Plot
The film starts by showing Nazareth's life as a blacksmith in the city of Mardin, where he used to live with his family. Although Nazareth had his suspicions about possible effects of the World War I, and he was considering the possibility of non-Muslim minorities of the Ottoman Empire being conscripted to fight in the army, his family and friends were trying to be optimistic, although they had heard stories about men from different villages disappearing. One night, Ottoman soldiers came to his door and took him to work for the army at a road construction, which was basically in the middle of an uninhabited area. While was working there and as time passed by, he and his friends started to notice different groups of passer-by Armenians under arrest. They even witnessed a rape. At one point, an Ottoman officer came to their camp and asked them if they would accept to convert to Islam and being set free. Some did and some did not. The officer and his fellows took the converts and left. Some soldiers and convicts, recruited solely to kill Armenians, arrived the next day to kill the rest. The convict responsible for cutting Nazareth's throat could not go along with it and made only a small cut on his throat, which made him faint and, presumed dead, he survived the massacre. However, while saving his life, the cut also made him mute. This "cut" not only symbolizes Nazareth's becoming mute but also his being cut from his life and family and the Armenian society's silence about the Genocide at the time.
His executioner, who was an Ottoman subject, returned and took Nazareth, and both joined a gang composed of former defectors. This gang is mainly formed by Ottoman Turks, based on their clear accent, yet they were willing to take Nazareth with them, which is a sign that the ordinary people did not have any problems and the Genocide was substantially based on political will and motive. While trying to continue his life with the gang, Nazareth came across an old customer from Mardin, who informed him that surviving Armenians went to Raʾs al-ʿAin, which became one of several cities Nazareth visited to trace his family. When he concluded that everyone in his family had died he was devastated and unsure about what to do. At that point, he met a soap maker from Aleppo, called Umair Nasreddin. The soap maker provided refuge to not only Nazareth but also many Armenians, which can also be interpreted as a metaphor: bystanders to the Genocide cleansing their guilt by helping the surviving victims. It is in Aleppo that Nazareth learned that his daughters might still be alive and set out to find them first in Lebanon, then in Cuba and finally in Ruso, North Dakota, United States. [3]
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