Daughter of the Crying Man

This episode has a special companion video. 

An unexpected VHS in a Toronto basement leads to finding a branch of the family that has been lost for 60 years, and uncovering the last Armenian village still surviving in Turkey. A multi-generational story told by producer Nyree Abrahamian. 

Transcript

This story begins in 2002, in my uncle’s basement in Toronto.

I’m 18, surrounded by my big Armenian extended family - my parents and brothers are there, uncles, aunts, cousins… We’re gathered around the tv with my grandparents at the center of the group - they’re sitting on a little loveseat directly across from the screen.

We’re watching a video of a home they haven’t seen in over 60 years – Musa Dagh.

A friend of a family friend was recently there. The video he’s taken has been traveling from living room to living room - it feels like a treasure, like contraband.

My grandparents, along with almost everyone they knew, left Musa Dagh, their indigenous home in what is now southeastern Turkey, in 1939. And it’s like the place stopped existing, or existed only in legend.

Now here is this video proving that it’s still a place existing in real time. And there are still Armenians there. I’m watching the video, but also, I’m watching my grandparents.

Nene (my grandmother) is SO excited. She’s pointing things out like a tree she remembers, and the street her friend used to live on. Here in Canada, she’s used to being led around by her kids and grandkids. Now she’s showing us around. I’ve never seen her so confident.

My grandfather, Baboug, is mostly silent, as usual. He’s a tiny, quiet man. I hardly ever hear him speak. He’s just staring at the screen kind of blankly.

In the video, there’s a huge party going on. They’re cooking harise, a traditional ceremonial meal, over an open fire in these giant pots. Crowds of people dancing the Musa Dagh dabke to the droning sound of the zourna and the booming rhythm of the davul…

Among the crowd of dancers, there’s this tiny little old woman. She appears on screen for just a second or two, and then again. She’s hunched over, dressed in black, with a headscarf. She has the sweetest smile, and she’s dancing with so much flair…

Baboug’s still not saying a word, but then suddenly his hands start to tremble and tears stream down his face. He points to the screen.. His finger is so unsteady… and he says “my sister, that’s my sister”. He hasn’t seen her in over 60 years.

Welcome to Country of Dust - stories of a changing Armenia

I’m Nyree Abrahamian

This episode: “Daughter of the crying man”, is dedicated to my Hayrig, Jean Abrahamian.


MUSA DAGHTSIS

When we saw that video, my grandfather was sure it was his sister. But we had no way of contacting her. All we had was this image of her dancing. My Baboug died a few months later, and he never got to reconnect with his sister. But my dad took up that mantle for him.
 
My dad was born in Syria and raised in Lebanon. He fought in the Lebanese civil War, then emigrated to Canada. He’d never set foot in Musa Dagh, but he was THE quintessential Musa Daghtsi.

Musa Daghtsis speak a wild dialect of Western Armenian. Most other Armenians can barely make out a word. Like to say “How’s it going?” instead of “inch ga chiga” we say “cheku chiku”. We’re known for being tough, crazy, mountain people. My dad EMBODIED this.

He was also a family man. And I don’t just mean our immediate family. When I was growing up, every year we’d have this huge Musa Daghtsi family reunion at our cottage near Toronto. My dad and all the uncles would stay up all night drinking and dancing. They would spit roast a lamb and cook harise, stirring it with these giant wooden oars that my dad had hand-carved.

But he wasn’t all machismo - My dad had a tenderness to him that would just come gushing out. As a kid, I’d watch him tear up every night watching reruns of M*A*S*H.

That night in my uncle’s basement, seeing that video, and watching his father cry, opened up something new in him.

With all his Musa Daghtsi pride, I don’t think the idea of going there had ever crossed my dad’s mind. For many Armenians of his generation, the thought of going to Turkey, even to the village your family was from, was too painful to think about.

I think finding out that he had living family there made it more real for him. So my dad set out on a mission to find his long lost relatives.


AFTER THE RESISTANCE

I mentioned that my grandparents left Musa Dagh in 1939. You might be surprised that they were there in the first place – Armenians, in Turkey, living in their hometown decades after the genocide. But Musa Daghtsis are fighters. In 1915, they took up arms, took to the mountains, and resisted the Ottoman military for 53 days. Just as their supplies were running out, they were spotted by a French warship and taken to a refugee camp in Egypt.

This part of the story is pretty well known, but what fewer people are aware of, is what came next – After WWI, the Musa Daghtsis returned home. But this homecoming was bittersweet. Almost every other Armenian community in the former Ottoman Empire had been wiped out.

