Michael Joseph Martin is reluctant to accept he will be the last in a long line of Armenians to make a major contribution to the history of Bangladesh.
Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, was once home to thousands of Armenians who grew to dominate the city’s trade and business life. But Martin, aged in his 70s, is now the only one left.
“When I die, maybe one of my three daughters will fly in from Canada to keep our presence here alive,” Martin said hopefully, speaking broken Bengali with a thick accent. “Or perhaps other Armenians will come from somewhere else.”
PHOTO: AFP
Martin came to Dhaka in 1942, following in the footsteps of his father who had settled in the region decades earlier.
They joined an Armenian community in Bangladesh dating back to the 16th century, but now Martin worries about who will look after the large Armenian church in the city’s old quarter.
“This is a blessed place and God won’t leave it unprotected and uncared for,” he said of the Church of Holy Resurrection, which was built in 1781 in the Armenian district.
Martin — whose full name is Mikel Housep Martirossian — looks after the church and its graveyard where 400 Armenians are buried, including his wife who died three years ago.
When their children left the country Martin became the sole remaining Armenian in Dhaka. He now lives alone in an enormous mansion in the church grounds.
“When I walk, sometimes I feel spirits moving around. These are the spirits of my ancestors. They were noble men and women, now resting in peace,” Martin said.
Armenians, persecuted by Turks and Persians, were embraced in what is now Bangladesh first by the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries and then by the British.
Fluent in Persian — the court language of the Mughals and the first half of the British empire in India — Armenians were commonly lawyers, merchants and officials holding senior public positions.
They were also devout Christians who built some of the most beautiful churches in the Indian subcontinent.
“Their numbers fluctuated with the prospects in trading in Dhaka,” said Muntasir Mamun, a historian at Dhaka University.
“Sometimes there were several thousand Armenians trading in the Bengal region. They were always an important community in Dhaka and dominated the country’s trading,” he said.
The decline came gradually after the British left India and the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 with Dhaka becoming the capital of East Pakistan and then of Bangladesh after it gained independence in 1971.
These days, the Armenian Church holds only occasional services, with a Catholic priest from a nearby seminary coming in to lead prayers at Christmas.
Martin said the once-busy social scene came to a halt after the last Orthodox priest left in the late 1960s, but he is determined to ensure the church’s legacy endures.
“Every Sunday was a day of festival for us. Almost every Armenian would attend the service, no matter how big he was in social position. The church was the center of all activities,” he said.
“I’ve seen bad days before, but we always bounced back. I am sure Armenians will come back here for trade and business. I will then rest in peace beside my wife,” he said.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS