A proud Armenian…
It is just a joke. Has it ever happened? I have no idea. Most probably it was the product of a cheeky story teller. Once upon a time there was a sultan. He had a very mighty army and it was the era of conquest. Booty from war filled the treasury up to the top limit. With plenty of cash, no social problems at home and no external threat, the mighty sultan started to become bored. What should he do to entertain himself? Many people who failed to entertain the sultan perished; heads rolled down the imperial palace. One day, the frustrated sultan told his clown “Tell me such a joke that the apology of which will be worse than the joke!”
The chief clown was a small guy with nice hair, as if he had an implant. He was so successful at his job that according to the talk of the town, he was hiding his immense treasure in shoeboxes.
The task was a very serious one. His head was at risk. The clown thought about the issue extensively and eventually went back to the sultan’s court with a bright idea. “My sultan,” he said, “shall we walk a little bit in the rose garden?”
Viziers were in charge of state affairs. The war was over and he could not yet concoct a reason to start a new war. The treasury was full anyhow. He was bored. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said and slowly climbed down the stairs to the palace’s luxurious rose garden. After touring the garden for a while, the sultan and the clown were returning and all of a sudden, the clown pinched the sultan’s back.
“How dare you?” the sultan roared. “Is your head uneasy on your shoulders?” With a large smile on his face the clown replied back “Sorry my sultan, I mistook you for the mother queen!” The sultan was perplexed. He would yell at the clown, but he did exactly what he ordered him to do: A joke the apology of which would be worse than the joke… The clown received a loaded bahsish…
One of the presidential candidates was talking on television. The interviewer acting the role of a journalist, was asking the questions he was given by the “Public Diplomacy Department,” created as a prelude to moving a while later to a grotesque white palace, the “AK Saray” for the construction of which a forest was devastated.
The candidate was complaining that his opponents were constantly accusing him of being arrogant. “They complain that I was arrogant because I called one an Alevi and the other a Yazidi … So what? They have been saying many things about me … They claimed I was Georgian … Some said something even far worse … Sorry to say, but some even came forth with an ugly claim that I was an Armenian … From my grandfather down, we have been Turks … That’s what I was raised with…”
Can it be “worse” for anyone to be a Greek, Armenian, Kurd or Turk? What relevance is there for nationality or ethnicity? For a civilized mentality aware of the fact that in this open air brothel, where thousands of ethnicities, cultures, belief groups came, settled and dissolved in the big melting pot, Anatolia, or left their residue and vanished for good or exterminated after being subjected to some unfortunate, shameful undertakings of the mentality that considered being called an Armenian as something horrible.
Turkey’s Armenian community, the few remaining from one of the several ancestral peoples of this land, was hurt with the sultan’s statement in the making. I feel as if I am a proud Armenian today.
p.s. Vote on Sunday!