When they returned, their region had been under French control. But then in 1939, the French ceded it to Turkey, leaving the Armenians vulnerable. This is when most of the Musa Daghtsis left, in an exodus that was part of the long shadow of the Armenian Genocide.

This was the split in my family. My grandparents went to Syria, then Lebanon… eventually in their old age, to Canada. My grandfather’s sister, Zaruhi, stayed behind with her husband. Over the years, they lost touch. The last he heard, they had emigrated to Soviet Armenia.


FINDING OUR RELATIVES

Soon after we watched that video, one of my uncles, who had been planning to visit family in Lebanon, decided to add Musa Dagh to his trip. Before he left Toronto, my dad handed him his camcorder and said: go find our family. 

My uncle arrived, and sure enough, after walking around the village square and talking to some of the elders in the church courtyard, he found them. 

(Sounds of Zaruhi singing)

That’s Zaruhi, my grandfather’s sister, the woman dancing in the video. She’s sitting on a daybed, dangling her feet over the edge, and singing a song she made up about “garod” – about missing all her family members. 

This is something my dad would do all the time too, make up songs about his life. I grew up with his improvised tunes filling the air in our apartment and on long car rides. 

Zaruhi had 9 kids and many grandkids. Some of them were still living there in the village. 

(Talking from home video)

Several family members have gathered. They’re sitting in a cozy living room. 

My uncle says, I’m going to take this video to Jean and to our family in Canada. 

A woman says, in Armenian, “Hello to everyone, I want them to come so we can meet, I'm Alice.”

That’s Zaruhi’s daughter, looking at the camera.

That year, 2004, my parents had been planning a big trip to Armenia for their 25th anniversary. But the moment my dad saw this video, he knew he needed to go to Musa Dagh. He now had our family’s phone number there, so he called them. 
 
It was afternoon in Toronto, but in Musa Dagh, it was close to midnight. He was so excited, he didn’t bother checking the time difference.   

My cousin Cem, Zaruhi’s grandson, answered the phone. He was telling me about this phone call recently. Almost 2 decades had passed, but it was still fresh in his head.

Cem answers the phone half asleep, and there’s this man, talking in the local dialect. He says, “I’m your family!”

My dad is talking and crying. He says “I'm coming! were going to eat fasulia together!” He calls my mom over and shouts: “Hasmig, change our tickets!”

Eventually, they get down to logistics and Cem says “How are we going to recognize each other at the airport?” 

To which my dad responds: “Aryune gkashe” Meaning - the blood will pull us. And he was right, the blood did pull them. 

When Cem saw my dad at the airport - he said “That has to be Jean.” 

“I’m going to get emotional,” Cem told me when he was recounting the story. 

“I’ll never forget the first time your dad hugged me. He kissed me here.” Cem points to his neck. Then, Cem breaths in “And he smelled me.” 

This was a thing my dad would do. When he hugged you he would smell your neck, just fully breathe you in. 

“From that first hug,” Cem says, “we were family.”

JEAN’S VISIT

This trip was momentous for my dad. He and my mom spent a couple of weeks in Musa Dagh and there are hours and hours of video – he carried his camcorder around the whole time.

In one of the videos, he’s on his cousin’s roof, taking a video of Musa Ler, the mountain where our ancestors resisted genocide. He says, “I can never get my fill of seeing this mountain.”

Watching these videos reminds me of a side of my dad that had kind of faded away in my mind. He could get SO into something, with his whole heart. He was like a little kid, just so excited to be there. 

I’ve watched hours and hours of these videos, but there’s one moment I especially love. 

They’re having a big party in the church courtyard. The whole village is invited. There’s a microphone going around and people are singing old revolutionary songs. My dad grabs the mic and starts singing Odarutyun - this iconic song that’s about longing for your homeland. 

The chorus goes hampere hokis, hampere - be patient my love, be patient. We will make our way home.

Then he walks over to his aunt, Zaruhi, crouches down, and they sing together. 

THEN he starts ad-libbing, making up his own lyrics so that they’re still in the spirit of the song, but specific to him, and his aunt, and Musa Dagh and this homecoming. 

This is such a full circle moment for him. All his life, he longed for something that felt like home. Now he’s here, singing. 

