In the last days of the Ottoman Empire, the rulers of Turkey took it into their heads that the Armenian population of the country was a threat. So it began the first mass extermination of a people during the 20th century. As the world turned a blind eye (as it continues to do so today when it comes to Turkish treatment of its minority Kurdish population, and the Kurdish population in Northern Iraq which they relentlessly bomb and harass), first Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and shot for sedition; then as many Armenians as they could find were rounded up in Istanbul and force-marched across the country with no food or water and shipped into exile.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, died of malnutrition during the march and subsequent confinement. Children who survived were placed into orphanages where they had their names, language, and culture stolen from them so that they could be raised as good Turkish citizens and the Armenian culture would be eliminated. Thankfully the Ottoman Empire was nowhere near as efficient as Nazi Germany in their methods, and thankfully a good many regular citizens interceded to protect their friends and neighbours, so Armenians survived both in Istanbul and to flee the country to start new lives abroad.
The memory and history of what happened has never left them, and each generation of Armenians living abroad is weaned on tales of those whose lives were lost and the dispossession of their homes. Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian is the daughter of an Armenian-American and an American. Her mother and father divorced when Armanoush was only two, because her mother Rose couldn't take the pressure of so many people judging her every move while always treating her as an outsider. Her revenge against her former in-laws was swift and merciless — her second marriage was to Mustafa Kazanci, a Turkish man whose family still lived in Istanbul.
While Armanoush is growing up spending half of her time with her father's family in San Francisco learning the horror of her family's past, Mustafa's niece is growing up in Istanbul without even a past of her own. Asya is the daughter of the youngest of the Kazanci sisters, four in total, who live with their mother and grandmother in the family's ancestral home. Men have a habit of dying young in the family - so his mother had sent Mustafa off to the United States in the hope that he would beat the curse that had deprived the family of their precious men.
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