Intersections: Paths of discovery in a Detroit cemetery
They came out of nowhere, headstones that found me, instead of the other way around. The more I drove through the pathways of the cemetery, the more names popped up: Gregorian, Tabibian, Shirinian, Shakargian, Emerzian, Doumanian.
The dates of birth and death were ancient, going as far back as 1869. The cities proudly displayed on the headstones recounted where the deceased were from — Izmit, Sivas, Van, Kharpert, Amasya — cities in Turkey that were absolutely rid of their Armenian population through death and deportation.
Those who survived found refuge in cities across the world. One of those places was Detroit. They came by the thousands, attempting to rebuild their lives in a city that was defining what it meant to be middle class in America and taking advantage like so many other immigrants of Henry Ford’s $5 workdays. Later, I found out that the cemetery, built in 1905, was created to cater to the immigrants who had flooded the city.
The graves I had stumbled upon were truly relics from another time. I was witnessing the physical remnants of what it meant to make a diaspora. In Los Angeles, we think of our immigrant populations as something new, as something that has recently benefited from or disrupted the environment, depending on your opinion.
In the Armenian context, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Armenians have been coming to America and contributing to its fabric for hundreds of years. Their story is wrapped up with that of America, and a trip to any cemetery, even in L.A., will unearth these complexities and history. You just have to care enough to go looking for it.
I wasn’t meant to be here. I was on my way somewhere else. But visiting cemeteries is a favorite pastime of mine, and I couldn’t resist stopping at this one. I’ve been here for six months, but Detroit still feels very new to me and my favorite way of getting to know a city is through the history found in its cemeteries.
There was a particular grave I stood in front of for a while, the only one I could find that had an inset photograph in an oval frame. The weeds had almost completely covered the headstone and I tried to push them back as much as I could, but this was a grave that had been forgotten for a long time and nature, as always, proved to be a more powerful force.
I kept thinking about these refugees, who never dreamed of dying and being buried in a city so far away from their homes, and then I kept thinking about how so little has changed in 100 years. We have come full circle, back to the past, as a global refugee crisis continues to unfold in front of us.
The unrelenting heat cut my grave-hunting short. I left the cemetery with many undiscovered graves around me, hoping to come back another day.
I thought that being in Detroit meant that I’d just be learning about the rise and fall of one of America’s greatest cities, and the little glimmer of hopes in between, but in a strange way, I am also learning about myself and the places and people I come from, the people and places that are part of my history, too.
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LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.