By the time I was born I could only inherit the mere skeletons of a soul. The flesh had been stripped off the generations before me. With each ancient church destroyed, literature and art burned to ashes, language forbidden, and music and dances pirated by the imperialists that rode through the Caucuses using my ancestors as pawns in their power games.
The Assyrians, the Romans, the Mongols, the Arabs, the Persians, the Ottomans, the Turks, the Russians… you name it. I grew up with an inherent understanding that I was part of a “tribe of unimportant people,” as Pulitzer Prize winner William Saroyan put it when writing about his Armenian heritage. But I didn’t care. I always felt the strength of my ancestors when facing obstacles. It’s part of the reason why I made it to medical school with all the socioeconomic odds stacked against me.
But here I am. A new generation, another attempt at ethnic cleansing. I watch an ancient cultural landmark destroyed in real time. My identity shatters as I go see a patient with acute pancreatitis and write my H&P. I once asked my professor for an extension on an assignment because I had watched a church bombed and I will never forget the complete lack of sympathy on her face, as if it’s a normal occurrence in that part of the world — it’s not. As if I were pestering her. She didn’t understand!
I had seen images of Syrians on their knees paralyzed at the rubbles of their cultural monuments. I understood. It’s eternal heartbreak. It’s not an ex-boyfriend you get over but it’s the same profound epigastric ache that radiates to all the extremities. I had learned to navigate medicine carrying this heartbreak with me around the hospital. I write this in disbelief that it is 2024 and my skeletons are still being chipped away at. How much more can they take? How can they want the crumbs too?
Why can’t they just leave me be with my bare bones so I can carry myself to the next patient?
I think, how much more can my spirit handle? Thousands of beloved Khachkars that withstood centuries of natural disasters and war deliberately destroyed by hand. I think I’m the lucky one. I cannot imagine what my friends with missing family members are experiencing looking through videos of beheadings to see if their loved ones are in there. Seeing the graves of their families desecrated. Even the dead are not spared peace.
Yet, you wonder how there can be a complete lack of silence. The pinnacle of apathy is people complaining how annoying it is that Armenians keep talking about genocide. Exactly — why do I need to keep talking about it? Why does every generation need to relive the same nightmare? I would like nothing more than to stop sounding like a broken record.
Sometimes my patients are drunk, sometimes they’re high, sometimes they’re aggressive. My preceptor asks me if I’m okay, but I don’t know how to explain to him that they can never hurt me. Sometimes my peers ask me how I deal with tough preceptors and rude patients so well, and I don’t know what to say. I want to tell them I will trade my skeletons for your flesh. Unfortunately for me, there’s nothing to wound or scar and there’s only a few things strong enough to chip away at my bones.
I don’t know if this makes me a better doctor, but I know it makes me a caring and resilient one. For a moment each day, my heartbreak fleets when patients tell me I will be a great doctor or write down my name so they can come see me once I’m practicing. They don’t know it, but it’s my bony soul that brings kindness to their care.
Email Preny Karamian
Photos by Dickran Khodanian.
