Balakian is a poet. The colourss, textures, sounds, and visible radiations he describes pigment a image of a kitchen but no people. When he mentions himself opening the cabinet a peculiar manner, let go ofing a odor into the room, he breathes life into it, his younger ego about mounting into the image. After seeing it from afar, the reader himself is eventually drawn near adequate to the room to smell it.

3

“ If I lived in a house where the old state still had a presence, why was n’t at that place a map, or exposure, or beautiful drawing of it someplace, like the one the Zandonellas had of Milan in their Television room? Since there was no image of the old state in our house and since I did n’t hold one etched in my head, the old state came to intend my grandma. Whatever it was, she was. Whatever she was, it was ” ( p. 16 ) .

Through his younger ego, Balakian introduces inquiries that have troubled coevalss of immature Armenians following the Genocide. To them, Armenia ‘s history has at times existed about literally merely in its surviving people, so light was its acknowledgment by the universe. It was up to Balakian ‘s grandma to affect him with the facts of his Armenian roots because nil else was there for him.

4

“ After my grandma died, Armenia seemed more and more remote, and I lost my direct and splanchnic sense of the antediluvian Near Eastern universe that she embodied. Yet, no affair how profoundly I sank into suburban life and the happy society of teenage Tenafly, my memory of my grandma was a unusual shadow looking now and so to remind me that there was something else I needed to cognize ” ( p. 27 ) .

Here, Balakian describes the deep cultural memory that about calls out to him from within his caput, beging him, guilting him to seek out the full narrative of Armenia. He shows that his grandma, without straight-out stating him everything, made him desire to larn about their civilization ‘s yesteryear, because this is how many immature Armenians were influenced. In other words, though there were 100s of independent intelligence studies of the Armenian race murder, the will to cognize the truth is merely every bit important to Armenia ‘s recovery, and has been passed on through the influence of people like Balakian ‘s grandma on their subsisters.

5

“ I feel like I am woolgathering, but the headboard is difficult against my cervix and I sit propped up in bed watching my grandma. Was she woolgathering, in forepart of me? ‘Everything smelled rotten. Hagop was on the land. I kicked him ‘ ” ( p. 31 ) .

The foggiest minute of Balakian ‘s memoir so far, while he ran a febrility of 104, is interrupted by a awfully limpid relation by his grandma of her darkest memory from the Armenian Genocide. This is the H2O on the seeds she planted throughout his life, giving bran-new context to all of his life ‘s cognition of Armenian civilization. From these watered seeds would jump the guilt adhering him to larning Armenia ‘s history.

6

“ ‘You ‘re lost here, ‘ Auntie Anna said, and made it clear that we had sold our psyches to a brutal society that did n’t cognize the difference between Monet and Donald Duck, Mallarme and Michener. We would go merely like everybody else-a thin piece of xanthous plastic cheese in the long, soft loaf of Velveeta that was America. Before my female parent could break out, my male parent interrupted with some remark about how good the kabobs had come out, and members of each side of the household tried to extricate the two adult females by pressing them to acquire the dishes and platters and bowls of nutrient around the tabular array ” ( p. 37 ) .

The suburban life style, Aunt Anna believed, would distance Balakian ‘s household from its Armenian roots and do them lose the memory of the slaughter of their people merely as the Turkish authorities wanted them to. Of class, this was untrue ; the memories, or thick shadows, pecking suggestions of them, were exhaustively imprinted upon at least Peter Balakian by his grandma. Anna is likely showing unsuppressible choler from the Genocide.

7

“ But the statement at 2nd base over Abraham ‘s married woman had intruded on my game and my afternoon and made me recognize, as I did when I spoke with my female parent on that December forenoon, that we were born into things ; we had ‘backgrounds, ‘ as my friends ‘ parents would state. My Judaic friends had their ain linguistic communication and rites they carried out each hebdomad that were bound up in 1000s of old ages of history and narratives and thoughts. There was something secret and tempting about it all ” ( p. 43 ) .

Balakian was, at first, beyond unmindful to Armenian civilization ; he did n’t even acknowledge that people were born into different civilizations. When he does acknowledge that, he is drawn to Jewish civilization because it ‘s the 1 he ‘s most cognizant of. He likes the thought of a distinguishable civilization but does n’t cognize his ain.

