Mari Firkatian's 18k Ottoman Gold Coin Necklace
For Mari Firkatian's grandmother Mariam, the journey out of Armenia during the genocide was arduous and filled with terror. Having to leave behind a prosperous family olive orchard, Mariam's life was completely uprooted and changed forever. It became incredibly important to hold onto any semblence of her old life, of which the coin represented.
As Mari recalls in her interview: "I believe it's 18 carat gold, which tends to be pretty soft. And this coin is one of a handful that survived the deportations. So my maternal side of the family, the Yahanadjian, the ones that had the olive oil trees. They poked a hole in all of these [coins]. So that's why I mentioned 18 carat: it's easy enough to knock a hole into one of these and put little hooks and sewed these in the seams of under their underarms and in their clothing, so that if they were separated from the family, they'd be able to survive. And so the coins that made it to Bulgaria were no longer necessary for survival, were distributed among the descendants of the family. And so I have this memento, which is precious to me for that reason."
Mari's story about acquisition of the coin is so key to contextualizing the importance of jewelry artifacts as genuine memory in the face of attempted erasure. It also reflects the importance of these coin artifacts in times of emergecy, for means or survival. In those days of escape, family members were given objects (such as coins) due to the eventuality of being separated from each other.
It speaks to the atrocities of genocide that a culture of people who previously used gold coin jewelry as culturally significant adornment, gifts during life-changing events, and symbols of wealth were eventually having to poke holes and surrepticiously sew them into childrens' clothing as they were being hunted, deported, and death-marched. The coins didn't necessarily symbolize freedom from prosecution, rather, as a certain hope and fighting chance that they would be saved.
