SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW THE NEW YORK TIMES ‘There Was and There Was Not,’ by Meline Toumani By CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUEJAN. 23, 2015 In 2005, Meline Toumani, an Armenian-American, went to live in Turkey — the country that, in its former incarnation as the Ottoman Empire, killed more than one million Armenians beginning in 1915, in mass deportations most historians regard as genocide. Fellow Armenians considered her decision perverse, not least because she, like them, had imbibed stories of Turkish plunder and murder along with her mother’s milk. But Toumani is an idealistic, somewhat contrary soul. Although in no doubt of Turkish culpability, she was convinced of the need for reconciliation on a basic, human level. Also setting her apart from most of her fellow Armenians was her skepticism over their pursuit of genocide “recognition,” a cause that unites the tiny, landlocked Republic of Armenia, on Turkey’s eastern border, and a formidable diaspora scattered from Beirut to Buenos Aires. Armenian pressure has led to resolutions recognizing the genocide from the European Union and more than 40 American states (but not the United States government), each one causing anger in Turkey. What worried Toumani was that an obsession with the genocide had, she believed, occluded all other aspects of the Armenian identity. In the United States, she writes, “I could no longer stand to attend any Armenian gathering, because it seemed that whether it was a poetry reading, a concert or even a sporting match, it was always, ultimately, about the genocide.” Hence Toumani’s move to the heart of enemy territory, Istanbul, where she began learning Turkish and even acquired a taste for Turkish food. So successful was her acculturation that eventually she felt close enough to the country to regard certain national idiosyncrasies as “endearingly Turkish” — a phrase that would occur to few Armenians. But the liaison soured. Four years later, her Turkish improved but her identity in pieces, a “chain-smoking neurotic” whose pathetic desire to ingratiate herself with the Turks had shades (as she saw it) of Stockholm syndrome, Toumani limped back to the United States. She left (after sobbing through a venomously antagonistic soccer match between Turkey and Armenia) with few genuine Turkish friends and, to cap it all, was regarded with suspicion by Turkey’s tiny surviving Armenian community. “There Was and There Was Not” (the title is the stock story opener in several Middle Eastern cultures) is the sensitive, inquiring, somewhat naïve account of this defeat. Toumani casts an unsparingly honest gaze on her own motivations, endlessly trying to find the merit in the other person’s point of view (even, as she discovers to her horror, that of the top Turkish genocide-denier), though she can also be very funny. A theme of the book is the alarm that Turks evince when they find out she is Armenian — “The weather’s been beautiful lately,” is a common response — and the unaccountable sense of deference she feels in return. Having a pedicure in Istanbul one day, she does not dare “subvert the natural order and inform the beautician that she was sitting at an Armenian woman’s feet.” All this comes against a backdrop of failing Armenian-Turkish relations, for while Armenians in Turkey have become more assertive and a growing number of Turks seem willing to atone for the past, détente has yet to materialize. (Turkey and Armenia still do not have diplomatic relations.) Toumani risks the ire of both sides by “tampering,” as she puts it, “with the story we had all agreed to tell.” Although it cost her some peace of mind, she has shown considerable courage in doing so. THERE WAS AND THERE WAS NOT A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond By Meline Toumani 286 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $28. Christopher de Bellaigue is a London-based writer and broadcaster. His most recent book is “Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup.”
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 07:45:26 +0000