ARAM MANOUKIAN

If you had told Aram Manoukian on March 6, 1908, that within a decade he would successfully lead the defense of Van against the Ottoman military, save tens of thousands of Armenians from imminent murder, become the temporary governor of Van after the withdrawal of the Turkish forces, and then emerge as the founder of the First Armenian Republic as Tsarist Russia faltered, he probably would have had a good laugh. After all, that day seemed to usher in the end of Aram’s life as a free man—if not his life altogether—as Turkish policemen and soldiers dragged him out of a 30-foot-deep well where he was hiding with fellow revolutionaries, and escorted the lot of them to the military commander’s residence, where they were interrogated, photographed, and sent to solitary confinement.