Customer Reviews

The Gendarme

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book was haunting and beautifully written - this last being all the more noticeable and affecting given the utter ugliness and horror that the language is often portraying. Mustian brings to life with searing vividness the squalor, disease, and everyday violence that made up the caravans, tent cities, and refugee destinations of the Armenian Genocide. He uses the same blunt simplicity to describe both the rape of a woman trying to save her child in wartime Turkey and the seemingly unbridgeable gap existing between a daughter and her dying father at the end of the 20th century in America. There were many passages that I marked off as I read through, thinking that I would choose one or two to quote in my review, but now having finished the book I find myself unable to pick just a couple.

THE GENDARME is a novel about the two very different stories that make up one man's life. Emmett Conn (Ahmet Khan) is a man at the end of his life. He's 92-years-old, a widower, and has two daughters, neither of whom he is very close to. After being diagnosed with a brain tumor, he starts to dream about another life during another time in another land: that of a young 17-year-old gendarme in charge of driving a caravan of Armenians out of Turkey and into Syria.

Ahmet has very few memories of anything before his early twenties, when he was found by the British on a battlefield and taken to a London hospital to be treated. This life that comes to him in pieces and fragments is not one that he remembers, yet as the story of it begins to unfold, he recognizes it as his own and hungers for the complete picture and for the self-knowledge that has so long alluded him. This other tale is one filled with violence, confusion, anger, guilt, and love bordering on obsession. Central to it is the young woman Araxie, one of Ahmet's Armenian prisoners, and their meeting seems fated, with both lives irreparably and irrevocably changed as a result.

Through this novel, the reader is given a stark look at the Armenian Genocide and Mustian takes an incredible chance by portraying it all through the eyes of one of the perpetrator's. This is a heavy responsibility and a careful balance must be achieved, but the author is able to pull it off and the book, as well as its message, are all the stronger because of it. With his choice of heroes, Mustian leaves the reader conflicted from the beginning, for while we are able to relate to and sympathize with elderly Emmett Conn, the young Ahmet Khan is a rapist and murderer.

His actions are not described in a vacuum, however, and as we are shown the atrocities he witnesses and commits, we are also given insight into his own confusion and questioning over why this is all taking place and what the purpose is. He is not an unwilling actor and should by no means be seen as such, but the truth is that he is also a young man - almost a boy - who seems to be swept along by the events surrounding him, doing what he's been told to do, accepting the reasoning behind it, and not questioning at first whether it's right or wrong. As the full of Ahmet's story is revealed to Emmett, he is left with the pressing and urgent need to find the woman whom he loved so profoundly and to beg her forgiveness.

One criticism I can't go without mentioning is that I could never quite figure out Emmett's feeling towards and relationship with his wife, Carol. She remained something of an enigma to me throughout the book and although she's not actively present in either the main story or the flashbacks, I thought she should have nonetheless been more fully developed. I'm also not certain how I feel about the conclusion in the second-to-last chapter; it brought me to tears, but I think the story might have been served better and the reader left more satisfied if it had been written in a different manner. (It would be a spoiler if I wrote anything more or included my suggestion).

I'm curious to see what the reaction to THE GENDARME will be, given the political tensions and continued sensitivity that surround the Armenian Genocide, including even using the word "genocide." I think the book would make an excellent book club selection and might be further enhanced by being read alongside a non-fiction account. One that the author mentions is Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past, and there is also The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response by the same author, both of which are highly rated. (I myself have not read either).

Overall, I would highly recommend this book: it is a well-written, emotionally involving, and deeply moving story. Mustian seeks to highlight the importance of seeking forgiveness and the necessity of remembering, and he succeeds wonderfully. THE GENDARME is about forgiveness and guilt, memory and forgetting, acknowledgement and denial, love and hate, and the strength of the human spirit and the complexity of human beings. It reinforces the undeniable truth that we can never be just one thing or one act, but that we are defined by a culmination of all aspects of our character and all the actions and decisions that we make throughout our life.

