1915

Holding a cane in his right hand, Movses Haneshyan, 105, slowly approaches a life-size landscape.

He pauses, looks at the image, and begins to sing: “My home... My Armenia.”

It’s the first time Movses is seeing his home in 98 years.

A century ago, the Ottomans initiated a policy of deportations, mass murder and rape to destroy the Armenian presence in the Ottoman Empire. By the war’s end, more than a million people, from what is now modern-day Turkey, were eliminated.

It was one of first genocides of the 20th century, one that Turkish authorities deny to this day.

Movses and his father survived.

I traveled to Armenia to meet Movses and other survivors to ask them about their last memories of their early home. I then retraced their steps in Turkey to retrieve a piece of their lost homeland.

One hundred years after having fled his birthplace, Movses caresses its image, as if by holding it close he will be taken back to the place he called home many years ago.

This is his story, and those of other survivors.

A story of home — everything they had, everything they lost. And what they have found again.

2015

Once the capital of an ancient Armenian Kingdom, Ani, was known as the "city of 1,001 churches." After the genocide, Turkey cut Armenia from its history, with no mention of who built or inhabited it. Today, the city remains abandoned, apart from the occasional presence of Turkish border guards.

Yepraksia Gevorgyan, now 108, escaped by crossing the river to what is now present-day Armenia. She watched the Ottomans kill the Armenians, throwing their bodies into the water, which she described as "red, full of blood."

During the early series of deportations and massacres, The New York Times suggested there was already a "policy of extermination directed against the Christians of Asia minor." 

A portrait of the Sargysyan family in Kutahya, Turkey, before they were deported in 1915. 

Scenes like this were common in the spring and summer months of 1915, as the Ottomans turned much of modern-day Turkey into a killing field. 

A box containing the remains of Armenians from Der Zor, Syria: a destination to which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forced to march in 1915 and 1916. This location in the Syrian desert, now ISIS controlled, for Armenians is synonymous to Auschwitz.

The waters of the Akhurian River trace the border between present-day Turkey and Armenia. The river is a tributary to the Araks, which Armenians crossed over to escape the massacres of 1915.

Yepraksia holds an image of the location from whence she recalls escaping with her family. This is the first time she has seen it in 100 years.

A hand-drawn map of Kebusie, a tiny village on Musa Dagh Mountain, a site of resistance during the 1915 deportations. Movses and his father fled from the village to Syria in 1915. A century later, he asked me to go back to find his church, and to leave his image there.

"I remember the river," recalls Yepraksia Gevorgyan upon seeing the panel. "I saw the Turks kill the Armenians, throwing their bodies into the water."

I followed the map Movses had given to me. I discovered everything he had described: the sea, the tree with the fruit he remembered eating, and the goats he shepherded. I found it all, even the rubble of what was once his church.

A century later, a part of Movses found it too.

The town of Sason, Turkey was a major site of massacres. Once populated predominately by Armenians, the district is now inhabited by a handful of hidden Armenians, many unaware of their identity or afraid to reveal it.

Mariam Sahakyan, 101, was born in Sason, Turkey. She escaped to Syria with her mother and older brother, whom they dressed as a girl for safety.

Mariam's chair.

Mariam spent most of her life moving back and forth between her home in Armenia and visiting relatives in Syria. She never again saw the place where she was born. Her one request: "Go to my village and bring back soil for me to be buried in."

The Sahakyan family tree depicts four generations dating back to 1915. Mariam spent most of her life separated from her brothers and sisters who stayed behind in Syria.

Mariam sits in front of a panel of an unpaved street in her hometown. She recalls hiding in the grass and walking at night for three days to flee the soldiers..

A family icon belonging to an Armenian family brought from Turkey during their deportation from Kutahya. At the time of the genocide, many Christian Armenians were spared death by marrying into Turkish families or converting to Islam.

In the shadows, Haydarpasa train station. On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested several hundred Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul. From Haydarpasa train station, they were sent to Ayas and Cankiri, where they were executed. This event marked the beginning of the genocide.

An archival image of a couple on their wedding day in 1910. The image was ripped in half during the deportation, and pieced together only after they arrived in Armenia.

A drawer of photos, including a family portrait taken in 1909 of Yepraksia’s family in the city of Kars, now Turkey.

Movses remembers when soldiers entered his village. “I was with my father, holding his hand. Half the road was covered with dead people,” he recalls.

The Ottoman Archives of 1915 in Istanbul, Turkey

Yepraksia with her daughter and grandson in their home in Armavir. She survived the genocide with her brother whom she was eventually separated from. All these years later, Yepraksia wants to find him.

"His name is Yeghia Ghazarian. I was 10 when I last saw him. He liked to put me on his shoulders and play with me at the orphanage. I don't remember much else about him except he has blue eyes, like mine."

A century later, Yepraksia can't help but cry when recalling the events of 1915. “You’re lucky you didn’t see it,” she says.

A map of Western Armenia, once a part of the Ottoman Empire, and now present-day Turkey. The route I traveled to re-trace the memories of my subjects who fled at the time of the genocide in 1915.

An image of Movses at the ruins of his church in Kebusie, Turkey.