How It All Goes Down
Vahan Kenderian is a twelve-year-old kid from a wealthy Armenian family in Turkey. He doesn't know it yet, but his life is about to change for the worse. His older brothers start suspecting something when their dad, and then uncle, is taken away by Turkish police officers. They've heard about the Armenian massacre a few years earlier, and they worry it will happen again.
Pretty soon, it's happening all around them. People are taken from their homes, men are killed, women are violated, and Vahan watches first hand as his brothers are shot before him. Since he's younger, he's spared, along with his two sisters, mom, grandma, and slightly older brother, Sisak. They are all taken to a place called Goryan's Inn where they are starved and held prisoner.
At the Inn (totally inaccurately named, by the way), Vahan's sister takes poison so she doesn't have to be raped by the soldiers, and his grandma is hit over the head with a rock. After watching three of her children and her mother die, Vahan's mom begs him to run away with Sisak—unsure of where they will go or how they will make it, the boys leave anyway. They hide out at first, but pretty soon, soldiers find Sisak and shoot him too.
Vahan runs to his buddy Pattoo's place. Pattoo and his mom are still there, even though his dad and elder brother have been killed already. At first Mrs. Altoonian is warm and welcoming, but soon Vahan has worn out his welcome—Mrs. Altoonian worries that one of the soldiers will find him there and take it out on her and Pattoo. So she arranges for him to go stay with Selim Bey, who used to know Vahan's dad but now kills Armenians. Oh good?
Vahan is scared, but he soon figures out that there's no reason to be. Selim is kind and well dressed, so he can't really kill people, right? Vahan later figures out that Selim was killing people, and knew how to be cold and calculating when it suited him. He gives food to Vahan every day and gives him a job as a stable boy, though, and even takes Vahan along with him when he travels. It's not ideal exactly, but it's better than Vahan not having any ally.
Soon Vahan meets Seranoush, an Armenian girl whom he thinks Selim wants him to be friends with. It turns out Seranoush is really just there to be used by the soldiers though, and Vahan feels sick about it; he can't believe he fell for Selim's act, but he's got nowhere to go. Before long, he escapes and takes up with a group of Turkish refugees who think he's a deaf mute—which he pretends to be so they won't kill him (since they would if they knew he was Armenian).
One day one of the guys figures out he's not actually deaf or mute, and Vahan knows it's only a matter of time before he tells the others—so (wisely) he makes a break for it again. He finds a place to stay at an orphanage, so long as he pretends to be a girl. One day, Dr. and Mrs. Tashian start looking for a boy servant to help out at their place, and though they think Vahan is a little scrawny at first, they take him anyway.
He's not so much a servant as he is a son. The Tashians are very loving toward Vahan, and ask him to do normal chores around the house. While he's staying with the Tashians, Vahan meets a pretty Armenian girl next door named Seta, who is the German consul's companion. She and Vahan become fast friends, and it's not long before they share secrets—but soon after Vahan meets her, Seta gets pregnant with the consul's kid, and is kicked out.
She comes to stay with the Tashians, but when she has the baby boy, she dies of a fever; the consul takes the boy away, even though the Tashians want to raise it. Ugh. And then, a couple days later, Mrs. Tashian dies from a stroke because she's too overwhelmed with grief. Vahan wants to leave this house full of death and sad memories, so he gets a job as a wagon driver for the Turkish army. Dr. Tashian gives him some money and wishes him good luck before he goes.
While he's driving his wagon, Vahan decides he wants to get to Constantinople. It's not safe for Armenians in Turkey, and he doesn't want to keep hiding and running his whole life—so he pays a guy to get him on a boat, and a couple of agonizing days later, he makes it. Finally in Constantinople, Vahan imagines a world of possibilities at his doorstep. The reality though, is that he still misses his family and dreams about them often.