8

“ ‘I ‘m running off. You stink, ‘ I was shouting now. My female parent so said something that struck me as strange. ‘Do n’t acquire excessively attached to topographic points in life, Peter. ‘ But in the spring of 1960, my demand to be a Jew had more to make with go forthing Dickerson Road than a deeper apprehension of the existent affinity Armenians and Jews shared ” ( p.44 ) .

Balakian has a shallow apprehension of the thought, at least, that people were born into different civilizations and believed on some degree that he was per se Judaic. He was really merely attached to the specific illustration of Judaic civilization that he knew: the people on Dickerson Road. In Spring 1960, Balakian was, in general, ignorant of the events that had shaped his civilization, so it ‘s a small dry that he grew up on a street saturated with a civilization his had so much in common with.

9

“ The civilization that was misunderstood was my female parent ‘s: her feminine, Armenian, post-Genocide temperament. At certain minutes her unacknowledged cultural yesteryear became an uncontrollable force, a statement of beauty and sometimes ramp that asserted itself in the name of things culinary, in the name of the kitchen, the inviolable sanctuary of a civilization that had hardly escaped extinction. In the kitchen, my female parent truly was stating: We are alive and good, things have order, the universe has grace and manner ” ( p. 51 ) .

This portion of Balakian ‘s female parent ‘s civilization is one thing Armenians have in common with Hebrews: They love nutrient. The Armenians were starved during their Genocide, so Balakian ‘s female parent felt about a right to good nutrient in compensation. Food stood for solidness and order ; for the universe being the right manner.

10

“ Or to be at the Walls ‘ with my pess on a ottoman on a Saturday dark, watching the whole of Love Is a Many Splendored Thing or Town Without Pity, a box of Oreos and a six battalion of Mountain Dew at manus and non a parent in earshot. Such indulgences were impossible at our house, where an Armenian-American Puritanism was get downing to rigidify as our first twelvemonth on Crabtree Lane came to a stopping point. Inside our new suites with their fantastic contraptions, my parents were telling our lives-or possibly were being ordered by the old wonts of Armenian civilization, in which the lines of authorization between parents and kids are clear and rites of dining primary looks of cultural continuity ” ( p. 56 ) .

In the new vicinity, the contrast between Balakian ‘s Armenian family and America at big is magnified. Sadly denied the chance to populate the American Dream for most of his life, alternatively cooped up in a Judaic vicinity in the metropolis, he entirely indulges himself in the white suburban civilization he finds himself in. His parents turn the Armenian up to the equivalent of 11 of 11 possible units of Armenian to contend the sensed tough-minded, distrait values of white suburban area.

11

“ As the old ages wore on and I found myself sitting in the back-seat of a ’60 Chevy Bel Air and so a ’63 Buick as we wound through the streets of Tenafly rating split-levels, spreads, and colonial resurgences, my aunts and grandma still had non found a house good plenty to purchase. There was something vicarious, voyeuristic, and sublimated about their rough sentiments of what were to them clear weaknesss of the houses of northern New Jersey. Or was it that nil in the material universe was good plenty for the inheritresss of the household silk luck lost to the Turks when the Armenians were driven from their fatherland? ” ( p. 64 )

Harsh Armenian-American unfavorable judgment widening to everything reflects Balakian ‘s household ‘s keeping onto the steadfast belief that they deserve compensation for the wrongs inflicted on them during the Armenian Genocide. Being virtually a nucleus dogma of their civilization, it shows how wholly the Genocide changed them. They hold their caputs high all the clip ; demanding regard became portion of all Armenians ‘ blood.

12

“ Cigar fume, java, hot Canis familiariss, moist sod, the good odors of Saturday afternoon like a distant universe as I sat in the bases believing about the little bald adult male and my male parent, and the ambulance with its eerie bed on wheels. I kept seeing his manus and the blood leaking onto the land. By the terminal of the 4th one-fourth, when my male parent realized that we had non analyzed dramas or calculate manager Donelli ‘s calls and that, in fact, I had said about nil all afternoon, he turned to me and said, ‘The adult male will be All right, he wo n’t decease, he had a little bosom onslaught, ‘ so he brushed his manus over my crew cut and said, ‘you got ta be tough as nails, boy ‘ ” ( pp. 70-71 )

At his age in this transition, Balakian was mystified by decease, and accordingly to some grade by his male parent, who confronted decease about daily. This is portion of a go oning form in the interactions between male parent and boy. For old ages, Dr. Balakian is awkward in his efforts to pass on deeply with his boy about things including Armenian history and, here, life and decease.

