By Arpie Dadoyan, New Jersey, 21 January 2009
Friends of Hrant: Voices in Dialogue are a group of Armenians, Turks and Kurds with roots in Anatolia who have come together to share their deep love and respect for Hrant Dink and to carry on his legacy and dream. On January 17 in Ottawa, Canada, they put together an evening commemorating the second anniversary of Hrant Dink’s senseless killing and invited the public to attend the event.
By Arpie Dadoyan, New Jersey, 21 January 2009
Friends of Hrant: Voices in Dialogue are a group of Armenians, Turks and Kurds with roots in Anatolia who have come together to share their deep love and respect for Hrant Dink and to carry on his legacy and dream. On January 17 in Ottawa, Canada, they put together an evening commemorating the second anniversary of Hrant Dink’s senseless killing and invited the public to attend the event.
For this occasion, I drove to Montréal from New Jersey taking the 87 Thruway on to Highway 15 in Canada and from there five of us Armenians drove to Ottawa on Autoroute 417, thus bypassing the ways of politics, governments, hate, ignorance, revenge and demands. The experience was liberating. Understanding open arms of non-Armenians greeted us upon arrival and welcomed us in peace and appreciation.
Despite the fact that non-Armenians outnumbered us 5 to 1, from then on and throughout the event, the evening brought us closer to each other via the tool called compassionate intelligence. We, the Armenians were the endangered species for them. They had worked so hard and slept so little to let one more Armenian know that they understood our plight. They knew. There were tears, hugs and laughter, smiles of understanding and discoveries, language and name comparisons, geographical locations of ancestors were noted. At one point I had to come to terms with the sense that the grandparents of the people I was talking to might have been the neighbors of my grandparents.
At times we forgot why we were there only to later realize that it is Hrant Dink who brought us together. His vision was being realized as we were honoring and remembering him. He was among us and we were all him.
In Beirut, where I was born, the Kurds used to live in huts behind a whole circle of buildings in our neighborhood. They always wore their traditional costumes and before television they were our only source of entertainment and education in matters ethnic. The husbands sold vegetables on carriages in the mornings and were oh so kind to all the Armenian housewives who kept bartering for pennies.
But I had never met a “Turk.”

VICTOR JARA

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