Albert Apelian M.D.: "The Antiochians" (2/2)

Reviewed by Vahe H. Apelian

Kessab is located at the southernmost border of the historical Armenian Cilicia on the Mediterranean Sea, almost equidistant between coastal cities of Latakia, Syria in the south and historical Antioch or Antakya, the capital city of Hatay province of Turkey in the north. For centuries, Kessab, along with the rest of the Armenian Cilicia, remained under the Turkish yolk. As an outcome, the Kessabtsis traded  with Antioch in the north and remained almost oblivious of Latakia in the south. That is how I explain Albert Apelian chose titling his last novel  “The Antiochians”, instead of the Cilicians. 

Dr. Apelian had The Antiochians published in 1960 by Vantage Press Inc. Most of its 312 pages had appeared in weekly installments in Hairenik Weekly of  Watertown, Massachusetts and in the Nor Ashkhar, a New York biweekly.

The novel's plot is an account of the unfolding of the lives of Kevork Agha Matossian of Kessab and Keorkineh and that of his descendants. Matossian, a gentleman farmer “could trace his ancestors to the fourteenth century, to the first kings of Armenian Cilicia”. He was a tall and handsome man. “What a powerful leader this man would have made, had he lived in France,” had said the French consul in Antioch, present-day Hatai in Turkey. Matossian had silkworm and silk business dealings with the French. 

Through his association with the French consul and with lots of baksheesh–bribe in Turkish--Matossian succeed to have his son, Haig, appointed Antioch’s medical doctor. Haig, newly graduated from medical school at the American University of Beirut (AUB), falls in love with Osanna Melidonian soon after his return home. An orphan, who had been brought up and educated by American missionaries, was a teacher in Kessab. The newlyweds make their home in Antioch where their son, Ara, is born. His parents sent him to Kessab early on so that he would grow in Kessab instead of Antioch.

Ara lives through the ordeal of the 1909 pogrom, the sacking of Kessab, and the Armenian Genocide while a medical student at his father’s alma mater in Beirut. During the First World War, he is drafted in the Ottoman army. After the war, he moves to the U.S., completes his medical training and starts a successful practice. He marries and has a son Vahakn. Dr. Ara loses his wife to cancer and then his only child in the Second World War. Distraught, he returns to his ancestral village and finds his mother had died just a few days before his arrival. He ends his life there and is buried in the family’s ancient cemetery in Keorkineh thus putting an end to Kevork Agha Matossian’s lineage.

The author said of the novel, “despite its historical background and true-to-life picture of Armenian people, places, and customs is a work of fiction from beginning to end”. It is a superbly narrated book. His descriptions of events and places are akin to a pictorial presentation. The narrative is “liberally spiced with foreign words, phrases, most of which are easily understood when taken in their context”. 

 Dr. Apelian’s narration of historical events indicates a sharp mind that analyzes events with a revealing insight. Two caught my attention. In 1909 most of the Kessabtsis were able to flee to safety when their villages were also attacked in the aftermath of the Adana Massacres that decimated the Armenian population of that city and some of its surrounding towns. Kessabtsis have historically attributed their survival to their fighters who, for few hours, held at bay the marauding Turkish mob thus giving time for the Armenian population to flee. It turns out there is more to this interpretation. Had it not been for the outright help of their neighboring Turkmen village Faku Hassaan (pronounced now as Fakassan), the fleeing Kessabtsis would not have been able to secure a southwestern passage to the Mediterranean Sea and have their representatives reach Latakia to ask the French and British consuls' help to evacuate to safety the survivors reaching the sea. Also the sudden change of guard in Constantinople, due to the dethroning of Sultan Abdul Hamid, and his replacement with the more moderate Sultan Reshad came at this opportune time enabling the French and British consuls to send boats to evacuate the escapees, without concern for repercussion from the Sublime Porte.

The other revelation for me was his analysis of the Dardanelles campaign. Historically it has been claimed that had the Turks not emerged victorious over the Allied forces, they would not have had the opportunity to commit the Genocide of the Armenians. According to Dr. Apelian, “no one can definitely be sure whether or not British diplomacy at that time favored an early occupation of Constantinople. A premature collapse of the Sultan’s government could seat a victorious Russia at the peace conference”. Dr. Apelian’s keen grasp of such historical events indicates that he had an intimate knowledge of Armenian history, more than one would expect from a busy medical doctor. 

