Hold onto what you have with both hands

I recently bought an issue of Drum magazine and there was an interview with John Dolmayan, drummer for System Of A Down and Scars On Broadway. I was very interested in reading the article because I am a fan of his style of drums and percussion.

As I read through the article, John says something that struck me as very deep. He said, "when your a victim of genocide, you hold onto what you have with both hands."

He was referring to how Armenians families are close with one another because of the Armenian genocide of 1915, and ethnic cleansing that Turkey still denies to this very day.

I have several Armenian friends, and after reading this article, I thought about them and how they were affected by the genocide. The reality is (no offence), my Armenian fiends were not around in 1915, so they didn’t see what went on. But one does not need to see these events with their own eyes, when you can just look at your grandparents and see it in their eyes, and in their faces when they talk about it.

John Dolmayan left a war-torn Lebanon after a bullet went through his bedroom wall and pierced his pillow. It would have hit him had his parents not taken him from his bedroom. Just like his grandparents, John and his immediate family moved away from an environment that could have killed them all.

I find myself thinking about my Armenian brothers a lot, being that I am so far away from home. I may not be Armenian, but I have always had a bond with them. I have never had a family go through a genocide, but I feel their pain, although I will never really grasp what it means to be a victim of genocide. This might explain why I have this fascination with their culture, and why I continue to Youtube ‘Armenian Genocide’.

When I look at how my friends act and speak amongst themselves, it is very easy to see how they are affected by what occurred in 1915. There is a closeness among friends and family. There is a manner in which they speak, which binds them all together. You can take a thousand Armenians all over the world, and put them all in one room, and they will all tell you the same thing, "we are all that we have."

You don’t really hear that from other ethnic groups. Philippinos do not sit around saying "we don’t have anyone but ourselves", but then again, the Philippines never went through an ethnic cleansing.

Sure, the Spanish tried to breed us out, but theres a difference between breeding out a race and all out attempts to make another race extinct.

John Dolmayan’s comment about holding onto what you have with both hands is not the first time an Armenian has said that to me. My friend Kev told me something very similar a number of years back, while we were just hanging out at his apartment.

Most people would find it very uncomfortable to hang around a bunch of individuals who speak a language that they cannot understand. Maybe I am just used to it, but for me I feel very much at home. When they speak in their native tongue, I sit and listen. And when they laugh I laugh, but not because I understand, but because it is my natural reaction.

Does it really matter that I don’t understand half of what they are saying? Not really. They’ll explain it to me but that does not matter. The point is that there is laughter and friendship, and I have been accepted into that world, even though I am not "their kind". But I guarantee you one thing. If you ask any one of my friends, they will disagree and tell you that I am one of their kind. I was just born in a different place and to a different culture. But I am one of them and welcomed into their circle.

And that is what I hold onto with both hands.