From De Sica to Khardalian : Filming Rape in War and Genocide

The history of rape should be as old as the history of  humankind. Swiss and Giller (1993) date back written accounts of rape in war to ancient Greece, referring to the abduction of Helen of Troy and rape of Sabine women.I watched Vittoria De Sica’s  unforgettable film La ciociara  (Two Women - 1960) when I was a teenager. Cesira and her 13-year-old daughter, Rosetta, flee from the allied bombs in Rome during the Second World War going to the village where Cesira was born. During their journey and in the village, the mother does everything to protect Rosetta. However, on one occasion they both get raped by soldiers hiding in a church. The scenes in the church, as tens of, or perhaps more soldiers running after the mother and the daughter, and catching them are still vivid in my memory. 

When I came across Grandma’s Tattoos on Internet a couple of weeks ago and watched it I was really touched.  The film was also shown during the 10th Travelling Festival  of Filmmor Women’s Cooperative in Istanbul in March this year. The grandma’s name is Khanoum. Khanoum is a word used in Turkish too as Hanım, meaning mistress. In villages it is also used as a girl’s name. Khanoum’s maintenance of a discreet silence and distance with younger members of the family and time passing activities she used to have with her grandchildren are quite similar to the relationship we used to have with our grandparents. Grandma would play the card game of Fanti with us or tell us tales. The interview with the elderly woman in Armenia was also interesting for me as some of the words she used were familiar. One of them was kerhane meaning whorehouse. Belonging to the same land means to have a lot in common. In case of Turkish and Armenian women it has also been the fate of being raped during this unfortunate period. 

In our cities which encountered occupation on the turn-of-the-previous-century, liberation days are celebrated since the foundation of the Republic as a new country out of the ashes of an empire. Years ago on a Liberation Day in Erzurum some elderly people were invited to talk as witnesses of those days. One of them  was a blunt person and although the expectation was that he would tell about the victorous end, he started from the beginning when Russian army with Armenian troops occupied the province and Armenian militia also gained power in 1916. He told that Armenians had come to their village and put men and women in different buildings and raped and raped women and girls. As he was telling this, the audience was shocked and the mic was taken from him and passed to the next speaker quickly. It is not easy to talk about such things but the taboos need to be broken to reveal realities.

I wish a filmmaker like Khardalian had filmed Mehmet Ali Mehmetoğlu from the Yukarı Kırzı village of Bayburt Province who knew about 17-18 young women and girls, --one together with her baby--, who threw themselves to the well rather than living under occupation for reasons one can guess easily. Mehmetoğlu who died in 2007 at the age of 103 was apparently not a person of words. His response to the interviewer about how Armenians had treated them was succint: They were bad, too bad… The interview was documented by an amateur person. Full text translation of the talk  will be posted to this blog soon.

One of the impressive scenes in Grandma’s Tattoos is the bones found in Zor, Syria. Earlier deportations were towards inlands of Anatolia, to cities such as Konya, Çankırı. However, when the number of deported people increased, settlement areas were expanded to maintain a ratio of 10% of the muslim population (Armenians..., 1995).  It should be possible to find such bones in a number of locations in Syria, because apart from the deported people who did not exceed 10 % of muslim people of Zor; a large number of Armenians went to Syria on their own choice because they had cooperated with French army which occupied some cities in the South such as Antep  (Aintab) and Marash* but could hold only for six months before deciding to retreat in 1919. They didn’t take cooperating Armenians together with themselves (Karacakaya, 2005). Armenians who tried to go after them on their own unfortunately had a very though time with high casualties because of illnesses and famine on the way.  Although France secured that they would be granted a pardon through the Ankara Treaty, they felt obliged to go because they could not face Turks after all they have done.

In an interview with İlina Aghajanian, (2012) Khardalian says that raped women do not want to reveal their names. If they are killed after raped their names can easily be mentioned like Pakize from Erzincan. But they are usually too many to name all, like those mentioned by Lt.Col. Tverdohlebov, who was the Russian commander in Erzurum from 1917-18 and  Western Anatolian women who were not only raped but also killed by retreating Greek army which was also supported by local Armenians in May 1921. The Greeks had scorched-earth policy and left a completely devastated area behind committing all kinds of outrage (Greco-Turkish War 1919-22). 

