These are emotional days. Tomorrow we mark 89 years of oppression. To avoid redundancy, I am posting my column from this week's Asbarez Daily. I have not much more to say.

Notes From Another Place
By Alex Sardar

Tomorrow morning, after I’ve reflected on all that April 24 means to me and my family and my nation, I will rise and start walking up at sunrise to the monument that was built decades ago to the memory of the Armenian Genocide and its victims. On this April 24, like the last two, I will walk with thousands of other people, each one carrying similar pain and pleasure, similar pride and prejudice, and similar pasts and presents. We will walk step by step, stopping every so often to allow others to go in front of us.

I will look at the baby cradled in her mother’s arms, peering over her shoulder, looking at the sea of bodies moving in unison. I will look at those eyes, and wonder how many such eyes never saw beyond another march through the desert. I will look at those eyes, and wonder if she understands that which was, is, and will be—all of it hers.

After I lose eye contact with her, I will notice an elderly woman, whose energy is waning, who’s dragging her tired frame up the modest hill just so she can place the shriveled carnation in her hand at a fire that was lit decades ago, that was extinguished for some years, and is now again, lit. I may offer her some of my water, but there are also water fountains along the way.

When we come to the first stop, where the group in front of us is allowed to continue, while we wait behind a rope drawn by the police, until there is reasonable distance between the crowds, so that people don’t get trampled, we will continue. We’ll continue orderly until we enter the cement slabs, wherein the fire rages on.

We will leave the cement chamber on the opposite side, and as we look up we’ll see the swallows that circle up above, waiting to take word to those who walked not to the fire but in the fire, who didn’t stop willingly, but were forced to stop, and who didn’t choose to gather up and hike up hills and dip into valleys but were made to do so. The swallows will wait to take word from us to those who didn’t have water fountains, but had forbidden rivers along their march, whose eyes looked but didn’t see, whose hearts beat but stopped feeling.

As I then walk down to return to my life, I will try to make sense of it all; I will try to understand wherein lies the significance of this ritual. Because, as a Diasporan Armenian, as a descendent of a genocide almost a century ago, never having had the comfort of calling my home mine, always asserting my identity, just so that no one else would dare to make me forget, I need to understand why in this place that’s supposed to be my home, my land, I still feel, along with so many others, the need to look back, and fight those who will never understand why I need to remember.

Perhaps I will speak to a swallow, one that is perched up on my balcony railings the next morning, after having some clarity from emotion. I will say to the swallow, take the word to your friends, and take it beyond. Tell them that on this day, we, Armenians remembered. We, people of good conscience remembered, and we, human beings said, it matters not whether your name is Shooshig Kouchikian, Rosa Parks or Matthew Shepperd, it matters that we pledged to not let it happen, again and again, because oppression is the same, no matter where and when it occurs.

Then I will join my grandmother, my storyteller and my history, in thought and work until I no longer have to talk to the swallows.