In one of the last pages, a character remarks: "A few things remain, seared so deep as to defy alteration. ... Maybe there are some things that should be passed on, that should never be forgotten" (p.283). This is echoed in Mustian's Author's Note, where he writes: "Remembering is living. Forgetting, as Ahmet Khan learns, has its costs. ... We want to know. Sometimes that knowledge is painful, or inconvenient, or even damning. But it is essential. It exposes us for what we have been, and can be."
[This review is of an advanced copy format of the book]

The haunting cover art, portraying a lovely young girl with two different colored eyes, is what first attracted me to this debut novel, The Gendarme. Trust me, once you finish this story it will stay with you for days to come.

In 1990, Emmett Conn is a 92 year old Turkish-American man, who is recovering from surgery for a brain tumor. In Georgia, to his family and friends he seems confused or senile. However, what has happened to Emmett is that after his surgery he is experiencing vivid dreams of World War I events he had previously or purposely forgotten. Memories that were lost, perhaps due to a war injury, have now returned some 70 years later.

The novel goes back and forth in time to when Emmett was a Turkish Gendarme who brought Armenians from Turkey in a death march to Syria.

"The original two thousand deportees have dwindled now to three hundred, many of these suffering from dysentery. A number of the guards are gone, too, leaving only three gendarmes, including myself to prod our group on its way. Our progress has been slower than before, maybe six or seven miles per day. At this pace it will take four or five days to reach our destination. Food is scarce, water even scarcer. The dead and dying increase daily. At the current rate of loss, only fifty or so of the deportees might actually make it to Aleppo."


Araxie is a lovely Armenian girl that Emmett becomes obsessed with and tries to protect. In his dreams he is reunited with his captive who he thought of as the love of his life. He is desperate to find her, and to beg her forgiveness for his sins of the past.

MY THOUGHTS - Even though this story is a work of fiction, I feel like I was given a painful lesson in history. Sadly, Armenian Genocide is a subject that I knew nothing about. The story is sad and haunting and tough to read in parts, but it is so well done that most readers will find themselves effortless and eagerly finishing the novel quicker than anticipated. It is clearly a story that demonstrates the evil that good people are capable of. The ending is not what I anticipated, but in some ways that was a good thing. I think this story would make an excellent movie.

RECOMMENDED - 4.5/5 stars

What exactly is Mark Mustian's book The Gendarme? It's a story of love set against the background of war and intolerance; it's a history lesson about the Armenian genocide that most of us didn't get in school; it's a commentary about how we treat our elderly when they become physically or mentally incapacitated; it's the story of dreams and lost memories and what they tell us about ourselves; and finally, it's an examination of divisive use of religious differences and racism created and justified by nations in order to advance political agendas. And while this book examines all of the aforementioned, some of it is done in a rather ephemeral and perfunctory manner.

Alternating between Wadesboro, Georgia in the 1990's and Turkey and Syria 75 years earlier we are given two narratives delivered by the same man at different stages in his life. Emmett Conn (Ahmet Khan) is currently 92 years old and suffering from a terminal brain tumor that has triggered vivid dreams of events buried in his subconscious since he suffered a head injury in WW1. His recollections of the brutality involved in the forced march of Armenians from Turkey to Syria appear, to this reader, to be shockingly authentic however, his memories of Araxie (she of the mismatched eyes) and their bittersweet love teeters on the brink of preposterous and puts me in mind of some old "bodice-rippers" in which the heroine is raped by the hero, falls madly in love and follows him to the ends of the earth. Emmett's dreams too are suspect because not only do they recall the past in sequence, but his brutality seems to replay as less callous and barbaric than his cohorts like Mustafa.

Finally, I found the circumstances surrounding Emmett's trip to New York to be implausible for a 92 year old suffering from a brain tumor to accomplish.

Overall - I have mixed emotions about this book. I loved some things about it, hated others. I suppose if you are a person who enjoys historical fiction, and you can refrain from examining the logic of certain story elements to closely you will find The Gendarme to be a pleasant diversion.