13

“ There was an Armenian eating house in Greenwich Village, The Dardanelles, named after the celebrated sound that links the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean. We drove at that place in rush-hour traffic for midya, cold mussles in their shells stuffed with currants, pine nuts, and rice. And there was The Golden Horn on 56th Street, named for an recess of the Bosphorus. Why were Armenian eating houses in New York named after parts of Constantinople? ” ( pp. 74-75 )

Though he does n’t explicitly cognize the inside informations of Armenian history, Balakian sees intimations everyplace. Thankss to the seeds his grandma planted in him, these intimations raise inquiries in him like those that many immature Armenians have asked. Every spot of Armenian civilization seems oriented towards the events of the 1910s, and yet he still ca n’t ground them out from the exterior.

14

“ A twelve-inch piece of parchment with a three-by-five-inch exposure of the household. My male parent with a Beatle haircut have oning a crewman suit. His eyes dark and playful. It ‘s the spring of 1926. I think of him, non yet six, annoyed by the fold in his pants. Trying to make order. The name of his place of birth has disappeared from the map, and the significance of that map, excessively, has disappeared. I picture him tilting over the railing of the Berengaria, the Atlantic Ocean in the background ” ( p. 78 )

Photographic memories are a uninterrupted subject in this memoir. Balakian ‘s conceive ofing his male parent in a still photograph analogues the beginning, where he described a different scene, foreground and background, like this 1. All of the inside informations he gives are as if of a individual concrete image. This is the splanchnic sort of item that he wants to enter in his authorship.

15

“ I love this gentle, unagitated manner about him. I love the tact with which he respects my infinite. And I love to speak with him for hours about peculiar dramas of the game, about the opposing squad, about our game scheme. During these minutes his Armenian silence and formality dissolved, and we expressed our love for each other ” ( p. 106 ) .

In contrast to the manner their relationship was through most of portion III, on Monday when Balakian is on the school football squad, the ice between him and his male parent seems to run off. This mirrors the manner he and his grandma bonded over baseball.

16

“ On our waning day of the months, the affair of poesy kept coming up. ‘You ‘re an elitist, ‘ she said. ‘Poetry is about all of us, ‘ I said. ‘It ‘s blasted life we ‘re speaking about. ‘ ‘Just ’cause I do n’t acquire it, you ‘re seting me down, ‘ she said ” ( p. 112 ) .

Balakian ‘s girlfriend Ellen demonstrates ill will to his new-found intellectualism. She is apparently vexed by the thought of discoursing poesy, taking personal discourtesy even though he says nil about her. Balakian ‘s interrupting up with her symbolizes his rational development as he is forced to travel on from people who are openly hostile to the individual he is going.

17

“ Walking for stat mis through clay in a new brace of bellbottom trouserss and a rain-soaked tee shirt. Santana and Richie Havens repeating and blasting all twenty-four hours in the mizzle and rain and Sun. A alien go throughing me a clay pipe of hash, from which I took a toke and passed it to one of my friends. I felt uneven with pumped up biceps from a summer of weight raising for football, and I was n’t certain if I belonged here, but I began to experience that twenty-four hours at Woodstock that college was n’t traveling to be what I had thought it would be merely two months before, when my friends and I signed each other ‘s high school yearbooks cursing that we would run into on opposing sides on the college gridiron in the coming old ages ” ( p. 115 ) .

With two short sentences of ocular and aural inside informations, Balakian immediately brings the reader to a new scene and implies that clip has passed for him to hold arrived at that place. He merely off-handedly references Woodstock, lending to a sense of all of a sudden looking someplace. Use of marihuana by the writer is a go oning subject in AP Language and Composition possibly intended to rock the pupils ‘ sentiments of the drug, or at least give them more insight into its usage by writers and impact on literature.