THE SIX VILLAGES

What I’ve been calling Musa Dagh is actually a group of six villages in the vicinity of the mountain where the Armenians staged their resistance. It’s also known as Musa Ler in Armenian - literally, the mountain of Moses. It’s right on the Mediterranean coast, near the border with Syria.

When there was a mass exodus in 1939, across the six villages, a small portion of families stayed behind and THEY congregated in ONE village, Vakf, which now holds the eerie title of Turkey’s “ last Armenian village”.

The other 5 villages, including my grandfather’s village, Yogun Oluk, became populated by Turks. So my extended family who still live in the region, all live in and around Vakf - the Armenian village. 

My dad was thrilled to be there, to be able to speak his native dialect, spend time with elders in the Armenian church… but what he really wanted to do, was find his ancestral home, where his father had grown up, in Yogun Oluk.

Here’s what we knew about the house: It was a two-story stone house that my great-grandfather had built. When our family left in 1939, he handed the keys to a Turkish man who worked in his orchard.

This is one thing that’s unique about my family’s story – in most cases, when the Armenians left, the government took their deeds and gave them to Turks from a different part of the country. But in our case, the house got passed to a family that my family had known.

We knew this story. But no one in my family had ever been back to the house, or even knew if the same family still lived there. Even my relatives who lived in the area, like Cem, hadn’t considered visiting the house.

But Cem was pretty sure he’d be able to find it. He’s the local veterinarian, so he knows most of the families in the area because he takes care of their livestock. So he, and a couple of older Musa Daghtsi men, took my parents to Yogun Oluk.


FUCK YOUR WELCOME

Yogun Oluk is about a 15 minute drive from Vakf, the village that has remained Armenian. They drove there, got to the neighborhood where they knew the house would be, asked around a bit, and within minutes, they were there.

They say hello. There are two women standing outside. One older, one younger, with a baby on her hip. My dad sees the house. He sees these two women.

And then he says: “This is my baboug’s house?”

And he breaks down. 

You can hear him sobbing. Someone tells him not to cry. He drops the camera. 

The next part of this story has become etched into my family’s lore, from Musa Dagh to Toronto.  

My cousin Cem was telling me about this moment. My dad was crying and crying. Then the older woman - whose name is Hammale - brought him water, and a chair. Hammale is the oldest member of the family who is still alive - the family that my great-grandfather gave the house to.

Cem is cracking up as he tells the story. He says that she kept repeating “Hoş geldiniz, hoş geldiniz” Turkish for welcome. “Welcome! Welcome!”

Then my dad, still in tears, said something to her, in a mashup of Turkish and the Musa Dagh dialect:

“Fuck your welcome! This is my dad’s house. You’re the one who’s welcome.” 

I ask Cem if Hammale understood him. He laughs and says “no!”

Fuck your welcome! This phrase has become iconic in our family. To this day, Cem and his brothers use it as a joke to greet each other, like “Welcome.”  “Fuck your ‘welcome’.”

Someone might interpret it as rude or crass, but I know my dad didn’t mean it that way. He was actually comforted knowing that the family living in our family’s home was not in denial of its history, and especially, that from a few generations back, they actually knew our family. That meant something to him. 

But there’s this huge dissonance. Here’s this kind woman saying, “Here, have some water, have a chair, welcome…” and it’s like, how is this glass of water supposed to address, a lifetime, several lifetimes of being displaced, of not being able to live where you're from? And not just our family, our nation…What is this water going to do? What is your “welcome” going to do?

At one point, Hammale said to my dad “this is your home,” or it might have been “this is your home, too.” But what does that mean, exactly? She didn’t literally mean it, like “You can come move in,” and that’s certainly not how my dad took it. I think it was an attempt at reconciliation, but it’s bittersweet. 

On the one hand, what so many Armenians seek is acknowledgement. And in this very specific case, on a person to person level, we have it. But what does it change?

HALAL TOGH ELLA

As they were leaving the house, my father, still in tears, said: “hallal togh ella irents”

You can barely hear it in the video, but Cem was there with my dad, and he remembers.

It means: “let it be blessed for them.” or “let them live in peace.” It’s like for my dad, there was a curse hanging over the house, and by saying that, he lifted it. 

My dad grew up with hardline views about seeking justice for what the Turks did to us. And in that viewpoint, there isn’t room for someone like Hammale. Giving his blessing doesn’t contradict his need for justice. But it does complicate it. He’s there, in his grandfather’s house, holding his pain and his anger - but he doesn’t turn away from it. He faces the house and the people who live there with compassion.  

