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

took his rifle and ran. The dog felt that someone was coming and barked. So he went towards that barking,shot and killed my poor grandma at the place of praying. He killed her (in weeping voice) my mothersaw this all with her own eyes... She said “I took Paytsar on my shoulders and went forward”. This Kurdbrought them home. He had a daughter-in-law, her name was Taveh, she was a very kind daughter-inlaw,she called her, telling “do not cry, my dear Nusheh” – her name was Haykanush but they called herNusheh. “Dear Nusheh, do not cry, tomorrow I will take you where your mother is, maybe she is stillalive”. My mother said she couldn’t sleep until dawn. She said, in the morning Taveh said to her fatherin-law– “let Paytsar stay here, Nusheh and I will go, bring some banjar [an edible plant]”. So they wentthere and they saw that dogs from the neighborhood have torn my granny apart – her intestines wereon one side, lungs on the other. So my mother lost her consciousness (Mrs Almast continues in weepingvoice). Poor Taveh brought her back to consciousness somehow; they dug [a hole] and buried her.My mother told “On a small stone I made a cross with stones, took it and placed it above my mother’shead. Then Taveh gathered some banjar, she gave me half of it and kept the other half for herself, andwe came back home”. She says, “We came home, I was crying, crying a lot, and Taveh told me – do notcry, if my father-in-law hears, he will beat you up.” In the morning she took my mother and Paytsar, shetook them to the river bank to wash some clothes. She took them to the river bank... There was a Turkishcommander, he had finished with the massacres and was looking for survivors, about two hundred Armenians.He saw my mother and her sister and took them too. Taveh begged him much, she said, “thisis my sister-in-law”, but he took them. They took these two hundred Armenians to the gorge and killedthem all. My mother said “Paytsar was on my shoulders, I was afraid [to see this] so much that I trembledand fell, Paytsar jumped from my shoulders and fell into those who were already killed.” So, after themassacre, they killed all the survivors and left. She said it was dark already. My mother was wounded inher leg but she didn’t know that Paytsar was also alive. She said, at dawn Paytsar stood up, asking “Sister,sister, where are you?” She said, I called her, then I saw that there was a severely wounded womannear me; she said “Dear, call your sister to come here. I will tell her, I will show her some healing herb;let her bring it and we will put it on our wounds”. She said Paytsar was five years old; she went, gatheredthis herb and brought it, chewed it and placed it on the wounds. My mother tells they stayed therefor forty days. I asked her “Mom, how do you know it was forty?” She said “Well, they massacred us on14 th - the wheat was already ripe. I am telling this approximately. It was in June”. She said, the corpsesswelled under the sun, they were exploding like cannon balls. There was some small stream, I told Paytsar“let us go to the other side and hide in the shrubs there...” She said this woman had some ‘pokhind’[flour from roasted wheat] in her bag; she was an old woman... We were gathering banjar, sindz [edibleplants] and eating them. She told a terrible thing. She said “We went, crossed the stream, in the morningwe saw that some Kurdish women came, they were reaping wheat with a sickle”. She said “By middaythey came, had their lunch, there was some leftover food after them - some bread crumbs, pieces ofcurds and cheese... Paytsar ran there and gathered these.”She said, “The next day another Turk came, he saw from afar that there was a child on the river bank. Hesaid “There are Armenians here”. He told his group to go along the river bank. When Paytsar heard thesounds of the hoofs she came, embraced my mother, saying “Sister, they are coming and they will kill137