Elia Kahvedjian's adept fingers could tease the strings of his banjo and
mandolin into seductive dances and renditions, just as skillfully and
felicitously as they could coax his treasured Hasselblad and Leica into
turning out irresistible photographic compositions.
A
legend
in
his
time,
the
mild-mannered
Armenian
photographer
of
Jerusalem,
survived
a
horrendous
ordeal
of
starvation,
torture
and
genocide,
and
a
run
in
with
nefarious
cannibals,
by
dint
of
sheer
guts,
determination
and
luck,
to
leave
an
indelible
imprint
on
the
cultural
history of the Holy City.
Until
today,
his
odyssey
from
the
killing
fields
of
Urfa,
the
erstwhile
mystical
outpost
on
the
ancient
Silk
Road,
through
the
death
marches
in
the
desert
of
Syria
that
became
drenched
in
Armenian
blood,
to
eventual
sanctuary
in
Jerusalem,
had
been
available
told
only in Armenian in a book published in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1995.
But
thanks
to
the
efforts
of
his
son
Harout,
urged
on
by
the
indefatigable
journalist
and
editor, Jirayr Tutunjian, we now have an English translation in our hands.
Despite
entreaties
from
his
children,
he
had
refused
to
publish
the
torrential
volume
of
photographs
he
had
taken
over
the
70
years
he
had
wielded
various
camera:
the
ones
he
began
with,
the
wieldy
post-Daguerreotype
contraptions
with
their
cumbersome
glass-plate
negatives, until he graduated to sample the delights and perceptions of German ingenuity.
"Not
now,"
he
would
tell
the
persistent
Harout.
"Maybe
later.
If
anything
happens
to
me,
you
know
exactly
where
the
negatives
are.
You
know
what
my
plan
is.
Maybe
someday
you
and
your
brother
[Kevork]
will
work
together
and
publish
[them]
in
a
book
form.
I
leave
these negatives to my children."
The
English
version
of
the
autobiography
of
the
man
dubbed
the
last
survivor
of
the
Armenian
genocide,
is
entitled
"From
the
Red
Desert
to
Jerusalem."
A
labor
of
love
and
devotion
from
Harout,
the
300-page
book
he
has
edited
and
published
is
a
gripping
narrative, lavishly embellished with choice specimens of the master's art.
This
is
a
harrowing
narrative,
with
its
depiction
of
the
depredation
of
predatory
barbarians: not easy fare for the squeamish.
It had to be told.
Harout's
mellifluous
translation
from
the
Armenian
into
English
makes
for
easeful
if
painful
reading,
his
sensitive
and
informative
colophons
indicative
of
the
veneration
in
which
he
holds
his
father,
and
the
great
pains
he
has
taken
to
put
the
tale
into
a
proper
perspective, with frequent forays into historical background.
His
portraiture
of
Elia
depicts
him
as
a
gentle,
affectionate
father
who
was
never
happier than when he was surrounded by his wife and children.
"He
always
had
time
for
us,
no
matter
what,
even
when
he
came
home
from
work,
after
punishingly long hours, tired and hungry, he would always play with us," Harout reminisces.
Strumming
his
banjo
or
mandolin,
he
would
forget
for
a
moment
the
pain
and
suffering
of the past.
Elia had lost his childhood when he was 5.
"His
eyes
had
seen
more
misery
than
anyone
could
imagine.
In
his
young
life,
he
had
become
witness
to
such
horror,
death
and
destruction,"
but
none
of
his
terrible
experiences
affected the great capacity for love that resided in his heart.
He
began
his
photographic
career
at
the
age
of
14,
working
long
hours,
six
days
a
week,
for
Jerusalem's
prestigious
Hanania
family.
But
eventually,
he
took
over
the
business
and
transformed it into a lodestone for camera and photo buffs.
Elia's
chronicles
inevitably
evoke
comparison
with
Franz
Werfel's
popular
book
about
the
Armenian
massacres,
"The
40
Days
of
Musa
Dagh."