This meant a lot to Cem. He says ”Your dad grew in my eyes when he said that.” 

Then he tells me. “We should have done this, had this conversation, when he was alive”

I had this conversation with Cem in June 2023. My dad had passed away just a month before, after a 3-year struggle with ALS.

I went to Musa Dagh with my family - my mom, my brothers, and my son - and we scattered his ashes on the mountain where our ancestors resisted genocide. That was my dad’s wish. 

THE DAUGHTER OF THE CRYING MAN

Musa Dagh was such a huge part of my dad’s life, and even though we never went there together while he was alive, he passed that connection on to me. Ever since my parents’ first visit, I had wanted to go, but it felt like such a big experience, and I wanted it to be on my own terms. Years before my dad got sick, in 2015, I took my first trip, solo, to Musa Dagh.

I went to Vakf, the one village that has remained Armenian, met Cem and his family for the first time, and we instantly bonded. Everything felt familiar, not just from my dad’s videos, but on a cellular level. The smell of orange blossoms and bay leaves, the sea air, the homemade olive oil… It felt like my natural habitat.

On my first day there, Cem took me on a tour of all the former Armenian villages, and of course, we went to the house. Just like that, after years of hearing about it, I was on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean, at my great-grandparents’ doorstep.

We were greeted by Hammale, the old woman who had famously welcomed my father. Cem said: “Remember the crying man with the video camera?” She cocked her head and threw up her arms as if to say, “How could I forget?” Cem told her, “This is his daughter.”
 
So now, I was The Daughter of The Crying Man.

Hammale greeted me warmly, motioned for her daughter-in-law to bring us something to drink. Then came those familiar words: “Hoş geldiniz, hoş geldiniz!”  Welcome, welcome. I smiled politely and said thank you.

I had  watched my dad’s video so many times, but being there, I really saw the house for the first time. The underside of the old roof was lined with neat, dense rows of twigs. Cem told me they were laid by my great-grandfather. Further down, there was an addition made of flimsy, modern shingles.

I went from room to room and noticed that most of the furniture looked old enough to have belonged to my family. I hesitated a bit.. It felt like I was imposing, but Hammale waved her hand and nodded her head as if to say, Go, look, take pictures! She’d done this before.

This was a decade ago, and so much of that day is a blur, but there’s one moment I remember so clearly:

Standing on the 2nd floor landing, just like my grandfather must have growing up, I thought – this was his view. This is what my Baboug woke up to every morning. – the green hills dotted with houses, the Mediterranean, then - on the border between Turkey and Syria - Mount Casius ... It was epic.

And then he lived through years of displacement and struggle… I think about where he ended up –  in the flat monotony of suburban Toronto. He would pass his days sitting in the food court of the mall across the street with other old Armenian men. They’d play cards and exchange stories from back home… He went from THAT view, to the Fairview Mall food court.  This really hit me standing there, and it made me wish I had known him more, had asked him more questions.

As we left, Hammale gave me some homemade bay leaf soap. I told her I liked her headscarf, which had bright red embroidered edges. She beamed, sent her daughter-in-law into the house, and she quickly came back with a scarf for me. It was navy and pink, with little flowers stitched in.

Being in the house my great-grandfather built gave me access to something I couldn’t name – it wasn’t a fact, but a knowing. I got some of that knowing in that moment. And once I got it, I wanted more.


AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

It was always in my head, planning my next trip back. But it was tragic news that made it feel urgent for me to return – the earthquake that ravaged southeast Turkey, including Musa Dagh, in February 2023.

I went in June, 4 months after the earthquake. And just a month after my father passed away. When the earthquake hit in February, it was toward the end for him, and he was experiencing some cognitive decline. I was with him when it was all over the news. There was also awful news coming in from Armenia and Artsakh, from Lebanon… and for him, it was all mixed up together as - things are bad back home. I was relieved that the scale of the destruction wasn’t sinking in for him. It would have crushed him.

When I got there in June, it was hard to wrap my own head around. Antakya, the historic metropolis of Antioch, is the nearest city. There, it felt post-apocalyptic. We drove through block after block of cranes clearing rubble…

Vakf, the Armenian village, was in bad shape too. All homes had suffered some damage, some were completely destroyed. The steeple of the church had collapsed. Cem’s mom had been badly injured, along with many others. The population of Vakf had already been declining, but now, even more people had left. This village had survived so much - but this felt like it could be a breaking point.

So all of this was with me when we went to Yoghun Oluk, back to my ancestral home. I went with Cem, his wife, and my co-producers. We parked the car on the road and then walked down a footpath to get to the house. It was lined with tents on either side - people still living in these makeshift conditions, months after the earthquake.

We got to where the house should be, and there, sitting outside a tent, was Hammale.

“Hoş geldiniz,” she said, “hoş geldiniz.” Welcome, welcome. Like she said to my father all those years ago, and then to me.

Using my phone’s translator I ask her how her family is, if everyone is okay. She says her family, her grandkids, they’re all ok. They’re living for now, in tents set up on the walkway leading to the house.

The house itself has been reduced to mounds of stone, scraps of wallpaper peeking through, some mangled toys… I can still see parts of the old twig roof.

Most of Hammale’s kids and grandkids used to live under this roof. They’re excited to have visitors. The children are excited to use the English they know - they tell us their name and they count to 20.

As we look at what remains, I’m trying to sort out which parts are the house my great-grandfather built, and which are new additions.

It feels like I need to know, but I’m not sure what knowing it would change. It’s like on my dad’s video tapes – There are several minutes where he’s just slowing, silently surveying the perimeter of the house.

Then I say to Cem, “I want to know if any of the old things have remained.”

To which he quickly replies, “No, don't ask that, it might be misunderstood.”

I was a bit taken aback, but I think I understand what he meant. You don’t say to someone who is living in a tent next to the pile of stones that used to be her home, Can I go in and look around? See what’s left?  I see how that could feel disrespectful, so I didn’t insist. But it felt important to me, to get as close to what was left as possible.

I’d only been to the house once while it was still standing, back in 2015. And I didn’t feel like I had gotten a proper feel for it. I don’t mean examining every piece of furniture – I mean being in that space, just closing my eyes, and BEING there. This was possibly my last chance to be with the house.

What I felt in that moment was a sort of panic… I used to have this place, this physical testament to my family’s existence on our native land, and now it was gone... But it was still sort of there… whatever shred of it was left, I felt like I had to cling to it.

I brought up the scarf Hammale had given me on my last visit. Cem’s wife was translating. She asks if I cover my head with it. I say “I don’t, but sometimes I put it on my shoulders.”

I think I was just trying to connect with her over something. It’s like Hammale is my link to the house, but our lives are worlds apart. The scarf felt like something we could both place our hands on.

As we’re leaving, Hammale says next time you come I’ll make you coffee and tea. Next time, I’ll give you another scarf.

My relationship with Hammale and her family exists in a delicate realm. I don’t really know how to navigate it, I just know to tread gently.

As we get in the car and drive away Cem says “It’s good that your dad did not see the house in this condition.”

As we left, I felt a layered kind of sadness.

One of those layers came from seeing Hammale and her family living in those conditions. It made all the suffering I’d witnessed over the past few days more real.

At the same time, seeing the house destroyed, it felt like something very dear to me had washed away. I’d lost something too. And this was all very shortly after losing my dad. So much of what the house meant to me, had to do with what it meant to my dad.

I know how rare it is, as an Armenian, to be able to set foot in your ancestral home. I feel lucky that I’ve gotten to do it, and I’m grateful to my dad for this. 

Now that the house is gone, it hurts. But that’s not where things end. I would have expected some kind of finality associated with the loss. But my connection to Musa Dagh - and to my family there - is still very much alive. I’ve been back several times since then, and I keep finding reasons to go.

Back when my grandfather recognized his sister in that video, a connection that had been disrupted for 60 years began to come together again. We are weaving ourselves back into the soil.

It’s like my dad said to Cem, all those years ago, “Aryune gkashe” the blood will pull us. The blood keeps pulling me.


CREDITS

Country of Dust is created and produced by Nyree Abrahamian, Jeremy Dalmas and Gohar Khachatryan. Sound engineering and music by Jeremy Dalmas. 

Thank you Gohar and Jeremy for your patience and care in making this episode. 

Thank you Alex Atack and Dana Ballout for your expert feedback, and for being so supportive. 

To my mom, Hasmig, my uncle Joseph, Cem and Lara and everyone in my family, from Musa Dagh to Toronto, who trusted me to tell this story – thank you.

This episode was made possible with generous support from the H. Hovnanian Family Foundation, the Hrant Dink Foundation, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

To the supporters of our crowdfunding campaign: we couldn’t have made this season without you. Thank you for backing us. 

And we’re grateful to YOU for tuning in. To support us - head to CountryOfDust.com.