Innholdsfortegnelse for Jan-26-15 i The New Yorker

ATONEMENT Thank you for Raffi Khatchadourian’s piece on Diyarbakir, Turkey, where I spent two of the best years of my life (“A Century of Silence,” January 5th). He captures many of the complexities of the Armenian genocide. In the mid-sixties, I was a Peace Corps volunteer working in rural community development outside Diyarbakir and lived in a village with Kurds and ethnic Turks, some whose families migrated from the Balkans. In the city, shopkeepers would pull a cross from under their shirts and whisper that they were Christian. My boss, in the Ministry of Village Affairs, told me about Armenians who had killed his uncle in Chicago. I also met Kurdish agas who “owned,” through a feudal-like system, a dozen or even fifty villages; I once watched from a…

That summer there was no girl left in me. It gradually became clear. It suddenly became. In the pool, I was more heavy than light. Pockmarked and flabby in a floppy hat. What will my body be when parked all night in the earth? Midsummer. Breathe in. Breathe out. I am not on the oxygen tank. Twice a week we have sex. The lithe girls poolside I see them at their weddings I see them with babies their hips thickening I see them middle-aged. I can’t see past the point where I am. Like you, I’m just passing through. I want to hold on awhile. Don’t want to naught or forsake, don’t want to be laid gently or racked raw. If I retinol. If I marathon. If I Vitamin C.…