(complete text: http://proza.ru/2004/03/23-113)
Yerevan
The end of January, 1990
Anahit, a specialist in Turkic philology, was a researcher and lecturer of the University. She had moved to Yerevan from Syria together with her parents at the end of 50s during repatriation of Armenians to the Soviet Union. Her parents had survived the Turkish massacre thanks to help of Arabs and were able to set up a family and provide Anahit and her two younger brothers with good education.
The 1988 earthquake, inter-ethnic conflicts, impending collapse of the USSR – that was a tough and uneasy time for everyone who lived in Soviet Armenia. And that was exactly that time, when 80-year old Anahit’s mother decided to tell her the secrecy of her birth. At the age of 18 Anahit’s mother moved together with her husband to work on the border between Syria and Turkey. Three months later their village was attacked by Kurds from Turkey side. Her husband was killed in shooting and she was kidnapped by one of attackers to Turkey. He was very young, just a year older than she was. And, fascinated by a beauty of a young Armenian woman he decided to marry her based on his ideas of generosity. The young woman did not have a choice and thus she became a wife of the Kurd, whose name was Hussein Iso. Years passed. After the birth of their third daughter, when she was no longer watched, she escaped with a baby, and left two elder daughters in her husband’s house. She crossed the border with Syria and reached Aleppo. That baby was Anahit, who was renamed later in honor of her new father’s mother, killed in massacre.
The mother told Anahit that she and her new husband tried to redeem her daughters left at Hussein Iso’s, but the latter did not accept that.
Separation from her daughters was a heavy burden in the mother’s heart; she paid a cruel price for returning to Armenia.
And now, when the USSR together with the Iron Curtain was behind, and time made old both her and Hussein Iso, her only desire was to meet her daughters again. She could not travel because of the health problems, thus she asked Anahit to go to Turkey to meet the relatives.
The truth about her birth was a shock for Anahit. But it looked like Providence decided to help her. A team of journalists from Great Britain came to their University. They worked on a film about the Past and Present of Western and Eastern Armenia. Anahit got an offer to go with them to Turkey as an interpreter. Their trip started from Nusaybin, where her old father lived with her sisters.
The meeting was very hard. All those years her sisters missed their mother. They had a difficult life like all Kurd women in a village. Anahit thought that they hated her because she turned out to live in other world with other values.
Anahit’s father confessed that all those years he hoped to meet her. And then, when all three sisters were together he decided to distribute his and their mother’s gold jewelry between the three of them. And a dagger, his most valuable treasure, he passed to Anahit’s son, as a sign that her son was his heir, the heir of the land regardless of the borders and political situations.
On her return home Anahit learnt that her son volunteered to the war. She accepted that news with dignity and faith that the dagger passed by Hussein Iso to his Armenian grandson would save him during the war a talisman.
The book "Kurd's daughter" is printed on armenian, russian and kurdish
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