BIG HEARTED HOUSE DOORS Bedros Dağlıyan
Türkçe
BIG-HEARTED HOUSE DOORS Bedros Daglian My grandfather's door was open to everyone... He used to say that a man whose house door was always open would also have an open heart. However, after the deportation, my grandfather searched for years for his beloved, to whom he had opened the door of his heart for years, but he could not find her. When he couldn't find her, he didn't resent his fate; he didn't lose faith in people... He always judged others by their humanity; he didn't look at their religion, race or identity... I recognised humanity and virtue in him and lived with him, whatever I lived... Doors were important for him. Wherever he went, he looked for the large courtyard door of that huge house in the Yarahmet neighbourhood of Tokat... He made such houses his home... Those huge doors informed you who was coming with the door knocker. If it was a woman at the door, the one with a thin voice in the form of a graceful hand, and if it was a man, the one with a thick voice informed the people at home by knocking... ‘You can find out the gender of the person inside by looking at the knockers on that sentence door,’ my grandfather would say... It was fate; my grandfather searched for houses that resembled his old house in every country he travelled to in order to remember his home; and when he could not find one, he opened the door of his heart to every visitor and knocker... When the fifteen were conscripted into the army, he never had the chance to return home from the barracks he went to... ‘Hey onbeşli onbeşli/ Tokat roads are stony/ Onbeşliler are leaving/ The girls are teary-eyed’ folk song and the folk song that describes that pain is now played by girls at weddings... He was saved from death, where all conscripted Armenians were massacred, thanks to his major who loved him very much... For years, he searched for his loved ones; his mother, his sister and his wife... He kept all his loved ones like a secret in that closed door... When he could not find them, he recreated his house, his wife and his sentence door by not resenting life and enduring every difficulty and opened his heart to everyone. All the Christian people of Anatolia left their houses with wide doors in one night as a result of deportation. The survivors of the genocide, with tears in their eyes, searched for years for a homeland, a home for themselves. They re-created and re-created their families, their businesses and their arts... Then they retreated into their shells and lived until today with the pride of saying to those who destroyed them that we exist again, we will always exist... My grandfather married Lusia from Malatya, who was wounded like him, orphaned and orphaned like him; they healed each other's wounds and together they recreated that big-hearted, wide-doored house. My grandfather, that big-hearted man, opened his home to his lonely military comrade and made him his brother and uncle to his children... He was our uncle when I saw and recognised him. Oh Uncle Karekin, what a beautiful man you were; a big-hearted man like my grandfather... Maybe it is just to have houses with wide doors, to own phaetons and spring carriages and to manufacture them with the best of art... My mother used to open the door of a fairy tale for us when she told us about that house with a wide door with many grooms... I know that when you entered, that door would open the door of other worlds for you. My grandfather, who settled in Elazığ, opened the wide door of a magical world to the people of Elazığ, perhaps for the first time, in a cinema made out of a barn... My grandfather, whose main profession was writing, although he could not return to the school he left while studying medicine, he knew how to overcome every job with his intelligence and heart like a barbecue... He found new new jobs, new new arts and dormitories... By embroidering writing motifs on the carriages he finished, he left traces of his past in your dreams... My mother, who learnt this from her father, used to say: ‘Open your heart and door to everyone and approach everyone with the same good feelings so that you have a door wherever you go...’ Now all the orphaned and orphaned babies of Anatolia, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Yazidis and Alevis are looking for houses with wide doors, just to share them with everyone...