"The Gendarme," by Mark T. Mustian, is a multifaceted journey through the mysteries of the human condition. It is an odd, exotic, and seductive love story told against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide. The work is full of extreme emotional and psychological juxtapositions. On one hand, there is exceptional beauty, tenderness, kindness, and innocents. On the other, there are scenes depicting an array of the worst human atrocities, all historically correct within the context of the Armenian Genocide. Thankfully, the later are unveiled through vague dream-like recovered memories. These are easier to deal with, but nonetheless devastating in their impact. The novel is a fierce compelling work that commands the reader's attention as it weaves a web of tales in strange, haunting, and distant places--in another world, another time.

At its heart, the novel deals with powerful themes of inhumanity, guilt, absolution, and forgiveness. We learn the universal truth that good people are capable of great evil.

It tells the story of Emmett Conn, a 92-year-old immigrant Turkish-American who develops a brain tumor and starts remembering suppressed memories from his youth in Turkey. At that time, he was 17-years-old Ahmet Khan and served as a gendarme escorting a group of 2,000 Armenian deportees on a forced march out of the country. Only 65 deportees survive the ordeal. Along the way, there are horrific acts of inhumanity. Emmett Conn's recovered memories assault him in every more persistent streams of indistinct dreams. At first, he denies that these dreams reveal anything about his own personal past, but slowly he begins to understand the truth. We go along with him as he recovers the details of this journey, the details of his past. We learn about the atrocities that he and his fellow gendarmes committed. But most of all, we learn about the beautiful young Armenian girl, Araxie, who he loves and tries to protect.

I have read numerous academic and historical accounts concerning the Armenian Genocide--about the forced mass deportations and related deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It is generally agreed that these events occurred, but the Turkish government and many other nations deny that they constitute genocide. This book placed me in the emotional heart of this issue. It forced me to make up my mind. Personally, I am left with no doubt whatsoever that these events constitute genocide. But equally as strong, I am compelled to understand and forgive. Good men can do evil things--this is the central mystery of the human condition. This is something we all must all come to terms with.

The author is an accomplished storyteller and an astute literary talent. "Gendarme" is popular fiction, but it has strong literary overtones. The prose is crisp, fresh, and rich; best of all, it never gets in the way of the story. The action is taut and purposeful. As the story progresses there is an ever-quickening rhythm that compels the reader to find out how this strange story concludes.

Personally, I had problems with the ending. The ending read more like what you'd find at the end of a blockbuster movie rather than what you'd find at the end of a fine book dealing with such complex psychological and historical themes. But I am usually the odd person out on such matters. I suspect, in all likelihood, the ending will thoroughly please most readers of popular fiction.

The novel is exceptionally cinematic. I would not be surprised to see it adapted into a screenplay and made into a major motion picture. If this happened, I'd be one of the first to see it. I would also not be surprised to see this novel work its way onto major bestseller lists. Why? Because it is a good story; it is well written; and it is on a topic that is of interest to a wide range of readers.

I will recommend this book to my friends. It will make a terrific book club selection.

This novel introduced me to an aspect of WWI that I was completely unaware of: the Turkish genocide of Armenians. The device used to tell the story was quite clever. Emmett Conn suffered an injury during the war that caused amnesia of all events prior to waking up in an English hospital. As a 92 year old, he suffers from a brain tumor which stimulates these lost memories and he relives the atrocities of the genocide through vivid dreams. As a Turkish gendarme, he must face the transgressions he committed as he escorted Armenian refugees to the Syrian desert. His relationship with one refugee in particular, the young Araxie is the focus of most of these recollections. His enchantment with her affects both the decisions he makes during the war and a new obsession as an old man.

This is a very dark topic and the author is not timid in his depictions of rape and violence. Emmett's elderly struggles to come to terms with these visions can be frustrating and often sad. The author's attempt at lightheartedness often fails due to the bleak atmosphere of the subject. Overall, it was a well-told story, but the conclusion could have been more decisive. It did an effective job illustrating the horrors of this conflict and recognizing the wrong that was inflicted upon the Armenian people.

