A piece of peace, a murder foretold
Growing up, my sister and I spent summers with our mother’s relatives in Yerevan. For two months, every two years, we became neighbors with the children of the neighbors she grew up with.
Most days were spent outside, long after the sun had set and you could hardly see your own hands. In our bak (neighborhood), politics were learned through games.
Footbol with the boys. Gorc-na-gorts with the girls. But the clap games were desegregated. One of my favorites was a sing-song about pork belly, played in pairs. It went like this:
Խոզուկը խորոված,
Խոզուկը տապակած,
Խոզուկը ապրել էր ուզում,
Բայց նրան բռնեցին,
Կախաղան հանեցին,
Դանակը փորը կոխեցին։
The piglet, grilled,
The piglet, fried,
The piglet wanted to live,
But they caught it,
They hanged it,
And plunged the knife into its belly.
We clapped to the rhythm, laughing at the piglet’s fate. But on the last line, we pointed our index fingers at our partner’s stomach. Whoever managed to pierce the belly first shouted “plunged!” and won the game. In the end, one of us always became the new pig.
We played, not knowing how much of our future was already written into the rules. So much of our animal language carries an impolite second meaning. A chicken is a coward. A fox is untrustworthy. A sheep is mindless. And, of course, a pig is a slob. All lack the most fundamental of human emotions: dignity.
In 2018, the nation was running at a fever pitch, hungry for hope. The revolution promised to starve out corruption. Instead, the country itself is being starved—of land, of sovereignty, of its sons. In the seven years since, borders have shrunk, boys have died and men are held hostage in dungeons whose leaders hold a shackle in one hand and a treaty with another.
We have been here before. We know what comes next. The ink is barely dry on the ‘peace’ agreement with Azerbaijan, waiting for a signature. Today, our hostages bear witness to that peace, on their fading skin. Weeks into his hunger strike, Ruben Vardanyan urged the nation to hold onto dignity, even as his body withered. Though he has since ended his strike, he may still perish in that cell—alongside dozens of his fellow countrymen.
In a land that chokes doves, peace is not a piglet’s tune but a swan song—gone with the borders. In the end, it is not just the corrupt who gorge themselves. It is the enemy who feasts.
A pig at the trough is still a pig, but a lamb led to slaughter is not a negotiator. A government that believes peace can be made with those who wish to see us erased has not brokered peace at all. It has only prepared the next sacrifice.
On March 15, 1921, Talaat Pasha, mastermind of the 1915 genocide, fell in the streets of Berlin. “Master” and “mind”—the linguistic associations of superiority. In university, my genocide studies professor once told me that he hates the word “extermination.” “You don’t exterminate people; you exterminate rats.”
The ‘rats’ to the ‘master’—the dehumanizing language we incorporate, even when condemning a crime. Before our tongues grew accustomed to this dictionary of debasement, we acted. After all, fate is written on the forehead, but someone must do the writing.
On March 15, 1921, justice rang—as reported by major publications all across the world. The Armenian American community, most new to this country, not yet citizens or versed in the English tongue, relied on the Hairenik for their news.
At the same time that the paper was hosting “bulletin boards” for community members to find missing relatives from the genocide, it also reported on the trial of the pashas, their escape, and on March 17, 1921, the murder of the “Turk who caused the Great Calamity” by “an Armenian terrorist’s bullet.” There was no equivocation on this word, which has become much politicized today.
Soghomon Tehlirian did not wait for the perpetrator to validate his suffering. Soghomon, who shared a name with Komitas and the Jewish King, who lost 85 family members and a homeland to that ‘master mind,’ did not accept servitude and loss as an inevitable fate. Chakat-a-gir. He lifted the pen in the form of a gun and spilled.
Soghomon did not run from the crime scene, just as Ruben did not run from his captors and our soldiers did not flee from the battlefield. They bore witness to tell the truth—with dignity—knowing that it might cost them their lives.
Gone are our youthful days, of playing pig in the bak. From the velvet նախագահ (president, or its more literal translation, “pre-throne”) to նախասպան (“pre-killer”), we plunged.
Full circle now. A piece of peace. Before the final thrust eats us whole.
Lilly Torosyan
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Beautifully written, Lilly. We need Soghomons and Rubens in our government!