important part of community identity; second, every member of the Armenian community I encountered had strong feelings about Turks. Hate might be the appropriate word. Certainly, there was anger. It occurred to me that this is an opportunity to explore in fiction a number of interesting concepts—family, culture, trauma, and justice. Questions about justice are raised throughout the book. Most importantly, how can members of the Armenian community reach a sense of justice when the genocide perpetrators not only go unpunished but deny that the genocide happened? As one of my characters says, “Hate is not a solution. But neither is forgetting.”
Why is justice so central to the human condition?
Psychologists find that believing in a just world may be critical for our sense of well-being, at least in Western cultures. We know things are not always fair, but we need to believe that in general the world is a just place—that people get what they deserve and they deserve what they get. This is part of why people often have a difficult time overcoming trauma; that is, if these types of things just happen, then there’s nothing to keep them from happening again. This is also why injustice on such a grand scale as genocide is unacceptable. But your question touches on another theme I raise in the book, a notion sometimes referred to as “the sins of the father.” I can understand why Armenians feel anger over the lack of justice related to the genocide—I feel it, even though I am not Armenian. But why turn that anger on the next generation of Turks? Are they to pay for the sins of their fathers? Is that justice?