18

“ I am directing you an article refering our ain people-which unfortunately clip and circumstance have non allowed me to speak about. In an epoch in which the bad lucks of other peoples are in the headlines invariably, it is most necessary and worthwhile to cognize about your ain people. We have a enormous historical antediluvian background with discord against odds, courage against perfidy, but eventual victory. 50 short old ages ago it was felt that the Armenians were finished after World War I ” ( p. 116 )

Balakian ‘s male parent ‘s tone remains formal in this, his most articulate address yet about the Armenian race to his boy. It comes after Balakian has been, as

19

“ Old Larison Dining Hall filled up with pupils in bleached bluish denims ant tee shirts with mottos on them like ‘Make love wherever you are, ‘ ‘Stop the war now, ‘ ‘I brake for marihuana. ‘ Some wore bandanna, some love beads. Some were barefoot, some wore mocassins. Faculty came in tweed jackets or lacerate denims and sandals. Everyone was sitting on the floor, as articulations were circulated and bottles of Boone ‘s Farm apple vino and Mateus rose were chugged and passed ” ( p. 122 ) .

This transition recalls the imagination with which Balakian began the chapter: The dining hall is like his ain small Woodstock, with poesy alternatively of music. His life has turned aggressively off from the universe of frats and football, yet its flight has been consistent in a manner. Football brought him closer to his male parent, and with his him he began to discourse thoughts, doctrine, and the universe at big ; at around the same clip, he came to cognize his aunts through their authorship.

20

“ When my female parent barged into my room rather early the following forenoon, I do n’t cognize what she expected to happen. Charlene and me? Or me under the screens, entirely in pyjama? She found neither, because I had neglected to state her that I had given my room to Allen and Peter, and that I was remaining at Charlene ‘s. What she witnessed exactly-that is, the precise details-I ‘ve ne’er been able to happen out, but my flat couples who lived in bordering suites said they heard her shriek and run down the hallway and the stepss, and from their Windowss, watched her get in her auto and drive away ” ( p. 125 ) .

This incident, as amusing alleviation, makes up in a manner for the poke Balakian ‘s female parent took at him through his girlfriend in her Armenian Odar-concerned manner. The deeper cultural connexion between them through the poem Kaddish is lost beneath this normal noise of familial discord.

21

“ And I, non certain whether Saroyan is an old odd fellow or a prophesier and still regardful plenty to the Armenian patriarchal manner, travel out the following twenty-four hours and purchase a manual typewriter. The best manual typewriter I could happen, which turned out to be a piece of debris, and I cursed Saroyan every clip its bolts came undone. I pitched it a few old ages subsequently in a Dumpster off an issue incline on path 80. But Saroyan was a literary patriarch, and Auntie Nona, who ever encouraged and praised my authorship, wanted me to link with him ” ( p. 133 ) .

With the by and large positive tone of this chapter, Balakian humorously misleads the reader to think this item of his narrative about come ining the societal literary universe would besides be positive. He learned that although their thoughts could alter his life, the Masterss of the literary universe were n’t perfect in all respects.

22

“ ‘You see, ‘ she went on, composed once more and speaking like a critic, ‘I believe that Saroyan, like all Armenians, was a natural Utopian. We have a dream alternatively of a state. Because district has eluded us, we have a freedom to contrive that most people do n’t. The more our geographics psychiatrists, the more our imaginativenesss expand, the more we ‘re like owls winging in the dark ‘ ” ( p. 138 ) .

Aunt Nono speaks approximately Saroyan as an Armenian and expresses that Armenian history is inextricably tied up with the Armenian literary tradition. This describes Balakian in his personal development sing literature and Armenia every bit good every bit Armenians as a whole. The chapter rubric, by the way, is drawn from Aunt Nono ‘s shutting analogy because the chapter as a whole is basically about Balakian ‘s altering relationship with Armenia.

23

“ I pulled into the long round private road at Graham House tardily on Sunday dark experiencing good about life. As I walked up the stairway, I realized I had n’t thought one time about my grandma all weekend. Not about church, or household, or hokee hankisd. I opened the Gallic doors to my flat, chucked my backpack on my bed, sat on my garage-sale turquoise sofa, and opened my notebook. I merely needed to compose, and I began ” ( p. 141 ) .

