The Starving Armenians

The Starving Armenians

By Jeff Namian

Ellis Island, 1915

There’s not a date one can pinpoint for the arrival of my Grandpa George, his brother and my Great Uncle Sam and sisters Anoush, Sarah, Bodgy and their mother Unna. Less is known about family members left behind, or how they were fortunate enough to escaped a genocide when one and a half million Armenians did not. What did they witness during the genocide? They refused to ever discuss it.

In 2021, President Biden stated the Ottoman Empire’s slaughter of Armenian civilians was genocide. The intention was to eliminate the country, culture and people of Armenia. The Turkish government has never acknowledged systematic plan.

So what exactly constitutes a genocide?

The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group (devoutly Christians) with the aim of destroying any evidence of the group and its cultural significance. Simply put, the Armenians were long settled in a region they claimed to be theirs. That stability alone encourages culture, food, and pride in their nation. The Turks were nomads. They wanted to assume the best parts of the Armenian heritage to validate their reputation. They were Muslims with zero tolerance toward Armenia, which was a and is still is sandwiched between Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Not desirable real estate.

The Armenian genocide was the systematic killing and deportation of Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians. By the early 1920s, when the genocide finally ended, between 7500,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were either dead or forcibly removed from their country. Those that got out were beneficiaries of sponsors in Latin America and the United States. But it took (at least it took me) years to uncover the truth. It was a forbidden subject amongst my family. An embarrassment.

Birthdays were another mystery. According to the matriarch of the family Unna; always a hot day to for babies. She had nine. Five got out. Grandpa and his surviving siblings celebrated their birthday twice a year; February 15 and August 15. Made up dates. The desert was hot all year so the fortunate five shared two birthdays, which got costly the older I got. Armenians have longevity on their side, a perk for the crap that dismantled most of their family trees.

My name is a pain in the ass. Easy to pronounce. Difficult to spell.

N as in Nancy

A as in Apple

M as in Mary

I as in Intelligent

A as in Apple

N as in Nancy

Then I’ll add I’m Armenian which is meant to help but results in: What’s that? Well it’s just and extinct nationality know knows of. With all the details known about the Holocaust, perhaps a sentence could be dedicated to the plight of the starving Armenians and the tag name of IAN every survivor that entered through Ellis Island inherited. How about a shout out for those that never made it. They kept their names but paid quite a price.

Interesting to note: an Armenian that resides in Armenia ends their name in YAN. The Americanized version is IAN.

Grandpa and his family didn't speak a word of English. Hence, when a clerk at Ellis Island asked for their family name, Grandpa responded with:

Grandpa: Name

Clerk: What is your name. (slower and louder, like that helped)

Grandpa: Name

Clerk: Namian it is. Line up for your tetanus shots and welcome to the United States of America.

Imagine if he said piss or poop. We’d be Pissian or Poopian. I’m sure he had to do one or probably both. It was a long trip.

Now most Armenian names contain several syllables. The composer Aram Ilyich Khachaturian had five. Jack Kevorkian and the Khardashians have four, not that the Khardashians are at all indicative of being Armenian. If a bride has her back shaved in the parking lot before taking her vows, that gal’s Armenian. If she’s posing on the beach wearing dental floss, nope.

While our nationality was rarely if ever discussed, when it was the details were vague. For a while I wondered if the Armenians did something wrong. There were no Armenians in my school. We went to a Lutheran Church on the rare occasion we went. Our weekly cuisine offered no indication of anything other than barely edible. My brother and I both went to Jesuit colleges. Fairfield University and Fordham University to confuse matters even more. We never read the Bible. We didn’t start college with 100%.

When my third grade teacher mandated the class to present our heritage, I was running on empty. The presentation was scheduled for the following Monday. One lesson I learned from my grandfather was to never call in sick on a Monday. Wait until Tuesday. Eliminates suspicion. Oh that as well as sharing his version of the traffic light codes.

Red = stop. Green = go. Yellow = race like hell, gonna turn red.

We had dinner every Sunday with my grandparents. Let’s say the food was not good. My grandfather insisted my grandmother cook only American standard meals like boiled chicken, radish salad and rice pilaf. The chicken part I got. The pilaf part I got. The radish side dish only made the menu since they grew like weeds in his back yard. In fact, I can’t say for sure that the greens weren’t weeds instead of lettuce. He was pretty frugal.

