancy Kricorian, who was born and raised in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University and is the author of four novels about post-genocide Armenian diaspora experience, including Zabelle, which was translated into seven languages, was adapted as a play, and has been continuously in print since 1998. Her latest novel The Burning Heart of the World is focused on Armenians of Beirut before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review, Mizna, The Markaz Review, Witness, and other journals. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale, and New York University, as well as with Teachers & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools. Kricorian has also been a literary mentor with We Are Not Numbers since 2015. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Gold Medal from the Writers Union of Armenia, and the Anahid Literary Award, among other honors. She lives in New York City.

8 Comments

  1. Nancy, thank you for the great article on the rarely reported events of the past few years and especially the “Sur Gentrification” photo. Of course, destroying the armenian neighborhoods erases evidence of our existence and is a continuation of the Genocide. Please shed further Sunshine on the destruction of Dikranegerd

  2. Wonderful report, Nancy. Among other things, it tied together accumulated rumors that had been confusing to me. So this is where Dikranagerd/Diyarbekir/Amed stands these days… Thank you.

    1. Thanks, Markar. As I mention, there are varying reports about what is happening with Sourp Giragos right now. The area is still a “closed construction zone.”

  3. Thanks, Nancy, for your excellent essay on the destruction of Sur. It’s even more painful because there had been a short period of hope in Dikranagerd before the crackdown and the leveling of the ancient neighborhood. The U.S. government’s continued resistance to recognize the Armenian Genocide has aided and abetted Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of the Kurds.

  4. What a great article indeed. My eyes are leaking like the titanic. I met many survivors from that part of the world, and they told me about their childhood days. Stories, not happy but sad. Real stories and not fictions. They recalled the years of 1890’s and the early 1900’s. I am sure whoever reads this article will be reconnected to his/her roots because while fire turns to ashes your narrative turns ashes back to fire.

    I am proud to know that we still have great Armenian authors like you. God Bless you.

    1. Thanks, Michael, for the kind words about the writing. And what you say
      about the sad stories reminds me of an Armenian proverb: Hayastan, vorpastan. (Land of Armenians, land of orphans)

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