#nor is it negating all the effort and learnings that were born out of it

[hunkydorkling]

Do I think now's a good time of day to second guess myself? Yeah.

[picsofsannyas]

Mm, mm. Even the fear of going in a wrong direction is an ego trip.

[A sannyasin says: I feel if I don't ask you whatever comes up -- every week almost something new comes up -- I'll go off the track; I'll go off on some incredible ego trip.]

Mm, mm. Even the fear of going in a wrong direction is an ego trip. Why are you so afraid of being in a wrong situation? -- because the wrong situation is very ego shattering and the right situation is very ego enhancing. In fact to think of the future is to think in terms of the ego. So remain with the moment If it is needed for your growth -- that you should go in a wrong direction -- it will happen. And you cannot avoid it, because avoiding it will be avoiding your own growth. You cannot avoid anything. So whatsoever is available, enjoy it to your total capacity; respond to it totally. Let this moment give all that it can give to you. And the next moment is going to be born out of this moment

If this moment has been rightly lived, from where will the next moment come? It will grow out of this moment. It is going to take on the same quality. It is going to be a continuity with this moment. The next moment is not coming out of the blue. It grows out of you like a leaf grows out of the tree. It comes from your roots... it is nourished by your life juice. So if this moment is lived rightly.... And when I use the word 'rightly', I don't mean in the sense puritans use it; I don't mean the meaning that moralists will like to enforce on it.

To live rightly means to live totally. It is not being virtuous; it is just being whole. The right is not against wrong or against sin. The right is only against being partial. Don't be partial, don't be fragmentary. And the right has nothing to do with any goal, any perfectionist's ideal. The right has something to do with the feel of this moment If you feel good, it is right. Easy is right. Happiness is right.

So celebrate this moment, enjoy this moment, delight in this moment -- and the tomorrow will take care of itself. Think not of the morrow. The moment you start thinking that you may go wrong, that you have to go right, the ego has entered. It is the ego that is worried about its decoration, morality, good, virtue, respectability, some shoulds. So just remain with the moment, as much as possible and everything will go right If this moment is right, everything is going to be right

This is the definition of being right if you are happy in this moment nothing is going to be wrong. Happiness is a sure indication that things are flowing with the total; you are one with the universal.

Happiness arises only when there is a harmony between you and the whole... when there is no conflict, when there is no pain. Then there is sheer joy -- and the joy is incredible because you cannot even find any cause to it. You cannot explain why it is there. It is there unexplained, and it is utterly there, for no reason at all; it is simply there. It is there like a mystery. So live in the moment and by and by start dropping these tensions of the future. If you go wrong, you go wrong; nothing is wrong in it. Don't be a coward -- be courageous. In life a few wrong things happen. In fact they are part of life.

You cannot weave a cloth unless the thread is put in such a way that each thread is crossed by another thread, the vertical is crossed by the horizontal; otherwise the cloth will not exist. A good man is simply good. He is a heap of thread; he is not a cloth. A bad man is simply bad. He is again a heap of thread; not a cloth. A whole man is both. He accepts God and devil both, day and night both. And in that acceptance is transcendence. In the very acceptance you are neither good nor bad. You have gone beyond both; you become a witness. And that's what real sanctity is.

So don't try to be good and don't try to be right. Don't try to avoid the wrong and don't try to avoid the bad, because then your life will lose all salt. You will become tasteless. Saints are tasteless -- at least so-called saints. A real saint has tremendous contradictions in him; he is paradoxical. He is both sweet and bitter. He is as dark as the darkest night and as full of light as the noontime. He's simple like a child. You can almost call him a fool. That's what Saint Francis used to call himself -- and he is as wise as there is the possibility to be.

In the Old Testament there is a saying: The wiseman, the perfect man, is as cunning as the snake and as innocent as the dove. This is the contradiction -- as innocent as the dove and as cunning, sly, as the snake -- but both meet, and in that meeting both change their qualities; in that meeting both negate each other. When both the plus and minus come together they negate each other. And out of that negation a zero experience is born. When God and devil meet they negate each other. They are equal forces, and when they are negative, you are empty. That emptiness is absolute. It knows no limit; it is immeasureable. And in that emptiness is what in the East we have called the witness, the witnessing consciousness.

My whole effort here is to help you to become that emptiness. So I am not worried about going wrong. Sometimes it is good to go wrong. It is very good to go astray sometimes. It is not always good to remain good, so don't be worried about that. It is as it should be. Nature takes its own course. Simply remain with the moment. Live the moment with your total being involved in it, committed to it, absorbed in it. Become drunk with the moment, and then whatsoever happens will be good. Even if it is not good, it will be good. At least eventually it will prove to be good. Even if you go wrong sometimes, finally you will find that that was also part of being right. It was needed. Life is really a mystery, and the mystery is because of this paradox.

If you love somebody and you are together for twenty-four hours, your love will lose charm, the magic will be gone. But sometimes you are separated. You fight; you go on your own way. When you are separated, again a desire to meet arises. Again you come... you come fresh. The old is dissolved by the fight. You have become discontinuous with the past. Now it is a new moment again -- fresh, young, virgin. You fall in love again. You will fight again.

One day when you look at the whole phenomenon you will see that fight was part of love -- otherwise love would have died long before. It was the fighting that wouldn't allow it to die. The fight creates separation, the separation creates desire to be together again. You come together again. In being together again there comes a moment when it becomes flat, becomes monotonous. Again a desire to separate arises. You move again... you fight for small excuses. That's why lovers always say, 'We have been fighting but there is nothing much to fight about.' In fact when they look, when they think about it, it seems ridiculous. The reason seems to be absolutely absurd, or so tiny -- but that is not the point. They don't know the real reason. The real reason is that they want to create hunger again. Separation gives hunger.

This is how it goes -- exploding, imploding, exhaling, inhaling. This is how it goes -- happiness, unhappiness; good and bad, right and wrong. So don't be worried about it. Simply trust life. I teach you trust -- trust in life. So if sometimes life leads you into some wrong ways, go. Don't resist that moment; just go totally so whatsoever life wants you to learn from that experience is learned, and you can come out again.

In Jesus' life he used the parable of the prodigal son very much. That's what I am saying. A man had two sons and he divided his property among these two -- half and half. One remained with the father -- was a good young man, very virtuous, obedient, served his father, increased the money that had been given to him, was respected by everybody. But the other, the younger one, left the town. He gambled, he drank; he moved in wrong company. He destroyed all his money, he destroyed all his character, he destroyed his health.

One day news came that he had become a beggar. The father sent a message that there was no need for him to become a beggar; he could come back home. The son came back and the father arranged a big feast for him. The fattest lamb had to be killed and the best wine from the cellar had to be brought. He invited many guests to receive the son on his coming back.

Somebody went to the field where the older son was working hard in the hot sun, and said, 'Look at the injustice! A lamb was never cut for you. The old wine was never brought for you, a feast was never given for you. Nobody gathered to welcome you. Now look what has happened! This is absolutely partial. And that vagabond who has destroyed the whole money earned by your father with much hard labour is coming back a beggar. His whole life savings he gambled. Now he is coming like a beggar but he is going to be received like an emperor!'