Imagine the heartburn after eating ten or twelve radishes? I learned later on in life that the way to avoid heartburn from radishes or cucumbers is to keep their skin on. It counters the acidic quality of what’s inside. But the damage was done by the time I reached puberty. Today I hold stock in Tums, even for a cracker. Now the boiled chicken turned into a salt and pepper experiment. It had to. And then there’s the plight of the rice pilaf.

Grandma’s name was Ethel. Grandpa pronounced it Ettel as in his favorite rant: bad cook dat damn Ettel. Poor thing never set a place for herself at the table. She speed walked between the kitchen and dining room. Seems everyone needed either a spice or a condiment or Cool Whip. Anything.

According to my grandfather, dat damn Ettel couldn’t make rice pilaf to save what was left of her demoralized life.

“Why you to try make the pilaf like Janet (my mother) who never fessed up her masterpiece came out of a box of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat.

And the boiled chicken? It turned into a salt and pepper experiment.

I don’t think I ever saw Ethel (aka Ettel) even eat. She was a rotund woman so she musta been consuming something. She had a persistent case of eczema on her hands. I mean considering the stress she was under, I completely understood. She always wore white gloves to cover up the rash. Never took them off. Hell, she’d mix a meat loaf in them.

Before each meal, my grandfather mumbled something, then wrap things up with a soft-spoken “remember the starving Armenians.” I had no idea who these Armenians were nor how they survived without food but if they wanted my boiled chicken, done deal.

After dinner, my grandfather took my brother and I into the study that had a fire going in the fireplace going regardless of the season. The Irving Berlin image. Look like an American. Grandpa always had a tumbler of scotch handy to wash down the dinner. Sadly, he didn’t share. Then he’d read to us. Now he didn’t read To Kill a Mockingbird or even a murder mystery. He read the Dictionary, intending to increase our Americanism.

We weren’t sure who the intended benefactor was. We were distracted by the burning repeats of radish. And these were Pre-Tums time, mind you.

The hardest part was that he had his own version of every single word. Well most of them. Cat was definitely Cat. Crêpes were craps. Try ordering that at a cafe in Paris sans severe humiliation. We were in the I’s (somewhere around irrelevant) when I told grandpa I had a school assignment due Monday. I needed know a few things about our heritage.

“What nationality are we Grandpa?”

His face turned red as a radish as he jumped to his feet:

“YOU SAY NOTHING. NOTHING. WE'RE AMERICAN. THAT’S IT.”

My Grandpa loved Hogan’s Heroes, so he put a lot of Sergeant Schultz “I KNOW NOTHING” into his NOTHING.

During the ride home, I asked what the big deal was. What did we do? Were we being followed? Were we a legitimate family or a drug ring? Why did we have to read the dictionary? It was monotonous and confusing since Grandpa’s pronunciation differed from what we were learning in school. We lived a life of contradictions. Here was my father’s explanation.

We’re Armenian. Our native country is Armenia, but it doesn’t exist anymore. There was a genocide initiated by the Turks and millions of people were tortured and killed. Some escaped on foot and walked to the Holy Land, then shipped to Brazil by a sympathetic sponsor. They stayed there until it was clear to enter the States.

“So we’re Armenian,” I asked?

”Probably but you can’t admit to that."

“Brazilian?” I asked.

He went on to say while we were probably Armenian there was a chance we were Syrian. Nobody knew. If we were, we were muslim. If we were Armenian, we were christian. The walk to the Holy Land tilted the odds toward Armenian, as Armenians were not only Christians but the very first people to adopt Christianity.

They were a religious people. They certainly weren’t chefs!

What would I say during the class presentation? For some reason no one wanted to spill the beans about the whole Armenian thing. It didn’t sound like Syrian or Brazilian would be received any better. Jesus Christ. Or should I say Holy Allah? What I knew was the food sucked and we spoke a fucked up version of English. And why did I have to remember these starving Armenians if most of them were dead and we weren’t allowed to feed nor acknowledge them anyway. So I concocted a cover up. I’d be adopted so I didn’t know what I was. Here was my presentation:

I am adopted. That means my real parents left me somewhere

and my new parents picked me up. They’re very nice. So that’s what I am. Nice. I’m a nice American. Thank you for your time.

The class looked like they sort of believed me as I returned to my desk. In hindsight, I think they felt bad for me as the subject never came up again.

The following Tuesday was Parent - Teacher night. My parents rushed home and slammed the front door, seemingly in a froth.

“You told them you’re adopted?” asked my mother.

