Ottoman Times; Armenian Timemakers

In previous blogs and published books I have written about my constant struggle in dealing with the concept of time. I am an amateur in understanding time as a dimension where past, present and future events parade in an orderly manner. Yet I have read Kant, understood Newtonian Time where events occur in a sequence, and tried to understand the dimensionality and bending properties of time as Einstein saw them.

I have given time, had time, shared time, lost time, celebrated time, sacrificed time, and let time pass by. But I had not felt time. Till a couple of days ago when I found an old pocket watch in a box where my mother’s few belongings were kept.

It was an absolute feeling—I was holding time and through that tactile action traveling back a century.

… I had seen that watch as a kid. My mother said that it was a watch my grandfather kept with him when he escaped the Ottoman oppression in the early 1900’s. I had seen that pocket watch but had not opened it. Because it was not a watch but a memory of my grandfather.

A couple of days ago, when I found it in the box, I put it in my palm and wondered what was inside. Was there an actual watch between these tarnished silver covers? Could I even open it without everything falling apart? After all, I believe that this watch has not been played with for a century.

But first I looked at it closely. Heavy, and with that old silver patina. A handmade silver chain clamped to its loop, with a winding key at the end. The key itself was anachronistic. No, it was the very form that described the time travel I was about to embark upon. A handmade key to wind a handmade watch. To hand wind time.

But time had stopped a century ago. Can I, by holding this key between my index and thumb rewind time? Will it be Ottoman time? Armenian genocide time? Exodus through the Syrian Desert time? Or will it be just stopped time that should remain untouched?

The case is covered with intricate etchings, so is the rim of the watch. Still, I am not sure if there is a watch in it. Not sure my mother knew either. She was not a mechanically-inclined woman and I doubt it that she tried to open the covers.

But I am, and as the grandson of the man who I was told carried this watch with him from Konya to Aleppo, then to Beirut, I want to open the watch.

So I did.

Without hesitation, the spring under the cover relaxed and the exquisite face of a pocket watch appeared! The dials are delicate and still there; there is a seconds dial as well. The hours are depicted in symbols I had not seen before. And in the upper quadrant, a floral design arches over letters too small to read.

As a photographer used to looking at film strips under a loupe, I unscrewed the lens from my camera, and looked through the front glass. That’s how a lens becomes a loupe.  And I froze. It read:

                                        “Pouldjian Djezvedjian & Arabian, Constantinople”

Three Armenian names, and the Ottoman era name of Istanbul.  I looked again. Yes, the letters were clear, as if written yesterday. Time had stopped. And I was holding it in my hand.

Then I looked, with my makeshift loupe, inside the front cover. Intricate stamped letters read “Bellevue”. There was a lion, numbers and other symbols.

…Should I open the back? Could it have my grandfather’s name engraved? What if it has another person’s name? In such a case the entire history of this watch will be rejected. Or it would open a new chapter of wondering about how my grandfather obtained it. 

Should I open the back?

I did. With a bit of tremor, I looked inside the back cover through my lens. No name, just additional numbers. And the silver, protected for a century from exposure was shiny as silver is.  I was relieved. …

Two openings in the back with tiny rods in them. I knew one was to set the dials, the other to wind. I had to do it.

… I do not know if time is a measure or a feeling. I do not understand the power of that little key and the tension I felt on the spring. What I know is that within one rotation, that stopped time became alive, became vocal, and with the predictability of mechanical watches, started ticking. I turned the watch around to see if the dials were moving. They were, although I was not sure if it was an illusion associated with my trembling hand.

There I was, listening to a century old watch just as my grandfather had. His times were immeasurably harder than mine; he challenged destiny and walked through the Syrian Desert. He survived the journey and started a new life. And today, his grandson, at the autumn of his life, was holding that stopped time, gave it new life and in a small way, rejected letting his grandfather's, Karnig Kazandjian born in Konya, story go silent.

… Once my nerves calmed down, I opened the third “coquille” (pocket watch cover in French) to see the mechanism. All was there and ticking beautifully. Under my loupe I could again read “Bellevue” and then all around the casing engravings in Arabic letter. I know it is Turkish, as in that era they used the Arabic alphabet.

