“Stop, Brother Harout… Don’t look… God’s begging you, don’t go there…”
But Harout only quickened his pace.
In a few moments, he climbed the hill and immediately froze, feeling a chilling horror in his whole body. Cold sweat poured from Harout’s forehead at the sight of a scene that appeared before him.
At least two hundred people of all ages were lying on the ground, forming an ideal circle. The heads of all of them were facing the circle’s center. In the center, a stake was hammered into the ground. Everyone had their hands tied behind their backs. A separate rope led from each person’s bound hands to the stake. But the worst thing was that everyone’s feet have been cut off.
Blood flowing from the legs of people formed a moat inside the circle. A trickle flowed out from this moat. Many of the people lying before Harout were already dead. Some were still alive. Their bodies were shuddering in continuous convulsions.
“Bloody sun,” a voice filled with pain said behind Harout. Harout descended into the moat and slowly wandered in blood, looking at the martyrs without blinking. He wandered for a while, then stopped, stepped out of the moat, and knelt beside the head of an old woman.
Harout stroked the wrinkled face of this woman and then laid his palm on her forehead. The woman was still alive. Her gaze struck Harout almost more than all this bloody sight. The woman looked at him… with pity. Her whitened lips opened and whispered barely audibly in Armenian:
“It’s harder for you… Than for us… I see it… In your eyes…”
Excerpt from the book “Kes Harout” by Louis Brignon
“Kes Harout” covers the events taking place in the Ottoman Empire from 1893 to 1918.
The book is based on real events and real people. It tells about the tragic fate of the Armenian people throughout about two and a half decades of genocide. It also tells about plans for the complete extermination of the Armenian people – about the monstrous crime which even today, after a hundred years, still has not received due appreciation.
Almost all the names are genuine. The events are real and confirmed by documents, photographs, as well as eyewitness accounts. Among them are the testimonies of doctors and nurses of the Red Cross. Testimonies of employees of charity missions, testimonies of employees of diplomatic missions from Russia, the US, France, and many other countries. Testimonies of Russian soldiers and officers of the Caucasian army who fought in the territory of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Testimonies of 365,000 Armenians saved by the Russian army…
