The latest fashionable trend , in the odd Armenian world – Village of Asterixian, fragmented and spread around the entire planet -, is to open wide your mouth and your terrified eyes, and to hit your knees with your palms, crying that Armenia is being emptied from its population, because of massive emigration. 

The paradox, in this industry of lamentations, is that it is riding on some Grand Ideas and Big Principles which could easily compete with Sassountsi Tavit's Kourkig Tchalali, but at the same time, it pretends to be situated on the most realistic, clear-headed, close-to-the-people level. The contradiction is that, for those pathological weepers or professional cry-babies, said Ideas and Principles should especially exclude any notion of patriotism, thus considering that the latter is not only obsolete, old-fashioned and laughable, but downright irrelevant. 

In this false debate, this abstract - and intellectually fratricide - extreme fighting, for which the Armenians hold the secret recipe (just like the one for the magic potion), what is missing is a serene analysis, based on modern and contemporary, historic realities, on irrefutable facts. 

Lebanon, 1975 to 1986. An endless, infernal civil war. In the absence of an independent Armenia at that time, the Armenian community of that country – which had actually ceased to be one – decided, resolutely, to stay. 

Can anyone really pretend that the conditions in which the majority (in fact, the quasi-totality ) of the Armenians of Lebanon were living during that period, were better than those of the Armenians of Armenia, today... ?   No work, no school, shortage of everything  - often including even bread -, lack of water, gas and electricity, continuous shooting and bombings, kidnapping, torture, rape, confiscation of belongings, invasion of properties, looting, a totally dark and clogged future... They stayed.  The largest majority put up with it, endured, and knowingly decided that they shall not leave, they shall not run away, they shall not abandon. 

Why? Because they assessed that the survival and the future of the nation dictated it.  Considering the particular specificity of that community during that era, this was actually true, on several levels. 

Even today, the same phenomenon is happening with Syria. The logic is less true, since there is Armenia now. But it is the same idea, the same principle, the same profound conviction. Somewhere between stoicism and patriotism. When the sense of collective interest supersedes obtuse individualism. Despite horrifying conditions, ultimate and daily risks and dangers, many are hanging on, and are determined to stay. Even if that means losing their lives. 

By studying the subject of emigration from Armenia from this point of view, in the name of all those who, in every sense of the word, sacrificed their lives in the Diaspora, for the love of the nation,  and also on behalf of all those who have chosen to renounce a substantial portion of their tranquility, their comfort, their pleasures, their personal affairs, their business, their career,  their leisure and their financial success, in foreign countries where they can very well relax, enjoy their lives and prosper, without worrying about anything else,  and instead, have  dedicated and devoted themselves to the painful and laborious emergence of the Motherland, we are entitled to say to some of our compatriots of Armenia: enough with the whining already.  Love her, or leave her. 

Haytoug Chamlian, Montreal

June 06, 2013