Sakina Dhilawala - Armenia

Published in 2018 by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC

243 5th Avenue, Suite 136, New York, NY 10016

Copyright 2018 by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC

Third Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dhilawala, Sakina, 1964- author. | Nevins, Debbie, author.

Title: Armenia / Sakina Dhilawala, Debbie Nevins.

Description: New York : Cavendish Square Publishing, [2018] | Series: Cultures of the world | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017009421 (print) | LCCN 2017010562 (ebook) | ISBN 9781502627360 (E-book) | ISBN 9781502627407 (library bound)

Subjects: LCSH: Armenia (Republic)--Juvenile literature. | Armenia (Republic)--History--Juvenile literature. | Armenia (Republic)--Civilization--Juvenile literature.

Classification: LCC DK685.6 (ebook) | LCC DK685.6 .D48 2018 (print) | DDC 947.56--dc23

Writers, Sakina Dhilawala; Debbie Nevins, third edition

Editorial Director, third edition: David McNamara

Editor, third edition: Debbie Nevins

Art Director, third edition: Amy Greenan

Designer, third edition: Jessica Nevins

Picture Researcher, third edition: Jessica Nevins

Printed in the United States of America

PICTURE CREDITS

The photographs in this book are used with the permission of: COVER Wojtek Buss/AGE fotostock; p..

PRECEDING PAGE:

A statue of Mother Armenia stands in Victory Square in Yerevan.

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

ARMENIA TODAY

A RMENIA IS A LAND WITH A LONG MEMORY. IT REACHES BACK to biblical times, when Noah and his salvaged menagerie rode out the Great Flood, two by two, in an ark. Noahs floating microcosm of Earthly life came to rest, at long last, atop Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in the Armenian Highlands. According to this creation mythology, therefore, all life was reborn in Armenia. Indeed, the Armenian people themselves are said to descend directly from Noah through Hayk, the legendary founder of the Armenian nation.

Today, Armenia is a small country in Eurasiasurrounded by Turkey to west, Georgia to the north, and Azerbaijan to the east and south. Landlocked, it has no coastline. But Armenia remembers when, some two thousand years ago, it was a much greater land. The Kingdom of Greater Armenia (331 BCE428 CE), under Tigran the Great, stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, and embraced Mount Ararat within its geographical heart.

Today, the double-peaked mountain no longer lies within Armenias borders, but the nation still carries it in its heart. Mount Ararat can be clearly seen from Yerevan, the capital of Armeniaindeed, it dominates the citys western horizon. The sacred mountain, from which Armenia still draws its symbolic lifes blood, tantalizes with its majestic visual presence, but is physically off limits. It lies beyond reach, just over the Turkish border.

From the Armenian point of view, thats enemy territory. Since 1993, the border between Armenia and Turkey has been closed because of political disagreementsmost pointedly, Turkeys failure to acknowledge the murder of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 as genocide.

Armenia remembers those murders. In fact, each new generation of Armenians swears to never forget. The catastrophe, they sayand most historians agreewas the systematic and deliberate attempt by authorities of the Ottoman Empire to exterminate its Armenian Christian population in what is now eastern Turkey. But at the time, the region was known as Western Armenia, part of the Armenian ancestral homeland. That apocalypse, sometimes called the Armenian Holocaust, prompted about half a million Armenians to flee to other parts of the world. They created what is now the Armenian diaspora, or community of Armenians living outside of Armenia. Many fled to the Soviet Union; others went to the United States, France, Argentina, and virtually anywhere that would take them.

The Armenian Genocide memorial in Yerevan features an eternal flame surrounded by a circle of twelve inward leaning slabs. They represent the twelve lost Armenian provinces that are now located in Turkey.