(By E. Haig, as printed in The Sacramento Gazette on 4/20/2001)
In a powerful new book entitled 'The Godless and the Infidels', author Harry Artinian provides a shocking account of the horrors of the Armenian genocide by the Turkish government of the Ottoman Empire. The historical record of what was the first genocide of the twentieth century has been questioned by Turkophiles for many years, notwithstanding significant and uncontradicted evidence in the written record, and other works have also chronicled the atrocities that were visited on the Armenian people in Turkey beginning in 1915. What makes Artinian's book unique is that it is, essentially, a retelling of the experiences of a young boy who lived through the horror.
The book opens with a passage in which Artinian explains how, in 1974, as a sixteen-year old living in Beirut, he was visited by an older man, who had learned from a mutual friend of the teen's superior writing skills. The old man, whom Artinian thought to be in his 70's, proceeded to ask the teen to read his memoirs, which the young Artinian did. What he discovered was a tale that is as riveting and unbelievable as any fiction ever written, for what he read was the memoirs of this old man's survival of the genocide.
Artinian has made the portion of Hovsep Balian's memoirs that chronicle his genocide experiences the heart of his book while fictionalizing the life that young Balian lived in the months before the Turkish pogrom began. And he tells Mr. Balian's story in the first person, becoming, in a sense, Balian himself, which has the effect of creating a greater sense of tension and anguish as the young boy's story unfolds.
And what a story it is! Forcibly taken with his family from their modest home at the age of ten, the boy survives countless brushes with death, each time seeming to have been spared solely by the hand of providence. Along the way, he witnesses the deaths of his three-year old sister, his mother, his sister-in-law and his two best childhood friends. The rest of his family also perishes, as do literally tens of thousands of others, many right before his eyes. How they all die, and the accounts of their deaths as told in the voice of a young boy, cannot for a moment be considered fiction, for these are brutalities that no writer of fiction could ever imagine.
It is impossible to read the accounts contained in this short work without feeling unbearable sadness mixed with absolute rage. (How can any human beings have been so cruel?) And yet, there are moments of tenderness and compassion too, as the young boy is saved on several occasions by the kindness of ordinary Turks who clearly wanted no part of the government's extermination edict. In the family of one such man, the young Balian finally secures his salvation. Artinian then closes his tale with a fictionalized ending that will undoubtedly evoke cheers from his Armenian readers. It had us applauding as well.
'The Godless and the Infidels' is an important book. It should be required reading, not just for the Armenians of the diaspora, but for all who seek to know the truth about an historical event that for too long has been denied by too many. (Reprinted with permission.)
