A Tragic Story

I read through this book almost without putting it down. It is the beautiful but sad memoir by Turkish human rights lawyer Fethiye Çetin on her grandmother.

Here is the description from the cover:

When Fethiye Çetin was growing up in the small Turkish town of Maden, she knew her grandmother as a happy and universally respected Muslim housewife. It would be decades before her grandmother told her the truth: that she was by birth a Christian and an Armenian, that her name was not Seher but Heranuş, that most of the men in her village had been slaughtered in 1915, that she, along with most of the women and children, had been sent on a death march. She had been saved (and torn from her mother’s arms) by the Turkish gendarme captain who went on to adopt her. But she knew she still had family in America. Could Fethiye help her find her lost relations before she died?

There are an estimated two million Turks whose grandparents could tell them similar stories. But in a country that maintains the Armenian massacres never happened, such talk can be dangerous. In her heart-wrenching memoir, Fethiye Çetin breaks the silence.

Another Week...

… has gone by – time goes too fast sometimes. I have been busy with several things, particularly with a new website I’m creating for an elementary school. The principal is a member of my former church, and as obviously none of the teachers or parents at the school is able or willing to create a site and I have also created the church’s website he asked me if I was willing to do it. Of course I said yes! I don’t know what I will get for it (not much to be sure, schools in Germany usually do not have a very high budget, and they’d rather spend it for the children), but that is not something I care about. I enjoy creating websites, especially when it is for a good cause :)

Movie Evenings

The carnival season is in full swing now and therefore Hermann has to spend many evenings at the various events for the newspaper he is working for. This means that I’m alone at home all those evenings which gives me the opportunity to watch movies that Hermann wouldn’t want to watch – like the Jane Austen adaptations, for example. In his opinion, nothing ever happens in those movies *lol*

Yesterday I watched “Pride and Prejudice”, the famous BBC adaptation of 1995 with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. It is so beautifully made – just right for a romantic evening on one’s own ;)