Anahit Vardanyan

"One morning the Turk soldiers surrounded us, poured oil on us, and set us on fire. We wanted to run away, but where to? They were shooting anyone who tried to escape," Grandmother Mariam told us, recalling the Genocide. Seven years old at the time, she could not understand why they were being killed. This question still haunts her today, in her old age. The massacres and violence in which she lost part of her family live on in Grandmother Mariam's memory.

A Turkish commander offered to spare the family if they would give him Mariam's sister, Sose, as a bride for his son. But their father Grigor refused. "I will not deny my Armenian heritage and give my daughter to a Turk," he declared. The Turkish commander killed him for it, but miraculously, Mariam escaped with her mother and younger brother, leaving their native land of Sassun.

"We endured some horrible nights, running through forests, sleeping in valleys. What had they done? The sky had gone black with smoke and ash. Day was like night. I remember how they used to plunder their victims after killing them. They'd turn the corpses over, so that they could get the gold off the necks and ears of their victims," Mariam recounted.

She still remembers the bloody journey that brought them to this side of Mount Ararat . There were Turkish soldiers everywhere; they were sparing nobody. But under the protection of Andranik's battalion, the migrants managed to cross Ararat and stop at Gharakilisa, now Vanadzor. Here, they were helped by American missionaries, who were sending the orphans away on special trains to a faraway land, where their suffering would finally end. Mariam did not go with them, but continued to live the life of a migrant. Passing through Goris, Spitak, and Arouch, she finally settled with her uncle's family in the village of Bazmaberd in the Talin region in the early 1920s. She got married there in 1926, and found work on a collective farm. Working night and day, she managed to keep house and raise a family.

Today, Mariam Avoyan is 100 years old. She has six children, 23 grandchildren, and 56 great-grandchildren. She escaped the Turks, and created a life alongside fellow Armenians, but Mariam has not found solace.

"When our churches were destroyed, our Mass was over. When our baptism was completed, the Turks massacred us. I haven't received Communion for 30 years. What kind of an Armenian am I? Looking at the Turks, I'd say I was more of a Turk," Mariam insisted. She has long considered talking about the Genocide to be pointless, because she does not believe that justice will ever be done.