The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Journey is a memoir that retraces a grandfather's epic tale of survival amidst the Armenian genocide in Anatolia, Turkey, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Not only is this memoir terrifying in the detailed descriptions of the horror of ethnic cleansing, but it is also poignantly beautiful. Amidst the reality of hunger, sleep-deprivation, nakedness, thirst, a violent uprooting from home, separation from family and loved ones, illness, and despair, the author includes passages resounding full of virtuous hope, gratitude, and appreciation for beauty. Here, for example, the author's grandfather Stepan savors a sack of dried grapes and dates:
"Skeletal and nearly naked, he dropped the shriveled sweetness of each one into his mouth. He could feel the raisin plump with his saliva, almost come to life, and taste the pop of a sugar rush as he bit down.... Ten minutes passed like this. The quiet was stifling; it was still enough to hear his own breath, his own beautiful breath. Finally, the guards motioned. Another raisin plopped into Stepan's mouth, and his legs, thin as skewers, began to move. Where? He didn't know the exact coordinates, but this time, he knew his final destination.... I have one or two hours of life left. One or two..." (180)
That anyone survived the Armenian genocide is a miracle, but these kinds of violences waged against our fellow human beings occur regularly across our troubled world. It is the terrifying and all-too-historical reality of genocide such as that waged against the Armenians that leads me to side with regular citizens' rights for self-protection in a world where governments often turn against a defenseless population (i.e., Cambodia, Germany, Ukraine, Turkey, China, Cuba, U.S.S.R., Syria, etc.).
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