ISBN 0-9535191-0-4   xvi + 375 pages, paper, index.   Price: $25.00 plus shipping. To order call 1-800-865-6405 (U.S. and Canada) or click here   Table of contents   Read excerpts

Was life beautiful in Kharpert at the turn of the century? Did its golden plain really nourish a unique civilization? What was everyday life like, before it was smothered in 1915?

Stina Katchadourian, an accomplished writer, gives unique insights into Kharpert in her latest work, Great Need over the Water: The Letters of Theresa Huntington Ziegler, Missionary to Turkey, 1898–1905. This 392-page publication, replete with maps and many photographs, weaves a delightful commentary around the letters Theresa Huntington sent to her family from this region between 1898 and 1905.

The letters reflect on everyday life in the twin towns of Kharpert and Mezreh, as well as their surrounding villages, around the turn of the century. Reading the letters of an impressionable young woman, written with a great deal of vigor and good humor, one almost feels the pace of daily living, with the seasons, smells, and colors. Theresa describes shopping, making clothes, teaching children, talking to parents, celebrating holidays, going on various trips. Her work as an American missionary is primarily amongst Armenians, though there are others too, including Kurds and Turks.

Great Need over the Water provides a window into a lost Armenian world that is difficult to imagine, though many Armenians in the diaspora today share elements of it. Much of the book deals with Theresa’s interaction with other missionaries, as they worked very hard to evangelize Armenians. These Americans, like Theresa Huntington, left their comfortable lives in the United States to answer a calling they believed in. They learned Armenian and Turkish, ran schools and hospitals, had families, and many even died there. By the end of the book one feels as if one knows Theresa quite well, as well as her friends, such as Laura Ellsworth, "Aunt Hattie," the Barnum, Gates, and Knapp families.

Nevertheless, there is also an ever-present bittersweet element in Great Need over the Water. This is because the book not only celebrates a peasant civilization, a way of life, but it also foreshadows what was lost in 1915.

In the epilogue, Stina Katchadourian underscores this point, as she returns to Kharpert to discover the utter desolation that is Kharpert today, where nothing remains of Theresa’s Armenians, not even a trace. Buildings that once housed thousands have disappeared, like the children who studied in them, as well as their parents, and all we have left are the written records of a bygone age.

Stina Katchadourian (MA Stanford, ’67) grew up in Finland as a member of that country’s Swedish-speaking minority. She is a author, literary translator, and journalist. Among her interests are women and the Middle East. She is a member of the Board of Directors of The Global Fund for Women and her many publications include a memoir of her Armenian mother-in-law entitled Efronia: An Armenian Love Story. Stina lives with her husband on the Stanford University campus near San Francisco, California.

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Last modified on 05 May 2006.