{"id":9,"date":"2014-11-15T14:09:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T14:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.armeniandiaspora.bujournalism.info\/?page_id=9"},"modified":"2015-10-16T14:49:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T14:49:27","slug":"blog","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/blog\/","title":{"rendered":"My story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Through my\u00a0blog I want to explain my connection to this investigation and how my family are affected by the Armenian Diaspora. I will\u00a0also explore and discuss Armenian culture – historically and in the modern day. The following posts explain\u00a0my own story\u00a0in terms of the initial steps I took\u00a0to discover\u00a0my heritage as well as how my grandfather escaped death in 1915.\u00a0\u00a0I never met him\u00a0but I have been told\u00a0this\u00a0story by\u00a0his son, my father, and other relatives.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\"bannerblog\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the first 18 years of my life being an Armenian in Britain wasn\u2019t a very conscious part of my being. I grew up in Kent with my Essex born English mother and older sisters who had little desire to seek out their own non-English identity. My Israeli-Armenian father moved out when I was a baby and other than the fortnightly visits to his house, I was pretty oblivious to my foreign baggage.<\/p>\n

Growing up,\u00a0our\u00a0father would often try to encourage us\u00a0to visit Israel with him to meet\u00a0my Armenian\u00a0family there.<\/p>\n

Aged five I visited Israel,\u00a0meeting my father\u2019s\u00a0family for the first time, including\u00a0my grandmother. It would prove to be the first and last time I met her as\u00a0another 12 years would pass until I visited again.<\/p>\n

Returning for a two-week holiday when I was 17 I started to understand my roots a little more.<\/p>\n

Before starting university I\u00a0decided to travel to Israel and the wider Middle East for six months.<\/p>\n

During my travels I spent\u00a0Christmas, New Year and other holidays with my Israeli-Armenian family which had\u00a0a real impact on me and I began to seriously look into\u00a0the story of my family.\u00a0Slowly my\u00a0surname was becoming\u00a0more than just an interesting conversation point.<\/p>\n

These initial steps have paved the way for me to research my own background and roots. Through this project I hope to further that research and understanding, as well as telling the compelling story of the Armenian diaspora<\/a> who are littered round the globe in their millions.<\/p>\n\n

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Nerses Nerssessian was four when Ottoman troops massacred his family in front of him. One of twelve children, Nerses and his older sister, Anahid were the only survivors. They were just two of thousands of orphans following the events of 1915.<\/p>\n

The pair escaped death only because they had visited their Uncle\u2019s house and were returning when they saw their parents and siblings being slaughtered. After fleeing back to their Uncle, who was also later killed, they left the Ancestral homeland of Armenia escorted by Ottoman troops through the Syrian desert in the later named \u2018death marches\u2019.<\/p>\n

Later in life he told my father:<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople used to die, left, right and centre. We would do anything to survive. Anyone who couldn\u2019t carry on marching they just shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually he ended up in a orphanage in Greece and later Syria. The orphanage held roughly 500 Armenian children and many would die of malaria each day. \u00a0My grandfather, however had a trick, he would bathe\u00a0in a warm spring to keep himself healthy.<\/p>\n

Ten years after watching their parents die together, aged 19, Anahid\u00a0left him to travel to the newly formed Armenia Republic. They lost contact and he never saw her\u00a0again despite attempts to track her down.<\/p>\n

As a teenager he\u00a0trained as a tailor and would travel to Lebanon and Palestine, eventually becoming a master tailor in Haifa. He\u00a0escaped death once again during the Jewish insurgency in the 1930\u2019s.\u00a0He left the shop to deliver a suit, as he walked back to the shop it exploded. A Jewish attack on an Arab business, several of his colleagues died.<\/p>\n

Following the attack and as Palestine became Israel, he re-trained as a baker. Then in 1951 aged 40, he met my grandmother, a 20 year old Christian Arab born in Nazareth.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>

My grandmother who I met once when I was\u00a0four or five.<\/p><\/div>\n

They were married shortly after. Seven children followed in the next eleven years. He wanted twelve to replace his brothers and sisters\u00a0that had been killed in 1915 but my grandmother wouldn\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n

Nerses then\u00a0worked on\u00a0a farm in Rafat, near Jerusalem. The children were sent to Armenian boarding school in Jerusalem to save money.<\/p>\n

A few years\u00a0before\u00a0his\u00a0death they\u00a0moved back to Haifa and the Arab area of \u2018Wadi nissnass\u2019 where the family home remains today.<\/p>\n

He died while working as a security guard on a building site in the early hours of the morning.<\/p>\n

Of his father, my dad said:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a very well known, kind man. He never had much money, he spent it all on us. He was a loving father and always had sweets in his pocket. I remember he was quite skinny but very strong. And in the winter he would wear a\u00a0pom pom hat. I think the one thing he taught me is to always be kind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through my\u00a0blog I want to explain my connection to this investigation and how my family are affected by the Armenian Diaspora. I will\u00a0also explore and discuss Armenian culture – historically and in the modern day. The following posts explain\u00a0my own story\u00a0in terms of the initial steps I took\u00a0to discover\u00a0my heritage as well as how my … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"page","2":"publish","3":"author-joe","4":"post-9","6":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6Qxwr-9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":491,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions\/491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}