The Armenian Genocide

To bear witness is a carrying task. To march morbidly with the weight of bones and to

muster memories with the might of mind is a daunting deed. To unlock legacies lopped short,

tossed beneath time, takes a special kind of remembering—a looking through lineage so deeply

pressed that no text could possibly bear witness. A way of awakening these atrocities in the veins

that process my essence is essential, but painful. So much blood was shed, so long ago; which

part of me carries this forward? I shed blood to write this, through every pore of double helixed

protein, prose, and past.

Metal

Molecules as malleable as metal make my past seem weldable, time-twisted joints made

married with the heat of recollection’s density.

“Cool as a cucumber”, she calls me, rolling up my sleeve and swabbing the area with

disinfectant. I tell her I’m not afraid of the syringe—that metal through bloody nerve cringe. It’s

a half feigned bravado, though. I wonder if my skin belies the war of higher-order vs. hormone

insurgency beneath. Making sure no one else sees the terror towered follicles on each arm, I play

the hero I fear I can never be. I focus heavily: if I could just manage to muffle the flinch, as the

innocuous prick—proboscis—pinched... A foreign wedge bores through me at the upper-most

crack of micro and the lower most threshold of pain. The sting—that high plucked string, that

steep somatic staccato’ed ring— swept out by a slow sigh, resolved with a saccadic half-bolt of

each eye. No flinch, but, the body never lies. A muscle-bridged, capillaried cavern wells up, and

my blood gushes. Bleeding is just tissues, time, and red-coated proteined grime. The gauze had a

good day, piecing platelets, absorbing my dye; it seemed that just this time, I was reluctant to

dry.

“The elders persuaded the women to gather up large sums of money [to take along with

them]. We got as far as Albistan safe and sound. There they began to demand money such that

the hapless and defenseless women were forced to give them what they wanted, short of

1

renouncing their religion and sacrificing their honor. They were content to collect money, and

left us alone for four days” (1).

“After fleeing a certain distance, we saw that they were coming after us on horseback,

holding a rifle in one hand and a knife in the other. Nevertheless, the Lord protected us again.

All of a sudden, the turban fell off of one’s head and he, in turn, got down to get it; by the time he

could say, ‘let me get back on my horse,’ the village had already come within our sight” (6).

Wood

Tooth-picked time spans like a foiled sheet, barely buoyant, but sustained by its span

alone. Stardusted, hourglass grains seep, and reform as other things. Matter merely means the

way in which things are arranged, not made. Only in the smallest pieces of stuff can anything

truly be.

A wooden splinter slips into my finger. A thousand-bound one-wayed flakes of rigour-

mortised thread find lacquer in me, red. The layers of skin are made translucent by their

displacement; it becomes simpler to observe their construction. Each splint slices through what

would phenotypically come to surface as a print—an indelible idiosyncratic indicator of I.

Something suddenly clicks, I feel violated, as if my blood is more, as if some sort of microscopic

map tore. Morbidly, I wonder, if strewn across a canvass wide, what color of story would my

bloody pulp dye?

“When the work was finished, they began to have their houses renovated. It was a village

of a hundred houses, and they were all renovated. They had us bring down buriam on our backs

from the mountains” (6).

“In order to satisfy their wicked desires, again they deported us. They rounded us all up

and piled into a place; there the staircase collapsed on us but none of us was killed. They

confined us there for 24 hours; during that period, they did a lot of perverse things to us” (7).

2

Fire

When matter seethes, it yearns for white-hot. The hottest anything can ever be is white—

thermal energy scares color off the visible spectrum. Fire is an element to be feared and

favoured, and sometimes an element to cauterize synaptic seams.

The white dust at the tip of a spent fire’s log, like salt or ash or snow, seems strange in

the hearth; such a polar white in such a terrestrial heat must be opposite, I surmise, and plunge

my thumb into the crisp carbon. The embers drive ash and heat so simultaneously through my

estuaried capillaries, it dams the caps, cuts and seals. The wonder of liquid-less laceration for a

minute beguiles the burning. I realize that blood isn’t simply mess—that there is order to it, and

structure, and the ability perhaps to bear things. In cells? In organelles? I don’t know. I can see it

and smell it and almost taste it, taste past the iron, to the tinge of lineage, before it crumbles to

ash in my palms.

“Everyone of us, leaving behind their possessions, attempted to save our lives. Four-five

cannibals came rushing upon us from behind every tree and bush. Many of them were armed

with firearms while others attacked us with knives, axes, and skewers. A miracle of God was

needed to escape their clutches. Removing our clothes, they stripped us naked, and then robbed

us of all our possessions. Afterwards they threatened our lives: They tied us together in groups of

four, administering all sorts of torture and injuring many of us. Some were tied alive to trees and

set on fire” (1).

Water

Water has a method of making matter permeable—isotonic, even. Pruned fingertips can

attest to this; watch how it warps each fingerprint into a unique dermal topography. This only

works if you are mostly water. And if your blood spills, you are.

The whistle blows and before I realize I’m in over my head, I’m submerged over my

head. Chlorine-piss-countered gunk, engulfed, a poor excuse for H2O— an affront to the element

3

actually, and a pathetic way to die. Did I need to move to swim? Why? It moves within me

effortlessly—no time to think, my heartbeat trots, alveoli suck at spent air, hemoglobin fidgets

frantically for its fix. I realize I’m drowning. Walking at the bottom of the basin, trekking thick

and hell-bent, arms flailing like a monsooned marsh. I find a leg, and pull myself up. Liquid

could kill me, even though it was within me. This was an odd lesson to learn. It was almost as if

evolution kept part of the sea as a trinket, to remind man of what particles preceded him.

