Summary

In this section, Roy returns to the subject of Hrant Dink, the journalist who was killed for discussing the 1915 Armenian genocide. The title, “Listening to Grasshoppers,” comes from the words of an Armenian woman who lived through the genocide and who remembers the grasshoppers that arrived in her town as a bad omen. Speaking to the audience assembled in Istanbul, Roy calls Hrant’s death a “shout that can never be silenced again” (143) and an occurrence that will, in time, only make people more aware.

Roy talks to her audience about the 2002 genocide of Muslims in Gujarat. She says that while the deaths of 2,000 people cannot compare with the deaths in Rwanda or Bosnia, the Gujarat genocide indicates that “the grasshoppers have landed in mainland India” (145). She cites from the United Nations' definition of genocide and suggests that...