The Christians had been the minority within Turkey. A falling away of relations between Christian and Muslim took place and everything had changed for the worse. Turkish soldiers under sanctioned authority drove between one million and two million Armenian Christians on death marches into the desert to die.
Some estimates of the death toll were even higher. Even to the current era over a hundred years later the Turkish government still denied that the Armenian Genocide ever took place, but such a refusal to claim responsibility for past misdeeds did not do away with all the evidence of their past actions, which offer their own testimony as did the testimony of those who survived.
Zora had survived. Somehow my precious love had survived this hell on Earth scene that lay all around me that stretched out as far as the eye could see.
As the memory unfolded I walked on through the hot sand littered with the corpses of martyrs. They became fewer and fewer, as the stumbling trails through the sand stopped one by one, until there was only one trail that continued on.
The desert grew dark and cold and rounding a corner I saw them.
There was a girl maybe ten years of age who lay on the ground shivering, as she hugged herself for warmth against the chill air of the desert night. There was no hope in the child's eyes. Eyes that reflected an emptiness that was heartbreaking to behold.
Zora the woman stood within the ground plane of her remembered memory staring down at the earlier version of her herself that lay shivering on the sand. A little girl's soul shattered by the atrocities of mankind.
I stepped up and wrapped my arms around Zora and she leaned back against me trustingly.
"You're not that scared all alone in the world girl anymore Zora. You don't have to keep reliving this terrible memory. I'll protect you. I promise."
She turned her face and pressed it into my neck in search of comfort and closeness as she breathed out, "I know."
She was quiet for a moment before saying, "My Papa told me that there would be a man one day, who would change every misconception I had about what men were and that I would be happy in his arms." She pressed back harder against me with the saying of her words and I held her all the more tighter to me.
"Are you happy Zora?"
She turned and hooked her arms around my neck and nodded with her eyes wet with tears, "Very happy! But I have a bone to pick with you Mister!"