André Manoukian
His father named him Antranig in memory of the Manoukian tribe patriarch, who fought as a fedayi under the renowned General Antranig. He goes by his second name, André, but his fans affectionately call their favorite TV presenter “Dédé.” His disarming smile, five o’clock shadow, sparkling green eyes and a penchant for provocations have helped this extraordinary pianist and composer secure a lasting legacy in the history of French media. Already a grandfather at 58, André Manoukian spends his time between his estate in Chamonix and Paris, where he works. By blood he is 100 percent Armenian, minus the melancholy.
However, he has no time for communitarianism, and that’s because he hails from the post-1968 libertarian generation. Back in those days, André chose his tribe among the baba-cool (hippie) leftists. His Armenian side he chanced upon through jazz: the year 2007 was the year of Armenia in France, and thanks to his fame as presenter of the “Nouvelle Star” TV show (the French equivalent of “American Idol”) Manoukian was invited to partake in a show about the Armenian Diaspora. He was hard-pressed when the producer asked him to play something Armenian, but a distant memory of a song his grandmother Haïganouche used to sing resurfaced and he improvised it on the piano – bits of melancholy, spleen and blues. Something long-lost but indestructible had come forth in André, giving birth to his “Inkala” jazz album inspired by Armenian tunes.
Antranig headed to Ottoman Turkey and scoured Anatolia in search of his family, passing himself for a Greek. However, his new identity did not serve him long, and he was soon arrested in Konya. “Every day, a guard came and took two the prisoners to help in kitchen, and the men never came back…” Manoukian recalls. This made Antranig so afraid for his life that he escaped once again and managed to join General Antranig’s Armenian fighters in the far east of the empire. With the general’s fighters forced to retreat to Eastern Armenia, Antranig ended up back in Russia once again.
Meanwhile, his children and his wife Haïganouche, along with her parents and her seven sisters, had been deported from their hometown.
With the exception of Haïganouche and her sisters, everyone soon perished in the death marches to Syrian deserts. Haïganouche and her sisters used all kinds of strategies in order to survive: Haïganouche covered her sisters’ faces with mud to protect them. She narrowly escaped rape herself, pretending to be mad to scare the attackers away. They arrived in Deir ez-Zor at the end of World War I and soon found refuge in Bulgaria with help from the Red Cross. Antranig’s uncle, Agop, already lived there.
In Russia, Antranig saw one of the many notices posted by the Red Cross, stating: “Agop Manoukian seeks members of his family.” He went to Bulgaria, found his family and moved them back to Turkey. Together they settled in Smyrna (now Izmir), where he opened a tailor’s shop. Business flourished with as many as 35 sewing machines at his disposal. His son Arthur was born in 1920.
Life had gone back to normal, but not for long. As the Greco-Turkish war raged on, Antranig once again put on his soldier’s uniform. In September 1922, Turkish General Mustafa Kemal’s forces captured the city and set Armenian and Greek quarters on fire. The Manoukian family, separated from Antranig, narrowly escaped on a boat. Arthur, then three years old, still remembers how, amid the flames, the family embarked on a French ship leaving for Greece.
Demobilized, Antranig again went looking for his family. He found out from the Red Cross that his wife, son and sisters-in-law were in Greece, at a refugee camp in Larissa. One day, as the family sat at the dinner table, little Arthur saw the door open. A tall man with a thick moustache, wearing a big Russian-style jacket and an Astrakhan hat, came in.
Everyone was frightened: Haïganouche screamed, the sisters ran to the back of the hut and cried. That was Arthur’s first memory of his father, Antranig.
Arthur’s sister, little Takouhie was born in Greece, and for two years the family lived crammed in a tiny shack, until one day an employee of the Aubenas spinning industry came looking for workers. At the end of the war France was in dire need of men and recruited however and wherever possible. Thus the family left to work in Ardèche in southern France, before moving to Nice and, finally, Lyon.
Arthur grew up amidst traumatic memories of the past. As a child he shunned family reunions, where, according to André, oriental pastries accompanied horrific tales “of massacres, rapes, the bellies of pregnant women being cut open, fathers decapitated in front of their sons, children impaled alive.” Arthur took special care to later spare his own two children from these horrors.
“It was a bit strange, almost comical. We left for Yerevan at midnight. When Hollande entered the plane, we skipped our meal so as to greet him. When we got there at six a.m, we heard him improvise a beautiful speech at the French embassy. He emphasized how fortunate France was to have Armenians,” Manoukian said.
The French delegation was late to the official commemoration ceremony at Tsitsernakaberd and landed right in the middle of the show. André headed the procession, next to famous French-Armenian signer Charles Aznavour. “I’d never seen so many cameras!” he exclaims.
A journalist came up to them, stuck a microphone in their faces and asked point blank: “I’m Turkish, what do you have to say to me?” Aznavour opened his arms wide and answered “Welcome!”
“It was very moving,” Manoukian recalled.
André encountered Armenia by chance on that most luminous of pathways – music. Since then he has realized that although Armenians welcome him as a prodigal son, the land of his ancestors is where Turkey is today. He no longer fears going to Istanbul at the invitation of his musician friends.
Lena Chamamyan and André Manoukian performing a song composed for their upcoming project.
The story is verified by the 100 LIVES Research Team.
