rooftop where I sipped tea. Various beetles have been used as carpet dye in the Middle East for centuries. The oud was traditionally played with an eagle’s quill. The terrible facts of the genocide are also real. During the first half of June 1915, all the Armenian men of Palu, along with ten thousand men from nearby Erzerum, were slain by chetes on or near Palu’s eight-arched bridge. Aleppo was a central staging ground for deportees from all over the empire who were then marched into the desert of Deir-el-Zor to die. Armenians from regions near to the then partially complete Baghdad Railway line were packed into cattle cars and brought to Aleppo.
The journey of Shahen, Sosi, and Mariam is entirely imagined, though with the benefit of many hiking trips in the cold above the tree line. They stayed along the ridge lines of real mountains and passed through archaeological sites such as mystical massive stone heads on Nemrut Mountain and the Byzantine ruins known collectively as the Dead Cities of Syria. When the Turkish state was founded in 1922, many place names were changed. Kharpert, the city where Shahen would have gone to college, is now Elâzı
ğ. Constantinople is today’s Istanbul. To map the young ones’ journey, I linked today’s names to those from the time of the genocide.
International relief work in the Ottoman Empire had begun during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895 to 1896, with Clara Barton, national hero, nurse, and founder of the American Red Cross, leading the American efforts. As the violence intensified in 1915, so did international aid. In Aleppo, orphanages were established by priests such as Hovaness Eskijian and the Swiss missionary Sister Beatrice Rohner. In the greater region, the Near East Relief organization founded orphanages, hospitals, and refugee camps and sponsored food, clothing, and medical supply drives through direct appeal to the American public. But by 1917 the Ottomans had closed down most aid efforts within their borders. Aleppo’s international orphanages were replaced with ones run by the state only for those young enough not to remember their Armenian identity. A lucky few, like Shahen, Sosi, and Mariam, were hidden by families of Arabs and Kurds and even Turks like Mustafa. While Ottoman authorities used a rhetoric of jihad to incite the murder of Armenians, the sharif of Mecca called for Muslimsto save them. After the war ended, Near East Relief continued their work, ultimately saving the lives of 132,000 orphans.
One of the largest of the Near East Relief orphanages was located in Gyumri, a city that sits on the closed border between present-day Turkey and Armenia. From 1918 to 1920, Armenia briefly had the status of an independent republic. According to the Treaty of Sèvres, signed by the Ottoman government and the Allied powers in 1920, this republic was to include much of the land that is eastern Turkey today. Turkish nationalists under the leadership of Kemal Attatürk opposed this treaty; war erupted, and the fledgling republic collapsed. What remained of Armenia was absorbed into the Soviet Union. On September 21, 1991, Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union. This small nation has remained independent since then.
I took a bit of purposeful poetic license with a few facts. In this story, Ardziv calls the Ottoman Turks “drum caps,” identifying them by the felted fezzes they wore. Though the fez was certainly part of the Ottoman army uniform, Armenians also wore these stylish hats at the beginning of the twentieth century. We mongrels know that identity lives in social surfaces.
And what of people who marry across social boundaries, as did Anahid and Asan? In 1914, the lives of Armenians, Kurds, and Turks near Palu were socially intertwined. The rare “love matches” that undoubtedly occurred contrast with the many acts of violence committed against women during the genocide. Some Kurdish groups were well known for helping and hiding
The journey of Shahen, Sosi, and Mariam is entirely imagined, though with the benefit of many hiking trips in the cold above the tree line. They stayed along the ridge lines of real mountains and passed through archaeological sites such as mystical massive stone heads on Nemrut Mountain and the Byzantine ruins known collectively as the Dead Cities of Syria. When the Turkish state was founded in 1922, many place names were changed. Kharpert, the city where Shahen would have gone to college, is now Elâzı
ğ. Constantinople is today’s Istanbul. To map the young ones’ journey, I linked today’s names to those from the time of the genocide.
International relief work in the Ottoman Empire had begun during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895 to 1896, with Clara Barton, national hero, nurse, and founder of the American Red Cross, leading the American efforts. As the violence intensified in 1915, so did international aid. In Aleppo, orphanages were established by priests such as Hovaness Eskijian and the Swiss missionary Sister Beatrice Rohner. In the greater region, the Near East Relief organization founded orphanages, hospitals, and refugee camps and sponsored food, clothing, and medical supply drives through direct appeal to the American public. But by 1917 the Ottomans had closed down most aid efforts within their borders. Aleppo’s international orphanages were replaced with ones run by the state only for those young enough not to remember their Armenian identity. A lucky few, like Shahen, Sosi, and Mariam, were hidden by families of Arabs and Kurds and even Turks like Mustafa. While Ottoman authorities used a rhetoric of jihad to incite the murder of Armenians, the sharif of Mecca called for Muslimsto save them. After the war ended, Near East Relief continued their work, ultimately saving the lives of 132,000 orphans.
One of the largest of the Near East Relief orphanages was located in Gyumri, a city that sits on the closed border between present-day Turkey and Armenia. From 1918 to 1920, Armenia briefly had the status of an independent republic. According to the Treaty of Sèvres, signed by the Ottoman government and the Allied powers in 1920, this republic was to include much of the land that is eastern Turkey today. Turkish nationalists under the leadership of Kemal Attatürk opposed this treaty; war erupted, and the fledgling republic collapsed. What remained of Armenia was absorbed into the Soviet Union. On September 21, 1991, Armenia declared its independence from the Soviet Union. This small nation has remained independent since then.
I took a bit of purposeful poetic license with a few facts. In this story, Ardziv calls the Ottoman Turks “drum caps,” identifying them by the felted fezzes they wore. Though the fez was certainly part of the Ottoman army uniform, Armenians also wore these stylish hats at the beginning of the twentieth century. We mongrels know that identity lives in social surfaces.
And what of people who marry across social boundaries, as did Anahid and Asan? In 1914, the lives of Armenians, Kurds, and Turks near Palu were socially intertwined. The rare “love matches” that undoubtedly occurred contrast with the many acts of violence committed against women during the genocide. Some Kurdish groups were well known for helping and hiding
Similar Books
