My Grandma Shogher on surviving the genocide

I can’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance when asked the question, “So you’re Armenian like Kim Kardashian?” It’s not the question itself that bothers me, but rather the dismissive reduction of the vast and spirited Armenian culture to a single celebrity’s persona. I am not Armenian “like Kim Kardashian.” I am Armenian like Zabel Yessayan, a political writer and voice for women in the early 1900s, like revolutionary and soldier Soghomon Tehlirian, like the poet and public activist Yeghishe Charents. I am Armenian like my Շողեր Տատիկ (Grandma Shogher), the sole survivor of the Armenian Genocide among her parents and eight siblings.

My great-great-grandmother was born on Christmas Day in 1905. She was the youngest of nine children – a Christmas miracle, as she was called. Her family led a simple rural life in the city of Mush in Western Armenia. Her father was a farmer, and her mother, as were most women in traditional Armenian families at the time, a housewife. The native Armenians of Grandma Shogher’s village lived alongside Kurdish, Assyrian and Turkish people, sent to live there by the government in order to assimilate the area. In the 1910s, after the Young Turks ascended to power, news began to circulate throughout the village of plans for the deportation of the Armenian population. People were assured that they were being deported farther west for their “safety.” The seemingly absurd talk of deportation was brushed off as mere village gossip. In the spring of 1915, just months after Grandma Shogher turned 10, these rumors transpired into a tragic reality.