Waiting

SUSAN ARPAJIAN JOLLEY

In this week's column, we are featuring the article of Susan Arpajian Jolley from the USA about her grandmother. Parrhesia Collective has been discussing the role of our  grandmothers, in our monthly Kov Kovi meetings for some time. Following the articles of our members in the previous weeks, we are honored to receive an article from Susan Arpajian Jolley, that we would like to share with Agos readers. The English original of the article you can read online. As Collective, we would like to thank Susan Arpajian Jolley for sharing her grandmother’s story with us. 


This portrait of my maternal grandmother, Arek Zakarian, painted by her daughter, my Aunt Mary, hangs in my upstairs study. It’s a pose my brother and I remember well--Medzmom gazing through the glass, chin slightly upturned, lids heavy, and mouth expressing a grief that went unspoken for most of her life. In the painting, her clothes reflect the colors in her house, where, as my brother once wrote, the “walls breathed sorrow.”  This was our grandparents’ house in Philadelphia, where buses passed, pedestrians walked, and the world carried on, oblivious to the woman behind that glass, trapped in inescapable memories of a far-away world and the genocide she survived. The portrait is not the most powerful of the many paintings Mary did of her mother, but it is, perhaps, the most emblematic of Arek’s life, before and after she finally found refuge in 1923 in America after wandering through a wasteland of blood and bones for eight long years.

Arek Khachikian was born in 1895 in the village of Khachaluys, “the light of the Cross,” in the town of Khnus, present-day Hinis. She was from a respected family and excelled at the village school. As a girl she was betrothed to a young man from a prosperous family. As fate would have it, though, an unfortunate accident left her lame and caused that good family to reconsider the match. Fortunately, a nice boy named Sako, from a poor family, stepped in and consented to marry her. In 1915, the gendarmes killed Sako and beheaded his and Arek’s two little boys.

Arek spoke of the particulars of that horror only once, years later when she arrived in Philadelphia and confided in a relative who had had her own heartbreaks and understood.

Arriving in America was the miracle she had waited for. She told Mary that she had been in blood up to her ankles, that she saw women throw themselves and their babies into the river, or lick the backs of mirrors to commit suicide. She said she lost all of her hair, three times, that she did not speak Armenian for two years. Her American children, Mary, my mother, Rose, my Aunt Sosie, and my Uncle Paul, believed that she had borne children during her ordeal. She endured much and survived longer than many before she was able to migrate to America.

That miracle Arek had waited for happened when, serving as a cook in Istanbul, she got word that Zakar Zakarian, a fellow villager from Khachaluys, would sponsor her trip to America and marry her. She disembarked from the ship, spent and sick, yet was cleared to be received by Zakar. But when he saw her condition, no longer the pretty young girl he remembered from Khachaluys, he went back on his promise. In fairness to him, he had been drafted into the United States Army and was gassed in France during World War I. They say he was never quite right after that. Having his own demons, his own PTSD, he must have known that he was not equipped to handle Arek’s. So she waited. She waited at her cousin’s house, where she broke her silence and divulged what happened to her family. But she recovered from her ordeal and this additional rejection, which must have stung in light of the broken promise years earlier in Khachaluys.

This time, like the time Sako agreed to marry her despite her disability, a kindly man stepped in. My grandfather, Movses Zakarian, Zakar’s cousin, a bantukhd who learned in Philadelphia that his own wife and four sons had not survived the genocide, did what Zakar could not—marry this unfortunate woman from their village. Zakar and Movses had heard about the massacre, but hearing is quite different from experiencing.

Nevertheless, having both lost spouses and children in the genocide, Arek and Movses made a life in Philadelphia. They managed to raise four American children despite poverty, irregular work, and culture shock. Their children excelled in school, as children of immigrants do, especially children of besieged populations, who must tacitly prove to the world that they deserve to live. Arek watched her children as they slept, fearful that tragedy might befall them if she were not vigilant. She would protect these children, as she could not protect her children in Turkey.

Her American children instinctively knew that their mother also needed to be protected. They were never told the particulars of her situation, but they knew that she could not withstand more heartache. They hovered by her side, tried hard to be model children, and won academic awards, amidst the unspoken sorrow in the house. Movses was a tailor, but really a musician at heart. The household was filled with his music, his zurna and duduk singing the traditional melodies of his beloved Khachaluys. Mary said that her father’s music countered her mother’s sorrow, a duality that would later play out in her art, the sorrowful portraits upended by the joyful colors of her still life studies.

Her children stayed close to her as adults. Their vigilance manifested when Movses died in 1963. Arek’s four children wouldn’t allow her to go to the funeral. They must have understood that a funeral would be too much for her to bear. My brother and I, ages 9 and 12, stayed with her until people came back to the house. Arek waited then, looking out the window.

Arek was a loving mother and grandmother. She was never mean, never angry, never judgmental. She loved her grandchildren. She could laugh, despite her trauma. She served everyone, but never sat down to eat herself. We couldn’t read her thoughts, though, as she gazed out the window as in Mary’s painting. We did not know what she was waiting for, but we imagine her longing for all she had lost. Her silence spoke volumes about the worst and best in us: what humans can do to each other and also how they can survive and endure. Arek’s story, and her portrait at the window, exemplify both.