My curiosity could not be satisfied without some search on the Internet. I found that these three Armenians were famous watchmakers around 1900. They used known watchmakers’ mechanisms (such as Longines) to build their own watches. And these watches were exquisite jewelry as well since they were jewelers and watchmakers. I found some of their watches auctioned on Christie’s site in London; others displayed in museums.

But most importantly, I found a historic document about Djezvedjian, one of the watchmakers, written in Armenian, French and Turkish. Now the loop was closed.

July 28, 2014

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

PS/ The watch is working like a charm and keeping time with less than a minute/day delay. And it is in the space of that slow minute that I find my daily moment of history, identity, and evasion from the present.

Dignity and a Wedding Ring

A week ago, a friend and professor of public health sent me a note after reading my essay on “Elegance and Harmony”¹. He suggested that the third dimension could have been “Dignity” since I was discussing harmony as a state of health. He further stressed that there is growing evidence that, for populations living in zones of conflict and economic distress, the feeling of dignity is correlated with their state of health, in a direct way.

To learn more about the moral and philosophical dimensions of dignity, I got hold of a well respected book by Michael Rosen entitled “Dignity: Its History and Meaning”². I am halfway through its reading while our world seems to have become more dangerous with the downing of the Malaysian Airline’s MH 17. I have been following the news like anyone else, and today I learned that there has been theft at the crash site, such as taking a wedding ring found on the site. And as I watched the somber procession of funeral hearse cars in Eindhoven, the reporters kept using the term “dignity” for how the Dutch were treating the victims of the downed Malaysian airline.

And, suddenly a number of events from my own experiences came out of hiding in my memory compartments and forgotten brain-files to help me understand dignity in perhaps a more tangible way.

… It was in the late 1990 when I started a project with the Isala Kliniken hospital in Zwolle, the Netherlands. It is a bucolic town an hour north of Eindhoven and the drive through the countryside perfectly inviting. During my meetings with the hospital staff, their dedication for respecting patient dignity was frequently mentioned.  “Dignity is part of quality and healing” I was told.

One evening, the medical director noticing my interest in learning more about the relationship of quality of care and dignity, explained it as such:

“Dignity is not for the living alone, but also for the memory of the deceased. See, here in Zwolle we have the only company in the world where precious metals, and hip and knee implants are collected from crematoria and recycled. In other countries they either bury the deceased with these or collect and sell these metals by separating them from the ashes. In fact, German law does not consider taking cold fillings and gold crowns stealing, because according to the law, they do not belong to anybody anymore after cremation. Here, OrthoMetals collects the gold, steel and titanium, recycles them, and sells them. But all proceeds go to charity. In some way, it is the dignity of the deceased that is celebrated by helping others with the proceeds.”

… As I watched the funeral hearse cars in Eindhoven, listened to the story of wedding rings stolen at the crash site and thought more about and the correlation between dignity and health, the definition of post-mortem dignity became even more intriguing.  There is a moral arc that bends differently with the times. But it always bends. We often think of dignity when it lacks, such as when people do not receive the respect, are not treated with dignity, or are humiliated and hence all dignity taken from them.

But how do we define dignity when it exists, rather than when it lacks?

Rosen has an ingenious formulation in his book. He proposes that there is a gap between respect for rights, and a "right to respect”.  Specifically, his thesis is that the respect for rights is what we commonly associate dignity to mean; while the right to respect is a societal morality. Well, at least that is how I understood it. If correct, then how do we acquire that “right to respect”?

It cannot be by force or by fiat.  Could it be a human duty toward other humans as proposed by Kant? Or is it a manifestation of human consciousness as Aristotle stated "Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them."

… When a human body is cremated in a crematorium or after a crashed airline, how would a wedding ring found in the crash site teach us about dignity?

¹http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/06/elegance-and-harmony.html

²Michael Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning, Harvard University Press, 2012, 176 pp.

July 24, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014

I took this picture in Auschwitz, Poland. 

Qing

I have an old suitcase that I use for storage of notes I take during travel.  I am old-fashioned: on trips I write on paper and yes, I use a pen! Somehow it helps me think before I write, just like an old mechanical camera helps me frame what I see before depressing the shutter. It is all about becoming one with the experience rather than impersonally, like typing on a laptop or using a digital “image maker”, record impressions and store them in the Cloud.