In
painstaking
detail,
Elia
pays
tribute
to
the
heroic
resistance
of
the
Armenians
of
Urfa
who,
subjected
though
they
were
to
daily
and
sometimes
hourly
abuse
at
the
hands
of
the
Turks,
managed
to
hold
off
the
hordes
armed
with
ramshackle
weaponry
and
depleted
ammunition,
succeeding
in
resisting
repeated
onslaughts
and
even
springing
an
ambush
on
advancing
Turkish
troops
and
forcing
their
withdrawal, before being overwhelmed by superior forces and armor.
Elia
pulls
no
punches
and
uses
no
euphemisms:
the
Turks
were
demoniacally
determined
to eradicate the Armenian entity from their history.
Defeated
and
captured,
the
surviving
Armenians,
with
little
Elia
in
tow,
were
hustled
into
the
red
desert
of
Syria
along
the
notorious
Deir
Zor
trail
that
decimated
thousands.
Many
would
drop
down
by
the
road,
never
to
get
up
again.
And
Elia
would
live
to
witness
one
atrocity
after
another:
never
in
his
life
would
be
forget
the
sight
of
the
mounted
Turkish
soldier
as
he
swung
his
sabre
and
decapitated
a
little
hungry
boy
who
had
the
temerity
to
ask for some water.
"It
[the
head]
fell
with
a
dull
thud
on
the
ground,
rolled
several
times
and
came
to
a
stop a few paces from where we were," Elia recalls.
At
one
stage
during
his
odyssey,
Elia
was
picked
up
by
a
Kurd
who,
despite
treating
him
with unaccustomed kindness and gentleness, in turn sold him to an Assyrian Christian family.
Eventually,
Elia
would
end
up
in
an
orphanage,
before
anchoring
himself
in
the
final
stop, Jerusalem.
Elia
retired
in
1993,
after
his
fruitful
career
documenting
the
delights
and
despair
of
Jerusalem.
According
to
Harout,
he
"probably
took
more
photographs
of
Jerusalem
and
the
Holy
Land
than
anybody
else.
Several
of
his
memorable
pictures
ended
up
as
tourist
postcards.
Lionized
and
honored
in
his
adopted
new
home,
Elia
never
forgot
his
hometown
and
recalls how fond of life his community had been.
"They
enjoyed
social
gatherings
and
parties.
According
to
centuries
old
customs,
every
Saturday
evening
families
of
the
same
profession
or
trade
gather3ed
in
the
house
of
one
of
their colleagues and partied till the morning hours."
Urfa
was
no
provincial
backwater.
Harout
reminds
us
that
it
is
one
of
the
oldest
cities
in
the
Middle
East.
Located
in
southeastern
Turkey,
it
lies
between
the
Euphrates
and
the
Tigris
rivers,
at
a
distance
of
only
50
km
from
the
Syrian
border.
Down
the
centuries,
it
has
been
variously
called
Orfa,
Ourha
and
Edessa
and
had
once
been
the
capital
of
the
Hurrian-
Mitonian kingdoms.
But
the
years
have
not
been
kind
to
it,
its
demise
culminating
in
the
devastation
of
1915
that transmogrified its idyllic way of life into a quagmire of blood.
"From
the
Red
Desert
to
Jerusalem"
joins
the
growing
library
of
testimony
against
man's
inhumanity
to
man
weighed
against
the
courage
and
endurance
of
the
weak
and
disinherited
in the face of oppression, and the indomitable will to overcome.
And
one
man's
determination
to
have
the
grace
not
to
let
affliction
and
adversity
cripple
him,
but
to
dig
down
deep
into
his
soul
and
uncover
and
nurture
the
golden
core
of
genius
he has been endowed with, unclouded by the dark forces of evil.
The
publication
of
the
book
will
be
marked
with
a
special
event
to
be
held
in
Glendale,
California, on December 6.
(Nov 16, 2014)