Despite the author’s assertion that any similarity of the characters to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintentional, a reader who has a rather intimate knowledge of Kessab is bound to draw a parallel between the novel and actual people and places. For example, Dr. Albert S. Apelian, 1893 (Kessab) - 1986 (Massachusetts), was the son of Dr. Soghomon Apelian, the first Kessabtsi Armenian to graduate from the AUB medical school. Dr. Soghomon's wife Ovsanna was a teacher in Kessab but she hailed from elsewhere. Father and son Drs Soghomon and Albert, were drafted to serve in the Turkish Army during the First World War. 

Albert Apelian regarded The Antiochians the crowning achievement of his writing career, a fulfillment of his father’s prediction that one day he might “write a long novel”. He attributed his interest to his father’s encouragement.  

 Dr. Albert S. Apelian ended his introduction of the novel writing with “It is self-evident that truth must prevail, or we shall all perish! And the truth is to be found everywhere, even in the pages of a work of fiction.”  Indeed, the book is as much fictional as it is a personal account of that crucial period in Armenian history.

The Antiochians' plot has Victorian flavor. All in all, it is a very readable book, especially for Armenians who hail from Kessab, It depicts and preserves for posterity a way of life long bygone now on that coastal Cilician town Kessab.

Embroidery of Gratitude

By Vahe H. Apelian

The embroidery in the picture measures approximately 4 feet by 4 feet. it was made available to the Armenian readership for the very first time by Anna Lee Hein-Langlitz and Danette Hein-Snider, the grandnieces of the beloved American missionary in Kessab, Miss E.M. Chambers. I  reported about the embroidery in Keghart.com on November 16, 2009, see “A Century-old Relic Comes to Light – Embroidery of Gratitude”.

The embroidery most likely was presented to Miss Chambers sometime late 1911 or early 1912 as she brought it with her when she returned home in Iowa in May 1912. The embroidery most probably was sewn by the women of Kessab and was presented to her as an acknowledgment of her dedicated services to the community at large between from 1904 to1912. 

The inscriptions on the embroidery are both in English and in Armenian. The following is sewn along the upper portion: “TO MISS E M CHAMBERS A MEMORY OF GRATITUDE”

 

“WE WILL NEVER FORGET” is sewn in the middle around what appears to be a cross.

The Armenian inscription, along the lower portion of the embroidery, reads: “Երախտապարտ Քեսապի Հ.Յ.Դաշնակցութիւնէն”, “IN GRATITUDE FROM KESSAB ARMENIAN REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION”. 

The battle-hardened Armenian Revolutionary Federation is not an organization that would have been swayed by easy sentiments. Its members must have believed that they had every reason to express their feelings of gratitude to her to have with her thenceforth throughout the remaining years of her life. 

Miss Effie Chamber’s missionary work in Kessab extended from 1904 to 1912. She left a legacy of goodwill and was endearingly remembered well into my youth.

The embroidery is an undisputed historical piece. Each and every one of us owes a degree of gratitude to the Chambers family for safeguarding the embroidery in the family in Iowa for the past over 100 years. When I offered Anna Lee that I will cover the expenses to have the embroidery professionally photographed, she declined. She taught the heat and the flashlight in the photographer’s studio might damage the embroidery. As a result, we have these pictures taken by her daughter at her home.

Such has been the care that Chambers family has displayed in safeguarding part of our history in Iowa, both symbolically, in way of the embroidery rendered by a grateful people, and in perpetuating the goodwill towards the Armenians by one of their own, Miss Effie Chambers. 

Anna, Annie, and Annais

(A Ramification of the Armenian Genocide)

By Vahe H. Apelian

In memory of my maternal aunt Anna Chelebian I never knew in person.

The name Anna first appeared in the maternal side of our family in the person of my maternal great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother Karoun (Apelian) Chelebian’s mother. Anna was from the Boymoushakian family of Sev Aghbuir (black spring), one of the 12 villages of greater Kessab.

