A Lamp Lights The Way Back : A Memoir

Description
''A Lamp Lights The Way Back'' is a memoir. However, it does not appear to be just personal as most of the memoirs do. It speaks about the whole era, which are also based on my ancestors' tales. I knitted my parents' memories with my own ones to tell the readers how my parents and grandparents lived at the time of Soviet terror, and how Armenia lost many of its precious lands with their historical and cultural heritage. I do not only speak of the events what my eyes have seen, but what my ears heard as well. My memories go back and ahead, too. They roam from past to present, speaking about life and death, wars and peace, happiness and unhappiness.

My memoir reflects a human condition, which may refer not only to me, but anyone else as well. Due to the metaphors, allegorical expressions and poetic descriptions my memoir looks like a novel to be read with a great interest.


From Chapter One
A Journey Back To My Childhood.

The sun has already guided me for sixty-one times. Sixty or more years is nothing for the sun, even not a minute or a second, but my mirror keeps on picturing my ages on my face by adding more and more curly lines on it. All those sixty years disappeared so quickly from the train of my life's journey. Those years look like butterflies that have already flown away as if they never existed, but they did.
''It was long ago, no, maybe yesterday or probably a minute ago. O, are they old talkie movies that I ever watched on my life's screen?'' I talk to myself with my searching eyes.
''Where have those soft voices gone, which patted my ears once upon a time?'' I say to myself.
The old photos speak for them with their silent tongues. These albums still take care of my life's written or unwritten pages. I look back to my past and smile to its reflection in a mirror that keeps pale sketches and even shadows in my eyes. I see grey and white butterflies in them.
''Haven't my grey cloudy days turned into these grey butterflies?'' I dare to wonder.
''The white butterflies may have been my happy days,'' I still talk to them without knowing where they are.
I don't know how many butterflies will still show me their reflection. I even remember an episode in a train from my early childhood that reminds me of a tiny shard of an embroidered glass castle.

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