A Place for Somber Reflection (On Genocide)

Every year the night before April 24th has people gathering at Yerevan;s Freedom's Square. There is screaming, and shouting, and chanting. A Turkish flag is usually burned. Torches are passed around, and the march toward Titsernakaberd begins.

Titsernakaberd is home to the genocide memorial and museum. It is a place built to remember the massive losses that took place nearly one hundred years ago. Inside the slanted concrete slabs that make up the bulk of the memorial, is an eternal flame, and by the end of April 24th, the rim of that flame is surrounded by a mountain of flowers.

The memorial is a place for somber reflection.

When the attacks on Armenians began the various branches of my family survived through different means. My mother's maternal grandfather was kept alive due to his intelligence, forced to work for the government in return for his the safety of his family, eventually moving to Lebanon when the killings had subsided.

Levon, my father's grandfather, was forewarned out of respect, and given the opportunity to leave with his family under secure conditions, though not all of his family was saved; most notably his brother Nazaret, who had been conscripted by the army never to be heard from again.

My grandmother's father used the small amount of German he had learned in an orphanage to fool a German officer into saving him from row of prisoners condemned to death. For two days served as a translator before escaping to Syria on the third.

Harutyun, my mother's father, was in school when the attacks began. Hos father had been conscripted and was most likely murdered by the army. His mother died returning home from a neighbors house, leaving her other son, Bedros, home alone. Harutyun escaped the confines of the school with a group of friends in an attempt to get home to his mother, only to be caught by a group of soldiers.

The soldiers began to tease the boys, asking which one wanted to die first. One of them said "Not me! Please, not me!" only to be the first to die. All of them were killed, save for my grandfather, who when i t was his turn was saved by an order that said children his age were not to be killed.

Bedros was in that apartment for a week before anyone found him; having survived alone on stale bread and water. The two brothers were sent to an orphanage, eventually moving to Beirut and trying to start over. At nights, when he thought his children were asleep, he would cry remembering the friends that died in his place.

I think about the past often. About how the events have shaped the course of so many lives. I consider all the things that were lost, our culture, our land, our monuments, and the generations of children denied their existence; and us, the subsequent generations born to fill that gap.

We are alive in defiance of the desire and actions that took place to erase us; and as such April 24th for me is as much a remembrance of loss as it is a celebration of life.