How the Internet and Modern Technology Revealed the Story of my Genocide-Surviving Ancestors
Everything about my grandmother’s strength, explained.
My family is Armenian.
My grandma was raised in Aleppo, Syria.
I don’t know if I was ever curious as to why she was raised there. I don’t even think I have asked her much about her upbringing or her family until recently.
Fast-forward to when I did 23andme, the website results told me that I was most likely from a rural region in Turkey.
Weird. I speak Armenian. Both my parents speak Armenian. Both sets of their parents speak Armenian. My entire extended family speaks Armenian. Everyone has stories from Armenia.
But it’s showing Gaziantep. This is a farmland — one that exists in Turkey.
I never told my grandma anything about this before. I forgot about 23andme for a while.
One day, I asked her what her parents were like. To my surprise, my great grandparents were actually alive when I was born. Both of them died, here, in Los Angeles. I was about 3 or 4 years old.
She remembers her dad’s parents, too.