Of course the son felt bad. He came home and he said to the father, 'This is too much!' And the father laughed and he said, 'You are with me so there is no need for any welcome. Not that I love you less, but the one who was lost is coming back. He needs love, he needs acceptance. He has to be welcomed. It is not unjust to you. He is wounded and he needs rest and love. Love will be his treatment.'

So nothing wrong in.... What Jesus is saying through this parable is that those who go astray will also be received by God. They will be really welcomed. This parable is very dangerous. It says that those who are good, they are just so-so -- but those who are bad, once they come back home they are going to be received with a great feast because they took the risk of going astray. They are becoming grown up. They have become more experienced, they are more mature. They staked their life, they risked their life. They were lost, and they are being reclaimed.

So never be afraid that something may go wrong. Simply trust. If it goes wrong, that's what is needed. Go prayerfully into it and you will see that your prayer, your acceptance, your trust, has changed the whole quality of it. It has transformed it utterly. The wrong also becomes right when you trust life. And when you don't trust life even right becomes wrong. So it is not a question of right and wrong.

And whenever you have a question, ask. Don't be worried about it -- whatsoever it is. Mm? Good.

Osho.

God Is Not For Sale Chapter #21  

[wotnahq]

Zuri Sedaway • 24 • Female (she/her) • Metahuman • Electrokinesis • Civilian

BIOGRAPHY

Zuri was born to Tobias and Lyonna Sedaway in Detroit, Michigan. She was the second child, her sister Breanna being born 3 years earlier. Her father worked home most days, allowing Zuri to form a close relationship with him and her sister, and her mother would spend the evenings with them. Her elementary school years came and went, with Zuri showing a knack for her English and Science skills, but already demonstrating her need to protect - she was put in detention multiple times for fighting with a group of bullies who would threaten and harass the younger kids.

Altercations with this group were the reason Zuri’s powers emerged so suddenly. A particularly nasty incident, in which one of the younger children almost was left with a broken arm, flared up Zuri’s anger to a new point, and she decided to get payback on the bully. For the first time in her life, her electrokinesis kicked in - her powers both strengthened and electrified the blow, and she knocked the bully out in one shot to the jaw. Zuri narrowly avoided getting caught by the teachers, but she couldn’t wait to tell her parents, only to be told that she had to keep it secret. They believed she was the only one of her kind and they wanted to prevent the authorities from trying to do anything with her, whether it was publicity or experimentation. Zuri was admittedly disappointed at their initial response, but she loved her parents and respected them, and so kept her mouth shut.

It was only mere months later that her family heard the news of the first discovered metahuman on the streets of Pansaw, California. Slowly, over the years, more and more metahumans began emerging all over the country, then the world, and it not only comforted Zuri but gave her hope that she wasn’t the freak she’d thought she was. Her thirteenth birthday had passed only a month earlier, and the government announced the Collection and Rehabilitation of Metahumans Agency, known as C.A.R.M.A. Zuri knew she’d have to hide her powers, she knew her electrokinesis would have to stay hidden forever, even if it meant suppressing a piece of who she was.

Years passed, and she’d transitioned to high school and returned to the lifestyle she’d held before her discovery, living life among the ordinary humans, but with strict limits - her parents feared that, if her emotions should flare badly enough or if she was hurt, it put her at risk of exposing herself. So Zuri began focusing her efforts on Mathematics and Sciences in school, specifically Physics and Biology, in the hopes of discovering a way to deactivate her abilities permanently. If she could do so, there’d no more risk, no more hiding, for anybody. She could be a normal girl.

After she graduated high school, Zuri aimed to attend Pansaw University in California. Hoping to keep pursuing her goal, she moved there in mid July, 2039, to start a Bachelor of Biological Sciences. But this meant that she was living there during the virus that wiped through the city in May the next year. Falling extremely ill, and dealing with her formerly suppressed powers that were now wildly out of control, Zuri only just managed to avoid being captured by C.A.R.M.A., remaining in her apartment for the duration until things calmed down. But as luck would have it, Axel Winchester’s snowstorm struck the state in December, and was the prompt for Congress to introduce the Meta Registration Bill. She couldn’t believe it. Years of hiding, of effort, all wasted.

After obtaining her mark, Zuri attempted to spend the next years as distant from her abilities as possible. When the week-long surge of powers hit and Zuri caused immense damage to her own apartment while hiding, she considered leaving Pansaw, returning home to her family who had been urging her to come back ever since they’d heard she’d now been registered. But nevertheless she stayed, if only to continue her degree.

Six months later, Pansaw proved to be the centre of attention once more, as the Nephilim attacked the city. Deaths racking up rapidly and the city falling apart, Zuri was urged to evacuate, and she wanted to. She wanted to see her family again, to hug them and let them know she was safe, but looking out of her apartment window and seeing the bodies left in the street, she knew she couldn’t. So she joined in the fight to defend Pansaw: weaker than nearly every other Metahuman from her constant ability suppression, she had very little idea how to use her powers, but a combination of her studies and hands-on experience proved useful. Somehow she survived, and the city’s defenders finally took out the Nephilim.

Zuri promptly returned home to her family in Detroit, deciding against remaining in the city to allow it time to recover and rebuild. The months that followed introduced the Meta Equality and New Registration Act, allowing her to finally have the coded tattoo removed from her wrist. Realising the good her powers had done for the city of Pansaw, she began practicing her skills in her parent’s basement in a training room her father set up for her, in case she should ever need to use them again. She excelled and grew talented with them, learning to control them better, but is still unskilled when it comes to preventing the influence her emotions have on them.

It’s now 2045. It’s been over 3 years since the Nephilim’s attack on Pansaw, and Zuri decided to return to the city to finish her Bachelor degree, though no longer to shut her powers down. She wants to study them - she wants to learn what makes her her. Once again moving to an apartment near Pansaw University, she’s hoping to become part of the next generation: the one to help humans and Metahumans live in peace for many years to come.

POWERS

ELECTROKINESIS: Zuri can create, shape and manipulate electricity, a form of energy resulting from the movement of charged particles (such as electrons or protons), allowing control over electric fields, all charge carriers (ions, electrons, protons, and positrons), electronics, and electromagnetic forces.

WEAKNESSES

Users of Electrical Immunity are not affected. Weak against Electricity Negation. Reflection Manipulation could cause a problem since it’s unclear if users are immune or not. Distance, force, precision, etc. of all powers depend upon the strength, energy, and concentration levels of Zuri, and her power’s natural limits. Electricity needs a conductor like metal or water to move through, therefore electricity can neither exist in nor move through a vacuum (such as outer space) and may be insulated by non-conductive matter, such as air and rubber. May become useless if confronted with electrical resistant material, such as rubber, silicate, etc. Electricity may be redirected by certain materials. A strong enough magnetic force/source may be beneficial or a hindrance. May be short-circuited under certain conditions (contact with water, a magnet, the opposite polarity, etc.).

