In 2015 a kind of pilgrimage mixed with academic curiosity led me to Dersim, in what is now Turkish Kurdistan, the town from which my grandfather had fled 100 years ago, never to return. In fact, no member of my family ever managed to...
moreIn 2015 a kind of pilgrimage mixed with academic curiosity led me to Dersim, in what is now Turkish Kurdistan, the town from which my grandfather had fled 100 years ago, never to return. In fact, no member of my family ever managed to return until my trip. This article presents reflections on my encounters with people living there today, the search for my "grandfather house", and the transformations that my concept "of return" underwent. My grandfather never wrote and hardly ever spoke of his life before coming to Mexico in 1923; the definitive impediment caused by the experience of a trauma was so great that he had lain a heavy shroud over his life as a survivor of genocide. But he did recount small, unconnected vignettes, a fragmented version of his life before, during and after the massacre of his family in Hoshe, a hamlet across the river from Perri, a small town in the Charsanjak district in 1915, but now part of Dersim (Tunceli).
