My grandmother Hasmik Kanayan

My grandmother Hasmik Kanayan passed away on the night of April 24, 1998, with her innermost wishes unaccomplished: visiting her sister Heghine’s and her husband’s tombs, and returning back to her birthplace, Igdir, which she had been forced to flee at the age of 10.

Hasmik was born in Igdir in the family of HakobKanayan, great commander DrastamatKanayan’s (Dro) cousin. Her childhood ended when Turks took her and her sister into the barn and put it to fire. Dro’s soldiers, fortunately, reached on time and save my grandmother.

When they were passing by the stables, they could see the burning bodies of women, decomposed body parts and bones. My grandmother’s mother Iskuhi was also dragged into the barn, but died several days later due to preterm birth.

She spoke about Igdir with much nostalgia and love. She proudly remembered that she attended ladies’ school in Igdir and tried to describe the three churches of the city. She remembered how she and her sister helped the refugees, and how her poor sister Shoghakat got infected and died as a result.

She told with great pride that Dro was her uncle, and that her father Hakob wanted to join his army, as Turks and Kurds had plundered the neighboring Armenian villages. When they liberated the village of Arabkirlu, where Turks had mercilessly massacred Armenians and robbed their properties, he returned home wounded and died several days later.

The Kanayan sisters continued to take care of the refugees who had sheltered in Dro’s father’s house that had been turned into a hospital.

Grandmother Hasmik remembered that they hit the road of exile for two times: when they reached Igdir, the city appeared to have been turned into a cemetery, while all the houses were looted and burnt. Hasmik remembered how Turkish women had gathered in their house and were choosing which clothes and dresses they would like to take. One of the Turkish women noticed a golden ring on one of my grandmother’s sisters and wanted to cut her finger to take the ring, but her second sister hit her with a heavy object, and they managed to escape and leave their home once and for all.

The sisters joined the displaced Armenians, but lost each other soon. Hasmik and her elder sister Hranush joined a group of orphans and were convoyed to a neighboring locality, separated from each other and driven into barns. A Turk, attracted to Hranush’ beauty, proposed to her, but hearing slurs instead of an answer, he shot her dead.

My grandmother fainted and was thus saved. She recovered consciousness from the odor of burning bodies in barns, and reached the river Araks, crossed it and got to Yerevan somehow. One day one of their neighbors of Igdir recognized and took her to her relatives that had settled in Yerevan.

My grandmother Hasmik Kanayan kept the memory of her family bright and missed her native Igdir much. She kept a Narek under her pillow and often read the following lines:

…That I should never suffer pains of labor without giving birth,

Lament without shedding tears,
Or meditate without sighing,
Or obfuscate and fail to rain,
Or go forth and fail to attain,
Or call on you and stay unheard,
Or humbly ask and stay unheeded, nor moan and refuse to sympathize,
Or pray while getting nothing,
Offer a sacrifice without burning it,
Or catch a glimpse of you and go empty-handed…

GayaneManukyan, editor-in-chief of the two-volume “Reflection of the Armenian Genocide in the Press Pages of 1915”