An Armenian Journey By Rudy Brueggemann

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Kardatsek sa:

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An Armenian Journey

By Rudy Brueggemann

T he taxi driver and Hozan, my Kurdish "fixer," sat in the front seat. I was in the back. They conversed quickly in Turkish. On a hot October day, we drove through the hillside slums of Caglayan, a suburb on the European side of Turkey's largest city, Istanbul.

"Why do you want to find a Muslim cemetery in Caglayan," said the cab driver to my colleague.

"Gold," said my fixer as a joke. "We want to dig up gold."

The elderly cabbie laughed. We cruised by the six-story apartments and businesses that filled the congested urban area. To our right, by a highway, sat a park with several memorials visible from the road.

"Talaat Pasha memorial," said the driver pointing out the window.

"Talaat who?" responded Hozan, playing dumb. "Please, just let us off near the Jewish cemetery at the Sisli Metro stop."

We quickly backtracked without talking. Hozan was not sure why I wanted to find this cemetery for one of the three principal architects of the 20th century's first genocide.

"What do you want to do?" he asked me. "Why do you want to find the grave of this ######er, Talaat Pasha? Do you know who he was?"

I knew exactly who "this ######er" was - a man whose crimes equaled those of Hitler and Stalin. But I did not answer Hozan's questions.

The memorial marked the first of more than two dozen places I photographed in Turkey, to document historic evidence of the attempted extermination of the Armenian people in the early 1900s. My pictures hopefully would tell a little-known story of enormous human evil. At another level, I hoped they would provide additional evidence against what my Armenian journalist friend called the "big lie," or Turkey's denial that Armenians were victims of a government-run, systematic mass murder.

Before this trip, I drafted post-dated letters that my friends were to send to my congressman to raise a fuss if, by chance, I was arrested. I also had spoken with an American filmmaker who had documented Armenian issues about this possibility. He said my risk was minimal if I was smart. He was right.

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