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In Armenia, an answer to the Kurdish
question
27.7.2007
By Lydia.Wilson
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July
27, 2007
It's 4 a.m. and the groom is tucking into what looks
like raw trout, stopping every now and then for a
shot of vodka. He's 25 and a fledgling entrepreneur,
flush with Russian money. The bride is 16 and a
village girl. Earlier in the day, she arrived at the
wedding to a traditional Kurdish welcome — which in
this part of Armenia consists of being showered with
red apples and sweets, hurled down from a rooftop by
her new husband's drunken cohorts. But she has long
since left the party, and retired to the conjugal
bed.
As we wait for our homeward taxi to arrive, we
wonder, pityingly, why her husband hasn't joined
her. Custom demands that the marriage be consummated
on the wedding night (and a red apple be presented
to her family on the morrow if the bride is found to
be a virgin). "She's probably exhausted and just
lying there waiting for him," whispers my
scandalized companion Nahro. But here's the groom,
heedlessly drinking vodka with his friends, and with
us — for we, too, are pouring more shots.
In Armenia, there are rural, mountain-dwelling,
poverty-stricken Kurds and there are urbanized,
lowland-living, comparatively wealthier Kurds. We
are sitting among the latter in the village of
Argavand, located in the province of Armavir on the
Turkish border — and when it comes to which group
makes the better first impression, there's no
contest. The lowland Kurds of Armavir mostly
migrated to this region during World War II and live
as a tiny minority among the Armenians, with whom
relations are often strained. Racism and harassment
are a fact of daily life. Violence is common. Their
religion, Yezidism, has strong similarities to the
Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, yet is branded heretical by all three. All of
this means that the lowland Kurds can be a bit
circumspect in the way they carry themselves, and
sometimes reticent about their ethnicity.
There's none of that in the mountains. In fact,
there's not much of anything in the mountains except
snow and the cheery, forthright welcome of a people
who have hardly anything else to offer. The Alagyaz
district — a cluster of 11 Kurdish Yezidi villages —
is just 50 km from the Armenian capital Yerevan, but
in terms of development it might as well be a
universe away, for the people there live a spartan
if not subsistence-level life. They moved to these
mountains nearly 200 years ago — fleeing persecution
in Turkey — and very little has changed since. There
is no running water; people and livestock live under
the same ramshackle roof; the schools are unheated
and woefully underequipped; and the only health care
for miles around is provided by a single nurse and
clinic — funded not by the state but by private
donations, and responsible for everything from
delivering babies to pulling teeth. The state, in
fact, is glaringly absent in many facets of life.
Perhaps this is the price the district pays for its
open sympathy for the militant separatist guerillas,
the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, or Kurdistan
Workers' Party — a sympathy that the Kurds in
Armavir would almost certainly not express if they
shared it.
These political realities mirror the apparent social
differences between the lowland Kurds and their
highland relations.
Encounters with the lowlanders are self-conscious
and awkward, leaving me feeling as if I'm on
display; meetings with the highlanders are marked by
spontaneous warmth and the ready inclusion of the
traveler in their midst. The contrast strikes me
hard as we sit in Argavand, waiting for a taxi that
seems like it will never arrive, and wondering for
how much longer the young groom will sit up drinking
when he ought to be in bed with his new wife. I
recall an evening in the mountains, when we were
invited to the local schoolmaster's for dinner, and
I got out my violin to learn some of the simple,
beautiful Kurdish tunes. Before long others joined
in, and after a few more vodkas dancing started. It
all seems so remote from the morose gathering we now
find ourselves in.
But the taxi does finally pull up outside. As we
putter home, Nahro, who understands the Kurmanci
form of Kurdish, talks with the driver about the
groom's reluctance to go to his bride on their
wedding night. The driver says something in reply
and Nahro blanches. "What? What is it?" I ask. Nahro
translates: as well as consummation on the wedding
night, local custom equally stipulates that the
groom not leave the party until the last guest
departs. So if anyone had been forcing the bride to
stare at the ceiling, waiting for her husband during
tonight's lonely, agonizing hours, it was us.
Suddenly, I'm mortified by my own presumption. In
fact, I want the night to swallow me up — but dawn
is already breaking.
Time com
** Armenia has a population of 3,215,800, Yazidis
Kurds make up 3 %. Some parts of Armenia belongs to
(Big Kurdistan). In the second half of the 10th
century, Kurdistan was shared amongst five big
Kurdish principalities. In the North the Shaddadid
(951–1174) (in parts of Armenia and Arran) and the
Rawadid (955–1221)
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