Talin Suciyan

What is the connection between Frantz Fanon and Zaven Biberyan?

These days, every woman following what is being written about the Epstein case should watch Epstein’s videos—especially those recorded after his conviction.

How many Armenians felt a sense of relief in those moments, while simultaneously being engulfed by an overwhelming feeling of guilt? The inability to protect the values one has created is a historical legacy, which isoften entirely unrecognized.

Photographs showing Armenian women with long, braided hair were mostly taken before 1915. After that date, in cities such as Aleppo, Beirut, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Cyprus, Syros, Athens, Piraeus, and elsewhere, surviving Armenian women, orphans and widows alike, appear with their hair cut short or completely shaved. The hair of children, in particular, was often shaven off. Cutting the hair of women and young girls was seen as a precaution against an invisible threat.

Hratch Kozibeyokian was born into weaving. His father learned carpet weaving from the surviving women weavers of Kaghtagayan in Aleppo. In 1977, Hratch came from Beirut to California, where he continued the profession of carpet restoration with his father. When Hratch began to take carpets from his collection and “read” their stories one by one, I realized how deprived we are of such fundamental knowledge, and how no amount of listening would ever feel enough. He would look at a single carpet and see an entire lifetime.

The relationship between yayas born outside of Istanbul and the Armenian language was also highly intriguing. Some never learned Armenian, while others, speaking in local dialects, were shamed for it. The mistaken belief that Istanbul Armenian was the ideal and most beautiful version of the language played an active role in the rapid loss of these local dialects. The stories of our friends’ yayas in the diaspora are different from ours. The grandmothers of Armenians who migrated from Cilicia to the Aleppo-Beirut route or those who immigrated to the United States carry narratives distinct from those who remained in Turkey

The expected performance of an Istanbulite Armenian woman includes setting up tables during name days, hosting relatives, cooking well, being the one who brings the extended family together, keeping the house constantly clean and organized, and always being well-groomed and stylish. In other words, the Istanbulite Armenian woman must be a type of person beyond perfection!

Wasn't the destruction experienced by the Balıkçı family a reflection of our common, perhaps unspoken pasts, which in fact still exist? With Hrant Dink and Sevag Balıkçı, we clearly saw that an experience and temporality that had been ignored for a hundred years to make us believe that its time had passed, was actually always with us.