blurred memories from my great-grandma's life
here's another story i'd like to tell. actually, i'm going try to translate the one i had written about a year ago.
when i was very little, i liked to sit next to my mum's grandma Azniv and listen to her stories that she told everytime when she did her needle work. then she would stop the story and ask the time. i would answer, "the big arrow is on this number and the small arrow is on that number." even though at least 13 have passed since those days, i remember my great-grandmother with her kind face covered by wrinkles, her snowwhite needle works and some stories from her life.
when she was 4-years-old the turks took her dad and uncle. her mother with her baby brother and her uncle's wife went to find their husbands. but the only one who came back was her uncle's wife and when she was back, she said, "they're gone, too." then grandma Azniv, her elder brother and their aunt were hiding in a turk's cellar and were staying hungry for days. a turk child was coming everyday, looking through a hole which connected the cellar with the world, talking to them. sometimes he/she (i don't know whether this child was a girl or a boy) brought some food for them. once the child brought immature grapes. my great-grandma tasted it - it was sour. so she was holding the grapes near the hole so that the sunrays would make it grow.
i don't remember the rest of the story. the only thing i remember is that a relative came from France and took her elder brother with him, while Azniv and her aunt after several sufferings reach Greece where they begin to work. Azniv got married there when she was 15.
i've never seen my great-grandpa - Azniv's husband. but the latter told me about him, too. he had suffered the genocide, too. i don't remember this story very well. but one detail of that story still touches my heart. it's that my great-grandpa's mother threw her daughter into the river Aras so that the turks wouldn't kill her.
Azniv also told me about her husband's death. it has happened in yerevan, in the garden of the same house where i live now. my family had an old quarrel with the neighbour. one day when my great-grandpa was holding my newborn mother in his arms and some members of the family were in the garden too the neighbour appeared with a knife. my great-grandpa put my mother on the ground, took a thick stick but couldn't defend himself - the neighbour killed him.
...and today when i hear the word "genocide" i remember the dark cellar and the immature grapes, the dirty river Aras and my great-grandpa being killed by an armenian.
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But you're not allowed
You're uninvited
An unfortunate slight
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