Seeking a Better Life: Inspired by True Stories

By Edward Seto

Edward Seto was born in communist Bulgaria. He has a bachelors degree in electromechanical engineering and automation of processes. He has seen the equality of people in their poverty in a communist country, and later as an emigrant the opportunity and democracy of a new capitalist world.

He is one of the founders of a Bulgarian East Orthodox church in Montreal, Canada. His belief in God and in the power of good has helped him find his way to a better life on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

He has worked as production manager and as vice president of a manufacturing company in Canada for twenty years. Now, he lives with his wife in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Father of two daughters and a grandfather, he loves his family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490824680

Edward Seto

Edward Seto was born in communist Bulgaria. He has a bachelor’s degree in electromechanical engineering and automation of processes. He has seen the equality of people in their poverty in a communist country, and later as an emigrant the opportunity and democracy of a new capitalist world. He is one of the founders of a Bulgarian East Orthodox church in Montreal, Canada. His belief in God and in the power of good has helped him find his way to a better life on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He has worked as production manager and as vice president of a manufacturing company in Canada for twenty years. Now, he lives with his wife in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Father of two daughters and a grandfather, he loves his family.

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Seeking a Better Life

Inspired by True Stories

EDWARD SETO

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Copyright © 2014 Edward Seto.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2469-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2470-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2468-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014901843

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/03/2014

Contents

July 2008

Summer 2010

June 2011

July 2011

September 2011 Ottawa

November 2011 Ottawa

December 2011

September 1913

May 15, 2013

July 2013

May 1919

October 1923

August 2013

April 1918

May 5, 1948

June 11, 1948

November 1956

September 201

To my parents and grandparents.

To my uncles, aunts, and cousins.

To my sister and my nephew.

To my wife, children, and grandchildren with love.

When Eric was a small boy, he dreamed of one day writing a story for his grandparents, Arakssi and Agop.

He did not know exactly why, but he wanted to do something for them to preserve images and remember the stories of their lives.

Not that they were extraordinary people, but they were the ones he loved. Sometimes he felt sad for the difficulties they had endured; sometimes he admired them and sometimes he was not very proud of them, but he always loved them.

Then his life moved forward faster than he expected, and he turned into a grown man.

He had been married to Renee for more than thirty years, and they had two beautiful, grown daughters, Nevena and Maya. The family immigrated to Canada about twenty years ago.

Still, from time to time, he remembered the young Eric talking to his grandfather, Mezhairig Agop, and grandmother, Mezmama Arakssi, saying, I will one day write a story of your lives.

Now in his mid-fifties, he still says that when he retires, he will write a story for his family, as simple as they were and as boring as a story of ordinary people can be.

He doesn’t know if he will finish it, but if he doesn’t start, there will certainly be no book and no stories, and he would then be a liar to his relatives.

Eric started to talk to himself while seated at his desk at home. "I hate to lie, even though sometimes when I’m challenged by people, I say exaggerated things; afterward, I hate it. I guess this is how things have worked for me, and I get things done. I have a big mouth, and then I have to do it.

"Our kids, Nevena and Maya, while they were still small, quickly learned the trick to make me say things, and then they’d say, ‘You promised me …’ So, I had to do it.

"Of course, this was one of the ways they got me to do things. Plus there was always the line of responsibility, the things I had to do to make the people I love happy.

"I want to see my family happy. So I’m busy, and most of the time, I’m happy.

Let’s get into writing this story and see what will come out of all this.

July 2008

Renee and Eric went on a two-week vacation to Bulgaria and Greece, and they had a good time.

They spent a week in Greece with Lisa and Arak, his sister and her husband, and then they went together to Balchik on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria for four days. He was able to improve his sister’s mood and change her daily routine.