Here Balakian suffers a discovery thanks to the Armenian guilt given to him by his grandma triggered here in response to non believing about hokee hankisd. For the first clip Balakian releases his pure emotion by composing poesy, like some of his older relations before him. As authorship, including poesy, is vitally of import to Armenian history, this signifies the beginning of a new phase in his relationship with Armenia.

24

“ By the clip the coach came rattling over the chuckholes of Knickerbocker route, I was lost in my male parent ‘s place of birth. Ships moored along the Bosphorus. The H2O, green, lukewarm, caique-flecked, the glister of Ag. Terraced bunchs of fid and olive trees. The dome of Hagia Sophia, aureate, with minarets stick outing up. Work force in Fez. Smells of shashlik and sewerage in the streets ” ( p. 149 )

Though he uses poetic linguistic communication to depict stealing into his male parent ‘s fatherland through Ambassador Morgenthau ‘s Story, instantly subsequently, Balakian ‘s enunciation displacements from connotative to denotative, his tone from poetic to serious. The history he gives is a fundamentally wholly factual history of events that would transform the Armenian people.

25

“ Morgenthau ‘s descriptions of Talaat, Enver, Djemal-the work forces who engineered the Armenian Genocide-fascinated me the manner descriptions of Hitler did when I foremost read about the Holocaust. The leader of the triumvirate, Talaat Pasha, like Hitler, Napoleon, and Stalin, was an cultural outsider-a Bulgarian itinerant whose provincial upbringing had non included the ‘use of a knife and fork ‘ ” ( p. 151 ) .

His involvement in Talaat Pasha reflects obviously the similarity between all four of the violent empire-builders he describes. It ‘s interesting that Pasha was non raised to utilize a knife and fork ; Adolf Hitler reportedly had distinctively atrocious table manners, eating quickly and automatically, running his finger under his olfactory organ, and eating so much bar that it might hold significantly contributed to his flatulency. This is one of many comparings of the Armenian Genocide to the Holocaust that will go more frequent as Balakian comes closer to the modern province of Armenian history.

26

“ ‘Peeta, Peeta, Peeta. The starvation Armenians. ‘ Jimmy said it swimmingly, like it was an old run motto. ‘When I was turning up in Charleston, if we left a green or some gravy on the home base, my female parent would state, “ Remember the starvation Armenians. ” ‘ ‘How old were you? When your female parent said that. ‘ ‘During the Great War, because I left place before the war was over. ‘ ‘Did you know what “ hungering Armenians ” meant? ‘ ‘I knew the Armenians were massacred, starved to decease, about wiped out. ‘ Jimmy made a wide X mark with his index finger. ‘By the Turks. They do n’t gull about, those Turks. Like the Whites in the Old South ‘ ” ( p. 166 ) .

The book Ambassador Morgenthau ‘s Story got Balakian to inquire his supervisor Jimmy about what any adult male on the street could hold told him: The starvation Armenians were portion of dad civilization, but Balakian merely did n’t look for his people until he was inspired by the book from his parents ‘ house to make so.

27

“ ‘She underwent the intervention and by winter she was all right. And nil like that of all time happened once more. No one of all time mentioned this minute in your grandma ‘s life. I ne’er heard her reference the Turks once more. It was as if it ne’er happened. We say in Armenian: When he past is behind you, maintain it there ‘ ” ( p. 180 ) .

Balakian ‘s grandma ‘s demands for her saneness ‘s interest conflicted with the household ‘s demand to retrieve and speak about its yesteryear. The state of affairs Aunt Gladys describes is about one of her memories being pinned under her female parent ‘s mental instability following the bombardment of Pearl Harbor. It ‘s dry that, for the interest of a individual who lived through the Genocide, the household had to halt speaking about the Genocide-for later on, the Armenians touched by the Genocide would populate on merely in the ideas of people retrieving the Genocide and its victims.