This morning, I needed that suitcase as a last resort for transporting household materials. So, dusted it off and proceeded to emptying the content. A lot of handwritten papers for which I did not have time to read so stored them in a duffle bag. But one notepad got my attention. It s pages had chronicles from a trip to Taiwan, especially from a visit to its first capital Tainan.   It read “September 24, 2001.” I took it out of the pile of papers and read the first line.

“qing chu yú lán er sheng yú lán” I had transcribed phonetically, and in parenthesis wrote “A student could surpass his teacher just as the Qing can surpass its color identity.”

Hmm.  Thirteen years later I had no recollection of this saying but vividly remembered my first visit to Tainan which I visited since I was invited as an educator. Indeed, Tainan’s Confucian Temple was Taiwan’s first official school built by Koxinga’s son in 1666. It is also among the oldest Confucius temples and rich in inscribed Confucius ‘philosophical legacy and his teachings. 

I recall the inscription above the door of one its sections “Anyone can be taught”, but vaguely recall what Qing represented.  So I read more through my notes.

“Qing is not a color but the essence of color. It can be green, gray, blue or black. I do not know of an equivalent word or concept in the languages I understand.” I reread a couple of times what I had written and thought “well, that is helpful!’

Then, and to my surprise, I started recalling a conversation about Qing with the wife of Tainan’s hospital administrator’s wife who was my guide on tour. Qing associated with another color can take on a philosophical or descriptive meaning. A few lines later I had written “Seeing my excitement about the temple and Confucius, she said that I was Qing-Green meaning very youthful.

… I stopped reading and thought about the essay I had written about the color black^*. I understand what black represent both as a photographer and a student of sociology and cultural diversity. Black is the deepest of colors, it is the color of the universe even when illuminated by zillions of stars, and it is the color we Westerners rarely associate with joy and beatitude. But black, or any other color, do not need an “identity adjuster” like Qing to acquire a new meaning.

However, it may be that adding black (or any other color) to a word changes the meaning and message of the word. Consider “Black Friday”, “Blackmailing”, “White lie”, “Red handed”, “Blue murder”… While languages used in the West may not have Qing, do we still associate color to feelings, reactions, and events the same way? And when we go a bit deeper than the syntax and mode of expression, do we describe our surroundings and especially our inner selves with the same fears, love and willingness to celebrate discoveries and virtues?

I am not even close to understanding the introduction to Chinese culture, but I fancy to think that indeed “anyone can be taught” and that my curiosity to learn is a good first step….

PS/ As I was hopping, a colleague from China wrote back with additional clarification-- many thanks! Here is her note:
"Qing, it is the word we use for the color of indigo. As you know a rainbow is composed of seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. You can see the indigo comes from blue but darker than blue. It means "surpass". So, "Qing chu yu lan sheng yu lan" means something surpasses its matrix. A child might be much more excellent than his/her parents; the young generation is more capable than their ancestors, and a student could surpass his/her teachers, etc. 

Qing, also means "young". In Chinese, the youth is "Qing Chun (Chun means spring)", Youth, is the spring of life if we chronically define our life periods by seasons. Childhood is the early spring. The color of baby green vegetables is "Qing"; in this case, it is fresh green."

* http://vahezen.blogspot.com/2014/07/black-sheep-and-doctors-white-coat.html

July 12, 2014 (original blog) and July 14, 2014 (revised page)

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Synthetic

When I came back

My empty hands

Were of the travel

Promising

          I pushed the panel

          Of a green window in peace

          Of a doorway to my self

          And the panel allowed the push

          There was no ladder

          No descent or flight

          In my empty hands

          All I found was a dance

When I came back

I clapped my hands of the empty

To give that awaiting dance

Its harmony

July 7, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Black Sheep and the Doctor’s White Coat

“Why do doctors still wear the white coat?” a student wrote to me. “In Denmark and in England we rarely see the white coat anymore.”

For a second I recalled the "The Gross Clinic" painting by Thomas Eakins, where Dr. Gross is performing orthopaedic surgery at the Jefferson Medical College's amphitheater in Philadelphia. He and his assistants were all dressed in black formal attire.