Lisa and Arak had taken very good care of his mother, Nelly. Eric felt very bad that he couldn’t spend enough time with his mother. He saw her once a year, when he took vacations to Bulgaria. He and his wife would stay for about a week with her and then go to their apartment on the Black Sea coast. On the way back, he would see his mother again for a few more days before taking the plane to Ottawa.

Last December, Nelly passed away just a day before her seventy-fifth birthday. It was unexpected, even though she had not been doing well for more than a year. Eric spoke with her on the phone the day before she left this world. He took a plane and was there for the funeral, spending a week with Lisa. She was not in good shape—she was emotionally exhausted and physically tired. She certainly had not told him how difficult the last five months had been since Eric saw his mother for the last time. He promised his sister to take them on vacation to Greece next summer. Lisa and Arak were both retired, so they were always careful how to spend their small pensions.

When Eric and Renee came to Bulgaria, he brought them a brand-new laptop so they could keep in touch on Skype. Using the Internet was a relatively new way to see each other. Too bad he couldn’t do that when his mother was still alive. His sister was initially afraid that she could not manage the new laptop, but soon she learned how to open Skype and how to speak and see Eric on it. She and Arak learned quickly how to check their e-mails and to browse the Internet. This was going to keep them busy.

In Greece, they stayed for a week at an all-inclusive resort on the coast of Khalkidhiki. Eric rented a van for a day, and they took a tour around the Cassandra Peninsula. The weather was good, and the beauty of the Greek peninsula made them dream of coming here again. They celebrated Lisa’s birthday on the balcony of the resort restaurant, with rich food, bottles of champagne and wonderful views.

When they came back to Bulgaria, they stayed for a day in Lisa’s home, and the next day, they went to Balchik. Here they met with Eric and Lisa’s cousin, Alexa, and her husband, Dinko. Eric was happy to spend time with his cousin’s family. Unfortunately, their son, Boris, was not with them in Balchik. He was busy working in Sofia.

Boris was part of the new generation of young, successful businessmen in Bulgaria. He had graduated from the American Business University in Bulgaria and later, together with three other friends from the same university, started a software company in 2002. Soon, their company became a preferred supplier for Microsoft in Eastern Europe.

Dinko was working as a representative of an American company, selling machines to factories in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Dinko and Boris had bought two apartments just in front of the marina. The bigger apartment was for Alexa and Dinko, and the other one was for Boris and his wife, Christy. They both had very good views of the sea.

Eric and Renee slept in Boris’s apartment, overlooking the marina, the sea, and the whole Bay of Balchik. Lisa and Arak stayed in Alexa and Dinko’s apartment. They all gathered together in the morning for coffee on Alexa and Dinko’s balcony facing the swimming pool; right behind it was the sea. The view was gorgeous. The sun was just coming up, as if from the depths of the water.

They drank coffee, joked, and laughed. Eric sat there smiling, listening to the conversation. They made plans for the next few days before going back to Canada.

Though he was participating in the conversation, at the same time, Eric had not stopped thinking about their past and the time when they were kids.

He wanted to start writing this book about their grandparents. The idea of how to write it was slowly coming into his head, but still he was not ready.

He first needed to remember more about his childhood, and sitting next to his cousin, Alexa, was somehow helping him visualize it.

Eric started thinking, no longer following their conversation.

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Alexa hasn’t changed much, and it really is a pleasure to be with them. They know how to enjoy life and good company.

Alexa likes talking about our childhood and Mezmama. I believe Mezmama is her favorite memory. She speaks about her with a lot of love. Recently, I found a picture of my grandmother and grandfather as a bride and groom. Mezmama Arakssi and Alexa are so much alike.

I haven’t seen Alexa for years, and then, even when I saw her, it was just for a few hours or a day. It is strange, because as kids, we grew up together until about ten years of age. We lived in my father’s house with our grandparents and my uncle Ed and his wife, Nadia. It was a big family—my grandparents, Agop and Arakssi; my mother, Nelly, and father, Santo; my sister, Lisa; and my uncle Ed, Aunty Nadia, and Alexa.