28

“ Aunt Gladys was speaking as if she had unlocked some box in herself, and each thing she pulled out was hooked onto something else. ‘Is that it? ‘ My aunt looked at me questioningly. ‘Of your memories? ‘ ( p. 183 )

Balakian uses assorted metaphors throughout his memoirs to depict the nature of human memory. Earlier, he described poesy as a manner of drawing out repressed memories and lodging them as words on paper. His description of his Aunt ‘s remembrance here is similar, with the first of her memories teased out possibly her clip spent in Paris with Armenian household, and the remainder being pulled out along one time she begins speaking. He goes into such deepness about the nature of memory because his memoirs are, basically, about his discovering and turning into his Armenian individuality, which requires him to plumb both his ain memory and those of others.

29

“ I sat there looking at the servers dressed in ruddy and white, the decanter of vino on the tabular arraies, the beautiful colour of the room. Peoples eating and imbibing and laughing. ‘His friend said that it broke him. The places for which he had scrimped and saved all those old ages while he was conveying his household out of that suffering topographic point. Those places which represented new hope in life. The darn immorality of those Turks stealing those places. ‘ ”

Contrast with eating house, like in the park with hot Canis familiariss reading Ambassador Morgenthau. That their appetencies are lost is implied by the deficiency of talk about nutrient, unlike every other household assemblage at a tabular array. The household has focused so critically on nutrient in the past, as with all other nice things, and remained soundless about Armenia ‘s history by necessity, for they can non eat with the memory of their starvation ascendants in head.

30

“ Q. 1. Give the ( a ) name, ( B ) abode, and ( degree Celsius ) business or concern of each person

A. 1. : ( a ) Nafina Hagop Chilinguirian ( B ) ( Born Shekerlemedjian )

( degree Celsius ) ( B ) Ghuri St. Aleppo, Syria. ( degree Celsius ) Tailoress

My female parent stating: ‘I do n’t care how long it takes, we ‘re waiting in line until the seamster is done ; you will non travel out without a suit that fits. My female parent made everything from abrasion. ‘ My grandma ‘s custodies. Blotched. Streaked white. Raw-looking. They had sewn my lacerate pants. They kneaded dough, flew like birds when she told her dreams. White-knuckled on her cane. Stiring the lokma hitter. Claping in the Little League stands. Agile with a Ag needle. Like wings in my head the dark she died. ”

Like Ambassador Morgenthau, like Ginsburg ‘s verse form Kaddish, even this authorities signifier awakens memories in Balakian that he forgot he had: His ma ‘s Armenian pride. His grandma ‘s custodies. He sees all of his memories of his grandma in an wholly different visible radiation given the business typed onto this signifier.

31

“ We the undersigned [ … ] solemnly affirm that [ … ] they are all killed by the Turks during our exile from diarbekir, except Mrs. Nafina ‘s hubby who died of violent agonies caused by the dehumanized inhuman treatments of the deporter gendarmes ” ( p. 201 ) .

That Mrs. Nafina ‘s hubby is noted on a authorities signifier as death of “ violent agonies ” distinct from merely being killed is noteworthy. It hints at more horrors like those described earlier without depicting them precisely. Sing this nothingness on a signifier is, in a manner, more awful than cognizing what was at that place.

32

“ ‘This is non what poesy is for! ‘ She was shouting now, and I saw Auntie Nona throw her a sticker expression. ‘What is poesy for? ‘ ‘You ca n’t be circumstantial in poesy, ‘ she said, her voice shrill. ‘Are n’t Dante and Homer circumstantial? ‘ ‘That was a long clip ago. ‘ Her voice was agitating. ‘You ca n’t hold the fortunes of history in a verse form? ‘ ” ( p. 225 )

Balakian has written this book about as a reproof to the place his Aunt Anna takes here. He uses poetic linguistic communication to show the manner his history affects him throughout the novel, in add-on to composing formal poetry. Balakian ‘s stance is that poesy is a utile agencies of reflecting upon and entering historic memories.

33

“ I was get downing to see the past as a worn carpet. Some tight deflection and woof here and at that place. Some good heap in musca volitanss where clear images appeared ; so merely frayed wool, so a large hole. So many were cut out of clip, and the hurting that ensued made it difficult for anyone to speak about the yesteryear ” ( pp. 230-231 ) .

The losing pieces of the carpet of Balakian ‘s household ‘s yesteryear are people who were cut out by Turks in the Armenian Genocide. The hurting of the carpet being cut made it difficult for them to speak about the past. Writing, he feels, is a manner of repairing the carpet.

