The Gendarme

As an avid reader, I take great pleasure in the books I read. But every once in awhile, an exceptional book comes along that leaves me speechless and forever colors my perceptions. "The Gendarme" by Mark T. Mustian did all of this and more. Before reading "The Gendarme", I had no knowledge of the great deportation of Armenians from Turkey during World War I. Others have mentioned being unaware of this disturbing piece of history as well, including the author himself. In the “Author’s Note”, after learning more about his own Armenian heritage, Mustian wondered, “How could this horrible thing have happened, and so few (including me) know anything of it?” (290). The Gendarme is an incredible story of a Turkish-American man’s pursuit of love amidst hatred and his lifelong search for truth. Emmett Conn has spent 72 years in the United States, almost a lifetime. While in the U.S., he became a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a widow. His memories of life growing up in his war-stricken motherland, Turkey, are sketchy and incomplete at best. What little he remembers centers around “family and hardship, conflict and death” (30). He sustained a head injury while serving in the Ottoman army in World War I. But now at the age of ninety-two, a brain tumor stirs his lost memories, and he begins experiencing vivid dreams of himself as a young man. “I keep dreaming a certain story, a continuing story. As if I am another person, living a different life” (108). Piecing together his dreams and what he has gathered of his family’s history, Emmett realizes he was not a soldier in the army after all. Rather, he joined the paramilitary police in 1915 and served as a gendarme in charge of leading Armenians to Aleppo, Syria. During this death march, he fell in love with one of the refugees, Araxie, and did his best to protect her from the violence, disease, and other atrocities along the way. Flashing between the past and present, Mustian spins an unforgettable tale about the power of love and strength of the human spirit. I highly recommend this well-written novel to both individual readers and book clubs. Reading "The Gendarme" will stimulate both self-reflection and group discussion on several topics including memory, genocide, and immigration.

Very readable description of an aspect of the Armenian genocide from a Turkish policeman's view, humanizing both the policeman and the victims.