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 rememberinga 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 recollections density.
Cool as a cucumber, she calls me, rolling up my sleeve and swabbing the area with
disinfectant. I tell her Im not afraid of the syringethat metal through bloody nerve cringe. Its
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 prickproboscispinched... A foreign wedge bores through me at the upper-most
crack of micro and the lower most threshold of pain. The stingthat high plucked string, that
steep somatic staccatoed 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
renouncing their religion and sacrificing their honor. They were content to collect money, and
left us alone for four days (1).
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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 ones 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 rigourmortised 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 printan 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).

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 fires 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 isnt simply messthat there is order to it, and
structure, and the ability perhaps to bear things. In cells? In organelles? I dont 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 permeableisotonic, 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 Im in over my head, Im submerged over my
head. Chlorine-piss-countered gunk, engulfed, a poor excuse for H2O an affront to the element
actually, and a pathetic way to die. Did I need to move to swim? Why? It moves within me
effortlesslyno time to think, my heartbeat trots, alveoli suck at spent air, hemoglobin fidgets
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frantically for its fix. I realize Im 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 didnt 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 dont speak or listen, they just act and, from time to time,
nudge.
Let them out, theres 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.
Whats preserved within though? Thunder booms in the distance, and I feel, for the first time, the
insurmountable quarts of my pasts bloods battles, jolted with epinephric foreboding.
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).
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Ever since we left Aleppo, the clothes on our backs still hadnt 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 galacticagain 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 Gaias 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 hadnt 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).

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 timeprick 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 couldnt 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. Im
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 mothers beautiful brown eyes, the eyes of her
father, and the eyes of his mother, Christine.
Nah, I decide to myself, I think Ill just let it flow.

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