Sometime late 19th century, most probably in autumn when the fields were harvested and the families had stocked the summer’s bounty for the long winter ahead, young Hanno (Hovhannes) Apelian of Keurkune and Anna Boymoushakian of Sev Aghbuir were married. Anna’s father and Hanno’s prominent father Bedir most certainly arranged their marriage. Their wedding festivities would have lasted a week and held in Keurkune, the Apelian family’s ancestral village.  

Meanwhile, a similar ceremony would have capped the wedding festivities at the bride’s home where the women would have congregated and sang a song in the person of the bride thanking her parents for having raised her and articulating her sadness in leaving her parental home and her joy in building her own. Anna’s family would have then helped her mount a decorated horse and would have escorted her to the church in the groom’s village accompanied by a group of the groom’s relatives and friends who would have come to the bride’s house to accompany her to the church.

Hanno’s and Anna’s wedding may have taken place by the Armenian Evangelical rite. Hanno’s influential father Bedir was one of the early advocates for the village to embrace the Armenian Evangelical faith, which had started in Istanbul in 1846. Some of Bedir’s sons, later on, would opt to take their prominent father’s name as their family surname and branch out as the Bedirians of the Apelian family, which continues to this day.

My maternal grandmother Karoun, who would marry Khacher Chelebian, was born into Hanno and Anna Apelian’s traditional family along with her three brothers, Diran, Serop, and Kerop. It also so happened that her brother Kerop eloped and married a girl also named Anna from the Titizian family of Kaladouran who was known in greater Kessab for her beauty and free spirit. Kaladouran is the Kessab’s coastal village where the Titizians have their hamlet named after their family as Titizlek, much like the Manjikian family of Kaladourn who calls its hamlet Manjeklek. 

In time Kerop Apelian left his pregnant wife Anna and their firstborn child Kevork behind in Keurkune under the care of his parents, Hanno and Anna and his sister Karoun and joined his two brothers in New York to have his family join him after settling in the New World. When his pregnant wife gave birth to their second son, Kerop sent word from America to name him James for the family was to join him in America. But that was not to be.

In June 1915, the once young bride and groom but now grandparents, Hanno and Anna were forcefully uprooted from their home along with their daughter Karoun, my maternal grandmother, and their daughter-in-law Anna-the-bride (Anna harse) and her two children Kevork and James. Only my grandmother Karoun and her young nephew James survived the ordeal. The rest fell victims to the first genocide of the 20th century.  Having left by herself, her relatives thought that it was best Karoun was married to the eligible bachelor Khacher Chelbian in their makeshift camp in Deir Attiyeh, a town an hour’s drive north of Syria’s capital city Damascus.

LtoR:Hovhannes, Khacher, Zvart, Antranig, Karoun, Anna Chelebian

After the World War I ended and the Turks, who had occupied Kessab vacated it, my grandmother Karoun and her husband Khacher and her young nephew James, against seemingly insurmountable odds, managed to return to Keurkune and moved into her parental house and resumed their lives anew. The young couple named their last child and second daughter Anna most likely in memory of her maternal grandmother, my grandmother Karoun’s mother Anna (Boymoushakian). Anna’s elder siblings were named Antranig, my mother Zvart, and Hovhannes.

My grandmother Karoun’s nephew James Apelian, whom she raised, married Khatcher Chelebian’s niece, Sirvart Chelebian, and the couple named their first-born daughter Anna as well, most likely in remembrance of the infant’s paternal grandmother Anna (Titizian), Kerop Apelian’s wife. Years later James' son, Kevork George Apelian, immortalized her paternal grandmother in his novel titled “Anna Harse”. 

But, James and Sirvart Apelian’s firstborn daughter Anna died in her infancy. My grandmother’s youngest child Anna also died of pneumonia when she was vivacious seventeen years old beautiful girl and was also buried in the Keurkune’s ancient cemetery next to her father Khatcher who also had died due to pneumonia at the age of 38. Anna’s tombstone reads in Armenian: “Here rests Anna K. Chelebian (1928-1945), “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mathew 5:8).

