InternationalA photographer searches for lost Armenians in Der Zor
Bardig Kouyoumdjian traces the lives of survivors in the deserts of Syria
Published: Saturday April 25, 2009
Abdallah Talal, born Hagop Doghramadjian. Bardig Kouyoumdjian
Yerevan - Hagop Doghramadjian, originally from Urfa, ended up in Der Zor after the Genocide. At the height of the deportations, his mother, at the brink of death, handed him over to a Bedouin family to save his life.
But Hagop's mother didn't die. In fact, she survived and ended up in Aleppo, where she was miraculously reunited with her husband. With her firstborn son lost to her, she went on to have four other children.
She could never forget Hagop, the child she left behind in the desert. Years later, she went from village to village to look for her son, who had a distinctive birthmark on his shoulder. She finally found him, but it was too late, as he was already a grown man and had become a Moslem.
Hagop had become Abdallah Talal. But mother and son did not lose touch with each other. Hagop had three wives and decided to give one of his children to his Armenian half-brother so that one of his children could grow up as an Armenian.
This is one of the heart wrenching stories French-Armenian photographer Bardig Kouyoumdjian has unearthed in the arid deserts of Syria. Along with French journalist Christine Simeone, Bardig has written Deir-es-Zor: On the trace of the Armenian Genocide of 1915.
Deir-es-Zor, which was published in 2005 to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, is about finding and recording the remnants of the Armenian survivors, of those orphans left behind who became Moslem and Arab. "Until the 1950s there was some research done on these Armenians. A woman, a teacher from Konya was recording and photographing these survivors living among the Bedouins. Her book was published in 1955 - two volumes, 500 pages of eyewitness testimonials and photographs. But that's it. Until the 1990s nothing else was done," Bardig explained emphatically in an interview.
This endeavor has become his life's work. Himself the grandchild of survivors, Bardig has been on a quest for the past 20 years to become the medium through which these stories are brought to the world.
In 1985 he began photographing Genocide commemoration ceremonies and demonstrations. And then in 1997 he started interviewing survivors who were living in old-age homes in Lebanon. "Most of them were in their 90s by that time, so they had relatively clear memories of their experiences," says the photographer.
The lost Armenians of Der Zor are waiting for their relatives. "These people have lived with the hope that they would find their relatives.... Wherever I went they would call me Keri," he said, using the Armenian word for maternal uncle. "I will never forget entering the home of one of these Armenian-Arabs. A man confronted me and said, ‘You abandoned us in the desert.' It's very emotional," he says.
Today, no one is sure of the exact numbers of Armenians who have been lost. But they exist. Thanks to the efforts of people like Bardig Kouyoumdjian, we are being reacquainted with some of the lost pages of our collective history.
