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Vahram Dadrian,
Forsaken Love,
translated and edited from Armenian by Ara Melkonian and Ara Sarafian (London and Reading:
Taderon Press, 2006), ISBN
978-1-90-3656-65-6,
paperback, GB£14.00/US$20.00.
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Forsaken Love
is one of the first
historical novels about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 written by a
survivor-victim of that calamity. Based on real events, Forsaken
Love reflects the experience of ordinary Armenians who fell
victim to the first genocide of the modern era. The novel revolves
around the fate of a dozen characters whose lives were shattered
during this period.
Vahram was 15 years old when his family was deported to the deserts
of Syria by the Ottoman Turkish government. Throughout his exile, he
recorded what he saw around him, as well as what he was told by
other witnesses.
After WWI, surviving members of the Dadrian family returned to
Turkey, where Vahram worked to support his mother and younger
siblings. This was also when he began writing short stories and
plays.
However, only after leaving Turkey and settling in the United
States, was Vahram able to publish his best known works, Forsaken
Love and To the Desert: Pages from My Diary, both of
which appeared in Armenian in 1945. They have only recently been
translated into English through the Gomidas Institute and Taderon
Press.
Forsaken Love is an epic story about the Armenian
Genocide of 1915.
Synopsis from
the introduction to Forsaken Love by Ara Sarafian
Forsaken Love
is about the destruction of Ottoman
Armenians in 1915, written from
the perspective of victims. Though a fictional account, Dadrian
stresses that this novel is based on real testimonies which he heard
and recorded himself, and many of the scenes in the novel are
clearly based on his diaries.*
Forsaken Love is one of the first historical
novel about the Armenian Genocide
written by a survivor of that event.
Forsaken Love
is set in the
late Ottoman Empire, where over two
million
Armenians lived alongside other groups, mainly Turks, Kurds,
Greeks, Arabs
and Assyrians. Armenians had their own community
organizations,
ran their own schools, printed their own newspapers, and
built their
own churches. However, they were second class subjects
because they
were Christians in a Muslim-Turkish Empire.
The opening political setting
of the novel is the Ottoman entry into
World War I
followed by the decision of the Turkish government to
deport and
eliminate its Armenian subjects. Forsaken Love captures the
sense
of bewilderment and helplessness of Armenian victims following
the
victimization of entire communities, the mass arrest, torture and
killing
of community leaders, the execution of Armenians soldiers serving
in the
Ottoman army, and the great massacres of Der Zor. Dadrian
portrays Armenian criminals,
informers and apostates who work with the
executioners, as well as others
who become slave workers simply to live.
Within a single novel, Dadrian
presents real scenarios — some simple, others profound — about the
Armenian Genocide of 1915.
Dadrian also
gives a prominent place to the Arab struggle for
independence
from the Ottoman Empire. This is first portrayed through
a group of
Arab deserters, led by an officer from a prominent Arab family,
who
help to save Armenians in Der Zor, and then other Arab characters
from Lebanon and Syria. The presence of the Arab struggle in Dadrian's
novel
should not be surprising, given that the author's family survived
the
Armenian Genocide amongst Arabs in Jeresh (Jordan) from 1915-1919.
The political
setting of the novel changes with the end of World War
I
(1918) and the expectation of Armenian survivors to return to their
homes and villages. By 1923,
these survivors are abandoned by European
powers (most notaby France and
Great Britain) when a new Turkish
nationalist movement sweeps
across Cilicia (and many other parts of the
former Ottoman Empire) and seals
the fate of Armenians once and for all — both in Forsaken
Love as well as in real life.**
This novel is
centered around a main character, Kirk, who survives this
period to tell his story. He is a romantic hero who resists his
executioners and fights for his people, while his world collapses
around him, first with
the apparent
death of Sara (his financée
from Erzeroum), and then the
death of his
second love and wife, Julia, who dies in his arms. Forsaken
Love
is a
remarkable and very powerful novel which reflected much of the
reality
of the Armenian Genocide, influenced a whole generation of
Armenians over
the years.
When publishing this work, we chose to change the original
Armenian title From
Amongst the Graves: Pages from My Diary to Forsaken Love
in order to focus on the poignant love story that is in the novel. We also
changed some of the names
of individuals
to make the work more
accessible to an English speaking audience.
NOTES
*
In his introduction to
To the Desert,
the author states that he used ten stories
mentioned in his diaries, as well as "assembling
hundreds of tiny events" which he
had heard about when writing
Forsaken Love.
See
To the Desert,
p.
x, p. 4.
**
For a recent work about the political
background to this post-WWI period and
the condition of Armenian refugees inside
Turkey, see Mary Garougian,
Flight of
the Dzidzernag: The
Autobiography of Varteres Garougian,
(Taderon
Press, 2002). Also see Stanley
Kerr,
The Lions
of Maras:
Personal Experiences with American Near East
Relief
1919-1922
(Albany, NY: State University of New York.
1973).
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