Historical Fiction Piece

My name is John Sargis and I am here to tell you about my story. It is one full of pain, suffering, terror, and death. But it is also one of hope.

It all started on a night I shall never forget when I, along with my cousin Joseph, were awakened from our beds and told to fly to Russia. It was on the night of January 16 at
11:30, I can remember it as if it were yesterday…

“Wake up children, quietly now, get your things, only what you can carry. John, wake up your cousin, hurry child, we don’t have much more time.”

As I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes I turned to see my aunt hastily putting things into a brown burlap sack, I reached over to shake Joseph but stopped because he was already awake. We looked at each other and the questions in my mind were reflected in his eyes. But we both knew better than to ask, with the recent news of murders of other Assyrians in neighboring villages we knew the journey ahead would be one that would change our lives forever.

Taking only this small writing journal and a fountain pen received from my grandfather I hurried to help my aunt and my mother pack necessities that we needed for the journey ahead. From my small village in Eurmia, Persia, we would travel many miles on foot to American missionaries in Russia that would eventually lead my cousin and I to a journey to America.

“John, it is time. Put away that foolishness, let us keep moving on.”

I closed my journal and looked up at my cousin, now twenty-six years old, his frowning features were accentuated by deep creases in his brow, a result of our hardships over the years. He did not understand the importance of what I was doing, how our story was important to future generations. He did not understand how easily people forget.

“Have patience with me cousin, this is all I have to offer this world.”

“This world, this world is not where we belong John, we have traveled here to this ‘great county’ as so many call it and we have nothing to show for it. We have left our beloved parents in Russia to find friends here who are like ghosts. This world is nothing.”

I was confused by his anger, it is true that we have yet to find who we are looking for, friends of the family that moved here long before the concept of America entered our thoughts. And yet here great things are possible, dreams never imagined have a chance at becoming reality.


Basic Outline:

John, Joseph, and their parents are going to go on this journey from their home to Russia. John will be going from past to present throughout the story. He’ll be telling about his journey to Russia that led him on a journey to America. On the journey to Russia my conflict will be an attack on the group of people traveling to Russia, John will lose some friends and family members. The conflict in America is finding a home for his parents to come to. Both John and Joseph have a limited amount of money, and cannot find the friends they’ve been looking for.