PERSONALITY

+ Fair + Protective + Sociable

– Naïve – Envious – Stubborn

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix, Nicky!

You have been accepted for the role of DORCAS MEADOWES! Your application was amazing! I really enjoyed seeing how well thought out this version of Dorcas was in your mind. I can clearly see where she’ll fit in and can’t wait for her to start blowing shit up! The Order needs someone to rock the boat and you’ve brought that through in your application!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Nicky

AGE: 30+

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Medium, sporadic; I work retail hours which means that my schedule is not consistent between days. I expect to be able to make several replies each week, however, and am available to check-in or chat often. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only time I’m really out-of-touch for considerable periods on a regular basis although in general I have more free time in the latter half of the week than I do at the beginning – and of course when Winter Holiday Shopping Season rolls around I will be more absent than usual!

ANYTHING ELSE: For experience, I have played in and adminned several roleplays, 90% of them Harry Potter-based, with a little time doing indie rp as well. I mostly only rp on tumblr (I like the visuals!) but I’ve been around for several years now. I tend to be long-winded but value content over quality, and don’t care about “length matching” on replies. I will also basically always post images with my replies because it’s an integral part of the “acting” experience for me, but I have no objection if my interaction partners prefer to go straight-prose in their posts. No triggers, although I would appreciate it if any posts involving the deaths of cats (or kneazles) could be tagged so I can brace myself or skim over them!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Dorcas Dembe Meadowes 

(her parents named her Dorcas for grace–it means “gazelle”–and because her father just liked the way it sounded, and Dembe for peace to honor their hopes for the world and her future; while she is hardly clumsy, aside from that there seems to be little of Dorcas’s names in her attitude or personality…especially not of her middle name! So much for the wizarding superstition that a child’s names can be prophetic…)

AGE: 18

GENDER & SEXUALITY: Dorcas is a cis-gender witch who uses she/her pronouns. I haven’t settled 100% on her sexuality (given the time period, I expect she hasn’t either) but I’m leaning heavily toward her being either a lesbian or a bisexual. I plan to start the game with her being somewhat aware of her preferences, but not having sorted it all out yet. While romance is not a priority in terms of plots I’m seeking, I am definitely interested in Dorcas exploring and discovering more about herself and her identity throughout the game. I think she’s definitely someone who would throw herself into the idea of being Out (and damn the consequences – as usual) which may be especially interesting if it serves as a stumbling block for friends or fellow Order members (or potential/current romance partners) who come from a more conservative (muggle?) background and aren’t keen on her flaunting that.

BLOOD STATUS: half-blood

HOUSE ALUMNI: Hufflepuff (certainly never a prefect, although she did fly Reserve on the Quidditch team as a Beater for two years, playing in a total of one match)

ANY CHANGES: None!

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY: 

“Brash enough to be a Gryffindor,” is something people say about Dorcas a lot – but only because they’re missing the point of Hufflepuff House, Dorcas insists. Hufflepuffs aren’t dull, mild stick-in-the-muds any more than any other House; they just have that reputation because they have more follow-through. Gryffindors are useless after the initial rush of bravada and adrenaline has worn-off; Ravenclaws are too easily distracted overall; and Slytherins are too quick to jump for the new advantage to see things through. Hufflepuffs, though, Hufflepuffs know how to focus. And while Dorcas might be quick to jump into a fray, she is no quitter. She’ll never admit a cause is lost (even when she should), never give up on anyone or anything…unless they betray her. Dorcas is an open-hearted, amiable, outgoing soul who is quick to offer friendship to others, but she is unforgiving and unshakable in the grudges she holds against those who let her down. Small things she can forgive, of course – she’s no monster and no one is perfect! But true, genuine betrayal? Of person or principle? That, she will not tolerate.

Dorcas herself is not always easy to tolerate either. Stubborn and blunt, she speaks her mind (even when perhaps she ought to keep it to herself) and her skill in tact and tempering is stunted from disuse. She redeems herself somewhat with those who can bear-up under her brusque honesty by being a loyal and helpful friend, but even that is sometimes negated by her devotion to whatever plan or purpose currently dictates her motivation. It’s not that she’s unkind – just something of a bulldozer. When Dorcas Meadowes decides to do something, she sees it through and damn the consequences – whether that be the numerous detentions she served in school, the bruised feelings of friends and foes alike, or the bridges she has (mostly metaphorically) burned behind her, she will not balk or hesitate even if it kills her (and everyone around her). And with the higher stakes at which the Order of the Phoenix operates, it just well might.  

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY: 

The only child of Olive Blott and Thewton Meadowes, Dorcas grew-up in a comfortable, secure, sedate, middle-class magical home. Her parents doted without spoiling her and while she never wanted for anything much, she wasn’t the kind of child who was showered with expensive brooms or designer robes – which was just as well, as Dorcas wouldn’t have cared much for those sorts of over-priced trinkets anyway. Like Dorcas, her parents were solid, hard-working Hufflepuffs (they had met in school; although they hadn’t been in the same year to share classes, they shared plenty of time in the common room and cheering for their friends together on the Quidditch pitch) but unlike them, her work-ethic was rather flexible about where it was applied. Maybe that was an innate aspect of Dorcas’s personality, or something she learned from her non-Hufflepuff friends at school…or maybe, something she picked up from her grandmother. Zawedde Meadowes was a firebrand, an iconoclast, and a fighter. She taught her granddaughter not only how to fight, but when to fight. (Dorcas may have learned that lesson a little too well, with none of the accompanying “and when not to fight” counterpart.) It was Grandma Zawe who broke the erstwhile “purity” of the old Meadowes family line when she married into it – but after seven years as a muggle-born student in Slytherin, some disapproving family glares (and hexes) weren’t enough to make her break a sweat. Despite her more conservative son and daughter-in-law’s efforts to temper Zawe’s outspoken attitude and boundless confidence, Dorcas learned a lot from the grandmother who often served as babysitter while mum and dad were working in the bookshop. Olive and Thewton would have much rather their little girl were a little bit meeker and milder. More willing to go with the flow, like they do; to not cause a fuss. But “fuss” is what Dorcas excels at. The older she got, the more she has come to look on her parents with bemused and at times almost condescending affection. How could they be so content with a world that was so unfair? Keeping their heads down might have kept the shop free of controversy, sure, and that kept them profitable and free of the sort of attempted censorship that louder opinions often garnered, but it didn’t do anything to change things. While Zawe doesn’t know the full extent of Dorcas’s activities with the Order of the Phoenix – nor, indeed, does she know for sure exactly what the Order is nor that Dorcas is a member of an illegal vigilante group – she knows that her granddaughter is up to something dangerous and illicit, something that mirrors her own not-so-long-ago-as-all-that battles against Grindewald. Having personal experience with war makes Zawe aware of just how much danger her granddaughter may be in, but it also makes her proud. When she entertained little Dorcas with stories of her wartime activities, she never thought she might be preparing the girl for her own battles – but if that is where the world is now, so be it. Zawe continues to encourage Dorcas just as she always has, whether that be with playing alibi for mum and dad or by offering words of advice and encouragement after a particularly difficult battle or frustrating conversation with the Order’s more stick-in-the-mud members. Dorcas may have learned the value of hard-work from her parents, but she learned the importance of standing her ground from her gran. With those two elements combined, she’s proven herself a true force to be reckoned with – at least when she’s doing something she thinks matters. (Otherwise…well, “lackluster” would be a generous way to describe her effort.)

