Mari Firkatian
All four grandparents from Mari Firkatian's family had lived through the Armenian Genocide. However, Mari was only able to hear stories and learn about the genocide through her maternal grandmother, Iskouhi Yahanadijan.
Mari was exposed to the Armenian Genocide all her life and she learned about the genocide "inadvertently". She was exposed to many stories about the genocide when her grandmother would bring her to tea with other old Armenian women. Mari particularly remembers hearing a heartbreaking story when she was younger.
"One of these women starts talking about her children and the genocide. And I remember her, she was rocking, she was doing this thing as she's telling the story and she said, 'yeah, I was alone and I had two young children, I was carrying one on my back and I had one in my arms'. And she literally had to abandon both children one after the other because she couldn't carry them anymore and she couldn't feed them. So she left them under a tree and hoping somebody would pick up the child and rescue [them]."
Stories like these were the reason that Mari knew about the genocide since it was never talked about at home. Decades after, she would talk about the genocide with her cousins and with the help of documents like the two family records they were able to find statisical information regarding refugees.
Mari is able to retell the story of her maternal grandmother and her grandfather Kirkor. These stories were passed on in which she mentions in both stories that her grandmother and grandfather had gone through a refugee camp in Greece. Through the learning of the genocide, Mari has pieced together stories of her family in the genocide including this picture where her grandfather is depicted. Similar to the rest of the women, she does not want these stories to be lost.