The Gendarme

Every once in a while you read a book that just blows your socks off. For me, The Gendarme by Mark Mustian is such a book. The novel begins with Emmett Conn, a ninety-two year old Turkish-American whose health is starting to fail. Emmett is hardworking, a man who spent years taking care of his ailing and difficult wife, and a father and grandfather who tries to be a better one. I empathized with him immediately as a good and caring man.

Emmett is diagnosed with a brain tumor and as his health worsens, he begins having vivid dreams of himself as a young man. Unusual because he was injured in WWI and has had amnesia of his early life every since waking up in a British hospital. The dreams are disturbing to him, and to the reader, because show more he begins to piece together that he had a role in the Armenian genocide. The novel switches back and forth between the present and the past, until Emmett Conn, or Ahmet Kahn, has difficulty staying in the present. Nor does he particularly want to, because in the dreams he can be with the young Armenian woman with whom he was passionately in love.

The plot drew me in from page one and never let go. In some novels, the shifts between past and present can be jarring, but not so here, where the old man's dreams are so integrated with his life, that they are nearly seamless. In addition, the characters are so well drawn, lifelike, and captivating that I felt as though I knew them, or wanted to. I sympathized with their situations, wanted them to find happiness, and despaired at their deparate circumstances.

And yet. And yet, Emmett Conn was a willing participant in the Armenian genocide. How can one reconcile such actions with the character one has grown to love? Is it possible to ever atone for such deeds? Can love for one transcend the cruelty to hundreds, thousands? Is it possible to move beyond the horror, either as a perpetrator, a victim, or a country? What role does memory play in atonement? Can love forgive even the worst of actions?

Although I rarely give a book five stars until I have been drawn to reread it at least once, I am incapable of giving this book anything less. It is an amazing novel that I recommend to everyone as a must read. It will be available in the US in September. show less

I won this advanced copy through the Goodreads Giveaway Program-Thank you Goodreads!

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 show more 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 can not 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. show less

Emmett Conn is 92 years old, or so he thinks. After suffering a head injury during World War I, most of his prior memory was erased. Since then, he fell in love with a nurse who took a special interest in him, emigrated to her home country, and lived out his days working as a plumber and doing his very best to live the American dream and pass it on to his two daughters. Even as he has aged, he has stayed in remarkably good health, that is, until he begins to have seizures which reveal he has a brain tumor. Even more disconcerting, however, are his incredibly detailed dreams, dreams of a past that he's sure could not even be possible. He dreams of a time when his name was not Emmett, but Ahmet Khan, and he was serving as a gendarme show more escorting captive Armenians out of Turkey. He dreams of an Armenian girl who intoxicates him with her beauty and her mismatched eyes. What he has known about himself for decades tells him that these dreams can't be true, but the dreams are too real to deny.

Mustian expertly weaves together the two narratives, one the current life and the remembered times of Emmett Conn, the other the strikingly realistic dreams of the terrible journey out of Turkey with a band of suffering refugees riddled with merciless cruelty and an unexpected and forbidden love. The present day narration is a seemingly spot-on depiction of an aging widower. He recalls a life he considers to be well-lived, full of hard work and family. He wonders how he failed to pass on his hard-won life and rigid values to his two daughters who seem to care about him but fail to visit and seem all too willing to concede his care to strangers. He even makes wry, almost laugh out loud funny observations about his dearly departed wife's relatives, really the only relatives he himself has left.

The other narration fleshes out the details of an incident that is still a taboo topic for many Turks. It effectively transports us to a different time and a different place. It reveals the raw cruelty and the terrible suffering inflicted by the gendarmes on their captive refugees. At the same time, though, Mustian manages to put a very human face on a tragedy using a present-day narrator we have come to like who is seeing this all anew, but in a way that feels distinctly familiar. Emmett's disbelief and regret at the actions of his former self, Ahmet, casts the events in an atypical and disconcertingly sympathetic light as we even watch Ahmet change as he falls in love with this unusual girl that he never got the chance to apologize to.

The Gendarme is a brave and haunting portrait of yet another wartime tragedy that many would rather see pushed under the rug, but it is also a story of love that transcends even the worst circumstances. The Gendarme is a powerful book that definitely makes Mustian an author to watch. show less

This was a quick but deep read that illuminates a little-known piece of history: the Armenian genocide. Emmett Conn is an elderly man who has lived a quiet life, when suddenly he is beset with headaches and memories that seem to belong to someone else. In his early life, he was actually a gendarme, a soldier who "escorted" Armenian citizens out of Turkey. During the trek he falls in love with one of the refugees and his feelings for her cause him to question his actions and the reasons for the genocide.

The novel provides a fascinating look at memory and perspective. Most interesting to me was the way in which the young Emmett justified his actions, and the tactics and messages that were used to justify racism, rape and murder. It's show more chilling to see how easily young men were convinced that a certain ethnic group was the enemy and how this dehumanized an entire population.

The novel is very well-written, and the back and forth between past and present is disorienting in a way that allows us to feel the confusion the way that Emmett must have felt it. The ending felt a bit rushed to me, and somewhat unbelievable in ways I can't articulate without spoiling it. Despite that, however, the novel as a whole was a very worthwhile read and serves to bring to life a buried part of history. show less

The Gendarme by Mark Mustian

8 out of 10

This was truly an amazing book. It took me on a journey in many ways. I knew very little of the Armenian deportation from Turkey that took place prior to the First World War. However, having a Turkish Armenian friend I did have an inkling of the history, but "The Gendarme" illustrated the depth of the atrocities with vivid realism. Mustian does not shirk from the brutal desperation and baseness of the human condition in these circumstances. At times the graphic descriptions made me gasp...and I don't consider myself easily shocked.

It began with our narrator and central character’s diagnosis with Glioblastoma Multiformae, and subsequent Radiation Therapy. As I am currently an Oncology Nurse in a show more Radiation Department this is something I treat on a daily basis and I found it most intriguing to see the experience and progression of this disease from the patient’s perspective. I also found it hard to fault on a clinical level and I was most sympathetic to the central character’s increasing retreat into a past that I also found more compelling than the bewildering, daily humiliation of becoming increasingly dependent on family and medical professionals. Even when he was held against his will in a psychiatric unit, I found the description to be detailed and authentic—and I am generally a merciless critic of medical drama, having previously worked in psychiatry for six years in New York.

I especially found the flashbacks to a London interesting as I have been researching nursing in the same period of time—as my grandmother was a nurse during this time and place and I trained to be a nurse myself in London, about twenty years ago. I could just imagine the Nightingale wards and the injured soldiers “back from the front” and I am particularly sympathetic as to how ill-equipped the nurses were to deal with so much of the pain and suffering in this time. It was convincing how Carol and Ahmet fell for each other in this context and strangely fulfilling that Ahmet ended up caring for her at the end of her own life.

Freedom of culture and identity are crucial to the story. It is a bold choice to tell this from the point of view of the captor—the Gendarme, and ironic that the tale is told at a time in his life that his own freedoms are being gradually whittled away by his physical and mental deterioration. Also mesmerizing, how sympathetic the Gendarme becomes to one of his charges, Araxie, ultimately deserting and plotting a new life in the place where all things are possible—America. The place where religious freedom is constitutionally protected, the only place where they can possibly imagine being together. It is skillfully handled how Ahmet shifts from captor to protector, then to admirer and ultimately to heartbroken lover. It is also perceptive that we gain insight from Emmet as exactly what his “freedom” in America has truly meant, the hard work, the small racist slights that he has tolerated over the years. As an immigrant into this country myself in a multiracial marriage, I have an appreciation of this.

I found the commentary on rape and prostitution to be intriguing—rape is evidenced as a weapon or war and prostitution is currency. At the same time, Ahmet (Emmet) protects Araxie’s innocence with his very life, her purity is something that he recognizes and is compelled to protect at all costs. Is she symbolic of her people for Mustian? Araxie is not naïve or ignorant. On the contrary, she is evidently educated and well-informed, easily an intellectual match for Ahmet.

There is a constant grappling with the concept of faith versus fate—indeed, if you accept the will of Allah are they one and the same? To what extent is one in control of one’s own destiny? How long must you trust in the will of God—especially in the face of an unfathomable reality? It was satisfying ultimately to see Emmet (Ahmet) take his own destiny into his own hands and go on his own pilgrimage to find the one he always loved.

The way in which we are treated to shards of memory as the story pieces together builds tension as we have the sense of time running out for Emmet. I thought this was a well-crafted story that served a broader purpose—to educate and compel the reader to think a little more deeply about the values that one holds with respect to identity, culture, religious belief, freedom and the freedoms that people are deprived of; both historically and in present day. show less

This book tells a very different type of story in such an intriguing way. The main character is a 91 year old man, Emmett Conn, who was born in Turkey and who served as a gendarme during the Armenian genocide. He discovers, at the age of 91, that he has a brain tumor that is malignant, and experiences intense dreams and seizures. The author uses Conn's dream state to reveal to the reader just how complex a life Conn has led. At the same time, this gifted author, Mark T. Mustian, juxtaposes Conn's present life in America in the 1990's dealing with his daughters, grandson and neighbors and his illness with his past life serving as a gendarme in Turkey during the early twentieth century.

Mastian is a superb writer and the words flow easily show more and beautifully as he shares with compassion and tenderness his characters' plights. As a reader, you really get to know the characters in this book and to understand who they are and how they cope and survive enduring one tragedy after another. Any reader will be captivated by the story of Emmett Conn's life and the two women he loves. One woman is his wife Carol, who is a blonde nurse who saves him when he is wounded during WWI and marries him and brings him to America. He lives with her for 70 years and has two daughters with her. Overcoming discrimination resulting from his darker skin tone and from his inability at first to speak English, he succeeds in becoming a plumber and then a builder and provides a good life for his family. He totally embraces being an American and forgets about his Turkish past. At age 91, when he starts having intense dreams and seizures from the brain tumor, we learn of his other love Araxie, a woman he meets and rescues during the Armenian genocide. It is the authors ability to reveal Emmetts complex past while this character is in a dream-like state that creates a spellbinding story of how the human spirit triumphs over war and destruction.

This is a book that is definitely worth reading. Following Emmett Conn on his final journey to find Araxie and beg her forgiveness is a haunting experience. This book could have ended with Araxie and Emmett meeting and bringing resolution to their past lives or with Emmett never being able to find her. Read the book and find out what happens...you will understand human nature better after you finish it. show less

The Gendarme is the story of 92 year old World War I veteran Emmett Conn. He has few memories of the war due to memory loss caused by a war injury. After being diagnosed with a brain tumor, he remembers the war in his dreams and is haunted by these memories. Emmett dreams he's a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turkey during the Armenian Genocide. During this trek, he meets the love of his life an Armenian girl named Araxie. After remembering her in his dreams, Emmett decides he must track her down to ask her forgiveness.

I knew very little about this period in history and learned a lot about it from this book and I would like to learn even more. I thought the author did a great job of making the reader feel what an elderly man in the show more last stages of his life might feel like - confused, regretful, detached, etc. At the same time, the younger version of Emmett Conn(Ahmet Khan)has a totally different voice - naive, headstrong, stubborn. Both story lines were compelling - it was hard to put this book down. show less