I really loved how Mustian's main character is a 92 year old man. I mean come on-how many books have you read with a narrator that old?? I also love how it's all told in the present tense, as if you are right there with Emmett as he's making all these discoveries. Emmett is a very intriguing narrator. He is still a strong older man, yet he is almost submissive in his old age, like so many elderly people I see everyday at my grandmother's retirement home. Their children never visit, but they learn to not really care. Their children make them move into nursing homes, and instead of protesting, they figure "what good will arguing do??", and then they go along with whatever their kids or doctors want. I think Mustian captures perfectly the mindset of a lot of older people. (Of course I'm not elderly myself, but I spend a lot of time with older people, so this is based solely on my observations.)

The events that Mustian (of Armenian descent himself) chooses to place this story around were another thing that I loved. The Armenian "genocide" (as many call it, though we never learn a thing about this horrific event in school) is a topic that has always fascinated me. As I just stated though, many schools (at leasts mine) don't teach about this event. I learned about it years ago through a song by a really awesome band who's lead singer's family is from Armenia. I don't know any other fiction books that use this very real event as a backdrop. Mustian did this all perfectly, and he also awakened in my history buff brain a hunger for more information on what happened in Turkey just before and during The Great War.

I highly recommend you read this book. It is extremely well written and different from so many other books I've read.

The Gendarme, by Mark Mustian, is a brilliantly conceived and carefully crafted novel about the Armenian genocide that took place during and immediately after World War I.
The choice of a 92-year-old Turkish man living in Georgia as narrator is one of the author's bold decisions. Emmett Conn has a brain tumor. His seizures spur dreams, which he soon realizes are memories of a past he's forgotten, either because of head injuries received during the war or because he has repressed events too horrible to remember. This device allows the author to slowly spin out the story of Emmett's past when he was known as Ahmet Kahn.
Mustian's prose is clean and spare, salted with occasional poetic descriptions. Words "snap and volley" in an encampment. Emmett's wife's hair is "golden-white, like a swan's feathers." Morning breaks "raw like a blistering skin." The style suits an old man bombarded by memories that engulf all his senses.
Since the death of his wife Carol, Emmett is a lonely man with few friends and connections. He has always been an outsider in America, dark-skinned with accented English. He feels most strongly connected to a grandson who also has dark skin and the prejudice and isolation that accompany it. Emmett's relationship with his daughter Violet is strained, in part because he worked relentlessly during her youth. Violet also made life choices that put her at odds with her parents.
The novel alternates between 1990, as Emmett confronts his mortality in the presence of Violet and the absurdly cheery oncologist, and 1915 when Ahmet served as a Turkish gendarme. In the present day, Emmett has persistent memories of his wife, who nursed him back to health after the war. He returned the good deed by caring for her through years of debilitating illness. Not love exactly, but gratitude, duty, habit, children, and memories of years spent together bind them together. This portrait of Emmet's family--imperfect as most families are--makes the dying man feel like someone we know. He could be our neighbor. Our father. Ourselves.
In his dreams, Emmett recalls a lost love from his youth, an Armenian refugee he was charged with escorting to Syria. Midway through the journey, only seven hundred remain of the two thousand who started the march. When they reach Aleppo, only a few have survived. The author unwinds Emmett's memories slowly. By the time we confront the atrocities Ahmet committed, we already know him as fully human. This is Mustian's achievement: to allow us to know Ahmet not just as a monster, but as someone not unlike ourselves.
Statistics in books or magazine articles about the destruction of more than a million Armenians barely makes most readers flinch. We see a number and not the faces of human beings. That distance is removed when the novel presents us with an Armenian woman begging Ahmet to carry her infant across a river. She strips off of her clothes and offers her body in a desperate effort to save her child's life. Amidst the chaos of hundreds of refugees forced to cross the river, Ahmet rapes her in full public view, the infant lying beside them. The sound of a horse's hoof crushing the infant's skull and the strangled cries of the grieving mother are devastating. We are confronted with the reality of war's degeneracy, unable to turn away from its violence though we want to.
Ahmet is serving this stint as a gendarme to gain entrance to the Ottoman army, but when they reach Aleppo he deserts. He risks everything to save a prisoner he has fallen in love with, a woman with one light eye and one dark, the captivating Araxie. He protects her from Mustafa, another gendarme who intends to rape her. After the death march, Mustafa gets his revenge by locating Ahmet and reporting him as a deserter. Soon Ahmet experiences the head injury that strips him of all memory and lands him in a hospital where he meets his future wife Carol.
Now at the end of his life, Emmett finds himself in a hospital again, a mental hospital, because the tumor causes violent eruptions when he confuses his dreams with present reality. He nearly strangles a caregiver.
In an imagined conversation Emmett asks Araxie's descendant if it all really happened. She tells him, "Oh, it happened...Don't let anyone tell you it didn't. It was, it remains, genocide."
In a final irony, Emmett dreams the rest of Araxie's story, discovering she wasn't even Armenian, but a Turkish orphan raised by Armenians. She tells Emmett, "...there is no blood test--nothing that I know of--to distinguish Armenians from Turks, Christians from Muslims, saints from sinners, the good from the bad. In the end, who really knows--maybe God?" We are left pondering once again how cultural differences can result in so much loss of humanity, Ahmet's, no less than the million-plus Armenians who died.
Forgiveness and rebuilding of relationships begins with an apology, however belated. It's a message the United States finally received concerning slavery, the internment of the Japanese, and the destruction of so many native Americans. As Emmett/Ahmet wonders how he can be forgiven if he hasn't expressed regret, the novel's message for modern Turkey is clear.

