Top

news

Stories

 

Armenian Patriotism, Revisited

A Los Angeles man returns to the homeland — and might become its president

Comments (0) By Gendy Alimurung Thursday, Feb 3 2011

When writer Garin Hovannisian goes home to Armenia in a few days, he will feel weirdly homesick. "It's so strange. I always miss the place where I'm not," he says, sitting in a café in Glendale, the one place in Los Angeles where there are so many Armenians it can seem like you already are in the old country. To understand his very contemporary kind of longing, you have to go back a bit, to the Ottoman Empire. Specifically, to a guy named Kaspar.

Garin Hovannisian at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Montebello
PHOTO BY JENNIE WARREN
Garin Hovannisian at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Montebello

Related Content

More About

Kaspar was Garin's great-grandfather, one of the tens of thousands of people fleeing the Armenian genocide. When the Ottoman Turks butchered the men of his village, Kaspar escaped to the San Joaquin Valley, where he started a grape farm. He gave his kids American names and taught them to embrace their adoptive country. One of these kids was Richard.

Richard did not love the vines and the farm. He fled his home, too, but to Los Angeles and a professorship at UCLA, where he founded the department of Armenian studies.

Richard, in turn, begat a son named Raffi, who grew up in Brentwood, played football at Palisades High, became a lawyer and married. Raffi set up practice and made lots of money. He became, in short, the epitome of the American dream. You'd think this is where the story ends, everybody fat, fulfilled and happy. And it could have ended there. But if you read the book Garin — Raffi's son — has written on the subject, you'd see it's actually only the beginning.

Because then, the fatherland called. Or rather, faxed.

"My dad sat in his office in Century City and realized history was waking up miles away," he says. "It was waking up after decades of silence."

Garin was 3 years old when his father announced they were moving to Soviet Armenia. It was 1989. It was kind of a shock. "My poor mother!" Garin says. "She was actually a refugee from Soviet Armenia. She had just become a successful lawyer herself."

Nevertheless, they traded the house in Brentwood for an apartment in Yerevan. Garin's dad didn't have a job lined up in Armenia, but his revolutionary and democratic hopes were high. You can live on patriotism, it turns out.

Raffi joined up with the people who would become the country's new leaders and made himself indispensable: visiting the Karabakh conflict's front lines one day, arranging interviews between the new democratic party's members and the world's press the next.

In 1991, following mass demonstrations throughout the Soviet Union, Gorbachev's empire crumbled and Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union. The fledgling government needed just such a natural connector, a person who knew law and the outside world, who had contacts in the United States, who could speak English, French and Russian. Soon Raffi was appointed the new Republic of Armenia's first minister of foreign affairs. He negotiated diplomatic relations with every foreign country. He raised the new flag at the United Nations. He installed the ministry's first fax machine. "We recognize," came the return transmissions, communiqués from Britain and Japan and Mexico, acknowledging the new country's independence.

"My dad was born in the U.S. but always had a sense that his future was somewhere else," Garin says. "He's left me kind of a divided legacy. My immediate family are in Armenia, but my extended family is in California."

From age 3 on, Garin traveled back and forth from L.A. to Armenia, spending half the school year here, half there. He remembers trips on Aeroflot planes. He remembers passengers drinking vodka, eating, handing him candy, "a party in the air."

He has grown up into a thoughtful, gracious young man who has never felt fully at home, never fully adjusted to the culture he's in.

History, apparently, is written not by winners but by their children. The bicultural upbringing that made a diplomat out of Raffi made a writer out of Garin. His book Family of Shadows is Armenian history as seen through the achievements of the prodigal sons — Kaspar, Richard and Raffi — of one of its leading families. It is a book bursting, aching with pride. Pride for fathers. Pride for family, duty and nation. Yet there are feelings left unspoken, too: disappointment, disillusionment. Hence, the shadows. They slip through the narrative, darker interior moments that are gone as soon as seen:

 We lived in a castle. That is what it seemed like, anyway, because there was a Russian pool table on the veranda and secret service agents in the basement. I marveled at all of this, yet I knew this was not my real home. I knew that beyond the gray walls of the dacha was Yerevan, which itself was not real, and beyond that was California, where all my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins lived. Where I was now, this was just beautiful nonsense. I was simply walking through my father's dreams.