OCCUPATION:

Dorcas works as a part-time assistant at the family business, Flourish & Blotts, the main bookseller in Diagon Alley. Her parents would be a lot happier about the fact that she’s showing an interest in the family business if she would actually show an interest – but half the time she cuts out of her shifts early, or sprints in late, or calls-off altogether. If she weren’t family, she’d have long ago been fired, but how do you fire the woman who’s going to inherit the place one day? Scolding her doesn’t seem to help; she either shrugs it off or stomps off, claiming she has more important things to do. What can she be up to that’s keeping her so preoccupied?

ROLE WITHIN ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

As one of the newest – and also one of the most openly passionate – members of the Order, Dorcas ought to be sitting back and following the lead of her elders and proving where she can be most useful. Instead, she’s causing something of a stir with her big mouth, blunt criticism, and insistence on doing things differently. Dorcas wants the Order to be more proactive, even if that means being more violent. She’s not afraid of collateral damage; this is a war, after all! People get hurt in war, and letting things drag-out because you don’t have the conviction to do what needs to be done is only going to get more people hurt in the long run. So far, she hasn’t swayed anyone who matters to her side – not Kingsely, not Moody, not [Alice] Longbottom, and certainly not Dumbledore. But she is riling-up the younger members, which can be both good and bad: it’s hard to make proper plans when a quarter of the room won’t stop shouting, but it’s also hard to sink into morose despair when there’s a wild-haired girl barely out of her Hogwarts robes shouting in your ear about “taking the fight to Voldemort directly, what are we waiting for?” She has become something of a pivot point within the group – not yet carrying enough weight to tip the balance of power or force any major confrontation or schism, but enough to make people think. Enough to make people argue. Enough to stir things up – which is exactly what she wants. Dorcas has no time for complacency; that’s her parents’ stock in trade, not hers. She is so adamant about not waiting around in fact that she has branched-out on her own private “missions” outside Order edict, support, or sanction – which isn’t quite crossing the line, because it’s not as though they’re an army with orders to follow. They’re a group of desperate vigilantes all pitching-in together to stop a great evil…but Dorcas is pitching a little harder than what some people are comfortable being associated with. So far Dumbledore hasn’t said much about Dorcas and her methods one way or the other – but with how preoccupied he’s been with his own secretive efforts, one has to wonder if he’s had time to notice? Worse (or better, depending on your point of view), she’s convinced other junior members to go along with her on her mad, reckless crusades – acts that the Daily Prophet more often than not labels terrorism. They’re too skittish and scared to understand the difference between what she does and what the Death Eaters do, that’s all – them, and all the complacent fools sitting huddled in their houses, waiting for someone else to come and save them. Dorcas thinks that the Order has been coddling these people too much, letting too many wix get away with sitting on the sidelines by not forcing them to take sides – by letting them bury their heads in the sands and pretend that if they ignore the strife all around them, it will go away. She knows better, and she thinks she can force those layabouts to pick up wands and pick a side if she just rubs their noses in it a bit more. If she brings the war to them, they won’t be able to sit back and marinate in their timid apathy; they’ll have to join the fight, because when she’s through there won’t be any sidelines left in which to hide. Voldemort won’t stand a chance then, not once the rest of the magical community finally gets off their arses and admits that some wars need fought. She has no time to wait for the Ministry, they’re a lost cause – and she’s running out of time (or maybe just patience) to wait for the Order either. Dorcas is going to save the world – and if she has to burn down half of it in the process, so be it.

SURVIVAL: Dorcas’s safety net is her family; it always has been. They may not be enough to protect her from herself this time, though – but she hasn’t been involved in the war for long. She’s still living at home but spends more than a few nights each month crashing at the Potter estate, her room at her grandma’s flat, or with someone else in the Order after a mission or a meeting that runs late – or while she’s waiting for her wounds to heal enough to be able to go home without causing too much outcry. Her parents just think she’s “staying with friends,” as youngsters do – and that’s not technically a lie. Even the people in the Order with whom she doesn’t get along are companions in arms, and that’s almost the same thing as friends surely. Whether she’ll be able to maintain her parents’ ignorance for much longer may be a moot point; someone like Dorcas burns so brightly she may well burn out before there’s time for suspicions to raise.

RELATIONSHIPS: 