The name Anna thus became prejudicial in the family but the memory of the two Annas lingered on. My grandmother Karoun ruled out naming Anna any daughter henceforth born in the family at large. Thus, a variation of the name Anna evolved in the persons of my maternal cousin Annie (Chelebian) Hoglind, and in the person of Annais (Apelian) Tootikian. Both of them are now proud mothers and grandmothers.

Was it Stockholm Syndrome?

Vahe H. Apelian

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 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. 

My maternal grandmother Karoun's case was altogether different. I associate the Armenian Genocide with her more than with anyone else 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.

Remembering Archbishop Ardavazt Terterian

Vahe H. Apelian

 

Archbishop Ardavazt Terterian passed away to his eternal rest on July 18, 2013. He was 83 years old.

The Western Prelacy broke the news of his passing away noting that the Archbishop Ardavazt “will be remembered as an exemplary clergyman, a faithful and humble servant who devotedly served the Holy See of Cilicia for over sixty years. He had served as Dean of the Seminary, Catholicosal General Vicar, and Locum Tenens. As a scholar and distinguished educator, the late Archbishop instructed and prepared countless Brotherhood members and community servants at the Seminary of the Holy See of Cilicia”

I met Archbishop Terterian for the first and only time on April 2004 in my parent’s house in Reseda, CA. He was in Los Angeles at the invitation of the Kessab Educational Association (K.E.A), to officiate the inauguration of the late Catholicos Karekin I Sarkissian Library at the K.E.A Center in Reseda, CA, as well, a short walking distance from my parent's house.

It's not possible to meet this unassuming, gentle, and temperate clergyman without feeling humbled by the privilege of having been graced by his company and not thank God for gifting us him as one of the many clerics who upheld and perpetuated the Armenian Church since King Drdat adopted Christianity 1,700 years ago.

Archbishop Terterian was born in Chakhaljekh, one of the 12 villages of Greater Kessab. The village is the ancestral home of the Terterian family. To this day only Terterian family members reside year around in the village.  Lately, the village, famous for its springs and gigantic trees, has become an attractive summer resort.

He is the son of Panos and Karoun (Apelian) and has a large extended family consisting of two brothers--Berj and Zaven and three sisters (Sarah, Berjouhie, and Marie). Berj and Marie are deceased. Other than his late brother’s family, who live in Chakhaljekh, the rest of his siblings’ families reside in Canada.

The Archbishop’s father and paternal grandfather were prominent personalities in greater Kessab. His grandfather was a master mason. In 1898, he erected, stone by stone, the Armenian Evangelical Church of Keurkune which defiantly stands to this day as a testament to his skills. His father was a prominent basket weaver.

After graduating from Kessab schools, Archbishop Ardavazt and the late Catholicos Karekin Sarkissian entered the Cilician Catholicosate Seminary in 1945 as teenagers. They progressed together through the ranks as monks and were consecrated as Vartabed, Bishop, and Archbishop. The late Catholicos Karekin and Archbishop Ardavazt were bosom friends and spiritual brothers. The late Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian, in his moving description of the last few hours of Catholicos Karekin I Sarkissian, in Etchmiazin, wrote that he would comfort the ailing Catholicos by telling him that Archbishop Ardavazt telephoned to inquire about the health of his long-time friend.

On April 7, following the inauguration of the library, the K.E.A. organized a dinner-reception in honor of the Archbishop, who attended the reception accompanied by the Prelate Archbishop Moushegh Mardirossian--one of the many students of the Archbishop Ardavazt. Other clergy and lay dignitaries from the Western Prelacy also accompanied the Archbishop.

During the reception, Khatchig Titizian, chairman of the K.E.A, welcomed the Archbishop. His cousin and prominent Armenian language teacher Haigaz Terterian introduced the Archbishop. My mother, Mrs. Zvart Apelian, the secretary of the K.E.A., expressed the Association’s gratitude to the Archbishop for honoring it with his presence and for officiating the opening of the Library. She also read a poem in Armenian (attached) she had composed honoring the Archbishop for his years of service and invited the Archbishop.

The Archbishop concluded his message by urging everyone to lend a helping hand to each other and to set aside self and selfishness in service of the nation.

