Hostage Writing and Walking as Im/mobility in Hagop Mıntzuri’s 'Istanbul Memories (1897-1940)'

• In Event: Crossing Borders/Border Crossings: Im/Mobility in the Post-Ottoman Balkans

Abstract

This paper centers walking as a means of survival and a reminder of death—a paradoxical condition of im/mobility—in Istanbul Memories (1897–1940) penned by Hagop Mıntzuri, pivotal intellectual, prolific short story writer, columnist, school teacher, baker, secretarial clerk, fodder seller, charcoal seller, church caretaker, and genocide survivor. What were the conditions of possibility for continuing to walk and write when collective mobility for Armenians had been violently ruptured? Like the flâneur, the quintessential chronicler of urban life, Mintzouri roamed the city, offering minute observations of Constantinople’s daily rhythms, providing rich, textured depictions of how class, ethnicity, and nationality were inscribed and performed in the early 20th century. Unlike the flâneur, who enjoys anonymity and whose mobility affords artistic detachment and pleasure, Mintzouri could never assume an unmarked identity before the Genocide, which he barely survived; after the Genocide, his steps continued to carry an unbearable past into a present that refused to acknowledge it.

Author

• Ayse Parla, Boston U