NOTE: this is all very much first impressions based on bios etc and subject to change when characters are actually claimed and backgrounds plotted; ergo if you see anything in here about your character that doesn’t feel like it “fits” or you have a better idea for or just aren’t in the mood etc – splendid! Any and all of this can be changed, and is just a basis for what I’m going to springboard off to start with until other options can be discussed or developed! In general, Dorcas’s relationships with the rest of the Order are…okay. She’s new, so some of them don’t trust her yet; she’s reckless, so some of them never will. On the other hand, she’s enthusiastic in her commitment, and that’s something of a breath of fresh air amidst a war that’s starting to seem to some to be unwinnable. Definitely she’s a divisive figure – you can’t easily ignore or turn a blind-eye to Dorcas Meadowes, she’s too loud. Too demanding. Too sure that she’s got the right idea to win this war. That doesn’t mean everyone (or even a majority) agree with her methods, and that can make her easy to dislike – or resent. If she’s so willing to accept collateral damage, then how could the Order continue to hold its head up in moral superiority to their opponents? But what if she is right, and only more extreme methods will win the day? Doesn’t that mean the rest of the Order are failures…or cowards? For some people in the Order, it’s easy to say that Dorcas is wrong (or right), requiring only a simple gut-check to know. For others, the question she forces is much more uncomfortable to confront. For many, that makes Dorcas an uncomfortable person to be around – or someone who causes their temper to snap faster than even she maybe deserves, lashing-out at her rather than facing their uncertainty about themselves. She’s a catalyst, and those are not always well-liked by the people thus catalyzed. As for Dorcas’s feeling about some fellow Order members in specific… James Potter. Everything she knew about James before she joined the Order was that he was a bold, reckless, slightly-wild wizard who never passed-up the opportunity for a prank or a laugh or a spot of danger. He was supposed to be some kind of “golden boy” idol for fun-loving troublemakers. So she expected something…more. What she found was someone far too meek, far too reliable, far too tame. What happened? Was his reputation always a bunch of hot air, or has he just lost the will to fight? Regardless, Dorcas is disappointed – but maybe he’s salvageable. Sometimes she thinks she can see a spark in his eye when she’s outlining a scheme; sometimes she thinks if she can push his temper far enough over the edge maybe he’ll snap out of this funk and get back to the person he should be. Maybe he’ll stop letting Moody and Kingsley and Lily Evans hold him back and he’ll actually get off his butt and do something! Caradoc Dearborn. The man’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, sure, but he’s a reliable stick-in-the-mud. (If they had more Hufflepuffs in the Order, they wouldn’t all be sitting on their hands like this!) And no coward either – just too cautious for Dorcas’s tastes. She thinks she can fix that, though. He just needs more of her influence and less of Moody’s and Shacklebolt’s sense of caution. Needs to push himself out of their shadow and back into the proper fight. Dorcas is convinced that’s where he wants to be, too – she just needs to show him how to get there. Shouldn’t be too hard. (If some Death Eater had murdered her mother…!) And once he does, he won’t suffer from the sort of second thoughts and backtracking that plague so many of their fellows and keep the Order locked in this endless cycle of act-regret-act-retreat; Hufflepuffs get things done. She won’t deny that it’s nice to have a “familiar” face in the Order too – even if he’s too old to have actually shared time at Hogwarts with Dorcas, they both come from the cozy Hufflepuff cellars and the dedicated Hufflepuff work ethic and that’s pleasantly familiar; just talking to Caradoc for a little can be a balm to her otherwise jangling nerves or anxious energy. Emma Vanity. If Dorcas has a best friend in the Order, it’s got to be Emma. Which is odd, maybe, because Emma Vanity is not the sort of person one would expect someone like Dorcas to be friends with (or the other way around!) but here they are! They came into the Order together, and so far Emma’s seemed happy to stick at her side through thick-and-thin (and through older, more cautious Order members lecturing them both into behaving more – as if anyone ought to “behave” during a war!) and Dorcas is both glad and grateful. She acts like she doesn’t care if no one likes her – but it’s nice having a friend who always does. Emma’s refined and delicate high-society manners don’t even get on Dorcas’s nerves the way such things do with most people…maybe because with Emma they seem natural rather than forced, or maybe it’s because Emma is always so quick to follow Dorcas’s lead without acting like she’s lowering herself. Maybe it’s just because Emma’s pretty manners remind Dorcas of her late great-aunt – the one “old school” Meadowes who actually got along with Dorcas’s muggle-born grandmother, and who was always the nicest part of family gatherings for Dorcas. Emma has more gumption than people give her credit for, too – even if she does have to pushed into it, most of the time. Good thing Dorcas doesn’t mind doing a little bit of pushing. Benjy Fenwick. Him losing his Quidditch career like that was a waste – Dorcas saw him on the pitch enough in school to know that – but the sport’s loss was the Order’s (and her) gain, so she can’t be too sad about it (even though she tries to make sure she acts like she is, if the subject ever comes up; her focus might be a little narrow but she’s not mean!). She feels a little protective – no, a little proprietary toward him, too. After all, she was the one who knew he’d be a great fit for the Order; she was the one who knew he’d be of great use to the Order. (It’s not all running into battle and sprinting away from arrest; there are so many other skills that matter just as much!) The one who knew he was looking for somewhere to belong and was clever enough to offer that. That means he’s “on her side” – regardless of his thoughts on the matter, maybe! It’s not like she’s taking advantage of him, either; she’s just doing what’s best. For everyone. Including Benjy! He’s happier now than he was when he was just sitting around moping, right? So well done, Dorcas! And if that means she has access to a semi-professional Healer who won’t ask questions or go tattling to Moody or Kingsley or Dumbledore if she and a few mates come in all banged-up right after someone’s set-off an explosion in Knockturn Alley or started a fire at some pure-blood estate…well, that’s just a nice side benefit, really. Sirius Black. Dorcas doesn’t trust him. He can be a lot of fun, and can even be a lot of use – but if there’s a candidate for “most likely traitor” it’s Sirius Orion Black. Something about him just rubs Dorcas the wrong way (maybe it’s the fact that she doesn’t like the parts of him she does like; maybe it’s just knowing how his relatives treated her relatives once upon a time – but Dorcas doesn’t believe in inherited guilt any more than she believes in inherited purity so it can’t be that!) so even though he’s one of the few in the Order who really seems to get what she’s pushing for, who really seems to be on board…there’s a little nugget of suspicion. He just seems to be trying too hard all the time – as though his rebellion against his family were pure performance. The fact that he “broke it off” with the Blacks too early to be able to give the Order any real information about his family’s (very very likely) support of Voldemort is awfully convenient. The fact that his “disreputable best friends” are two half-bloods and a pure-blood rather than, say, any muggle-borns or anything really objectionable is awfully convenient too. Almost like the sort of friends someone who believed in blood-purity but wanted to pretend they didn’t would acquire. (He seems to respect James – the pure-blood – the most, too. How convenient.) He even inherited a nice convenient little chunk of money from some uncle, didn’t he? Almost like his family wanted to make sure that he had enough to live on while he was “cut off” from their fortunes… Oh yes, there are a lot of things about Sirius Black’s story that are just a little bit too convenient for Dorcas to easily swallow. A lot of things that would make him the perfect spy for the people who share his surname…and the person a lot of them are almost certainly working for. The fact that there’s never been any proof just shows that Sirius is more subtle than he lets on, that’s all – unless he isn’t the spy. (But if not, who is?) Dorcas isn’t sure – and she isn’t one to turn down a gift horse just because she thinks it might bite her fingers off. As long as Sirius wants to help her plot some mayhem, she’ll take that help and even enjoy herself along the way – and she certainly isn’t going to say anything to undercut the support he sometimes offers her when a big argument gets going about how proactive (or not) the Order should be. But she’s going to keep an eye on him, anyway…someone should.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS: 

I have no ships in mind for Dorcas. Speaking generally, I think she is likely to be the kind of person who tumbles passionately into and out of love, and for the most part the “cause” comes first and “happily ever after” is for quitters – or at least, that’s the outlook on which she will insist both to herself and to others; her heart may disagree however, and Dorcas is not one to be ruled by common sense or cold logic, which could potentially place her in interesting circumstances. For individual characters, I’m keen to bounce Dorcas off of both those who agree and disagree with her – and regardless of whether they end up sporting romantic inclinations toward one another or not, I’m particularly interested to explore her relationship with Emma Vanity. Also her relationship with James Potter, but I’m definitely not seeing any potential for romance there! XD

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE? 

