|
fought back, my
father among them, with ancient hunting rifles. We
lost 50-60 men before we fled. We returned 5-6 days
later to find all our houses burned to the ground.
It took us months to rebuild.
In 1915, we were the last
to be deported out of Kessab because we were
Protestant. The American Ambassador in Bolis had
apparently secured guarantees for our safety, but we
were deported anyway. They took us toward Der-Zor—the
interior Syrian desert. Our whole family: my father,
mother, four brothers, two sisters. I was 20-21, at
the time. We loaded everything we had on mules and
horses and set out under armed guards. They took us
to Meskeneh on the Euphrates river. Meskeneh was a
huge outdoor camp where ten of thousands of
Armenians had been deported—bit by bit they were
sent to Der-Zor, to their death. We were there for
awhile. We lived under tents along with a lot of
others from Kessab. Most of the time we had nothing
to eat. Sometimes my father would buy bread from the
soldiers but they had mixed sand with the flour—so
we ate this hard bread and sand crunched under our
teeth.
Meskeneh was a horrible,
horrible place. 60,000 Armenians had been buried
under the sand there. When a sandstorm hit, it would
blow away a lot of the sand and uncover those
remains. Bones, bones, bones were everywhere then.
Wherever you looked, wherever you walked.
|
|
