“A Portal named Papken”

 

(Left: Papken Topjian's uncle, for whom he is named, who used to be an Armenian priest and currently lives in Montreal.  Right: Papken upon completing the Basic Military Qualification course in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1999.)

“A Portal named Papken”

     William Saroyan (1908-81), an Armenian-American novelist and playwright, said:

“I should like to see any power in the world try and destroy this tiny race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no longer answered.  Go ahead, destroy Armenia, see if you can do it.  Send them into the desert without bread and water.  Burn their homes and churches.  Then see if they will not laugh, sing, and pray again.  For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not build a new Armenia”.

     The wind whipped the faces of those huddled around the monument to Komitas (1869-1935) outside of Sourp Hagop Armenian Church in Cartierville that Sunday in November.  Komitas, the father of Armenian folk music, was driven from his home shortly after the start of the Great War and was left with incurable emotional scars.  Thanks to him, thousands of Armenian folk songs survived the 1915 genocide, during which approximately 1.5 million children, women and men were slaughtered by the Turkish state.  Those standing before the bust of this protector of Armenian culture clutched headshots of nine men who had died in the recently concluded (Second) Nagorno-Karabakh war, which had begun on September 27^th of last year.  The conflict began when Turkish and Azerbaijani forces invaded Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority Armenian-populated region of Azerbaijan which had, following a referendum in 1991, declared itself to be an independent Armenian Republic named Artsakh.  As we stiffened ourselves against the wind, I felt a “wrinkle in time” as a century-old horror rushed into the present as new martyrs were added to the lore of the world’s 11 million Armenians, a people whose story is ancient, rich, and tragic.

     As I shivered beside Papken, a member of the Canadian army and the one who had invited me to attend this brief ceremony, I felt like a complete and utter stranger.  I was painfully aware of my ignorance of this community and their history.  Standing beside my Armenian friend, I determined to get to know him better and strive to understand his experience of recent events.  I recalled when Papken had called my office several weeks before – he had sounded distraught, kept switching from French to English with a smattering of Armenian terms thrown in, as he expressed his impotent rage as he helplessly watched newsreels portraying the invasion of Artsakh.  Following that conversation, I got our garrison newspaper to publish a short piece that Papken composed expressing how he felt and encouraging all those feeling distressed to reach out to either peer supporters or Padres.

     To have a mental image of what diaspora Armenians feel about the recent events in their homeland, think of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian man-without-a-state whose ordeal was immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal, which was released in theatres two years before Nasseri finally left the Charles de Gaulles airport for medical reasons after having lived in the terminal for 16 years.  In the opening scenes of the movie, Nasseri, played by Tom Hanks, runs frantically from TV to TV as newsreels of the invasion of his country play out on the screens and the destruction of his homeland is narrated in a language that he doesn’t understand.

     Papken’s grandparents fled the genocide and emigrated to Syria.  Papken was conceived in Lebanon and was born in Montreal due to his parents having decided to try for a better life in Canada.  Papken has long been involved in Homenetmen, an Armenian Scout movement which has 25,000 members in 24 countries.  Homenetmen’s motto is "elevate yourself to elevate others".  Their objective is to contribute to the mental, spiritual, and physical development of Armenian youth by teaching them their cultural heritage as well as local and Armenian values.  This movement seeks to form responsible leaders and citizens for the Armenian community.  Papken joined the movement at the age of six and climbed through the ranks before enrolling in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1999.

     In 1994, Papken set foot in his ancestral homeland for the first time as he participated in the fifth General Pan-Homenetmen Jamboree, a cultural trip to Byurakan, Armenia.  Four places in particular remain engraved in Papken’s memory – the Khor Virap monastery, which was built in the 7^th century (C.E.) and from which one can see Mt. Ararat, of biblical fame as the place where Noah’s ark came to rest at the end of the Flood.  Papken also recalls the Sasuntsi Davit, a copper equestrian statue depicting David of Sassoun in Yerevan. Erected in 1959, it depicts the protagonist of the Armenian national epic poem Daredevils of Sassoun.  Before returning to Canada, Papken underwent a traditional Armenian rite of passage when he went swimming in the frigid waters of Lake Sevan, considered one of the three great "seas" of historic Armenia, the other two being located in Turkey and Iran. Lake Sevan is considered the "jewel" of Armenia and is celebrated as a national treasure.

     After spending several years posted to military bases elsewhere, Papken returned to Montreal and eventually joined the administrative council of Homenetmen in 2015 and before long, became its president.  Since 2013, Papken has functioned as a peer supporter (“Sentinel”) in his army unit in Montreal.  He continues to work with the Scouts, take care of his daughters, and provide logistical support to the suicide prevention program for which I am responsible as part of my work as a chaplain.  Is there hope for Armenia?  Well, Papken has provided me with a portal into this little-known cultural universe and has convinced me of one thing – as long as individual Armenians continue to sing and laugh, all the while working for the good of those nations where they have taken refuge, there will always be members of this resilient race to tell their story and inspire us all to strive – and perhaps pray – for peace in this tortured world of ours.  No one can thrive alone – but Papken’s personal motto is perhaps à-propos for all of us: “Do your best”.