A King

You can’t keep gathering fistfuls of water as you swim, can you? It will always slip away. What you can do is lie on your back, look at the sky and the scenery around you, and take in both the cold and the warmth. When you sense yourself drifting toward a large rock, do your best to change course. When you see someone else drowning, try to teach them how to float. In this way, the river can be transformed from an enemy into a companion of sorts, a guide. What’s the alternative? You can’t fight the flow of a river by swimming upstream; you only exhaust yourself. You could try to drown yourself, but then again, whom would you be helping by doing so? We must learn to let the current carry us where the river flows. We may not choose its speed, but we can choose how consciously we move within it. In this context, I don’t see acceptance as resignation. I see it as a form of cooperation with change, a learning of the rhythm of impermanence. When we stop demanding that moments stay, they reveal themselves more fully. Time moves whether we resist it or not, and the more tightly we clench our fists, the more it escapes us. I often feel like we (at least I) treat time as some sort of resource being spent, and I am the vessel slowly emptied by its passage. What a pessimistic train of thought! I’m teaching myself to think of time as a medium we move through. Meaning is not measured by how much time remains, but by the depth of our presence within each passing moment, how we inhabit it and the traces we leave after our passing.

"My dear Melinée, my beloved little orphan,

In a few hours I will no longer be of this world. We are going to be executed today at 3:00. This is happening to me like an accident in my life; I don’t believe it, but I nevertheless know that I will never see you again.

What can I write you? Everything inside me is confused, yet clear at the same time.

I joined the Army of Liberation as a volunteer, and I die within inches of Victory and the final goal. I wish for happiness for all those who will survive and taste the sweetness of the freedom and peace of tomorrow. I'm sure that the French people, and all those who fight for freedom, will know how to honor our memory with dignity. At the moment of death, I proclaim that I have no hatred for the German people, or for anyone at all; everyone will receive what he is due, as punishment and as reward. The German people, and all other people will leave in peace and brotherhood after the war, which will not last much longer. Happiness for all... I have one profound regret, and that’s of not having made you happy; I would so much have liked to have a child with you, as you always wished. So I'd absolutely like you to marry after the war, and, for my happiness, to have a child and, to fulfill my last wish, marry someone who will make you happy. All my goods and all my affairs, I leave them to you and to my nephews. After the war you can request your right to a war pension as my wife, for I die as a regular soldier in the French army of liberation.

With the help of friends who'd like to honor me, you should publish my poems and writings that are worth being read. If possible, you should take my memory to my parents in Armenia. I will soon die with 23 of my comrades, with the courage and the serenity of a man with a peaceful conscience; for, personally, I've done no one ill, and if I have, it was without hatred. Today is sunny. It’s in looking at the sun and the beauties of nature that I loved so much that I will say farewell to life and to all of you, my beloved wife, and my beloved friends. I forgive all those who did me evil, or who wanted to do so, with the exception of he who betrayed us to redeem his skin, and those who sold us out. I ardently kiss you, as well as your sister and all those who know me, near and far; I hold you all against my heart. Farewell. Your friend, your comrade, your husband.

Manouchian Michel

Manouchian was eventually captured by the Nazis and executed.