An Ottoman label for Cleansing (1915-1923)

An Ottoman label

An Ottoman branding.

To uproot my human development.

A human development of two millennia 

once flourishing in Anatolia.

I was labelled Armenian! 

I was branded Armenian!

By whom?

by merciless Ottomans!

I took a long hike to my own graveyard,

accompanied by the Ottoman funeral cortege.

They played the dead march for my own interment.

My interment in the Syrian desert.

My offence was my identity, and 

a global conflict and its attendant heavy losses.

A conflict I knew little or nothing about.

I was preyed upon by men of beastly testestorone.

Coercively I became a sunni proselyte,

and I was dispossessed of everything vital.

Terribly weakened by an inflicted famished state, I was laid to rest in the Syrian desert.