34

“ As Mandelstam said, because totalitarian governments ever find poets the most unsafe of people, they are frequently the first to be executed. The Young Turk authorities began its program of race murder by collaring a group of 250 outstanding Armenian leaders and intellectuals on April 24, 1915. They were taken off in the center of the dark to little towns in the inside and executed. It haunts me to believe about how a whole coevals of authors was silenced in 1915, merely as they were maturating and get downing to make something dynamic and new ” ( pp. 234-235 ) .

Totalitarian governments find poets unsafe because poesy is a manner of entering the actions of a authorities, which is the first measure to keeping it accountable for its actions. The Young Turks knew that if they were traveling to construct a permanent authorities on a platform of mass slaughter, they would hold to stamp down grounds of it or be known as monsters. In other words, simply kill offing a race is non plenty ; its civilization must be purged, excessively, and so in race murder, the authors must be killed foremost.

35

“ An Armenian doctor in the Turkish ground forces. To be scissored between the Hippocratic Oath and the cognition that those you were salvaging might be perpetrating genocide. To be an Armenian physician in the Turkish ground forces during World War I was to seek to salvage Lieutenant Jelal so that he could return to the field to rob and kill Armenians. My gramps had no pick. Either he complied with his military muster or he was executed for lese majesty. To salvage his household and himself, he served at Soma ” ( p. 241 ) .

Here Balakian describes a horror from the Genocide unique to physicians like his ain male parent. The Hippocratic Oath is, basically, a committedness to give oneself up to the work of salvaging lives. The Turks abused, among other things, physicians bound by this curse, like they took advantage of anyone else. Balakian means to stir sentiment in the reader by exemplifying one inhumane act among many by the Turkish authorities during the Genocide.

36

“ My aunt chose those lines from Breton as the book epigraph to Surrealism: the Road to the Absolute, and in so making stated her ain curative impression of poesy as a signifier of personal redemption in the aftermath of injury, scattering, and exile. Among other things, the Surrealist poets of France embodied for her the zenith of European civilization ; they were a span from her parents ‘ Europe and the charming bells of Collonges to her present. But certainly, one could love such an thought of poesy and besides acknowledge history. How can one deny the graveyard of one ‘s ascendants? ” ( p. 248 )

Balakian is mocking because something still escapes him: What makes Aunt Anna, despite her belief in poesy as therapy, so vehemently opposed to using it to Armenia ‘s lesions? The surrealist poets bridge parts of her life like Balakian feels other authors bridge parts of the Armenian narrative, but there is seemingly something particular to the Massacres ‘ consequence upon her that Balakian can non yet grasp.

37

“ Wordss like pieces of bone. I began to experience the presence of loss in a new manner. What did it intend for a whole civilisation to be expunged from the Earth? What did it intend when a people who loved and worked and built a civilization on the land where they had lived for three thousand old ages were destroyed? ” ( p. 253 )

Throughout his memoirs, Balakian comes closer and closer to the natural world of the Armenian Genocides, including the impact on the people ‘s history. Each beginning, demoing the narrative from another angle with different inside informations, raises new inquiries in his head.

38

“ I wept as I typed out the words of my lost uncle. I felt his embracing, his face fungus on my face. Against odds, his words had reached me here in cardinal New York near the terminal of the century ” ( p. 258 )

Balakian weeps, for his uncle is alive in the words that have survived to make him. He has personally touched a household member who about died to the universe, whose memory is preserved in one obscure book ( The Case of Soghomon Tehlirian ) that he hardly found. Typing his uncle ‘s words is, to Balakian, like salvaging him from a 2nd, more lasting decease.

39

“ The hills are soft in cardinal New York, but there is nil quaint about the Ag and white silos, the flaking ruddy barns, and the folds of black-faced white heifers. It ‘s a terrain of difficult economic systems, a landscape of work. Route 20 is a two-land main road, like old Route 66, and it runs four stat mis north of my house in Hamilton, cutting through towns and small towns from Albany to Buffalo. Saging Italianates, half-painted ladies, antique stores, diners, and eating houses with bleached Ne marks mark the waysides of even the smallest towns such as Bridgewater, East Springfield, Bouckville ” ( pp. 261-262 ) .

