excerpt Archives

Hasan Cemal, 1915 Armenian genocide, Paris, Common Priairies, 2015, 288 pages, 23

The past never dies. Besides, the past is never really past.

Logbook. New York, April 2011

I am from Los Angeles. The back room of the Coffee Fanelli, one of my favorites, is still almost empty. Calm reigns. Only one or two tables are occupied.

I seat and tuck in my favorite place in front of the street. The servers have changed again. New York is like that, everything changes very quickly. In Paris, I know almost servers cafes of Saint-Germain-des-Prés of view. We can go back forty years and the same faces on his return. At least that’s the impression I have, maybe because I like to see some familiar faces returning to the same location years later.

I remember some editorials written here, especially two papers that had cost me particularly and that I had been able to complete with the help of a few glasses of whiskey.

One of them was devoted to the death of Handan Selçuk, the other to put in custody in the early morning, her husband, Ilhan Selcuk, as part of the Ergenekon case. Ilhan, big brother … Two particularly painful moments. On the one hand, shared memories, another justice who gets involved and what to write without feeling let speak. No wall between. It also should not that was the case.

Handan Ilhan and both occupy a special place in my life. Difficult in a short chronicle of honor that, while candidly addressing differences of opinion emerged between us over the years. The pen may slip at any time on one side or the other.

Such is life. The past does not give people too easily. Continue to wear itself, also true that we can not get rid of his brain. Sitting in the coffee Fanelli writing my editorial, I had in mind the image of Handan greeting me from afar or shaking the index as a warning …

Last night I was at the Blue Note jazz club with my wife Ayşe. Michel Legrand played piano and sang old nostalgic tunes. I thought of three days in New York last week, especially those few hours spent at Istanbul Armenian Association under the gaze of Hrant Dink. Garabet Efendi was to give his own name to the room but preferred to baptize in honor of Hrant ….

Garabet. His life is a real novel! Not just his, of course. I saw how these Anatolian Armenians gathered after years of wandering kept, buried deep within themselves, the pain of exile. Over the years, you learn to deceive. By relating their misfortunes, and the others kept Garabet good figure. But one felt a deep nostalgia of Anatolia and Istanbul did not leave them.

Ilhan why he hid his mother was Armenian? This question haunts me. Handan told me yet how Ilhan loved his mother and how her death had affected him, though he efforçât not leave it show.