Description
This is the story of Katherine Magarian who saw her own father killed when she was just nine years old. The Turkish attempt to wipe out the Armenians lasted almost nine years and claimed the lives of more than a million people. Katherine, her mother and her sister survived by escaping their small mountain village of Palou. “My father was a businessman. He would go into the country selling pots and pans, butter, and dairy products. The Turks rode in one day and forced all the men to get together. They brought them into the church where they were slaughtered like sheep, with long knives. There were twenty-five dead from my family who died. My mother, my sisters and I, we ran. They captured my sister but my four year old sister got away. We walked and walked. I said, ”Ma, wait! I want to look for my little sister.” My mother said, ”No! It’s too dangerous! We kept walking.” Two, three days we walked with little to eat. Finally, by some miracle, we found my four-year-old sister. We arrived in Harput, and when I saw Turks, I wanted to run. But they were friendly and mother told me, ”You go live with them now. You’ll be safe.” I was safe as I worked there, waiting on them and cleaning. I was thankful to be alive and safe. I did not see my mother for five years and I missed her. She was taken to the mountains to live. Years later, my mother said, ”I want to go see my child” and the Turks let her come back. When she came to the house, she did not recognize me but I knew it was her. Her voice was the same as I remembered and I told her who I was. She exclaimed, “You are my daughter!” We kissed, we cried, we hugged, and we cried some more. My mother learned of an orphanage in Beirut for Armenians. This is where we went after the Turks kicked us out of our country. I spent four years there, and again, I didn’t see my mother until a priest reunited us. In 1924, my mother had the opportunity to immigrate to the USA to join relatives who came to America before the genocide. It was the third time I lost my mother. I met John in Beirut and we married on June 3, 1926. He immigrated to the USA in 1927 and I was close behind him, bringing our daughter Mary. We had a good life together, raising four children, two boys and two girls. We lived in Providence, Rhode Island in a nice neighborhood for fifty years. There were Italian people, Irish people, and Armenian people. Our children only spoke Armenian in the house and learned English in school. Education was very important to us. We had no money to send the girls to college, but we saved enough to send the younger boys. My mother and I were reunited in America. We saw each other often even though she lived in Pawtucket. In those days, it was much more difficult to get from one city to the next, but we still saw each other as often as we could. I love to crochet and still do it a lot. I crocheted angels for my nine great-grandchildren, so they all will remember me. Sometimes, near the anniversary of the slaughter, my mind goes back there. Back in Armenia, when I was fourteen, maybe fifteen, I had a dream. Jesus came to me and saying, “Give me your hand.” I want to get up and go with him but I cannot get up. Then, I am in the mountains, where all the dead were my mother would later tell me about, and I see flowers, every kind of flowers, no bodies. It is beautiful. Then I see the ocean and a boat, the boat that would take me to Cuba years later. I think maybe this was God saying to me that I would be okay. I was lucky to live, I guess. God made me lucky.