Suzanne Khardalian also says that she wants to make more films on genocide. I would suggest that if she can contact French journalist Jean-Yves Juvet who witnessed Armenian soldiers in Khojaly in 1992 betting on the gender of a foetus, and then taking out the foetus ripping open the pregnant woman to find out who won. They also played football with heads they had cut off choosing the roundest one. That film would only be for over 18+ with limited audience though.**

Tattoos were ornaments and cure of women in some parts of Anatolia in the past. The latest two generations are no longer interested in them in these areas. At those times a young girl, when was getting married, or a young woman if didn’t have a child within the time span a baby was expected would have a tattoo. It sounds rather odd to use something, you use for yourself with good intentions, on someone else just as a mark. I wonder if there is a misunderstanding at this point. My guess is that since it was a crime to retain an Armenian who was deported, tattoos could have meant to be a proof that she belonged to the family in case she was caught. I must note that although Anatolian women have abandoned tattoos, young urban youth have an interest in them nowadays. The photo on the right shows the tattoo on my son's back which symbolizes storm as his name means heavy storm rainfall. I must confess that I was very surprised when I discovered that my son had got a tattoo. The film titled Turkish Traditional Tattoos contains photographs of several women with tattoos. Sibel Abiç, lists the motives behind having a tattoo in her book titled Dövme / Dek. They vary from just being fashionable, to demonstrate the nobility of the family, from protection against evil eye to mark beauty and elegance. Each motif symbolizes something different. For instance "moon was made to bring beauty to woman's body like moonlight and make it light and reflect the light like moon." (Abiç, 2011)

I appreciate Ms. Suzanne Khardalian’s sensitivity about genocides and rapes, congratulate her for Grandma's Tattoos, and wish that she makes many more films contributing to the fight against rape as the world gets worse rather than better,  some soldiers today even raping not only the women of the country they fight with, but also women soldiers from their own country they fight together (Gibbs, 2010).

Sources 

Abiç, Sibel. Dövme / Dek. Mardin Valiliği Kültür Yayınları, 2011.

Aghajanian, Liana.Interview: Suzanne Khardalian on Grandma’s Tattoos and the Forgotten Lives of Armenian Women. Ianyan Mag, January 25, 2012. ( http://www.ianyanmag.com/2012/01/25/interview-suzanne-khardalian-on-grandmas-tattoos-and-the-forgotten-lives-of-women/) (Accessed: 14.04.2012)

Armenians in Ottoman Documents (1915-1920). - Ankara: Başbakanlık Basımevi, 1995. - XLIV, 641 s. - (The Turkish Republic Prime Ministry General Directorate of the State Archives; publication no. 25) p. 67.

Bayburt Ermeni Zulmü [Interview with Mehmet Ali Mehmetoğlu].27.07.2004. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMcafKZvXrs (Accessed: 15.03.2012)

La ciociara (1960) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054749/plotsummary (Accessed: 14.04.2012)

Ermeni mezalimi [videorecording]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt3bGvNkiGM minute: 2:10 (Accessed: 15.03.2012)

 

Gibbs, Nancy. Sexual Assaults on Female Soldiers: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Time Magazine US, Mar 08, 2010. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1968110,00.html (Accessed: 15.04.2012)

Grandma's Tattoos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=bwj4e_f_1DI  (Accessed: 15.03.2012)

Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922). Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_%281919%E2%80%931922%29  (Accessed: 15.04.2012)

Karacakaya, Recep. "Milli Mücadelede Fransız işgalleri ve buna tepkiler," Türk Kamuoyu ve Ermeni Meselesi. Istanbul: 2005. http://kutaksam.karabuk.edu.tr/M%C4%B0LL%C4%B0%20M%C3%9CCADELEDE%20FRANSIZ%20%C4%B0%C5%9EGALLER%C4%B0%20VE%20BUNA%20TEPK%C4%B0LER.pdf (Accessed: 15.04.2012)

Swiss, S, Giller, E. Rape as a crime of war. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1993, 270 : 5, 612-15.

Turkish traditional tattoos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZm9LcJajAw (Accessed: 16.04.2012)

Lt. Col. Tverdohlebov. I witnessed and lived through. http://armeniangenocidefacts.com/i-witnessed-and-lived-through/ (accessed: 16.04.2012)

*    Later on the name of Antep was changed as Gaziantep meaning Veterans' City and Marash was changed to Kahramanmaraş meaning Heroic Marash because of patriotic defense of the people against occupation. 

** Source is an e-mail distributed in early '90s which unfortunately has not been preserved.


Armenian Holocaust:My Story blog by Selma Aslan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Gayriticari-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.