The Crossing Place

Before I got here I suspected that what unites Armenians is language and religion. After I got here I surmised that it was the language and the alphabet. And then I had an additional thought – it’s also the diaspora. Before I got here, a friend said that history is the history of the conquerors, because the conquerors get to write it. Well, the Armenians are an exception – they have been conquered several times and yet they endure, in part because of the strong diaspora. There are many more Armenians living outside of Armenia than in the country itself!

I just finished a book, recommended in the Peace Corps welcome book, that reinforced and detailed this. The Crossing Place: A Journey among the Armenians, by Philip Marsden, chronicles the travels of the author to discover the essence of Armenia. He was inspired when, exploring Turkey, he came across a bone. When he asked what animal it might have come from, a shepherd told him it was “Ermeni” and tossed the bone to his dog. This led him to want to discover the spirit of the Armenians and how they have survived despite being at the “crossing place” of history, continually caught between warring religions and ideologies (some of this is from the book jacket).

He does his initial research in longtime Armenian communities in Venice and Jerusalem (I had no idea that the fourth quarter in Jerusalem is the Armenian quarter – but then again, I’d never thought about it). He goes from Cyprus to Lebanon and Syria, where many of the people forced out of Turkey in 1915 ended up (he also visits caves and other places where many of the forced marches ended in death, not in survival). As an aside, Gordon and Jeanne took their Peace Corps Response assignment here in part because they taught for two years in Aleppo, Syria, and got to know many Armenians there. The author then goes to Turkey, where there are still a few Armenians but also lots of historic structures designed by them – the Armenians were architects, merchants, mathematicians, astronomers, and other innovators.

He then goes on to Eastern Europe – Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova – where he encounters older Armenian communities; the Armenians were moved there as a result of the Turkish invasion in 1064 and also relocated there by the Persians. In these countries, there isn’t as much knowledge of tradition, and the last Armenians in some towns are dying out. He crosses parts of the Soviet Union as it is breaking up and at last ends up in Armenia itself. Most of the places he visits in Armenia are things I would like to see – Gyumri, the second-largest city, where there is still evidence of the 1988 earthquake (he was intrigued enough to go out of his way to the epicenter; I probably won’t), Lake Sevan and the world-heritage monasteries of the north, and then he ends his trip in what he thinks of as quintessential Armenia, the south – Goris, Kapan and Meghri, which at the time are under fire from Ajerbaijan.

He finds that the loss of the land is as palpable as the loss of the lives, and that there is a spirit that is represented by Ararat, a spirit that lives on. It was an interesting book and it gave me something to think about in light of my upcoming trip, to the homeland of a different people who are also mostly diaspora and who have also survived despite genocide. I’m not sure how much more I’ll read about Armenian history, but I’m glad I read this one.

P.S. I received two more issues of The New Yorker today (the second and third since I arrived) - happy to be reading those!