Dogs, Politics and President Putin

Vahe H. Apelian

(Note: edited in 2021 with President Biden taking office)

I believe President Putin's gesture of meeting with President Erdogan and his delegation in a room in Kremlin where the statue of Catherine II is prominently displayed was deliberate. The Tsarina had crushed Ottoman Turkey in Russo-Turkish war (1768-1774).

Dogs presidents own, also play a symbolic role in politics and in international relations between powerful leaders.

All the presidents I know, other than President Trump, owned a dog. After all, as President Truman famously said, if a president looks for a friend in Washington, he  better have a dog. The dogs the U.S. presidents own are no less known than their masters.  Reporters scrutinize the type of the dog the president's family own and measure their relationship in an effort to find out about the president's character.  When President Johnson lifted his beagle by its ears in front of reporters and photographers he made headline news and set off a nationwide barrage of protests from animal lovers. 

But for reporters, LBJ's treatment of his dog seemed to reinforce his character. President Lyndon B. Johnson was the second tallest president. He measured 6 ft 31/2 inches, short by a half an inch from the tallest, President Lincoln. It is said that LBJ had a tendency to stand close to someone and overpower him with his height. He had also a large ego. He had his wife's and his daughters' initials after his, LBJ.

President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush owned a Scottish terrier. According to Wikipedia "Barney (dog) Bush (birth née Bernard Bush; September 30, 2000 to February 1, 2013) was a Scottish Terrier. Barney had his own official web page which redirected to an extension of the White House website". President Bush seemed to dote on his dog. He would be seen carrying Barney on the White House lawn heading towards the attending helicopter. Barney seemed to have free access to the oval office.

After his retirement from public life, George W. Bush exhibited a latent talent in the painting of portraits. Some found George W. Bush's latent artistic talent remarkable. Others claimed that Bush officially established himself as an artist. He exhibited his paintings of some of the world leaders he shared the world stage, such as Tony Blair, Hamid Karzai, and famously Putin, whom he portrayed with clenched jaws, intensely focused blue eyes imparting an air of determination and being in charge.

George w. Bush explained his painting of Putin's portrait as follows: "As you know, our dear dog Barney, who had a special place in my heart — Putin dissed him and said ‘You really call that a dog?' "  A year later, President Bush went to visit Putin at his dacha outside Moscow. Putin showed him his dog, a "huge hound" much bigger than Barney. Then, quoting Bush,  "Putin kind of looks at me and he says 'Bigger, stronger and faster than Barney.' " The comment left President George W. Bush dumbstruck. (Adam Taylor, April 4, 2014, The Washington Post).

George W. Bush had Barney to have a measure of the former KGB intelligence officer Putin turned Prime Minister and President of Russia. Alas, President Donald J. Trump does not own a dog. It could have helped him assess Putin. 

The Bidens have German Shepherd dogs, named Champ and Major. They came with the rest of the family to the White House. German Shepherd dogs are no poodles but I am not sure how they measure against the dog Putin owns and bragged about to George w. Bush, dismissing Bush's dog as a "no dog". One thing appears to  be apparent, with dogs in the White House, a more aggressive shift towards Russia is palpable.

Note: Updated on May 6, 2021

A Sunday Unlike Any Other

Vahe H. Apelian

For an onlooker, Sunday in Keurkune, our ancestral village, was no different than any other day of the week. There were no cars and hence no traffic to experience less of it on a Sunday. There were no shops in the village to see them closed on Sundays. There were no people working in any commercial enterprise in the village to see them not working on Sundays. The villagers toiled in the fields. Yet Sundays were all too different from the other six days of the week, especially in our house because of our grandfather.

I will come to that later.

It was the sound of the church bells that broke the stillness of the day in the village heralding that the seventh day of the week is meant to be unlike the other six days. There were two kinds of bells. There was a resonating piece of metal that was hung with a wire from one of the three olive trees in the church courtyard. It was rung signaling the start of Sunday school for the children. It was a small metal piece but it made a surprisingly clear sound that was heard all over the village.