 How can a son be anything but proud of a father who has done so much? How can you be in two places — metaphoric, psychic, geographic — at once? History may be written by children, but it is made by parents.

1 | 2 | All | Next Page >>

Related Content

Check out this week's featured ad for Services
More Ads >>
 
My Voice Nation Help
16 comments
  Livefyre
Newest | Oldest
Ilyas Demir
Ilyas Demir

Ergun Kirlikovali is right. Armenian Supremacists try to make Turks look as much as demonic as possible. But they are scared the shit out of their pants to open their archives or join any historical commision, because they know they will be exposed to the whole world for spreading hatemongering, bias and one sided truths. They also know their little sly schemes and plots to divide the RoT will cease too. They claim to be a peaceful democratic country. Haha, yeah right. Serj Sarkisian said that he has faith that Armenia's failed land grad scheme in WW1 will succeed. It is a shame that people are not putting sanctions on Armenia. The world powers need to put sanctions on Armenia as much as possible for threatening to grab land from the RoT. Btw, who cares what Woodrow Wilson says, he was just simply a corrupt president like Obama, Bush and Clinton who was interested in warmongering then US interest. He is not a true American Patriot, the only good US president there are would be JFK, and Ron Paul if he gets elected. People have to force Armenia into a Historical Commision and force Armenia to open their archives. Why is Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora so hestiant to join these? Because they know it will expose the cold hard facts about how they are hiding lots of things, including their plans to create a purely Christian Anatolia through massacreing Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Circassians, Georgians and Jews. Also, look up the Topalian Affidavits on the ATAA website written by like 7-8 people and it will show the evils of genocide peddler racists. These racist Dashnaks don't care if you say "omg we are so sorry, here is your land". They will still hate. They think they are entitled to one, vilify and attack anything and everything Turkish, commit fraud schemes and terrorism (like the ASALA terrorism in the 1970s which costed many Turkish and Non-Turkish lives). I am not talking about Armenians as a whole, but Armenian Extremeist Terrorist Fanatics. If they claim they are fighting for "their rights." It is funny how they talk about their rights, but at the same time, Armenia's population is decreasing (and has already decreased by close to 1 million since the Early 1990), Armenia is ran by mafia bosses and oligarchs and their economy is down in the drain, that is why there are 50k Armenian Immigrants living in Istanbul. Armenia is poor and isolated because of their endless warmongering territorial demands (asking for lands they were a minority in well before the early 1900's. NOTE: In the 1700s to 1800s, Armenians were only 10-20% of East Anatolian Populace), having worldwide lobbies to crush free speech and debate about the Armenian issue (trying everything Turkish so they can warmonger and spread hate. They need to give peace a chance and give up hatemongering. Yes Armenians died and got massacred, but what about Turks, Kurds, Jews, and others. Are their lives worth less than Armenian lives. No. People need to expose all the nooks and crannys of Armenian Supremacism and the real facts about the vile side of the "Hai Tahd." I don't believe in hatemongering and I want hate to stop between the both sides but in order for this to cease, Armenians need to stop terrorizing and attacking everything Turkish, stop diverting and dodging and finding slick techniques to dodge historical commisions and archival exchanges, stop supressing free speech and further debate, because they know they are hiding something.to attack people with contra-genocide view points and calling them "haters" is just a scheme to stifle free speech), as well as spending millions of dollars in trying to spread a biased "one-sided" view about the genocide issue, plus intentionally trying to create a plot for Turkish people to be mistreated worldwide, even if they support the genocide thesis. They know that they want to attack and vilify

Armenak
Armenak

Ergun Kirlikovali - bigoted racist not only a prominent Armenian hater but also low life scumbag insulting Mexican American writer Gustavo Arellano calling him repeatedly a "speedy Gonzalez".

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

Where do you want to draw the line? I suggest let's all draw a straight line between these two points: truth and honesty. ( www.ethocide.com )

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

Half the story is left out in systematic efforts to make Armenian suffering look like genocide where all the Armenians are stereotyped as angels and Turks devils. If you leave half the story out like that, any war, even the American civil war can look like a genocide.

