Synopsis

“It is they, my fathers and mothers, who, emerging from a deep well, told me their story, and I sat down, one day in May, to listen and write. And it was like weaving a carpet.” Uncle Sempad is just a legend for us: but a legend we have all wept over. He was my grandfather's only brother, the youngest. He loved his quiet city, his sleepy province, the chats in the café with friends. He studied to be a pharmacist in Constantinople, but planned to return home.” Thus begins, like a warm and reassuring family memory, Antonia Arslan's long journey into the pain and horror of a people, victim of the first genocide of the twentieth century and survived thanks to the courage of its extraordinary women.