“What the hell’s wrong with you,” she continued.

“Are you that ashamed of us?” asked my dad.

I rarely get confrontational. It’s not worth the effort to convince someone you’re right and they’re wrong (especially when you’re always right).

“IF I KNEW WHAT I WAS THEN I WOULDN’T CLAIM TO BE ADOPTED.”

”Oh don’t you raise your voice to me,“ she said while paying far more attention to the amount of gin she poured into her tumbler.

No problem. One day we’re one thing, the next day we’re burying the evidence under a radish tree. Anytime we said words from Grandpa’s grammar class, we were mocked. Everybody else in the class had these really cool stories that included traditions and real food ... like pizza. We ate lamb and okra over pilaf. Nobody ever wanted to stay for dinner at our house.

To this day, when people ask how to spell my last name I either write it down or show them my driver’s license. If it’s over the phone and they ask my name, I always tell them “let’s go with a date of birth please”.

I'm a man without a past, a point of orientation with numerous unanswered questions. You know, the Jews and African-Americans have libraries dedicated to their history, contributions and tribulations. The Armenians, in sharp contrast, are a nebulous group of something from somewhere. There's still a country called Armenia. I know this as every Olympics opening ceremony they send a small contingent of athletes. I don’t know who’s funding them but their outfits kind of look like Target instead of Ralph Lauren. Last winter the Armenian team had just three members. One looked like he was knocking on deaths door and they made him carry the flag. I think they propped him up for the luge, gave him a good push and arranged for a medic at the end of the run.

They usually bring a larger contingency for the Summer Olympics. In Paris (2024) they even won a bronze medal in men’s vaulting. The headline of the Armenian Weekly screamed:

Artur Davtyan is the first Armenian to earn an Olympic Medal.

While he seemed a bit long in the tooth, he was a sprite and agile little thing. Very built. Not much of a looker. Great legs. And hairy? He could make cashmere sweaters once he retired. But he put Armenians (and I guess that includes me but who the hell knows) back on the map. And speaking of maps. Where the hell is Armenia? I took the bait. It was larger back in its hey-day than it is today. The Genocides that are rarely acknowledged lost a lot of Armenian territory to Turkey. It’s a bit north of Iran and Syria but I don’t anticipate any pot luck dinners between them.

The Armenians, an Indo-European people, first appear in history shortly after the end of the 7th century BCE. Some of the population trekked to the east of Mount Ararat where Greeks imposed their leadership over regions which must still have retained elements of a high degree of civilization (e.g., walled towns, irrigation works, and arable fields) upon which the less-advanced newcomers might build.

Armenians were not able to achieve the power and independence of their predecessors and were rapidly incorporated into the Median empire then annexed to form part of the Achaemenian Empire of Persia (c. 550 BCE) until its absorption into the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great.

Geez, no wonder the background info was sparse. Who the hell could follow it. I guess it was for the best that some of us made it to America and pretended to be Yankee Doodle Dandy. There’s no Armenian Day Parade, no Happy Armenian Day and no After Armenian Day sale.

And a generic untraceable name, but that’s not where the ironic history of my full name concludes. You see my parents wanted a girl and planned on welcoming Carrie Nell. No boy name was entertained. So when I slid out with a penis and the nurse declared its a boy my parents were completely disgusted.

“Shit” said my father as he grabbed his overcoat and hat and split. The nurse asked my mother what name to put on the birth certificate to which she responded in disgust:

“I don’t have a clue,” while puffing on a cigarette.

Now my cousin was campaigning to be my godmother and my mother agreed with a what the hell wave of the hand. The best decision my mother ever made because I love my godmother, minus a few of her more brazen political stances. When she came to the hospital, she asked what my name was.

“I’m working on it,” said my mother checking her hair in a mirror. The hairdresser just left. This was two days after being whelped and I remained TBA.

“Well I’m dating this guy named Jeffrey and I think it’s a cool name,” my cousin/eventual godmother said. My mother agreed. The attending nurse wrote it down with relief. My cousin and eventual godmother added that I’d also need a middle name. Just then my father entered the room:

Allen, get me the hell outta here, she shrieked.

So there’s that. I’m Jeffrey Allen Namian. No nationality, a contrived name and had it not been for my godmother, I might have been left behind and bar coded. My third grade presentation wasn’t remotely a stretch.

Eventually, I gave up on a cohesive family tree. I remember the starving Armenians, and Syrians and Brazilians too.

Hell, the food's way better