Speaking to One Another - The International Raoul Wallenberg ...

schoolgirl; she used to tell “We were writing with charred wood”. They used to burn a chip of wood andthen were writing on the board with this charred wood. So they did, until she was in fourth year of study.There were almost no Turks in the village. There were Kurds, but the majority were Armenians. Therewere some fifteen or twenty Armenian households there. They caught my grandpa before the massacres,all the men ran away out of fear, and they caught my grandpa. With lots of difficulty, my mother’suncle went there, gave some gold coins to the prison ward, said that their whole family wanted to comeand see their father just one time. My mother cried day and night when recounting this story. My motherused to tell that when they went – she was thirteen then – she says “my father was unable to walk”.She said they made a special device, they laid him down, raising his feet, beating the lower part of hisfeet with cane so long until blood came out... This was in 1914. My grandpa told his wife: “when you go,forget about wealth, take the children and go to Basork; Basork’s ‘agha’ is a good person, he likes Armeniansand he will rescue you”... Basork was a village, they were hoping [on the benevolence] of Basork’s‘agha’ because, earlier, in 1896, there was a one-day massacre. So, all the man in our family went to Basork,there was a Greek bank there, they fought Turks from the bank [building (?)]. When they ceasedfighting Turks came to the Batmana River, they settled near this Grasira village. The brother of this Grasira’s‘agha’, Mirza, came to my mother’s grandmother – she was a very beautiful woman, he has stolenher, took her away. Their grandpa came, he saw that his wife wasn’t home, he thought that Turks havetaken her; he went to the bank of Batmana river and cursed them heavily ... So they caught him, tiedhim to a tree, cut off his nose, cut off his tongue, they dismembered and killed him on that tree. Whenthey left him and went away, our people came and saw him, the poor one. His name was Emish. So, withthis memory in mind, my grandpa told his wife to go to Basorq. My grandma was pregnant, near delivery.By that time my mother was already present, her brother, and her little sister – they were three kids.So she took them all and they went to Basorq together with my grandpa’s brother Karapet. When theywent to Basorq, they took their whole flock [of sheep] to Basorq and they handed it to that ‘agha’ as a gift.But this ‘agha’ did a lot of harm to them in the end. First, he cheated them; he told that he would givethem full support. My mother told “When we reached there, my mother gave birth on that very night,but these Kurdish women did not even let us find out whether it was a boy or a girl. They wrapped [thechild] in my mother’s cloth, he was still alive, they took him out and buried alive under a stone in Gargar”.My mom was weeping day and night. I wrote this book just because of my mother. She used to tellme “My dear Almast, write it down, please write it down”. Her own grandma had asked her to write. Sheused to reply “Grandma, how can I write, I have had only four years [of education]”. So then, my motherused to ask me... One day, in Basorя, my grandma told my mother “Haykanush, I will take Paytsar onmy shoulders; we are leaving at the dawn”. The massacres were over. She heard that one of my uncleswas there – in the village Tapi, so she wanted to go there too.So, at dawn, she took Paytsar in her arms, and went with my mom and my brother. They lived in thathouse for one month, and the dog of the house got used to them and went with them when they left.Whatever they did, it did not go back. They went quite far away, it was light already. There was somewrecked church on the way, so my grandma said “Haykanush, sit here with Paytsar, I will go and praythere, and then we can go.” At that time the Kurd woke up and saw that they were missing. So he got up,136