One might think that having a Muggle-born grandmother she so adores and looks up to would leave Dorcas free of any traces of blood-prejudice – but one would be wrong, because Dorcas did still grow-up in the magical world and it is far, far too easy to internalize the prevailing attitudes of one’s society even when one ought to know better. Oh, she’s no blood-supremacist – but has she ever looked at a talented Muggle-born with shock at their skills because she expected less of someone with Muggle parents? Of course she has. Part of that comes from her own grandmother’s stories, even: knowing how hard Zawe had to work to keep up with housemates who knew so much more than she did about everything when she started at Hogwarts, Dorcas knows that Muggle-borns are starting-out a little behind the rest of the class…and when you “know” that and grow-up surrounded by a society that’s all-too-quick to assume anyone of Muggle origins is “less than” everybody else? It’s all-too-easy to fall into the same lower expectations…even when you tell yourself it’s just “more impressive” coming from someone like that. The fact that Dorcas doesn’t believe herself to have any sort of anti-Muggle-born prejudice really only makes it worse, because if confronted about it she’d only get defensive and argue the point – she isn’t, she can’t be. Don’t be silly. She’d never! She also shares most of the same other base prejudices common to magical society: werewolves are unclean and dangerous, giants are stupid and violent, goblins are greedy and unstrustworthy… All the “classic” prejudices that become so ingrained in society that it can be hard to even notice them until you know they’re there. Being a half-blood with such close Muggle-roots means thar Dorcas herself falls on the middling-low end of the privilege/prejudice ladder, which gives her just enough social stigma that she can sit back and blithely convince herself that she isn’t prejudiced while still giving her enough of a privileged position to make her life comfortable. No, she’s not some pure-blooded toff with connections stretching back halfway to Merlin who can wink-and-nod their way out of an altercation with the law…but she does fall well within the borders of Ordinary Citizen, nothing too fishy or objectionable about her to make somebody look twice or doubt her word. Plus she’s got the convenience of a recognizable and respected family to fall back on when she trouble comes calling – particularly in the form of the M.L.E.P., who are usually inclined to cut her some extra slack. (“Her parents run Flourish & Blotts, after all, my kids got their schoolbooks there! Go ahead and let the lass off with a warning there John, she’s just blowing-off steam, you know how kids are! No harm done…”) Her time with the Order is just enough for Dorcas to begin noticing this – which is both uncomfortable for her to have to own-up to in her own mind, and convenient for a woman with an agenda like hers. Knowing she can get away with a little bit more than she ought to is going to come very much in handy for dear Dorcas…even if the concept sticks in her craw.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 

I am honestly just so excited to get to explore the imperfections and prejudices within the Order; too often fandom makes 99% of the characters in HP so black-and-white in terms of good-vs-evil when most of them aren’t. Sure, there are extreme end-of-the-spectrum characters like Voldemort and Bella and Umbridge who are pretty much Pure Evil (and the occasional opposite end like the hardly-flawless-but-wholly-good-hearted Luna Lovegood) but for the most part, the people in this story are just people. (All that “both light and dark inside us” blah blah blah stuff.) But when you only focus on the Good Guys vs Bad Guys – particularly when the cause the bad guys are fighting for is so bad – it’s easy to gloss-over the flaws in the people fighting against them; easy to forget that they aren’t always great too. Easy to forget that just because you’re fighting against a group of people trying to enshrine prejudice as near-holy writ in their society doesn’t mean that you’re automatically free of prejudice yourself. (Maybe some of the people in the Order are there because they oppose blood-supremacy, but does that mean they like werewolves? Doubt it! Or what about the ones who come from Muggle roots who thus have Muggle prejudices that the wizarding world has little of – racism, for starters! What about queerness? Is it more tolerated in a magical society where people can change genders as easily as they transfigure themselves into rabbits and armchairs, and where marriage has always been about preserving the family line more than romance so who cares what the gender of your “bit on the side” is as long as you produce a proper heir? Etc. What about religion? I doubt too many wix go in for Muggle religions, when so many of those belief systems take the tactic of “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” so how does that conflict play-out between those who grew-up with one foot in the magical world and one in the Muggle? So many options for turmoil!) Just because someone is paying enough attention to know that Voldemort is evil doesn’t even mean that they don’t share some of the same ideals being spouted by the Death Eaters – maybe unconsciously, maybe to a lesser degree, etc…but still there, in their head. Internalized. Needing to be unpacked, confronted – but fandom does so little of that. Good Guys are Good, End of Story. The Order were all friends who got along, la la la! Nope. Don’t think so. The Order was made up of a bunch of scared, desperate, angry, beleaguered people (several of them outcasts in their own way) fighting life-and-death battles against an enemy they couldn’t always even find, opposing their own government in many ways in order to “do the right thing” – fighting a war that half the populace would rather just went away. Even if they had all started as buddies, that would have been enough strain to crumble half their friendships by the end – and conversely, to forge people who otherwise have nothing in common into lifelong mates. The interpersonal relationships and inevitable clashes and arguments and confrontations – those are going to be awesome. I’m so excited.

ROULETTE IDEAS (OPTIONAL): 

Firstly let me just say that I am happy to offer Dorcas up for any plotting purposes needed – whether that be her little group doing something destructive or illegal, a line that shouldn’t have been crossed, an injury or death that can be blamed on her directly or indirectly, kidnapping (with temporary hostage-plotting of Dorcas; I can sit out a bit no worries!) and rescue mission, whatever! Even if it’s not a plot drop about her, feel free to make use of Dorcas in any sort of inciting incident required; I’m not possessive! As for specific ideas… -Epidemic: because disease doesn’t seem to be something the magical community has to really deal with much (got a cold? Take a Pepper-Up Potion and it’ll go away in an hour!), not the way Muggles do, so I think it would be interesting to have a sudden outbreak of something (something Muggle or something magical?) run rampant through Wizarding England, particularly right now mid-war. (Perhaps rumors will fly that it’s deliberate – but from which side? And engaging in biological warfare in magical war, really??? Are we Muggle barbarians now??) Something strange and uncommon for them to deal with…something that will drive people in to St. Mungo’s in larger-than-usual droves and leave the potioneers and herbologists working overtime and meanwhile there’s a bloody war on we’re busy enough already do you mind? -Someone Gets Bit: either there’s a second werewolf in the Order now (has Remus been exposed yet? Guess it’s his responsibility to play Lycanthropic Yoda – or if he’s still closeted, time for a Guilt Waterfall deciding whether or not to out himself and help out! uh-oh!) or it’s a Bill Weasley/Lavender Brown situation where the offending werewolf wasn’t transformed but oh no lycanthropic taint now what? and general panicking with a heavy side-helping of bigotry whoops! Maybe the Death Eaters get wind of the fact that the Order has a Pet Werewolf, so they sic their own (not so) tame puppy on them with an ambush by Fenrir Greyback and his buddies…or they could decide to fuck with the Order by using Transfiguration to fake a werewolf pack attack, and everyone panics over the bites that are actually harmless but too late to take back anything they said or did when they figure it out whoops – basically just the Death Eaters pulling a nasty prank (because the Marauders aren’t the only immature asshole wix out there lol) but also has the potential “side benefit” of the Order risking exposure by going to St. Mungo’s to get treatment etc….idk this one sounded better in my head before I started detailing it, but I’m sharing it anyway in case it triggers a better idea with someone else! XD -Fake Defection: probably making use of a temporary secondary character, or as a potential idea for someone who wants to join the game only for a few weeks (due to scheduling issues or attention span or whatever) and then write their character out: a Death Eater makes contact with someone in the Order and wants to defect! Everyone is equal parts excited/suspicious! They are brought-in for debriefing and discussion! Things seem to be on the up-and-up…but they aren’t, it’s all a ploy by Voldemort and not a real defection at all but an attempt to worm a spy into the Order or at least sow distrust oh no! They make leading comments and sly little observations that has the Order distrusting each other as much as the supposed defector (who is the spy within the Order???) and eventually blows their cover either with a fight or by ratting-out some of their plans to the Death Eaters leading to an ambush etc etc…but in the meantime? At least one or two Order members thought they’d made a friend (and maybe they really had! but the Death Eater’s loyalty trumps their affection!) and that hurts. (Alt: if the player ends up falling in love with the character and wants to keep them, throw in a twist where the DE in question initially came in as a double-agent for Voldemort but then ends up falling for their new friends and even questioning their own prejudices as a result of direct exposure to the people they used to think weren’t people and now they have to work-out how to really switch sides without burning their bridges with the people who thought they’d already switched sides, whoops!) -Burning the Books: trouble at Flourish & Blotts! Maybe something nasty follows Dorcas home one day; maybe someone in the Death Eaters just gets offended at some of the product being stocked and Dorcas’s parents ignored the threatening letters and hints (because who would actually do any of those things? They’re just selling books! This is a civilized society!) so the Death Eaters decided to make a bigger gesture. Maybe it wasn’t even the Death Eaters themselves, but someone who was inspired by the current social strife and decided to act on their own agenda of hate for from arson-style censorship. How unsettled would Dorcas be to discover her safe-haven was a target now? Would it hit home hard enough to make her question her own policy of “collateral damage is inevitable, stop fussing!” that she’s been pushing? Would it inspire her dial-back her more extreme efforts – or only make her embrace them harder, because if even home isn’t safe anymore than all bets are off! Maybe it’s even all out of her hands by then; maybe it would be a wake-up-call to respect the rules of engagement more but it’s too late, her agenda has a life of its own and she can’t stop it now…so better run and keep up before you get run over? Or plant your feet and try to make a stand, even if you’re standing against what you used to advocate?