“Following the avaricious leader, we reached a water mill toward evening but again we

were surrounded on all sides. This time, inasmuch as they were sated with money and furniture,

it was time to carry off married women and single girls, which represented a most perilous

danger. Two days passed without us eating anything, yet we didn’t even think about food and

rest. We just implored the Heavenly Father with tears, the Beneficent One who is ready to listen

to those calling to Him, to have mercy on us… We set out, without having a single thing in our

possession; there was only a drinking cup and a blanket for the injured and the very young” (2).

Wind

Infuse atmosphere with energy, and watch it blow. Hot gas goes up, cold down, and they

tango tornadically in the center. Such mobility and abundance could bear witness to anything

quite efficiently. But the elements don’t speak or listen, they just act and, from time to time,

nudge.

“Let them out, there’s a storm coming,” my father commands, only slightly too late, as

gale ignites sail and swings a boom arm broad into my cerebellum. The visual map strewn across

my grey matter flutters for a second, weightless, like tomb-dust disturbed by a draft. The

particles settle back into cognition as a horizon equals out, teeter-totter. My fingers comb the

spot— wet! A leak, red matter. It seems different this time. I swirl it between thumb and index

finger, wondering how diluted the hue can go. The wind quickly dries it brown; fascinating

fossilization. What’s preserved within though? Thunder booms in the distance, and I feel, for the

first time, the insurmountable quarts of my past’s blood’s battles, jolted with epinephric

foreboding.

4

“They had us go down from places that were over 11 feet high. Rain was coming down in

torrents. As it was, only one or two persons from each family were left healthy; some had died

while others were sick. The weather was frightfully cold. There was not a dry spot on the ground,

and there were large multitudes” (3).

“Ever since we left Aleppo, the clothes on our backs still hadn’t dried out; likewise, day

and night, the rain kept coming down in torrents, accompanied by lightning and thunderbolts,

causing us to be frightened. Everybody began to utter woeful cries in unison and meanwhile, in

view of the deplorable [happenings], beseech the Heavenly Father to make the local lieutenant

commander have pity and allow us to be sheltered from the rain…” (3).

Earth

If you kick the dirt, it kicks back. Each atom bound so tightly to one another, physics

cannot help but force a fissure back up your leg, flogging your aortic flow, flinging a wrench into

the cellular machine of your mammalian mortality.

A bent bike wheel half spinning at my side, I stare with purpose this time into my gashed

flesh. Sand and blood swirl in a way that could only be described as galactic—again an intrusion,

but this time, a welcome one. The silica: small particles of a grander part, and my blood: a

grander part of not just smaller particles, but genetic ones. A mutual macro and microcosmic

meeting in my kneecap. I realize that within the tiny pieces of my abundant rouge-ribboned fluid

was a code, just as each fleck of dirt figures, somehow, codified into Gaia’s grandiose genome.

Could a code bear witness?

“Thus having taken us across the Murad River, they put us in caves outside of town.

There were more than 200-250 persons in each cave; without any opening and with any place to

get fresh air, we were piled on top of one another. Sickness spread among us, such that no one

was left able to stand on their feet, and more than 15-20 persons died daily” (4).

“The previous day they took us to work, which was such an onerous matter, because hadn’t even

seen the field. They got us up very early in the mornings; without exception, we were barefooted

in the heat and the thistles, and our clothes were totally tattered. What they fed us was two little

loaves of bread made of barley, common barley and millet” (5).

5

Blood

Two things, I can say with certainty, have survived The Armenian Genocide: the

elements and myself. Within my very blood I bear the fear, pain, horror, and hopelessness of my

butchered ancestors. My mind so mired in the present and future, of tasks mundane and

privileged, I forget the suffering from which I come. The mute elements who bore witness to

such atrocities prod me from time to time—prick me, even, with a subsequently release: that red

reminder of my predecessors’ strife and strength. It courses and flourishes within me.

“My one and only brother, who was my sole comfort, my one hope, after God, took ill.

The hard labor, on the one hand, and the fear, on the other, took their toll on him. As a boy

raised delicately, concentrating on his lessons and school, he couldn’t withstand the cold of

winter, followed by the heat of summer, his being barefooted and his back being exposed. Lying

sick in such wretchedness, he left me with wounds that are unforgettable for eternity. Leaving the

depths of my worn-out heart totally inconsolable, he died in his youth on Thursday, February 24,

1917 in Nizib. The most intense pain I felt was over what he went through during his illness. I’m

unable to write about that in detail; my hands are shaking; tears welling up in my eyes form a

torrent and they shall flow until my death. How can I forget that he died, without a bed, without

care, practically starving, uttering such tormented words!” (7).

“Tilt your head back, put pressure just under the bridge,” my mother advises me during

one of my hundred adolescent nosebleeds. My father always insists that cauterization is a viable

permanent option. I think it over legitimately, each time; just solder the crack shut, once and for

all. I think it over now as I gaze back into my mother’s beautiful brown eyes, the eyes of her

father, and the eyes of his mother, Christine.

“Nah,” I decide to myself, “I think I’ll just let it flow.”

6

Works Cited

Dagavarian, Harry. Three Who Survived. Unpublished Anthology, 2012. Print.

7