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Remembering the Armenian Genocide: A Review of Like
Water on Stone
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2015-03-03 00:58:48
This April 24 will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. In 1915, in the midst of
the First World War, soldiers of the Ottoman Empire began to deport and slaughter first, Armenian men, and then the
remainder of the Armenian people. In all, 1.5 million people, three-quarters of the Armenian population of the Ottoman
Empire, were murdered between 1915 and 1921. Despite the efforts of diplomats and humanitarians working in the area, the
story of this genocide gained little traction in the international press, and the silence of the world led Adolf Hitler to believe
he would encounter a similar level of impunity. In the summer of 1984 Dana Walrath and her
husband traveled to the city of Palu in Western Armenia, inside the present-day border of Turkey. There, she saw the mill
and lands that once belonged to her ancestors on her mother’s side, who were forced to flee when soldiers of the Ottoman
Empire massacred the Christian Armenians in 1915. Nearly 70 years later, Walrath met the Turkish woman who now owned
the mill and worked the land, an encounter she describes in her Author’s Note for Like Water on Stone. While Walrath has
her family story, the characters of this unforgettable verse novel are invented. The story is told from five different points of
view—that of the 13-year-old Armenian twins Shahen and Sosi, their older sister Anahid, their younger sister Mariam, and
the eagle Ardziv, who observes all from above. The storytellers are survivors and witnesses to the massacre. Each one acts
and reacts differently. Five-year-old Mariam struggles to understand what is going on. Her brother Shahen, who feels like an
outsider in his own family, dreams of going to live with his uncle in America and getting an education there. Sosi is content
to play her part within her family, but when she falls in love, she too begins to defy her strict parents. Nineteen-year-old
Anahid, already married to a Kurdish man, awaits her first child as she tries to guide Sosi in the ways of love. Ardziv has
already suffered a great loss at the hands of men with drum caps (presumably Turks). Taking on the role of an omniscient
narrator, he is both a witness to the genocide and, in an effective twist of magic realism, an active participant in the
children’s escape. Walrath explores the complex family dynamics as well as the reasons why the children’s father refuses to
let Shahen leave for America and to pack up his family when other Armenian families are already making their way to
Aleppo and the port city of Beirut. Papa, a musician whose band consists of Armenian Christians and Muslim Kurds and
Turks, sincerely believes that the three groups can get along and work together for the benefit of their communities and the
Ottoman Empire. Like many victims of genocide, he believes “it can’t happen here.” Shahen considers his father a “fool,”
and the father-son conflict at the core of this story will engage readers. The verse format holds the actual violence at a safe
distance for young readers while emphasizing the authentic emotional responses of the young characters, and the parallel
story of the eagle underscores both the sense of loss and the instinct to survive as the children make their way across a brutal
mountainous landscape. Like Water on Stone joins a growing body of literature on this once-ignored holocaust. Aram
Bagdasarian's Forgotten Fire, published in 2002, is based on the experiences of the author's great-uncle, who escaped from
Western Armenia via Constantinople in 1915 after witnessing the death of various family members. David Kherdian's The
Road from Home (1995) is written as a memoir from his mother's perspective as she flees the Ottoman Empire with her
family. Kherdian's book is appropriate for readers ages 11 and up and was a Newbery Honor Book, an award given by
the American Library Association for outstanding writing for children.