Mark Mustian's debut novel is a powerful story about a former Turkish gendarme and his role in the Armenian genocide that took place in Turkey during WWI. While his prose are lean the images he evokes are vivid, searing, heart-wrenching and unforgettable.

Emmett Conn was wounded in Gallipoli during WWI and lost most of his memory prior to that time. He goes on to marry an American woman and immigrates to the U.S., where he becomes assimilated in American life and culture. It isn't until he is diagnosed with a brain tumor when he is 92 that he begins dreaming of his life before the war. His vivid dreams tell the story of himself as a young Turkish gendarme, Ahmet Khan, in charge of leading 2,000 Armenians out of Turkey and into Syria. The journey is horrendous, filled with killing, disease, starvation, rape and torture. Of the 2,000 Armenians that begin the journey only about 65 reach their final destination (his was only one of many caravans that made this same death march). During this long trek he falls in love with an exotic looking young Armenian woman, Araxie, whom he protects and cares for, but ultimately cannot hold on to.

While many of the reviews call this a love story pointing to an enduring love that crosses lines of race, religion, adversity, war, and even time, I can only see a thread of a love story somewhere among the ruins. Ultimately my take away from this book is man's inhumanity to man. Is there another animal on the planet that commits genocide on its own species because a particular part of that species is a different color or religion (yes, I know it is absurd to think of animals as being religious)?

I read a lot of books that deal with war, misery, and the human condition, but I have to say this is one of the more depressing ones I've read; one horrible thing happens after another, even in the present day storyline. Having said that though, I think this is an important book, one that gave me greater insight into a part of history I knew little about. Mustian can be sure that after reading this no one will forget there was an Armenian Genocide, and perhaps by remembering we will not be destined to repeat it.

My book club read the book and had the pleasure of meeting author Mark Mustian for an extended discussion. This is a great book to discuss on so many levels: it is a compelling story with rich characters and vivid details, along with little known history of a terrible event. One of our members said, "I had always heard my parents speak of the starving Armenians, but I never made the connection."
I could see this book evolving into a great movie script with lots of action, a love story, and interesting characters. The only flaw in the book is the ending which is a little contrived, but other than that, I loved this book.

I just finished this book which I received as a Christmas present. When I first read the dust jacket blurb, I thought: "eh... I am not sure I will enjoy this. The premise is too far fetched." I read it because I was interested, call it morbid curiosity if you would like, in seeing how the author, Mark Mustian, would develop the plot. I also read it because I have, as many Armenians do, an equally morbid curiosity in hashing, re-hashing, and forever trying to make sense of the Armenian Genocide. So, I read it the book and must commend Mark Mustian for weaving what I believed was a lame premise into a very good and engaging novel.

