~~Tomorrow marks the sixty-seventh anniversary of Hagop Oshagan’s death.  He died in Aleppo, Syria, the victim of a massive heart attack, the night before he and a group of writer friends were to set out on a memorial visit to the killing fields of Der Zor.  The annotation of this photograph, in my mother, Anahid Oshagan Voskeritchian’s handwriting indicates that the heart attack began at this desk, while he was writing.

Oshagan was buried in Aleppo.  It is estimated that some 20,000 mourners were in attendance. The large turnout notwithstanding, Oshagan would have found irony, if not the cruel hand of fate, in the choice of his final resting place.  He loved Aleppo deeply, but his preference was elsewhere:   “–In the shade of Ararat: Even without a tombstone, without a sign, without an inscription:  But the hot earth on me, in the depths of my ancestors’ blood.”

The earth, light, on Hagop Oshagan. ~~