When I look at my cousin, I see our childhood, but there are not too many things I remember. Maybe it will come to me later. I know it’s all there somewhere.

Somehow, my sister and Alexa remember well the bad things I did to them. I suppose I was not a quiet boy, and maybe I gave them a kick or a fist from time to time, as they recall. Strange—I don’t remember it.

I remember well when we went to kindergarten, Alexa and I. There were two bigger twin brothers, and they kept pushing all the kids, till one day I hit one of them in the face. It must have been very hard, because I remember his mouth was bloodied and the teacher showed it to me, shouting and twisting my ears. I stayed there alone, scared, and punished in a small, dark room. Alexa was crying and waiting for me outside until my grandmother came to take us home.

Our grandmother. Her name was Arakssi, but we all called her Mezmama. How she loved us. Oh, God! We were the most important things in her life—the grandchildren: Lisa, Eric, Alexa, Victoria, and Magdalena.

Victoria and Magdalena are the children of my father’s sister, Vera, and Uncle Manuk.

They were at home every Sunday. Somebody at home cooked for the big family, and we were all there together. I did not have to count; I knew we were thirteen people as one big family. At that time, I didn’t pay attention to who was doing what; we didn’t have to do anything—just play in the backyard. One day my cousin Alexa and my uncle Ed and aunt Nadia moved to a new apartment. Still, though, almost every weekend our families got together.

That was the time we learned the stories about Mezhairig Agop and Mezmama Arakssi. It was like reading stories from books. The stories were scary and sad, but I felt proud that my grandparents made it through and now here we were all seated around them on Sundays.

My grandparents and my parents worked all day long, even on Saturdays. My father and my mom left as early as 5:30 a.m. in the mornings to go to the shoe factory. Mezmama cooked. Whenever Mezhairig did not feel sick, he spread glue on the leather shoe parts or turned the edges nicely with a hammer and then sewed them on a Singer machine. I learned to do all of the parts of making shoes, just as a game. Nobody asked me to work as they did.

My mom and father came home from work at 4:00 p.m. After a short rest, they were working again, finishing Mezhairig and Mezmama’s work. I don’t recall anybody ever complaining that we had a hard life. Maybe life was easy? For sure, it was easy for us kids.

When I was a kid about seven or eight years old, I kept asking my grandfather to tell me the stories again. Then I asked my grandmother to tell me her stories again. They both did—over and over, until I learned them by heart.

My grandfather was born in Adapazar, a small town or village about 130 kilometers southeast of Istanbul in Turkey. He loved his town and his country. There were many Armenians living in Adapazar. According to my grandfather, about twenty thousand Armenians left Adapazar, never to go back again. Some of them survived; some of them didn’t. This was from 1915 to 1921, when Armenians in Adapazar were either killed or left to die in deserts or sent to the war front to fight against England or Greece.

Armenian children and parents had to leave their homes, forced out by the Turkish rulers, and had to cross on foot the entire country, escorted by soldiers. Most of them died. Some were able to survive and got to Syria. During these long years, many Armenian boys and girls were stolen and forcefully sold into Kurdish, Arab, or Turkish families. A few years later, the world discovered the tragedy of the Armenian genocide.

My grandfather was one of the survivors. He was twenty-two or twenty-three years old in 1921 when he was taken into the army as a soldier. For three months, he was in a training camp on the outskirts of Istanbul.

One night a friend of his—a Turkish soldier—told him that on the next day, he would be chosen to go to the front. His friend had found out that all the Armenians would be sent to very difficult areas on the Greek front and were not expected to come back alive.

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Hey, wake up! Renee said to Eric. Are you here? What are you thinking about? She looked at him with an expression that said, Hey, you are not alone here.

We’ve been talking for an hour, and you have not said a word. Alexa pushed her cousin as they used to do when they were kids.

I’m okay. I’m sorry. I’m just flooded with memories about our grandparents and our childhood, Eric said. I know that’s strange when we are sitting on the balcony and enjoying the summer and the sea.

He went on, You know, I decided to write a book about our grandparents and how they came to Bulgaria a hundred years ago running for their lives.

He was shy and felt uncomfortable telling them that he was planning to write a book. It sounded like such a big task, and he wasn’t sure that he could do it.

I’m sorry. I know it is not the time now to talk about these things, so please allow me to just be silent for a while.

Alexa was excited, and she did not let him change the subject until he finally told them a little about his idea. He started telling them about his memories of their childhood and the story of his grandfather, Agop.

So what happened when Agop understood that he would be sent to the most difficult places on the front? Alexa asked.

Eric continued the story.

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That night Mezhairig had to make a decision between going to the front and probably dying there, or perhaps dying while he was trying to escape.

The next morning, all the soldiers were taken out for shooting practice.

When his turn came, Agop picked up the rifle and aimed at a stone next to the target. He was hoping that if he didn’t hit the target, they would leave him in the camp for some more training. He pulled the trigger, and the stone exploded.

The sergeant tapped on his shoulder and said, "Aferim! [Bravo!] Soldier, you are ready to fight for your country."

That same day he was put with all the other young soldiers on the train leaving Istanbul.

Istanbul was a big cosmopolitan city. The capital of Turkey, it was full of reporters and embassies. All the advanced culture of Turkey was concentrated there. Most of the progressives Turks were living in Istanbul.

The train slowly departed, and with every kilometer, Agop’s hopes of escaping decreased.

Agop told his sergeant that he needed to go to the bathroom, and the sergeant walked him to the door. Once inside, he locked the door and braced the rifle behind it. He opened the window. It was scary and his heart beat rapidly, but he well knew that this was his only chance. Without hesitating anymore, he jumped out the window.

Thankfully, he did not have anything broken, and no one had seen him jump out. He stood up and quickly ran away from the train tracks and into the forest to wait for the sun to go down and the moon to rise.

Agop had to walk several days back to Istanbul, always without letting anyone notice him. Nobody stopped him. He slept during the days and walked during the nights. Four days later, early in the morning, he entered the big city. He went straight to his relatives. Agop had not been able to contact his family since he’d been drafted three months earlier. There he found out that his mother, with his older brother, sister, and her husband had managed to leave Istanbul; they were now in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

During the Balkan War from October 1912 till May 1913, Bulgaria was fighting against Turkey for full independence. During the First World War from 1914 to 1918, however, Bulgaria was on the side of Germany and so was Turkey, so the border was relatively open and there was some communication between the two countries even though it was limited. Agop started to plan how to get to Bulgaria.

In the seaport, there were often boats going to Bulgaria, but to get on one of them, Agop needed money and papers. His relatives helped him to get a document showing that he was seventeen years old (too young for the draft) and with a false Turkish name. At that time, there were no pictures on personal documents, so he was able to walk around Istanbul and look for a job.

A few weeks later, he started working as a conductor on a tramway. A captain of a Bulgarian boat had promised to take him to Bulgaria for a certain amount of money, and now he had to work and save money as quickly as possible.

A month later, he was almost ready with the money—but in the train where he was working as a conductor, he noticed the same sergeant from the army. Agop turned his back to the sergeant, praying that he would not come to ask for a ticket. Luckily the man did not approach him to buy a ticket, and at the first stop, Agop left the train and went directly to the port to look for the boat and its captain.

The boat was in port. It was going to leave for Burgas in a few days, but Agop did not want to stay even one more day in the city. The captain took him on as a helper in the kitchen and allowed him to stay onboard the boat until they were underway.

A few days later, he was in Burgas on the Bulgarian sea coast, about 300 kilometers east of Plovdiv, with no money and nowhere to go. The only languages he knew were Armenian and Turkish.

How could he ask for directions? Who could he ask for help?