All the Light There Was by Kricorian Nancy

Author:Kricorian, Nancy [Kricorian, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literary, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780547939940
Google: qEMs0gv_FmYC
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2013-03-15T07:00:00+00:00

17

AT BREAKFAST, MY FATHER read aloud in his heavily accented French from a newspaper article announcing the arrest of Missak Manouchian. Manouchian, an Armenian poet, former factory worker, and Communist, was accused of being the ringleader of a terrorist network that had assassinated several high-ranking German officers, including a close personal friend of Hitler. According to the report, the members of this criminal gang had also blown up munitions trains and assaulted German troops in Paris and its suburbs, all within the space of seven months.

When he finished reading, my father commented in Armenian, “If an Armenian in France does something dishonorable, the French say he’s a dirty immigrant. If he does something good, the French take the credit and say he’s French. Whatever they decide to say about this one, the Armenian people have another martyr.”

We didn’t know Manouchian, but his wife, Melinée, who had lived in Belleville before the war, was friendly with Zaven’s parents. The Kacherians had met the husband several times at social events.

Soon after the arrests, my father’s mortal enemy, the radio commentator Jean Hérold-Paquis, began devoting his daily radio show to what was called the Manouchian affair. My mother and I often left the room during his broadcasts, which my father insisted on listening to despite the toll it took on his blood pressure. But during these episodes about Manouchian, I was glued to the radio as well—it was a rarity for Armenians to be referred to over the airwaves, and certainly never before had there been a mention of someone who was in our circle. My mother sat mutely in her corner as Hérold-Paquis filled the front room with insults about the dirty foreigner, the murderer without scruples, and the dark-skinned half-breed who had spit in the face of the country that had given him refuge. Death was too good for the subhuman métèque who had murdered the führer’s friend. Then Hérold-Paquis turned his hatred more broadly, railing against Manouchian’s gang of filthy Red and kike criminals and terrorists. In his opinion, they all had rotten faces and unpronounceable names and were a pox on the French nation. It was really quite a performance, I had to admit, but his venom and race-baiting made me feel ill. Clearly we Armenians were barely human, and it was only owing to a stroke of luck or a bit of oversight that we weren’t being subjected to the same grim regimen as the Jews and Communists.

My father’s face grew red as the litany of abuse went on until finally he burst out, “You mark my words, that Nazi puppet is going to end up in front of a firing squad or on the gallows. He talks shit, he will eat shit, and he will rot in shit by the time this is all over.”

I looked to my mother, expecting her to reprimand him, but she was staring ahead vacantly. It was unclear whether she had even registered either the radio tirade or my father’s scathing response.

The

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