The other was the sound of the church's bell that alerted the start of the Sunday service for the grown-ups. The bell was rung not long before the pastor was ready for the service, for he served the only churches, the Armenian Evangelical Church in each of the two sister villages: the one in Ekizoloukh, and the one in our village Keurkune. In a spirit of fairness the Sunday church service was held early in one village and later in the other on a given Sunday and the order was reversed the following Sunday. There were no cars then, so the pastor had to hurry from one church to the other on foot. It took some 30 minutes of brisk walking for the paster to cross from one village to the other. Most, to my recollection, preferred to walk the distance on the short path that traversed through the fields and orchards instead of riding a donkey on the regular route that might have made crossing the distance a bit more comfortable but surely not faster.

Honestly, Sundays were a dread for us boys. First and foremost there was the issue of the attire. Even though dressing for Sunday meant only tucking a white shirt in shorts and continue wearing our sandals without socks, it nevertheless became all too confining and all too formal for us. Hunting was forbidden on Sundays. We were thus not allowed to use rifles or debkh, the sticky sticks we used to catch birds. Even the animals were not grazed on Sundays, confining Papken and me in the village. Our inclination would have been to have the animals grazed in Keurkune's gorge, we called khandag where some of the Apelian families had owned and operated a water mill at one time. The mill had been idle and abandoned when we came of age. The khandag was considered to be too remote for a youngster to be entrusted with the animals for grazing there, but two youngsters teaming made the venture permissible.

There was also the chore of attending the Sunday service. Irrespective of marital status, the men entered the sanctuary from the left-hand side door and the women from the right-hand side door. The front two pews, on the left-hand side of the three rows of pews in the church, were reserved for the boys.

The fields were wide open then and spread all around us. There were no buildings to obstruct the idyllic pastoral scene that came into full view from the left-hand side windows, extending all the way to Chakaljekh, the village nearest to Keurkune. It took a lot of discipline on our part not to appear overly bored during the service and gaze outside lest we invoke the stern looks on the faces of our elders and be reprimanded after the service.

Sunday in our house was marked with our grandfather's ceremonial shaving in the morning. I do not think he shaved every day of the week and I do not mean to imply that he shaved only on Sundays. But his shaving on Sundays in preparation to attend the church service was the more ceremonial and it created that special Sunday mood in our household.  He had a bar of soap in a small kettle. He foamed the soap with a brush, applied it to his face and shaved with a long razor that he sharpened beforehand, all the while at looking at a small mirror he used for that purpose. His shaving was important for his Sunday grooming. There was an honored role he was entrusted with and attended to it diligently until to the very end. He was the life-long treasurer and a trustee of the church.

We had become accustomed to that Sunday ritual as kids came to our house bringing with them larger coins and asked him to have the larger coins changed for smaller. Our grandfather kept the church's meager treasury in a tin can in one of the cavities high on one of the inner walls in the house. He would bring the tin can down on Sundays to have an ample supply of smaller coins ready. He would see the kids returned to their homes with smaller change for their Sunday church offering. We called it khatchamboor. It is a word perhaps unique to the local Kessab dialect. It may have meant money reserved for the cross.

For lack of a better description, nickels and dimes may best describe the coins cast on the offering plate, which was made of brass. The drop of the coins on the metal plate made a distinctive sound during the collection. From the sound, we could tell what denomination it was.

Our grandfather would be late coming home after service. We would wait for his return home to have Sunday lunch. After service, he and the pastor would count the Sunday's offering and I presume recorded in a ledger. He would then bring the Sunday's treasury home to pile it in the tin can. At times, before he placed the coins in the tin can, he could have them on his bed creating a lot of excitement in the house should there be a "paper money" in the collection We would speculate as to who may have offered the "paper money". The speculating usually would center on the villagers who lived elsewhere, such as in Beirut, and were visiting the village for the summer or happened to be there. In hindsight, I realize that faith, more than finances, perpetuated the Armenian Evangelical Church of Keurkune that now bridges three centuries.

The rest of the Sunday would drag on for us boys.

As I look back to those bygone days, I realize that Sundays in Keurkune were truly a day for rest for the villagers. Having toiled in the fields for the preceding six days, Sundays gave them the rest they needed to resume their work the following day to make a living by the sweat of their physical labor made possible for them by nature's gifts, soil, water, and sunshine.