Along the drop of honey

Vaհe H Apelian

“A Drop of Honey” is a relatively lengthy, well-known prose-poetry by the “all Armenian poet” Hovhannes Toumanian. 

The poetry is about spontaneous reactions to turn of events, with each event becoming the trigger for increasingly harsher and more violent reaction. The whole thing starts as follows.

A shepherd with his dog enters, his neighboring grocery store to buy honey. While both are amicably chatting, the grocer is weighing the honey. A drop of honey drops on the floor. Soon, a fly lands on the honey. But as soon as the fly lands, the grocer’s cat jumps on the fly. But the shepherd’s dog, seeing the cat suddenly come of nowhere, jumps on the cat and mauls the cat to death. Distraught at the death of the grocery’s cat, the grocer grabs something heavy, and with one blow casts the shepherd’s dog’s carcass, next to the cat’s body. The shepherd seeing the grocer kill his beloved dog, brandishes his shepherd’s staff back and forth, and with a blow or two, leaves the grocer’s lifeless body on the floor. The villagers seeing their beloved grocer’s lifeless body,  come together, screaming and shouting, and give such a beating to the shepherd that shepherd’s lifeless body remains at the grocery’ door. The shepherd’s villagers hearing of his death, gather all they can, be it a rifle, or a hoe; mount anything they can, be it a horse or a donkey, attack the grocer’s village and a generational enmity and war comes about between these two villages.

The poem ends with something along these lines. (See the note for the actual in Armenian.)  

The fighting had not yet stopped,

Widespread inflation came about.

SNAP – supplemental nutritional assistance program - became scarce

With SNAP scarce, hunger came.

The once flourishing land became desolate.

The upcoming generation, having come of age

Ask each other in horror,

Where did this great general disaster come from?

The U.S. and Iran war reminded me of Hovhannes Toumanian’s “Drop of Honey” prose-poem. Admittedly, it is not over a drop of honey, nor it is over a drop of oil. It is not even over barrels of oil, but oil tankers, and lots of them.

Today I read that Trump has postponed his ultimatum to Iran over the opening of the strait of Hormuz.

In fact, Trump is conceptualizing this war wrongly. 

Martyrdom is deeply engrained in Iranian culture, and deeply rooted in Shiite Islam history and is the cornerstone of their faith.  No amount of bombing, starving the Iranians, decapitating their leaders will force Iran to the negotiation as a vanquished state. 

In fact, with each decapitated leader, Trump laid the way for a new theocratic leadership and helped perpetuate the rule of the Ayatollahs, that was experiencing serious challenges before the onslaught of the U.S. and Israeli attack. A new leadership is emerging, in the sons of the slain leaders who have now amassed unprecedented political capital, to take over the vacant posts and perpetuate the regime.

 The United States has a long way to go to bring some workable normalcy in that region. I wonder if it will ever come. I am afraid that we have set and burdened our upcoming generation to a generational war and to its dire consequences.

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Կաթիլ Մը Մեղր: https://hy.wikisource.org/wiki/Մի_կաթիլ_մեղրը