Was it Stockholm Syndrome?

 Vahe H. Apelian

The attached is an old blog that I updated to commemorate my  maternal and paternal grandparents orphaned  at  the Armenian Genocide 109 years ago, in 1915.

The attached depicts the 1915 genocidal deportation routes of my grandparents. Those who were driven to Deir ez Zoe did not return.  Our paternal grandfather STEPAN APELIAN reached YABROUD, and paternal grandmother SARA MOUSSAJEKIAN reached AL MOUDAMYEH.   Our maternal grandfather KHACHER CHELEBIAN and grandmother KAROUN APELIAN reached DER ATIYAH near DAMASCUS, 

Stockholm Syndrome is a term I came across for the first time in my Freshman Psychology 101 course. It was an elective course. The term gave me a whole new perspective about my maternal grandmother’s unusual recount of her ordeal during the Genocide.

My maternal grandmother Karoun (Apelian) Chelebian with her children and their spouses and her first grandchild, me.
Standing LtoR: Hovhannes Chelebian, Zvart (Chelebian) Apelian, Hovhannes Apelian, Antranig Chelebiab, 
Seated LtoR: Kohar (Apelian) Chelebian, Vahe H. Apelian, Karoun (Apelian) Chelebian, Siran (Toutikian) Chelebian.

Wikipedia defines it as follows: “Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them….The FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly 27% of victims show evidence of Stockholm syndrome.” Psychologists offer varying explanations of this seemingly contradictory behavior. It may be that it is the last resort to safeguard one’s sanity.

My paternal and maternal grandparents were orphaned survivors of the Armenian Genocide. They were driven to their extermination along with the rest of their parental families and Kessabtsis in July 1915. The popular account in Kessab is that their ordeal lasted three years and three months, placing their return to their villages sometime in the fall of 1918 to weather the winter ahead without necessary provisions. Somehow they overcame the odds pitted against them. 

I was their firstborn grandchild. Their other grandchildren would trail me by some six years and longer. It may be because of that I seemed to have enjoyed their special attention, although I did not have the pleasure of knowing my maternal grandfather, Khacher. He had passed away at the age of 38 due to ‘pneumonia’ leaving his young wife, my maternal grandmother Karoun (Apelian) Chelebian, a young widow raising their 2 sons and their 2 daughters. Their eldest child, my later maternal uncle, Dr. Antranig Chalabian, was a 10 years old lad when his father passed away.

Stepan Apelian

My paternal grandfather Stepan also survived the Genocide and returned to the village without having anyone else from his immediate family.  He was a quiet man. His whole life outside his family and work in the fields revolved and involved the Armenian Evangelical church of Keurkune, which he served his whole life as its life-long treasurer and trustee until almost the last few years of his life. He was very evasive when it came to my youthful curiosity about his life during the Genocide. My brother Garo was named after his brother Garabed. He also seemed to have a sister who survived the Genocide but we never found out where she lived or if she in fact survived.

Sarah Mousajekian Apelian

My paternal grandmother Sarah Mousajekian survived the ordeal and managed to return to Kessab with her mother and no else from her immediate and extended family. She was a gregarious woman. She had become the de facto medical custodian of the village. There was no birth, dislocated joints or broken bones she was not called to attend. She was illiterate. I was not yet in my teens when I discovered that she did not know how to read. It happened this way. I had accompanied her to the market to purchase reading classes during one of her rare visits to Beirut. The shopkeeper offered her an Armenian newspaper to read to pick the right eyeglasses. She declined the offer telling him that she does not know how to read to my dismay, bewilderment, and unease when all adults I thought knew how to read. Our paternal grandparents’ house was the only one in the village that was known after her instead of her husband when households in greater Kessab were referred to by the patriarch of the family. She was married to my grandfather when she was fourteen years old and he was twenty or so.  The surviving relatives had thought that the two should get married to chart their own course together. 

I associate the genocide mostly with my maternal grandmother Karoun nee Apelian because for many years we lived together in the same apartment in West Beirut. She was fifteen years old when she was driven from her home with the rest of her parental family. She and her young nephew James were the only ones who survived from their family and returned to Kessab having married, on their way, to my maternal grandfather Khacher in their makeshift camp in Deir Attiyeh, Syria. She was a refined woman in manners, in conversation, in her choice of words. Almost every night I would find her kneeling on her bed and praying with a barely audible but intense murmur. My mother has told me that she read the Bible once a year, every year. She had her family’s milestones inscribed in a beautiful handwriting in her Armenian script Turkish reading Bible that I now treasure.

When the family talk came to Genocide she would tell us that the Turkish gendarmes that accompanied their caravan displayed empathy. They would encourage them, she would tell us, to endure a bit longer for their ordeal would soon be over. They showed care and concern to their plight, she would say. I was a high school student and I would often wonder how could that be for at times in the silence of the night she exhibited a scary scene. Every now and then, far into the night, when everyone in the family would be sleeping suddenly she would scream in a terrifying agony and fear. We would immediately rush to her bedside and wake her up. I do not recall seeing her sweating or showing any outward sign of distress. She would then go back sleeping peacefully completely oblivious of the experience a moment ago. God only knew what had remained buried deep in her unconscious mind.

It was in that Psychology 101 class when the day’s lecture dealt with Stockholm syndrome that it occurred to me that my maternal grandmother might have demonstrated, in her conscious state, the symptoms of that affliction but her true feelings feelings of fear and terror came about when her unconscious mind took over.

I took leave of her in early July 1977 in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War. Having secured my immigration papers from the U.S. Embassy in West Beirut, where she lived with my uncle, I was to go to East Beirut the next day. In the morning I crossed to East Beirut with a convoy leaving the Armenian community center. It turned out that we were the last to do that dangerous crossing dodging snipers' bullets.  She had passed away that very night after an apparent stroke. We heard the news of her death the following day through a radio station announcement where a relative worked, as the telephone lines were not working. Later, my maternal uncle and aunt told me that she had agonized over my departure and had died that very evening.

 Upon hearing the sad news, my mother said that she will not wear black. She said she did not want to bid me farewell in black attire. My parents and I could no longer return to West Beirut.  My uncle and aunt accompanied her body to Kessab and had her buried in the Keurkune’s ancient cemetery next to her husband Khacher and daughter Anna.

Those were hectic days. I embarked on my immigrant's journey to the U.S. on a yacht that operated from East Beirut to Cyprus. I was to catch a plane from there to Athens and from there to the U.S. That was the only route available for leaving the country. After all these years, and whenever I think of those days I see my mother waving a white handkerchief as the boat left the shore and sailed into the sea and she gradually disappeared from view while the mountains of Lebanon came in a majestic full view. 

I also cannot do away with the association of Stockholm syndrome and my maternal grandmother’s unusual depiction of her ordeal during the Genocide even though many of my family members have told me that it was her deep-seated Christian faith of forgiveness that drove her and not such a syndrome.