Ortachiya, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006

As I used to work on the Kurds in Turkey, as well as having researched the Yezidi in Armenia for the London-based Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP) in 1998, a visiting academic or two from Europe always brings me back to take a look at Armenia’s largest minority. A month or so ago it was Nahro Zagros, an Iraqi-Kurdish ethno-musicologist now living in Britain, and this month it’s been a return visit from Christine Allison, an English Kurdologist from France.

Christine’s researching the oral history traditions of the Kurds while also using the Yezidi village of Ortachiya as the basis for an online historical memory web site. Today, while visiting the village to attend its annual commemoration for the memory of deceased relatives, I had a brief chat with Christine on her work.

OK: This is your second visit to Armenia?

CA: This is my third visit to Armenia, but my second for field work to Ortachiya. That’s it’s official name now. It means “mid-mountain” in Kurmanji [Kurdish].

OK: We’ve come to a Yezidi festival where everyone is paying their respects to relatives that have died. Is this festival always held on this date, and is it specific to this region?

CA: It’s specific to this region. The Yezidis in Iraq observe it at their New Year, which is in April, but there are several dates in the Caucasus. In this village it’s today, while in other villages it’s in September.

OK: Is this a specifically Yezidi or Kurdish festival?

CA: It’s a specifically Yezidi festival, yes.

OK: The women are singing laments?

CA: That’s a common Kurdish thing, and laments are alive among the Yezidi and Kurds in Iraq although every region has its own individual style.

OK: What sort of thing are people singing about?

CA: Well, the ones I’ve heard today are all very personal. The wife of the man that had died at the age of 39 was lamenting, “why did you leave us?” and then an aunt came and sang something more formed, musical and sorrowful which was something like “Why did you leave. It’s unfair. You left your wife and two little daughters.”

OK: What do the Yezidi believe happens to them when they die?

CA: That’s something I’m not sure about here because Yezidis are supposed to believe in going to heaven or paradise, the Zoroastrian “Behest,” if they’re good, but there is also some kind of Yezidi belief in reincarnation. Clearly, those two ideas don’t go together, but I’m not sure what the view on reincarnation is here, although people appear to be wishing their souls well in the hereafter. That’s not something I’ve come across in Iraq.

OK: What are you going to do with your research?

CA: I’m primarily interested in memory in this village, and the fact that people feel it important to bury their relatives here, and even if they’ve left the village and to come back regularly.

OK: I’ve noticed quite a few Georgian number plates here.

CA: In the case of this family [points], half have come from Georgia and the other half are from Moscow. And in the case of the family I’m staying with, some have come from Georgia, but there was a sister-in-law that was supposed to have come from Irkutz. In fact, they went to meet her at the airport last night, but it turned out she couldn’t get any further than Krasnodar because of problems with her passport.

OK: So the Yezidi really take this event very seriously.

CA: Yes, they do. I was speaking to the father in the family I’m staying with, and he said that people come every year. I said that it must be very expensive, or dear, and he responded by saying yes, it is, but our dead are also very dear.

OK: You’re researching the oral history traditions of the Kurds, and you’re in Ortachiya now. What have you discovered so far.

CA: This is part of that research, and what interests me specifically is how folklore becomes history. The Kurds in Turkey especially feel that they haven’t had an official history, and they know that a lot of their folkloric songs are about events in tribal times which have been transmitted quite well, but sometimes you see attempts to write historical novels use those same songs as factual sources. Of course, it’s almost impossible to write a definitive modern-style history using those sources.

OK: How important have publications such as Riya Taza been in this context in Armenia? It’s the oldest surviving Kurdish-language newspaper in the world, and is based here.

CA: Riya Taza is important because here we don’t have quite the same picture as we do with the Kurds in Turkey. In some ways, they’re more in touch with their past here in Armenia, and they’ve been studying it for a long time. One thing that I’ve noticed here , though, with the literary production from the period of the Soviet Union, has been what I would call works of memory. They’re about the history of people’s families or reconstructions of historical events.

There’s no doubt that this is the largest center for Kurmanji folklore studies — here in Armenia, as well as other places in the former Soviet Union. Essentially, all the people doing that work were from here, and mostly Yezidis as well. Riya Taza is part of that — to have a real Kurmanji intelligentsia, and they really did have one. In Turkey they just can’t do it without falling back on Turkish all the time. They’re so much in the Turkish mold.

OK: How long will your research last?

CA: It will be going on for a couple of years because I want to build a memory web site about the village, and I hope that people from this community will find it useful.

OK: Why this village?

CA: Because I had an entry into this village. It was purely by chance, although Aparan interests me anyway because these villages have been here since the 1820s. A lot of the other villages have only been here since 1917-8. These villages have been here longer, and there’s still this very strong memory of those desperate battles.

You know, the Sardarabad battle when the Turkish army went around the mountain two ways. If you go to Sardarabad you’ll find a plaque about Jahangir Ahar and it tells of the role he played, and also about Youssef Bek. Jahangir Ahar is buried somewhere in Russia because he ended up in exile, but Youssef Bek is buried in Shamiram.

OK: So when you’re conducting your research, you’re picking up history such as this?

CA: Well, because I’m interested in discourses of memory — what some people call defining events — this 1917-8 thing is always important for everybody because even though the village was already here, there was this big battle. In some villages, for example, they remember the Moslems that used to live in the newer villages.

It’s all at quite an early stage, but the web site is part of my work, and the idea is to make it accessible to people from the community.

I’ll be putting together a proper photostory for Monday’s Hetq Online, but in case you’re confused about the distinction between the Yezidi and Kurds, I wrote an article for Transitions Online which is available here. It’s also probably worth pointing out that there are categories for Yezidi and Kurds on this blog.

Ortachiya, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006