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

Half the story is left out in systematic efforts to make Armenian suffering look like genocide where all the Armenians are stereotyped as angels and Turks devils. If you leave half the story out like that, any war, even the American civil war can look like a genocide. Where do you want to draw the line? ( www.ethocide.com )

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

No word about Armenian territorial demands or half million Muslims, mostly Turks, killed by Armenian revolutionaries using Russian made Mosin rifles since 1893... No information about many other Armenian hate crimes...

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

No mention, either, of the Armenian revolts (1880-1920) and Armenian treason (1914-1915) when most Armenians took up arms against their own government (Ottomans) and joined the invading enemy armies (Russian then French and British and finally Greek) ...

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

A typical propaganda piece fed the unsuspecting readers in this country for so many decades... See how there is no mention of Armenian war crimes by Hunchaks, Dashnaks, Armenakans, and other Armenian terrorists from 1893 to 1921...

Dickron Maloian
Dickron Maloian

I don't have the talent or courage of the Hovanessians but recognize and appreciate their desires and accomplishments.

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

A typical propaganda piece fed the unsuspecting readers in this country for many decades... See how there is no mention of Armenian war crimes by Hunchaks, Dashnaks, Armenakans, and other Armenian terrorists from 1893 to 1921... No mention, either, of Armenian revolts (1880-1920) or treason that peaked in 1914-1918. Most Armenians took up arms against their own government (Ottomans) and joined the invading enemy armies (first the Russian then the French and British and finally the Greek) ... Armenian territorial demands are dismissed…Half million Muslims, mostly Turks, killed by Armenian revolutionaries using Russian made Mosin rifles since 1893 and many such Armenian hate crimes are forgotten.Half the story is left out in an effort to make Armenian suffering look like genocide. Well, if you leave half the story out, even the American civil war can look like a genocide. Where do you want to draw the line? I suggest let's draw the line between these two points: truth and honesty. ( www.ethocide.com )

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

A typical propaganda piece fed the unsuspecting readers in this country for so many decades... See how there is no mention of Armenian war crimes by Hunchaks, Dashnaks, Armenakans, and other Armenian terrorists from 1893 to 1921... No mention of Armenian revolts since 1880 all the ay to 1920... No mention of Armenian treason that peaked in 1914 and 1915 when most Armenians not only took up arms agaisnt their own government (Ottomans) but also shamelessly joined the invading enemy armies (Russian then French and British and finally Greek) ... No mention of Armenian territorial demands, either... No mention of half million Muslims, mostly Turks, killed by Armenian revolutionaries using Russian made Mosin rifles since 1893... No mention of Armenian hate crimes... Armenians are made to look and sound like angels... and Turks devils... Half the story is left out in systematic efforts to make Armenian suffering--which is mostly self-created and real, though not as severe as that of corresponding Turkish suffering--look like genocide. If you leave half the story out, even the American civil war can look like a genocide. Where do you want to draw the line? I suggest let's all draw a straight line between these two points: truth and honesty. ( www.ethocide.com )

Ergun Kirlikovali
Ergun Kirlikovali

Typical propaganda piece fed the unsuspecting readers in this country for many decades. There is no mention of Armenian war crimes by Hunchaks, Dashnaks, Armenakans, and other Armenian terrorists... No mention of Armenian revolts since 1880 all the ay to 1920... No mention of Armenian treason where Armenians not only took up arms agaisnt their own government but also shamelessly joined the invading enemy armies... No mention of Armenian territoria demands... No mention of half million Muslims, moslty Turks, killed by Armenian revolutionaries using Rusian made Mosin rifles since 1893... No mention of Armenian hate crimes... Armenians are made to look and sound like angels... and Turks deamons... Half the story is left out in systematic efforts to make Armenian suffering--which is mostly self-created and real, though not as severe as that of corresponding Turkish suffering--look like genocide. If you leave half the story out, even the American civil war can look like a genocide. Where do you want to draw the line? I suggest let's all draw a staright line between these two points: truth and honesty. ( www.ethocide.com )

 

Now Trending

VOICE Daily Deals

Slideshows»

More News Stories >
©2013 LA Weekly, LP, All rights reserved.
Browse Voice Nation
  • Voice Places Los Angeles

    Voice Places

    Find everything you're looking for in your city

  • Happy Hour App

    Happy Hour App

    Find the best happy hour deals in your city

  • Daily Deals

    Daily Deals

    Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%

  • Best Of

    Best Of...

    Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city