ABSTRACT
Mary Zakarian's euphoria over her successful exhibition turned out to be short-lived, and there was the inevitable fall back to the reality of her life. Laurens asked Mary to conduct interviews with survivors of the Genocide who were living in Philadelphia. She turned out to be perfect for the job of both interviewing and translating. She spoke Armenian far more fluently than most of her contemporaries, many of whom had wished to cut themselves loose from their Armenianism. And, she had known many of the Philadelphia survivors personally for her entire life. She was able to bond with them and establish a kind of trust an outside interviewer might not have been capable of. But to Mary this project took on almost mystical significance. This is how she would finally find her mother. This would be the chance to heal her own wounded spirit. She would hear the stories and through her empathy bear witness herself.
