Together Vahan's family was taken to Goryan’s Inn, put in a room with fifty or sixty people, and watched Armenouhi, Vahan’s sister, die. Next they were taken on a death march with everyone from the room, their grandmother also died during the march. Vahan’s mother told them to run away because she didn't want them to die. Vahan showed up at the Altoonian’s back door just after they had been …show more content…
Tashian died of a stroke. Mr. Tashian gave him two ten lira notes when he left to make sure that he had something to survive. He then impersonated a member of the Turkish army and signed up to drive horses. He drove them to Samsun, and once they had gotten to there Vahan met a greek man who had a friend who had a boat that would then bring him to Constantinople. When on the boat he meets Gagik a boy he shared his boat experience with for about four days in a room below deck. Four days have passed and they are above deck excited to see land. “Beside the sailor, incredibly, impossibly, was a gendarme! Seeing his scarlet collar patches and holstered gun, my new world vanished and I was back in Sanis.”(259). Constantinople is the place where Armenians could be free. When he saw the gendarmes he must have thought that he was going to be captured or killed. The gendarmes brought them to shore and told them to get out. When he got to the shore he picked up a handful of sand and was glad to be free, and on land. He walked around for a while and someone he met knew his father. They gave him clean clothes, shoes, and food. Vahan was free.
Throughout the book Vahan doesn’t have anything, He survives with the help of many kind people. Over the three years that took place in the book, Vahan met people that helped him on his journey, and people that impeded his progress of becoming a free man. Vahan was able to be free and was reunited with his sister Oskina when they entered Ellis Island in September of