My grandmother’s earliest memory was of digging a grave for her father’s head without shovel or trowel. She used only her fingertips.
As my grandmother and her sister dutifully dug a final resting place for the remains of their beloved father, they attempted to comprehend what they had just witnessed. Turkish soldiers chased down my great-grandfather, shot him in the back and, with a cruel barbarity, decapitated his corpse. A gentle, learned man, my great-grandfather was a professor at Euphrates College in Kharpet, Turkey. My grandmother was four years old. She became an orphan that day.
Each of my four grandparents had their own tale of horror. They survived, but they lost everything that was precious to them: mothers and fathers, siblings, home, and even their country. They were children – forced to march for hundreds of miles through the deserts of Syria with no food or water, raped, forced into slavery and eyewitnesses to unspeakable savagery and the murder of over 1.5 million of their kin.
As the children and grandchildren of survivors, we learned to accept the fact that our families were fiercely overprotective. We were taught to trust only ourselves. There were two types of people: Hye (Armenian) or Odar (everyone else). Drawn together in a way that is unique to a nation forced into diaspora, we formed familial bonds with other Armenian families that extend for generations.
Mostly, though, we felt (and still feel) an overwhelming sense of sorrow for the loss of something that we will never know. We lost precious family; entire lines were wiped out. We also lost our history. Most Armenian families cannot trace their lineage back for more than a few generations. We have no family artefacts or mementos. Gone are the family bibles and important documents notating family relationships. Our ancestors were forced to leave everything of value behind, where it was destroyed or pillaged.
Our parents and grandparents carried this loss with them every day. They could not forget. Some would wake at night screaming and shaking, reliving the horror in their sleep. Others tried to suppress the memories, carrying themselves stoically, yet betrayed by unbearably sorrowful eyes.
The failure of the world to properly recognize this calamity is something that is difficult for the descendants of survivors to describe. It is an open and festering wound. We grew up listening to the survival stories and promising – no, swearing – to seek justice for the loss endured by our people.
We teach this to our children. Never forget. We will never forget. For if we allow the death of over 1.5 million innocent souls to be forgotten, their deaths will have been in vain.
Nadine Sarajian Koobatia
Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. It marks the 100th anniversary of the deportation of Armenian intellectuals from Istanbul. You can read more of these accounts of descendants telling their ancestor’s stories and the impact of their atrocities on their families here. You can learn more about the genocide here or here.
The Turkish Government still refuses to officially acknowledge the genocide.
(via procrasimnation)