The Luckiest One

Harkine Pilibosian Hagopian told her life's story in anecdotes over many decades, a story that sparkled like a fictional fantasy: Arab sheiks with harems, Turkish baths, murderous marauders in the desert, a mountain pass on a donkey, salvation by the sacrifice of a beautiful sister and the will of a clever husband, a stranger from another social class. Most astonishing of all was an experience so shockingly brutal it didn't have a name until almost three decades after the event: Armenian Genocide. To survive such times required far more than good fortune - it required unfathomable mental and physical fortitude. She came to face the unrelenting eye of incarnate evil. Her legacy is a testament to the ultimate failure of Ottoman Turkey to extinguish the Armenian people. Facing incomprehensible evil, Harkine proved that good does sometimes prevail.