Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9501040014
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MARIE S. BEAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Who remembers the Armenians?" Hitler asked when it was cautiously suggested that the international community would never let him get away with his plans to exterminate the Jews.
In June, 1915, the Turks had massacred more than 1 million Armenian men, women and children.
In "Rise the Euphrates," Carol Edgarian remembers for us through the eyes of Garod, a 9-year-old girl. In visceral prose, relentless in its pathos, Edgarian describes the horror of the world's first modern genocide. Garod's father and brother are murdered, along with the other men of her village. She and her mother, Seta, with the other women and children, are forced to march into the Mesopotamian desert of Eer el Zor.
After eight days they reach the Eurphrates River. They have two choices. They could turn back into the murderous fire of the prusuing soldiers, or jump to an almost certain death in the muddy, roiling waters of the Euphrates. Garod's mother, holding her daughter's hand and calling her to follow, jumps to her death.
But at the last minute, the child recoiled, refuses to follow, and lets go her mother's hand. Her act of defiance in willing to live is too much for her psyche to bear, and memory leaves her. She forgets her own name.
Miraculously, Garod is rescued. She takes a new name for herself, Casard. At 15 years of age she comes to America. She marries a fellow Armenian immigrant, and they settle in Connecticut. They have a daughter, Araxie, who defiantly marries a man outside the Armenian community, an "odar." To Araxie is born Seta, the second, the "bright and shining hope" of her grandmother.
"Rise the Euphrates" is a moving and well-constructed first novel. Edgarian, with her strong sense of drama, creates lives for her characters that speak the truth. And we care about her characters. We see ourselves in them.
For this is not a book about genocide. It is a story of families, of family secrets, of poignant yearnings for autonomy and for freedom from impossible expectations. Edgarian helps us see how tragedy and pathos resonate from one generation to the next, and how succeeding generations are affected when one generation leaves unfinished emotional business for the next to fix.
Marie S. Bean is a retired college chaplain.
by CNB