I went over to the corner of the balcony closest to my father’s office. Kevork had left the window open, and I anxiously took a seat, not knowing if our Armenian neighbor had been lying to my father’s patients so they would clear out, or if my father truly was sick and too weak to help them. How was my father sick without realizing that he was sick? Wasn’t he the doctor?

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a sob. Another sob, louder, was followed by a steady flow of tears. Then came the consoling voice of Kevork. “Cry, my dear friend, cry,” he was saying. “The tears will cleanse the wound.”

———

My father said:

“What I saw, Kevork, made me wish that they hadn’t left me alive, but had finished me off just as they had done with hundreds of women, children, and old men. More than one thousand five hundred victims in two days! They were savage animals run wild, shooting and killing anyone at all. People were brought out of their homes, gathered together with their faces against the wall, and then they opened fire …

“Nurse Widad and I were in the room we had added to the clinic and dedicated to wounded and sick children. There were around fifteen children, the oldest being no more than ten. Some of them had been injured in a bombardment, while others had a fever, diphtheria, or were suffering from malnourishment. We did not know what to do or where to hide. At some point, I decided I should go out, waving a white sheet, in order to talk with the combatants. I would tell them that we were there in the children’s wing, and that they had to lead us out to safety. But Widad was overcome by terror. She grabbed my white robe and started screaming like a madwoman: ‘Don’t go out, doctor! They’ll slaughter us all if you do!’ The sight of the children, fear distorting their faces, made me reconsider, and I stayed back in order to reassure them that nothing bad would happen. I had not yet seen what was going on outside, and I thought it was just a matter of scattered clashes between the militias. But it was one slaughter after another. From Karantina to Damour, and on to Dawalik … The cataract of blood was now pouring upon us, never to end. They were slaughtering people on one side and carrying them off on the other. People were being sorted according to religion—one of yours for one of ours. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and it kept getting worse …