Looking at the cover of this book, I didn’t expect much. I didn’t even read the blurb on the back, just gauged it by the cover art--a young woman in white standing in a wind-eroded yellowed landscape--and the title. I sort of expected a coming of age story about some teenage girlfriends during a formative summer. But my wife had recommended it, and I was on my way to the airport and didn’t have time to be choosy, so I just grabbed it, kissed her, and ran. The story was actually about the Armenian genocide of 1915 in which some 1.5 million people perished from murder, starvation, or disease. Oooops. As they say, never judge a book by its cover.
Most of the story is set in the Syrian city of Aleppo, much in the news these days as the Syrian government commits heinous atrocities against its own citizens in order to stifle dissent. This city just can’t seem to get a break. In 1138 it was the site of one of the most destructive earthquakes in all history, killing possibly as many as 230,000. In 1915 it was the largest city on the hopeless trek from Armenia to Deir-ez Zor, a mid-desert encampment where thousands of women, children, and elderly were starved to death. The men had already been executed.
Laura is a modern day (2010) fortyish writer discovering and chronicling the story of her grandparents. She knows that her grandfather, now dead, was Armenian, and that there were parts of his past that he was unwilling to talk about. As the 100th anniversary of the genocide is approaching, she is caught by a photograph she sees in a museum. It shows a woman, emaciated beyond belief, sitting in the dirt against a wall; she is identified as Karine Petrosian. The same surname as her grandfather's. Could this have been a relative of hers? That question propels her to research in museums, archives, her grandparents’ letters, and eventually a journey to Aleppo where the galvanizing photo was taken.
This is a story of love, of survival, of perseverance, of remembrance. Armen, Laura's grandfather, is a young Armenian man who has survived the brutal obliteration of his home city by the Turks, and found temporary safety working with a pair of German soldiers in Aleppo. [The irony of finding refuge from genocide with Germans is never stated by the author, but impossible to miss as a reader. We are reminded that people--individuals--are all different, and that we all possess innate abilities to do great harm and great good.]. Elizabeth, her grandmother, is a relief worker from Boston, young and naive, but strong in spirit. Armen and Elizabeth are attracted, fall in love, are separated, and struggle to reunite against the horrific backdrop of both the Armenian catastrophe and World War I.
The love story is fiction but sadly the backdrop is not. For a hundred years Armenian descendants have sought to pressure the Turks to own up to the genocide, the intentional and systematic annihilation of a whole people. The Turks’ response is that shit happens in war, and it is forbidden in Turkey to utter the word ‘genocide’ in connection with the Armenians.
This is not, in my opinion, a lasting work of literature, destined for any hallowed place. It is a nicely told story with straightforward narration and unaccented dialogue. The romance and the connection between generations is treated with warmth and wistfulness, and there is a twist to the story that caused me to catch my breath. Much more than that, the story opens a window onto a piece of history that seems to be untold or to have been forgotten. That is the important thing about history: it must not be forgotten.
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