Mustian attempts to relate the Armenian Genocide (I am Armenian just to be clear) from the point of view of Turkish Gendarme charged with taking a group of Armenians from Harput to Syria. This fellow Emmett Conn, the anglicized version of the man born as Ahmet Khan, lost much of his memory from an injury sustained after the Genocide at the Battle of Gallipoli. Circumstances lead him to end up in the United States living in the state of Georgia. At the end of his life, Emmett begins having dreams of his role in the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Turkey. The book is about the piecing together of his memory and coming to terms with his past and past actions before he dies.

I do not want to dwell more on the plot and the details of the book. The power of the premise and how Mark Mustian brings it to life is powerful. The reader needs to let the novel guide him and part of the experience is lost if the entire plot is laid out in a review. It is noteworthy to add that Mustian has done a wonderful job writing about the Genocide and forced march form an Armenian region from the point of view of a Turkish Gendarme. Armenians tend to portray Turks as villains and heartless enemies. They are not often humanized in the way Mustian has. I am not certain if any other author, Armenian, Turk, or one of another nationality has attempted this. I believe it has been done with the Holocaust. The only example that comes to mind is the 1974 film, The Night Porter which was quite a controversial and disturbing film.

Mark Mustian is a bit like Michael Arlen, the author of Passage to Ararat. He came to realize and investigate his Armenian background later in life. Mark Mustian knew of his Armenian heritage but he is not prototypical in that he did not have a grandparent or great-grandparent that went through the horrors of the 1915 Genocide. In fact, his paternal grandfather immigrated to the Unite States so much earlier than most Armenians that he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. If he has enough information and background, I would hope to see Mark Mustian write the story of his grandfather.

In this 30s, Mustian became interest in his Armenian heritage was kindled when he read Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate. Reading that book inspired Mustian to learn more about Armenians in general and the Genocide more specifically. He was so inspired that he took a trip to Turkey and Syria from August 1-8, 2008. I can imagine the idea for the book was born from that trip. Mustian has posted a brief travel log on the his website: [...]

Also like Michael Arlen, Mark Mustian embraced his heritage or part of his heritage. The cynical would say both of them embraced their heritage because there was a book in it for them. Maybe so, but I look at this glass as half full. I am amazed how these two literary gentlemen responded when they were exposed to Armenian people, history, and culture. Both of them were fascinated enough to make trips. Michael Arlen went both to Armenia (Soviet Armenia in those days) and Turkey. Mark Mustian went to Turkey and Syria. That is no mean commitment to learning something new about ones background.

Both men also being fixated and obsessed with the Genocide. Mustian's entire book is dedicated to this huge, grim, and recent episode in Armenian history. And why should they become fixated and obsessed? Most serious Armenians are obsessed with it. We all think and write about it. We are still trying to come to grips with it and get closure on it 96 years after the fact. As Mustian points in the suffix of the book that many modern Turks do not understand why Armenians are obsessed with the events of 1915. The Turks have moved on.

Of course, they have moved on and only dwell on these events from 1915 when Armenians raise it to the levels of national and international press and politics. The victors, the vanquishers, never dwell on the negative parts of their wins. Turkey survived and emerged from the ravages of World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire with a Republic that for the most part has thrived. They celebrate that and do not dwell on how they secured that and who might have suffered along the way. It is no different than the United States. We celebrate our "purple mountains majesty from sea to shining sea." We do not dwell on the native peoples whose land, lives, and lifestyles we destroyed to take over the land. Many Americans are surprised at how much the remaining American Indians are obsessed and fixated on this. The dynamic at hand is quite clear... at least to me.

One can also read a short biography of Mark Mustian on the website. You will learn that beyond being an author, he is a lawyer and city commissioner in Tallahassee, FL. If nothing else, I highly recommend reading the backstory [...]. It is exactly like the backstory in the novel, I would have called it a suffix, appendix, or have put it at the beginning and called it a prefix. Read it... it is a good, short, piece of writing.

The Gendarme is quite well done and worth reading if the subject matter appeals to you. It is interesting if you are Armenian and should be of interest to Turks as well. I would generally recommend it to anyone.