We jumped right in to give our opinions of the book. Some of the comments are from notes submitted before the meeting, rather than stated at the meeting. If you were attending the meeting and don't remember hearing all of what follows, don't worry. You didn't sleep through it!
Azad liked the book very much, so much so that he ordered extra copies of the book to give to each of his children and grandchildren. He liked the fact that the stories are so short that they can be read and re-read to fully appreciate the meaning in them. He thanked Tom and Mark for having the book translated into English so that the stories could be read and shared.
He liked some of the sayings that Bedros used, such as "My mouth is a pistol, once a bullet is fired from there it doesn't come back." Azad says 'What a profound lesson for all of us, before we open our mouths in the spur of a moment.'
He was impressed by the way Bedros always looked at things positively. Even in the worst of times he always expected things to get better. He referred to the way Bedros would always pull himself back up after bad things happened. Azad had a friend who came to the U.S. with a wife, a mother and two daughters. He started from scratch, learned English and Spanish, lived a frugal life but always with a smile on his face.
Bedros, at his wife's urging, returned to Constantinople, but very quickly saw that he could never live there again. Azad had a similar feeling since he grew up in Syria, but then moved to the U.S. When he returns to Syria he is reminded of all of the restrictions and humiliations he had to live through while growing up there.
Azad thought that Bedros showed his true writing talent in the story "How Death Came to the Earth." (Note, this particular was actually written by Roupen Zartarian, but was translated into English by Bedros.) In his opinion, Bedros Keljik should be honored on the same level as Saroyan.
My opinion was that a lot of the stories were very good, but not necessarily all. Some of them could get boring. I quickly learned that nobody else agreed with me about the boring part.
Tom was only 10 years old when Bedros died, so he doesn't have too many memories of him. He said that Bedros spoke English with a distinct accent. Bedros' wife, Tom's grandmother, who grew up in Constantinople, spoke Armenian, Turkish and French as well as English and, as a child, he was never certain which language she was speaking in.
Bedros had learned English well enough that at one point, when living in Boston, he translated poetry that others had written from Armenian to English for Alice Stone Blackwell.
Tom thought that, even though his grandfather went through many ups and downs, he always kept his optimistic view of things. His stories give an image of his humanity and heart. He remained happy until he died.
After arriving in the U.S. from Ottoman Turkey, Bedros moved between New York City, Worcester, Boston, Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, bouncing back and forth between each of the cities a few times. He learned the oriental rug business during his travels and used what he had learned to start a rug business in St Paul, and then later another one in Minneapolis. When he moved back to the Twin Cities after the depression and started his store in Minneapolis, his brothers thought that he was competing with them and rejected him to some extent. Tom thought that that may be when he wrote the stories that ended up in his book.
After finding out about the original book, Tom searched for a copy. He found copies in just a couple of libraries elsewhere in the U.S. and then finally found a copy for sale on the web and bought it. It was being sold by a Russian-Armenian in Sweden and was dedicated to him and signed by Bedros!
Peter liked the book very much and especially noted the story about the man carrying rugs, who claimed that he had carried pianos. He compared Keljik to Saroyan by noting how Saroyan focuses on characters and is always very sentimental. Keljik focuses on characters but is not as sentimental. Peter also liked the story about the grandmother and her garden and the one about the man being fed by a Greek while he identifies all of the things that were being given to the Greeks by the Treaty of Sevres. Once the man admits that Trebizond is not being given to the Greeks, all of the food is taken away.
After hearing Peter's comment about the rug carrier, Azad said that Armenian porters did carry pianos.
Tom reminded us that Bedros brother, Krikor, wrote poetry. He thinks that other poems may be buried in Krikor's papers held by other relatives.
Tom talked about the story in which Bedros is trying to find work and is thrown into the street. He finally gets work as a window washer to earn food.
Several of us commented on the story of Baghdig. Tom explained that that was actually a story of Bedros' father, Tom's great grandfather. The great grandfather and his wife had moved to the U.S., but he decided that he didn't enjoy life here and wanted to go back home to the Ottoman Empire. While he was living in the U.S. he would send money back to the son of a friend, Baghdig, whose father had died. His wife died before they were able to leave, so he went back alone. Just before the start of the genocide, the great grandfather died and was buried. The Turks were suspicious that he hadn't really died and that weapons were actually hidden in the grave. They dug him back up and then just left his body lying exposed. Baghdig showed his commitment and love for his dead benefactor by risking his life to slip into the graveyard at night and rebury him.
At this point our discussion ended. We talked a little bit about which book to read for next month, but I'll leave that discussion for another email.
See you next month.
Leroy