A world turned upside down

My Grandmother: An Armenian-Turkish Memoir
Fethiye Cetin
Translated by Maureen Freely
London-New York: Verso, 2012
Pp. 114

This memoir reopens a chapter of history that, until recently, was largely obscured, not least in the country where it happened. By telling the story of her grandmother, Fethiye Cetin bears witness to a woman’s amazing adaptation and inner strength in the face of unspeakable tragedy. Implicit in the narrative is the question of why the truth should be unspeakable. It was not forgetfulness that made her grandmother keep silent about events that changed the course of her life and her very identity. She had an excellent memory. 

Cetin spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ home in Maden, in southeast Turkey, and grew up loving her grandmother most of all. The book includes warm and funny family memories — going to the cinema with her siblings, learning to play the mandolin, folktales told by her grandmother, and anecdotes about her grandfather, who was a charming person unless he was hungry, when he turned into an ogre.

It thus came as a shock when years later, after she had moved to Ankara to study law, Cetin learned that her grandmother’s name was Heranus, not Seher, as they had always called her; that she was an Armenian Christian, not a Turkish Muslim; and that she had been separated from her mother on a forced march towards the Syrian border in 1915. One day in 1975, Cetin’s grandmother took her aside to whisper a seemingly strange request to help her find her relatives in America, whom Cetin knew nothing about. 

From then on, always making sure they were alone, Heranus began to relate what happened to her as a child: how gendarmes came to their village, taking away and later killing all the men, returning to carry off particularly beautiful young girls and women, and once again to herd the remaining women and children on a long, agonising death march. Though her mother fought with all her might, Heranus was seized from her arms by a Turkish officer who took her into his childless home. 

In relative terms, Heranus was lucky. The officer loved her and was very kind, but she suffered many indignities from his wife and neighbours who knew of her Armenian origin. It was a relief when she was married off to a “cousin” and could start her own family, but the price of leading a normal life was drawing a curtain of silence over the past. 

Others have documented the horrors of the Armenian massacre. What is compelling about Cetin’s memoir is her exploration of the human effects of having experienced so much suffering and loss of family. She ponders why her grandmother recounted events without emotions or explanations, how she could have held so much pain inside her for so many years in total silence. Perhaps she could not fathom the depth of human cruelty she had witnessed, much less come to terms with it.

Cetin also ponders her own reaction: “I didn’t discuss what she told me with anyone else, and neither did I discuss the shock waves it sent through my own life. I cannot say if this was because my grandmother wanted it this way, or if it came from my own shame, but I, too, hid what I was hearing from others: my world had been turned upside down… We formed a special and very secret alliance. I sensed her longing to rid herself of the burden she had been carrying all these years — to open the curtains that hid her secret, to tell this story she had never shared with a soul… ” (p. 62)

Translator Maureen Freely’s introduction puts Cetin’s account in historical context, showing how European designs and territorial realities at the end of World War I produced a toxic mixture pitting Turkish nationalists against minority communities.

Cetin’s discovery of her family’s true history opened her eyes to the hidden diversity of Turkish society. Heranus’ story was no exception. Many Armenian girls were adopted or married by Turks and integrated into the society. As a relative later told her, “In the place where we come from, it’s hard to find anyone without ‘impure blood’ — there’s no one with any other kind.” (p. 84) 

The book is a study in the disastrous effects of ultra-nationalism and prejudice, but it also records counterexamples, showing that not all were poisoned by racial myths, not all agreed with the killings and deportations. And it’s not only about Armenians. Cetin has applied what she learned from her grandmother to her own life, participating as a lawyer in the Committee to Promote Human Rights and the Minority Rights Working Group. By speaking truth, this memoir is oriented as much towards the future as to the past, part of a growing movement to create a more democratic and tolerant Turkey.