Armenian writer Mıgırdiç Margosyan passes away in İstanbul

Photo: Agos

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Armenian author Mıgırdiç Margosyan passed away on Saturday (April 2) at the age of 84 on İstanbul's Büyükada island.

The mayor of the Princes' Islands, Erdem Gül, announced the author's passing on Twitter. "An Armenian of Diyarbakır... One who describes the wealth of these lands in the most beautiful language of our literature... The author of the great book, 'Tell Me Magros, Where Are You From?' A person of Büyükada... We have lost Mıgırdiç Margosyan. We are so sorry."

Margosyan, one of the founders of Aras Publishing House, wrote column articles for Agos, a weekly newspaper in Turkish and Armenian. He was a columnist for daily Evrensel before his death.

The publishing house also released a statement, describing Margosyan as "our elder, our founder and our master." He was the "last chain of the literary tradition," it said.

Margosyan will be laid to rest on Thursday (April 7) at the Şişli Armenian Cemetery following a funeral ceremony at the Kumkapı Patriarchate Church at 2 a.m.

"I couldn't recognize my street"

Interviewed by bianet following the 2015-2016 conflict in the country's Kurdish-majority eastern and southeastern regions, Margosyan said he couldn't recognize the street named after him.

Not only was his name was taken down from the street, but it was replaced with razed, empty land as a result of the clashes, which lasted 103 days.

"Can you find your house if you go to this street of which you know every corner, every nook and cranny? It is impossible because nothing is left. It turned into a football field," he had said.

Part of an interview he gave to the Yemek ve Kültür (Food and Culture) magazine in 2008 about one of his short stories, Ekmek, Ekmek, Ekmek (Bread, Bread, Bread), was published on bianet as well.

"My father, perhaps because of the habit he brought from Diyarbakır, was very fond of bread. Because, in our house, and not in our house but in all houses of the Neighborhood of Giaours — in the houses of Muslims, Jews, Assyrians/Syriacs and Chaldeand —  bread was not usually bought from bakeries. First of all, it was expensive. Secondly, you always had to keep around some bread.

"... Perhaps because of this habit, my father would always come home with one or two loaves of bread after we moved to İstanbul, without thinking about whether there was bread in home or not.

"It wasn't important if the bread was stale. "No, son. Bread should never be missing at home," he would say. And my younger son, Şant, whose name is Yıldırım in Turkish, for whom I wrote the story 'Bread, Bread, Bread' while waiting for his birth, brings bread every time he comes home, perhaps out of a habit inherited from his grandfather."

About Mıgırdiç Margosyan

Writer and novelist. He was born in Diyarbakır's Hançepek Neighborhood (The Neighborhood of Giaours) on December 23, 1938.

He graduated from the Philosophy Department of İstanbul University Faculty of Literature. Between 1966 and 1972, he was the manager and a teacher of philosophy, psychology and Armenian language and literature at the Surp Haç Tıbrevank Armenian Church in Üsküdar, İstanbul.

Later, he quit teaching and went into business. He continued his literary works without interruption.

Some of the Armenian stories he wrote for Marmara newspaper were made into a book entitled "Mer Ayt Goğmerı" (Our Neighborhood) in 1984. With this book, he was granted the Eliz Kavukçuyan Literary Award in Paris in 1988.

Aras Publishing House published several other books by Margosyan. Compilations of his articles for Evrensel and Agos were also published as books.

His last book, The Journal of God (Tanrı'nın Syir Defteri), was published in 2016. (RT/VK)