Life’s Joy, Life’s Pain: Aram Mrjoian’s Waterline

Even as her family comfort themselves with, “Mari had always loved the water . . . there was no other way for her to go,” they all wonder if the loss of their precious daughter, niece, cousin could have been prevented. Uncle Karo, for one, pledges to pay more attention to Joseph and Talin, his nephew and his niece, to make sure death does not become “a choice” for them as well. One wonders if a similar fate awaits Talin, who is in a hurry to read The Awakening right after her cousin’s death. One does not read literature for clear-cut answers. In fact, good literature helps us ask the right questions so we can make sense of the world.

With his vivid descriptions and meticulously chosen details Mrjoian draws the reader into a world of family togetherness, of picnics and barbecues, but also of pain as a natural and inseparable part of that world. The Kurkjians’ willingness to face the pain and to “fight back” — even when it feels like the world is crumbling around them “with all the grief” — may just be the best strategy for survival.

Waterline “gives life inevitability,” to borrow William Saroyan’s comment on The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. A copy of the first edition of Werfel’s novel, with Karo’s extensive marginal annotations, sits on the coffee table in the Kurkjian living room. Great-grandfather Gregor finally decides to tell his grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered around him at the nursing home “the truth” about “starving on Musa Dagh and about fighting back,” even as he withholds telling them about the atrocities.

“I’m not ready to give them the full burden. They are still young enough to believe in happy endings,” he tells his grandson Karo who, in his turn, tells his family, “We can’t hide from the water forever,” as they prepare to go camping on the beachfront, so reminiscent of their recent tragedy.

Aram Mrjoian is the editor of the 2023 We Are All Armenian: Voices from The Diaspora, an anthology of personal essays, both by established and emerging Armenian authors, that reflect on Armenian identity and belonging in the diaspora in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide.

I would like to add that to say that Waterline “brings readers deep into the heart of the Armenian Genocide,” or that the characters “navigate life living in the shadows of the Armenian Genocide” can be misleading. The characters’ past and their memories of that past are certainly an important part of who they are, but not everything they experience in the novel can be traced to the trauma of the Genocide.