This transition chiefly conveys a sense of a difficult, weather-beaten land. To stress the hardness, Balakian writes that there is “ nil quaint ” about characteristics typically found in arcadian farming area. The images of little, old people and topographic points ( “ drooping Italianites ; ” “ antique stores, diners, and eating houses with bleached Ne marks ” ) suggest isolation in clip every bit good as in infinite.

40

“ I had small fondness for patriotism, and I had been raised so outside of Armenian cultural life that my life had become a Hunt to happen out about the yesteryear. I found myself pulled by the calamity that had happened to Armenia and to my household, and by the universal, moral issues the Genocide represented. And so I had written a book of verse forms about things I could put claim to ” ( pp. 262-263 ) .

This transition describes Balakian ‘s relationship with Armenia both after printing his book of poesy every bit good as his relationship as of this twenty-four hours. It ‘s self-referential, as he is sill composing about his Hunt to happen out about the yesteryear.

41

“ ‘Damn Armenians, expect you to come at the bead of a chapeau, as if you owe it to them. And they ne’er pay. ‘ ‘You ‘ll experience bad if you do n’t travel, ‘ my married woman said. Bad meant guilty, and guilty is a manner of being in Armenian civilization, a manner we check our single self-importances against the collective will. ‘Fuck it, I ‘m stating no. ‘ So I called the following forenoon and said, ‘Okay, I can come ‘ ” ( p. 263 ) .

Balakian ironically causally associates his credence of a speech production day of the month with his unwritten statement the dark before that he would non travel. He does it out of guilt stirred up by any negative ideas about Armenia, guilt that has been with him all his life since his grandma died.

42

“ From the clip I ‘d learned about the Armenian Genocide until the old twelvemonth, I had known nil about the Turkish authorities ‘s run to hush the narrative of its offense against Armenia. But after Sad Days of Light came out, the New York State Department of Education asked me to be an adviser for a text edition on twentieth-century race murder that would be used in public schools. Not long after I and a group of bookmans had begun seting together the chapter on the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish Embassy got air current of the undertaking and began hassling the Department of Education, take a firm standing that ‘this race murder concern ‘ was invented by Armenians, and if the chapter were included it would ache U.S.-Turkish dealingss ” ( p. 266 ) .

The protest at his talking battle, like this official authorities torment, is peculiarly worsening to Balakian coming at what might be considered the end game of his find of Armenia ‘s history. He fundamentally merely spent old ages delving up the truth, and with this protest at his talking assignment, the Turks fundamentally take a shit on what he has found. His tone is mocking when he quotes the Turkish Embassy ‘s mention to reactions to the Genocide without recognition of the Genocide itself: “ ‘this race murder concern. ‘ ”

43

“ After all that has happened we are forced to populate with this sort of lewdness. The message the Turkish authorities sends us and the universe is: We will state anything to shrive ourselves of this offense. We have no scruples. We merely want to hush the victims and their posterities. I am inquiring good and nice American citizens to state no to Turkish efforts to cover up the Armenian Genocide ” ( p. 270 ) .

Here, Balakian verbally organic structure slams the Turkish race murder deniers out of fury in what was to be a short speech production battle. He believes that his occupation is far from over, because the Turkish authorities continues to seek to set a headlock on anyone discoursing the Armenian Genocide even decades after it occurred.

44

“ In 1983, when the first genocide declaration came before the U.S. House and Senate, the Turkish authorities threatened to shut down U.S. Military bases in Turkey, built with 1000000s of U.S. Dollars, and to end defence contracts with U.S. Firms. President Reagan, who earlier that twelvemonth went to Bitburg, Germany, to pay court to dead German S.S. officers-and in making so conflated the elect violent death corps with its victims-had no trouble assenting to Turkish demands ” ( p. 271 ) .

Balakian connects Reagan ‘s actions sing the Armenian Genocide to his obviously violative 1s sing the Holocaust to demo how Armenians have been wronged by actions of U.S. Government functionaries. He ‘s angered by both the Turkish functionaries who twist weaponries to acquire their manner and the authoritiess that so readily submit to Turkey at the disbursal of Armenia.