In Jerusalem, I had spent much of my time among the books of Gulbenkian library, following the loose threads of Armenian history. But the massacres, I put off until the end. What I’d been reluctant to start absorbed me at once; it was that that I had been afraid of. Everything else seemed meaningless when set against the reports of 1915.
Leaving the library after those sessions, I struggled for understanding. I wanted the courtyard outside to look different. I felt dazed and curiously grubby – as though simply by reading about it, I had participated in the obscenity.
Philip Marsden, The Crossing Place, p. 66