ANYTHING ELSE? nothing!

[teachanarchy]

On April 24th, millions of people around the world will mourn the implementation of a plan—devised by Ottoman officials a hundred years ago, amid the chaos of the First World War—to annihilate the Armenian people in their native homeland. Initiated in 1915, the policy was brutally effective; by the war’s end, it had resulted in the destruction of virtually every Armenian community outside Constantinople, and the elimination of more than a million people from territory in what is now modern Turkey. This is what is meant by the term “Armenian genocide.” In any context, one would expect that such an event would cause lasting collective trauma. For many Armenians living around the world, in a state of post-Ottoman diaspora, that trauma has been compounded by the lack of official recognition and reconciliation. To this day, the Turkish state denies that a systematic annihilation ever occurred (by the name of genocide, or any other). And Armenians continue to struggle with the official negation: to endlessly combat it is its own form of prison, but to try moving past it unilaterally, abandoning the horrific events of 1915 in the shadows of denial, is to succumb to willful blindness and injustice. Decades ago, The New Yorker published a short story by William Saroyan, titled “The Duel,” which offered the possibility of magical self-release from this dilemma: its protagonist, a trash-talking teen-age Armenian-American, decides in a moment of delirious oratory that he’ll simply turn his eyes from any Turks in the world, and thus be free from the need to engage in the ceaseless duelling. But, of course, one side on its own cannot heal the scars of genocide. As Pope Francis noted in a recent sermon on 1915, “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.”

Recently, however, there has been cause for optimism. Haltingly, and with difficulty, well beneath the upper strata of government in Ankara, a reckoning with history is edging forward in Turkey. For the first time in decades, it is possible to utter the words “Armenian genocide” there without facing certain criminal prosecution. Liberal-minded Turks in increasing numbers are challenging the old taboos, and many Kurds living in Turkey now speak with plain remorse about their ancestors’ complicity in the massacres. At the municipal level, some cities have even taken steps toward reconciliation. Reactionary forces certainly push against these changes—the word “Armenian” remains a slur, apparently even for Turkey’s President—but, in a way that feels new and genuine, one can now map the direction of progress: within a decade or two, denying the effort to exterminate Armenians may well become untenable in Turkey.

My ancestors were Ottoman Armenians: on my mother’s side from Istanbul and Malatya, and on my father’s from the city of Diyarbakir. In a piece that ran in The New Yorker earlier this year, titled “A Century of Silence,” I wrote about my family’s survival in Diyarbakir, and also about the remarkable spirit of atonement that has taken hold in that city. The people of Diyarbakir encouraged me to feel a sense of belonging there, and I’ll respond by expressing a wish on the genocide’s centenary: that a small street in Ankara be renamed. For decades, that street, near Botanik Park, has honored the Ottoman governor of Diyarbakir in 1915, Dr. Mehmet Reşid. This should be an affront to Turks and Armenians alike.

A little about Reşid. He was Circassian, born in Russia in 1873. When he was one year old, his family fled the Tsarist persecution of Muslims and immigrated to the collapsing Ottoman Empire. As a doctor in training, he became preoccupied with the empire’s weakness. “The Ottoman element is shrinking,” he recalled telling veterans of the Greco-Turkish War with tears in his eyes. “Ottoman land is disappearing piece by piece. Of this we are witness, and we know who the culprits are.” By the time he assumed Diyarbakir’s governorship, he had come to view Armenians as harmful “microbes,” and treated them as such: he once boasted that he had eliminated a hundred and twenty thousand people from the region. The violence that Reşid wrought upon Diyarbakir province was so indiscriminate, targeting Christians of myriad sects among the Armenians, that the Interior Minister ordered him to dial it back. (“It is categorically prohibited for disciplinary measures imposed in regard to the Armenians to be implemented against other Christians,” a secret telegram stated.) Reşid ignored the directive, and, assiduously, he removed local officials who refused to carry out the genocidal “discipline.” In May of 1915, the district governor of Mardin told him, “I am not a man without conscience; I have nothing against the Christians of Mardin; I will not execute these orders.” He was expelled. Two other local officials who refused were murdered. Evidence later gathered by Ottoman investigators indicated Reşid’s culpability; after the war, when a Turkish journalist found Reşid and asked him about the assassinations and the mass killings, he threatened to walk out of the interview. “It’s all slander,” he declared. “Aren’t newspapers the source of defamation and anarchy, anyway?”

It is hard to overstate the symbolism of that street name, of its endurance in a world capital even now, but perhaps a personal story can help to illustrate it. I never met my father’s father, a tailor by trade who passed away before I was born. Nor did I ever meet my mother’s father. But an elderly man from Diyarbakir, Nishan Tususian, a pharmacist in Queens who had helped my father immigrate to New York, played the role of grandfather in my life. He would stay in our home for days, taking my sister and me on walks, collecting leaves, spotting birds. Often, he spent afternoons beside a sunlit window reading the Encyclopædia Britannica. When he was not with us, he travelled, almost compulsively. (In a worn suitcase, he always packed an old hammer, for protection.) His presence in our home was a given, a simple thing; to think of it as the result of survival, as the result of bravery or cleverness in the face of mass murder, or as the consequence of random events falling into life-saving alignment, was impossible then, and maybe it still is for me. Mr. Nishan, as we called him in Armenian, was a man of quiet gentleness, seemingly untouched by cruelty of any kind. Last year, in a suitcase stuffed with old photos in my parents’ home, I found a picture of him from the nineteen-fifties, outside the city of Tripoli, on the northern coast of Lebanon. (I can guess the decade because my uncle, who is dressed in a dark suit, was accidentally killed by a stray bullet, in Beirut, in 1958.) Nishan stands at the center—a younger, more vital version of the man that I remember.

