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Posted on 6 Dec 2018 in Fiction |

ASHLEY KALAGIAN BLUNT My Name is Revenge. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

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A real act of terrorism in Sydney in the 1980s inspired Ashley Kalagian Blunt to write My Name is Revenge (a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award*). 

This work is in two parts – a novella, and an essay reflecting on the motivations and background of the fiction. The scene is set in the opening paragraphs of the novella

On 17 December 1980, at 9:47 am, two men shot the Turkish consul-general to Sydney and his bodyguard near the consul’s home in Vaucluse. The assassins aimed, fired and vanished.

Vrezh was home the morning of 17 December, across the harbour at 29 Whiting Street, Lane Cove, that quiet leafy Lower North Shore suburb.

The essay begins:

Though the characters are fictitious, I drew the plot from true events. The assassination of the Turkish consul-general and his bodyguard in Vaucluse, Sydney, in December 1980 was part of a series of international terrorist attacks. The Justice Commandoes of the Armenian Genocide were a real group. They and similar groups committed dozens of acts of terrorism across Europe, the Middle East and North America, as well as in Australia, from 1973 to the early 1990s.

In the ebook, the novella is presented first, the essay second, and it makes great sense to read them in that order, although re-reading the novella after the essay is also very worthwhile. Especially if your understanding of the Armenian Genocide is either one-sided or sketchy.

It may be that Australians of a certain age have a memory of some of the local terrorist attacks, but for those of us unaware of the Armenian and Turkish sides of the story, Blunt provides background in the essay:

The Armenian genocide began on 24 April 1915. That this is the day before Anzac Day isn’t a coincidence. The Ottoman government knew British forces were about to burst onto their shores, right near Constantinople, the capital. Feeling what historians have described as a ‘state of siege’, they decided to put into action the plans they’d laid to rid themselves of the Armenians. The Ottomans had come to see their Armenian citizens as an enemy, the reason their empire was crumbling. And so, during the long months of the Gallipoli offensive, some Anzac diggers were witness to the genocide.

In the novella, Blunt tells a story informed by the events that took place on Turkish soil in 1915, the effects of intergenerational trauma within families and communities, and how ‘radicalisation’ isn’t as straightforward as we sometimes assume.

Vrehz is a young man with a good heart caught up in a heartbreaking family situation. Living at home with his father, mother, brother Armen, and grandfather Arshag, the extended family is ‘scattered like ashes across the earth’:

As a child Vrezh had imagined his family one day reuniting in Armenia. What was this ‘Soviet Union’ that was so powerful it could prevent them from living in their homeland? Now he envied the uncomplicated naivety of childhood.

The family fracture is part of the cloud that hangs over Vrezh, but it is his grandfather’s personal experience that has the greatest impact:

‘Turkish soldiers. They tore apart everything in the house. Your grandfather stood with his mother and brother at the front door. He had a little brother, did you know that?’

There’s an atmosphere in the family and the house that pervades everyone’s thinking and actions. Vrezh is the youngest, a well-meaning, thoughtful boy who loves his grandfather and helps to care for him as he becomes increasingly frail, lost in a cloud of dementia and traumatic memories of the past. Vrezh’s older brother Armen is more actively aggressive about the Armenian community’s situation and, without Vrezh realising it, is the conduit by which Vrezh finds himself drawn into a terrorist plot. A plot that then becomes much bigger and more dangerous than he could have ever expected:

The concrete floor turned to jelly beneath Vrezh. Despite the autumn chill, his glasses slid along the sweat of his nose. All this time, he’d assumed they would plan another shooting.

The manner in which Blunt draws these comparisons – the willing and involved radical brother against the lost and somewhat naïve one – is remarkable. As is the portrait she builds of a very young boy trying desperately to understand why the pain his family experiences and the truth that they tell is so different from the version told in public, that the authorities are prepared to accept. It’s the small things that alienate Vrezh: being chided for lack of effort when a school project to create his family tree reveals huge gaps; the Holocaust presentation that creates tension at home; and the history project on a 20th-century historical figure that ends up with Vrehz being hauled into the principal’s office when the Turkish family of another child at the school objects to his choice of Mehmet Talaat (the architect of the Armenian genocide) and his assassin Tehlirian (an Armenian Revolutionary Federation member) as his project subjects.

Carefully and methodically Blunt builds a picture of a young boy who has had his past rejected, vilified, shut down and marginalised. His identity is chipped away every time somebody casually imposes an Anglicised version of his name. His past is never acknowledged yet he deals with it on a daily basis as he listens to the stories of his grandparents and sees his own attempts to cast light on it actively shut down. From there it makes sense that he turns to his brother and seeks a closer attachment, despite initial rebuffs. It also makes sense that the ‘mission’ that is part of his brother’s obsession isn’t something Vrehz necessarily questions, until it becomes a very stark choice. Nor does Vrehz ever wonder if maybe Armen is trying to protect him.

My Name is Revenge is a moving and informative piece of writing. Its history lesson is worthwhile, but even more so is its exploration of family, community and outsiders. It’s about the way that denial doesn’t solve a thing in life, and acknowledgement of the past is the very least that we owe our forebears. It also provides a salutary lesson in how to avoid so-called ‘radicalisation’ of at least some potential terrorists, and in this climate of constant blame, fear, demonisation and increasing marginalisation, shows very clearly that none of those things points to a good way to go.

* All the finalists in the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award are published electronically as part of Spineless Wonders’ Capsule Collections platform, which can be found at //www.shortaustralianstories.com.au

Ashley Kalagian Blunt My Name is Revenge: A novella and reflective essay Spineless Wonders 2018 ebook 68pp $4.99

Karen Chisholm blogs from //www.austcrimefiction.org, where she posts book reviews well as author biographies.

You can buy My Name is Revenge from Booktopia here.

To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.