I knew the white coat was adopted a century or so ago, but why did western physician, and nurses, wear black? I had always thought that before the understanding of bacteria and modes of contamination, a patient sought medical advice as last resort. In fact before Lister and the understanding of antisepsis, an encounter with a physician was bad for one’s health; and hospitals were where people went to die. Was it the somber nature of this non-scientific profession that justified the black garb?

Thinking about this question I realized that there was a bigger question I had not posed before: what is the significance of the color black in human history? Sure, that was a big question, but at least I could start addressing my curiosity.

As a Westerner, the first impressions I have of the color black are associated with funerals and mourning. When I was a kid, the average life expectancy for a male was late 50's, so I was surrounded with widows wearing black, sometimes 2 years after the death of their husbands, but often for the rest of their lives. They mourned for the rest of their days and I do not remember any widow remarrying, although I am sure there were.

But black is not the colour of funerals and of mourning. In India it is brown that is worn at funerals and widows in India are expected to wear white for the rest of their lives. In parts of the Middle East White is also the colour of mourning, although black is always associated with death. But for Egyptians, yellow and gold are associated with mourning mostly based on the historic tradition of belief in afterlife and the riches the dead supposed to take with them for a comfortable eternity! Look at the color paintings on the sarcophagus and mummies’ masks. In Mexico they mourn the departed in yellow and gold as well. Finally it is blue that dominates the mourning colours in Korea, whereas purple is the popular funeral and mourning colour in Thailand and Brasil.

So, perhaps there is a difference in how people express their sadness but not in how they describe death and evil?

Black on the colour spectrum is defined as the result of the absence of or complete absorption of light.  And isn’t light a requisite for, even synonymous with life? Not always, I learned. Indeed, in ancient Egypt black was the color of the rich black soil flooded by the Nile. Perhaps more striking is the fact that black was the colour of Anubis, the god of the underworld, who took the form of a black jackal, and offered protection against evil to the dead. But the ancients did not share the same attitude vis à vis this darkest of colours: for the ancient Greeks, black was the colour of the underworld, separated from the world of the living by the river Acheron, whose water was black.

I was perplexed and totally absorbed by my search. Dogmatic thinking, pain, sorrow and hope expressed through the colour black but often interpreted differently. No unifying traits that I could find so far across cultures and time. But what about social movements?

Perhaps it is natural to think about wars and violent events when one first thinks about social movements and change. The first colour-associated war imagery that came to my mind was the Bolshevik Red Army during the Russian Civil war. But I was surprised to learn that there were also a Black Army and a White Army fighting during that civil war! Then I progressed to the fascist movement and the Blackshirts in Italy (camicie nere) organized by Mussolini. Then the black uniform of the Nazi Party paramilitary, the SS (Schutzstaffe). Then the black flags of pirates, and more contemporaneous social and military movements.

Yet, for a photographer who treasures B&W photography as a candid mode of expression, I felt more comfortable thinking about black colour in the arts and fashion. The masculine black kimono in Japan, the Chinese brush painting using the darkest of the black inks made of soot and animal glue, of course the most recent impact on fashion by Coco Chanel and her 1926 “little black dress”!

Is it the simplicity and purity of lines that black provides more than any other colour? Could it be that it is in the arts and fashion where black is universally associated with that purity? After 40 years of B&W photography, I know it is for me. And that I still fancy a woman in that little black dress….

… Back to the doctor’s white coat. An article published in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, Mark S. Hochberg proposes that “the foundation of all professional societies is candor or truth“, and that the word candor is derived from the Latin candidus which means white. Interestingly he explains that “the term "candidate" comes from the fact that Romans seeking public office wore the white togas. The depiction of justice over the millennia has been a statue or painting of an individual clothed in white. The converse, of course, is evil or death depicted in black.”

Candor or truth.  Candidus or veritas. But would Edith Piaf show her candor and true feelings if she wore white on stage? Or rose? How about imagining clergy in white?  Well, the Pope does wear white, and sometimes red.  And why do Supreme Court (and all) judges wear black when Lady Justice is never shown wearing a black toga?

So I wrote back to the young woman who asked the question. “When physicians in Denmark and England do not wear the white coat it probably helps them listen to the patients, and hear them better.”

July 3, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

About the picture: I took this picture of the “little black dress” in a church.