Catherine Yesayan
BY CATHERINE YESAYAN
On the seventh day of our pilgrimage in Western Armenia we stayed overnight in Mush, which is an ancient settlement where archeological excavations have revealed cuneiform inscriptions from the time of Menua, (c. 800 BC) the most famous king of Urartu kingdom. Ancient records show that the origin of Armenians go back to Urartu civilization.
The name of Mush is derived from the word Mshush which in Armenian means hazy. It is a good descriptive name, because the weather in Mush is usually hazy.
Mush is also famous for the flat and long stretches of plains which surround the city. In Armenian, they call them “Mushi Mshot Dashter,” meaning “Plains of hazy Mush.”
For dinner in Mush, we went to “Locanta Park,” a restaurant that the owner was Armenian. There we met a big group of Armenians that were also visiting Mush from Armenia. They were an energetic group, singing popular Armenian songs.
I approached their table, and met Aragatz Akhoyan, who introduced himself as the president of “Return Foundation,” whose main purpose is to empower Islamized Armenians to be re-introduced to their origins and heritage.
To accomplish that noble quest, twice a year he brings Armenian dance and song ensembles to Turkey, and arranges recitals to entice the Hidden Armenians to reclaim their erased identity.
He told me that the night before in Diyarbakir, he had arranged for 150 people to come together in a restaurant to enjoy Armenian dance and song.
According to a Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, Mush had 27,000 inhabitants in 1913, of which 13,300 were Muslims and 13,700 Armenians.
Today, only a handful of Armenians live in Mush and most of them do not speak Armenian. But there is a movement among the children of Islamized Armenians, who had accepted Islam to avoid persecution, to return to their origin and discover their heritage.
Annie, a member of our tour, had made a prior arrangement to meet with a local guy from Mush whose 117-year-old-father was one of those hidden Armenians.
Before dinner, she went to meet the old man and was quite impressed with her interview. Later, I met his son, who came to have dinner with us. He too, like other children of Hidden Armenians was quite excited about discovering his origins.
My research to write this column revealed that before 1915, there were about 300 Armenian churches in the region of Mush. The most well-known and the most magnificent of all those churches was Surp, or Saint Marineh.
The precarious standing wall from Surp Marineh Church in Mush
The morning of our stay in Mush, we headed to the outskirts of the city to visit the ruins of Surp Marineh. The church was known as “Katoghike,” which means Cathedral. Unfortunately, from all that elegance and splendor, the only thing remained is a precarious outer wall.
With a heavy heart at seeing the dilapidated church of Marineh, we boarded our minibus to our next destination, to the village of Por, not far from Mush.
Our tour guide said that our beloved William Saroyan’s great-grandparents were from that village, where an Armenian church still stood.
We arrived at the village before noon. The church of Surp Anania in the village of Por was at the top of a small hill. For more than a hundred years, no Armenians had lived there.
Por, with its twisty dirt roads and rough constructed homes, and people traveling on donkeys, gave me the impression of a village from long ago.
The women, all Muslims, in the middle of summer, wore outfits that covered them from head to toe. The kids, especially the little girls, had mismatched outfits, such as skirts over pants.
When I tried to take pictures, the girls smiled shyly, but the boys, at age 11 or 12, were confident, talkative, and making jokes. They were happy to have the opportunity to practice the English that they had learned at school. The boys were counting “one-two-threeâ€