At the time I found this photo, my father shared with me a seven-page typed memoir that Nishan had written, in imperfect but matter-of-fact English, bound in baby-blue card stock. The document, forgotten at the bottom of a drawer after his passing, was titled “Escape from the Turks.” April 24th will mean many things to many people, but for me, I expect, the act of commemoration will involve the memory of first reading those seven pages, and the sudden awareness that this man who treated me like a grandchild carried with him a secret piece of such monstrous history.

The youngest of nine brothers and sisters, Nishan grew up in a stone house with a courtyard in the center of Diyarbakir city. He began his memoir by explaining that he graduated from secondary school in 1912, intending to go to college the following year. The Great War broke out in 1914; several months later his father’s hardware store was burned, along with hundreds of others Armenian businesses. In March of 1915, Reşid was appointed governor in Diyarbakir, replacing a more tolerant predecessor, and a climate of terror soon took hold among Armenians. Some of Nishan’s siblings had emigrated, but three brothers and two sisters remained. His brother Hagop was quickly detained and killed. His brother Vahan was conscripted into the Ottoman Army, released after the payment of a fee, but then arrested and imprisoned for carrying a pistol. His brother Dikran was imprisoned because of his membership in a political party. Nishan’s father, who was eight-four, died of old age that year. Two months later, his mother succumbed to typhoid fever. By the time of her burial, even the priest was unwilling to venture to the graveyard, so Nishan, who was then living with a sister and her family, went out with the pallbearers to learn of her resting place. “At the funeral procession, I was the only one there,” he wrote.

Reşid had assembled a strike force to enact “punishment.” Working with the local office of the Committee of Union and Progress, the party then in control of the Ottoman state, and with Kurdish irregulars, he created eleven battalions, populated by “the worst specimens of thieves, brigands, murders, deserters, etc.,” the former British pro-consul in Diyarbakir wrote in a report filed to the U.S. State Department in 1919. The eleventh battalion became known as the Butcher’s Battalion. At the end of May, on Reşid’s orders, more than six hundred Armenians who were detained in Diyarbakir prison—Nishan’s brother Vahan among them—were sent down the Tigris River on rafts and killed. The massacre was a turning point; the province thereafter became a wasteland of corpses. “I witnessed numerous ghastly scenes, women and children lying here and there in the valleys, either killed or dead from exhaustion,” a survivor later recalled. Another remembered women being separated from their children at a valley near Mardin: “When our mother came for the last time and kissed us madly, I remember she was clad only in her white underwear; there were no ornaments, no gold and no velvet clothes. We, the children, were unaware of the events happening there. In reality, they had taken off their clothes, one after the other, had arranged the garments on one side, had stripped the women completely, had cut their heads with axes and had thrown them into the valley.” Streams of people were forced to march south across the provincial landscape, into Arabia. As the Minister of Interior told the American ambassador, “We will not have Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert, but nowhere else.”

In June, a Turkish official arrived at Nishan’s home and instructed the family to pack: they were being deported to the south. Nishan’s brother Dikran was released, so he could join them. Nishan was pressed into a convoy and expelled to Urfa, then to Aleppo, then through an archipelago of isolated transit camps, toward a forlorn settlement, now in the Syrian Desert, called Der Zor. It is estimated that two hundred thousand people were slaughtered at Der Zor. The convoy, lead by Circassians and Kurds, varied in number as it moved, but it began in Diyarbakir with three hundred people: “all our neighbors, about forty boys, two men, including my brother who was released from prison.” Because Nishan’s brother could not walk, the family purchased a cart for five gold pieces. “When we emerged from the city gate, we saw by the city wall three-to-five-year-old boys, about a hundred of them helpless, out of the passing caravans,” he recalled. Shortly afterward, Dikran was removed from the cart and killed. The memoir devotes only a sentence to his slaying: a displeased Circassian gendarme “with three or four Kurds knifed him by the side of the road.”

On the way to Urfa, the convoy camped at a spot known as the Devil’s Valley, where, Nishan wrote, “they picked seven men and shot them.” (Several days later, scores of Armenians from Urfa, including the city’s archbishop, were massacred in that valley.) Passing a village named Karacadağ, he saw a gendarme with a rifle, joined by men with whips and cudgels, emptying homes of people. One of the men beat a girl trying to revive her mother, who had fainted. “There were a thousand bodies shot and scattered a mile around,” Nishan wrote; as the convoy progressed, “a donkey stumbled, and fell. Our neighbor Manoug helped the driver raise the donkey. He was shot.” The convoy diminished as it moved, leaving in its trail ailing women and children, who could not keep up, scattered possessions, and the dead. Farther down the road, one of the Circassians prepared to murder six boys, Nishan among them. In an interview that Nishan later provided to an Armenian oral-history project, he recalled that moment: standing away from the gendarme, stunned, imagining the knife entering his body, while the other boys begged for mercy. Several women in the convoy intervened: “They collected some money, and the gendarme was pacified.” Taking the money and a twelve-year-old girl, the Circassian mounted his horse and rode off.

From Urfa, along with other deportees, Nishan was packed into a train for Aleppo. He sought out relatives there, and for a month lived incognito, until he was discovered and forced into another convoy headed for Der Zor. Moving south along the Euphrates, the convoy grew to five hundred deportees; after several days of marching, it reached a camp called Abuharar, where, Nishan wrote, “there was starvation. People who could not stand on their feet were taken and lined up on one side of the camp, to wait their end.” Nishan met a friend of his brother who told him that if they did not escape they would either be marched until they died of exhaustion, or killed at their destination—“Der Zor means death.”

The two planned to meet at a telegraph pole outside the camp. “I got away first, waited by the pole for some time,” Nishan wrote. “My friend did not show up.” Alone, using the stars as his guide, Nishan fled through the desert, stopping on four occasions. “The first time, an Arab shepherd robbed me. The next day a good Arab took me into his tent, fed me, put me on the right road. The third time, two gendarmes caught me. They could have shot me, but they let me go. The fourth time, when the day dawned, I found myself in a flat country. There was no place to hide.” Some friendly villagers took him in. “I slept there during the day, and was on my way as soon as it was dark. In the morning, I came across a caravan going to Aleppo. I asked permission to join them. I reached Aleppo.”

In the last, dispassionate words of his personal account, he wrote, “It took me three days to recover myself. The ordeal was over. This completes my Odyssey.” Nishan devoted the final page of his brief memoir to a family photo. Here it is, along with captions that he wrote for a younger relative: thirteen typed lines, as succinct a story of 1915 as can be told.