Sawdust, a stream of litter on the floor, the door inside the outside door ajar, the contents of each dining room drawer emptied, strewn as if a giant had poured out everything. I ran screaming to call 911, surveying the chaos inside the bedroom, the lingerie a tide of silk and nylon flowing to the hall. “Table silver, all jewelry, an old photo of my father at four in a village dress, the only thing his mother saved, pressed on the inside of a brooch, and old cameo, my mother’s, my great aunt’s rings.” Police ask for listings of such things.
II
I gave them the inventory, everything I could recall, my former husband’s war medals, his silver officer’s bars, my child’s first tooth, pearls, my wedding ring. The detective asked if I’d been robbed before. I thought of jewels buried in the ground as Armenian families fled the sound of shooting, Turks breaking in each door, my grandmother’s gems down to one cameo sent to America with her older son, two million relatives lost as one, art, architecture, poems I’d never know, everything except a picture in a cameo. Answered what he wanted, “No.”
by Diana Der-Hovanessian in American Scholar, reprinted with permission.