“Oh, Khatcher agha, the killers have come.” Those words were spoken to my grandfather, Khatcher Matosian, with a tap on the back so that he would redirect his gaze. He and relatives had been peering from the rooftops of their Armenian village in central Turkey after hearing about the Ottoman government’s orders to deport Armenians from neighboring villages.

The scene from that summer of 1915 continues in my grandfather’s memoirs: