“The Road to Home”: Excerpts from Vartan Gregorian's memoirs

Even though my grandmother was a Christian and went to church often, she was troubled by the troubles that befell her. She had lost her husband; six of her seven children had died. She lost her house and village, and her grandson died.

The older I got, the more I thought she was either amazed at God or stunned by what He had done and continued to live in opposition to Him. My grandmother's silent fight was with God. If God is the author of events, or at least everything happens according to His consent in this world, then He could save at least some of her children, because she was not a sinful person to receive such a cruel punishment. My grandmother carried her grief in secret.

She never complained, she cried for her children only when she was alone. Her suffering caused me great pain. ...After the death of her children, my grandmother never left Tabriz. She was afraid that she might die in a foreign place and not be buried next to her children.

“Being buried next to family members is a great happiness” she told us, “Because, on the Day of Judgment and Resurrection, one should be next to one's relatives” My grandmother believed in eternal life. She told us that every Saturday night belongs to the souls of the dead. And on Saturday nights she was leaving a light burning in our room and burning incense, inviting the souls to rest.

...I learned a fundamental lesson at Stanford: we cannot and should not forget or ignore history, because history is our identity. We cannot be prisoners of the present and ignore the past because the future of society without deep historical memory ceases to exist, and the present turns into meaningless noise.