The majestic cruise-liner, 'The Summit', with its two thousand passengers on board had just docked at the Port of Naples. It was early morning and the summer sun had spread its golden rays over the shimmering blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea and had adorned the enchanting Italian coastline in splendour.

The passengers had already gathered in the grand ballroom for disembarkation. The hall was full of excitement and anticipation. The tour buses were waiting on the shore for the passengers to take them to their destinations such as the Amalfi Coast, Sorrento, Pompeii, and the Isle of Capri.

Our group, numbering six Armenians from Australia, was in a queue heading for Capri. This being one of my dream destinations, I was eagerly waiting for our turn to leave for shore.

"Are you Armenian?" came a voice from behind. Surprised yet flattered, I replied "Yes I am". The young women standing next to me was beautiful, tall, blonde and tanned. Her English had a slight accent.

"How did you know I am Armenian?" I asked instinctively. "I heard you speaking with your friends. I am Armenian too - from Uruguay," she said.

My curiosity turned into delight, as I had never met anyone from Uruguay - let alone 'an Armenian' from there.

I inform my companions of my exciting discovery. Veronica introduced herself to everyone and to our surprise she turned out to be one of our guides for the day. Soon, we were all on our way to Capri.

I felt I had to know more about this lovely young Armenian from the other side of the world working on this cruise ship.

In turn, Veronica did not leave our side. She spent most of the day with us. Her happiness of being in the company of Armenians was obvious. She took every opportunity to speak to us in Armenian.

"I am sorry my Armenian is not very good," she would say. "My father sent me to Armenian school, but the Armenian language classes at school were not enough, I did not learn properly." She sounded genuinely upset.

Before long, we understood why she was so concerned about her 'Armenian'. Veronica was only part-Armenian. Her paternal grandfather was the only Armenian in her family.

Born in the town of Marash in Turkey, her grandfather could only speak Turkish. After surviving the Armenian Genocide of 1915, he had made it to South America, married a Uruguayan and settled there.

What was more intriguing was that Veronica's father had also married a local girl. Having no knowledge of the Armenian language, her father had made sure that his daughter at least went to Armenian school.

Learning of this story, her determination to speak to us in Armenian touched us even more.

During lunch, sitting at an elegant restaurant in Capri, enjoying the pleasant company and reflecting on all this, my husband raised a toast and said to Veronica "Please tell your father that we thank him for sending you to an Armenian School".

To our astonishment, Veronica suddenly covered her face with both hands and began to weep.

Stunned at this unexpected emotional outburst, our own senses took a hit and we all became overwhelmed by emotion. Something had shaken us to the core. It was beyond our own understanding. The unspoken words had broken our defences, and tears began to flow and hugs took centre stage in the middle of this lovely setting, oblivious to the other diners around us.

The depth of Veronica's bond to her Armenian heritage and the respect she had for her father was greater than we had realised.

Surely this was strange! We had met many Armenians on vacation before, what was it about this young person that captivated us so immediately and our affection grew stronger as the day wore on?

Early next morning, Veronica called and said she would like to see me. We met at breakfast. I saw that she was carrying a little notebook in her hand. She handed it to me. The pages were made with blue cardboard paper, cut to size and attached together with a red Christmas decoration wire cord.

The front page read: 'The Word (and others)'.

I took a glance at the next page, but before I could read anything, she stopped me and said: 'please read it later ... when you are alone'.

By then I had seen the words scribed in the inside page: "Dear Silvia, I wanted to give you this, because I know you would understand...."

Our day was again filled with activities and beautiful shore trips. Yet my thoughts kept going back to those haunting words. What did they mean? Why did she think I would understand? What was it that I would understand? I could not wait to read those pages.

Finally, late in the evening I went to my room and opened the little eight page notebook and came to the realisation that it was filled with poems - Veronica's own poetry - all hand written.

As I read each line, my whole body trembled; I could not see the words through the tears that had filled my eyes. I could not have imagined that this unassuming young woman could express such powerful emotions in words and images.

I read on. This is some of the words she had written in the first poem "The word":

"My blood is marked by genocide..." ...the haunting words went on

"........My past was carved on children's bones in the mountains of Leninakan with hanged peasants on the slopes of Ararat.'

".........My eyes were numbed with what I hadn't seen, after the dirty war was over, after the bowels of the Earth had vomited bones in Uruguay......"

"........The word was black and cast a deadly storm before the sun - the word was Genocide".

Nothing had prepared me for the emotional journey that her poetry would take me.

In all the verses, Veronica's anger, fury and sense of injustice came blazing out of the pages. Yet the tenderness and love she felt for her father, her grandfather and her Armenian heritage and homeland powered her senses.

In the poem "Pamouk" Veronica epitomised her grandfather's life journey. Displaced, deprived and yearning for his past, compounded her own indignation at the distortion of her family name in the whirlwinds of destiny.

Veronica questions the face of humanity in the poem "The Music of the Mosque" where she describing her visit to Istanbul.

"They have a face so like our own that betrays not the rot of history
Behind these mountains was a land my kin did call their own
and I have seen the skulls set on a spear for all to see
The skies are calm,
The darkness coming
The Mosque awaits but not for me."

Veronica's rage and sense of the injustice transcends the shields we, the descendants of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, have created to protect our own tribulations, and her words exposes us to the reality.

She laments over her father's longing for a homeland he has never seen, and a town etched in his heart called 'Marash' - all so passionately illustrated in her verses.

Every word Veronica had written in her poems was as if it was a challenge to my generation. My heart pounded. I had no answers to her questions. It made me delirious. What could we give our young to satisfy their own rage and exasperation about the Armenian Genocide? We carry a heavy burden.

Her poetry bears witness to the depth of suffering within the confines of the human mind.

I understood Veronica's pain. I understood that it was also my pain. It was the pain that we share as Armenians. She knew I would understand!

Veronica is an inspiration. She did not need to be first generation to feel her Armenianness. She carries the seed of millenniums of history and culture that could not be erased by the vortex created by the Genocide.

It is a force that comes from the depth of history and no power on earth can destroy it.

The following is one of Veronica's poems. She composed this the day she met us.

She had called it "Capri"

'Hay em' (in Armenian letters)
It's in my veins, it's in my blood
I am the seed that turkers didn't kill
I found the love in the Island of Capri - found my blood my kin
The place where I belong
The moment when I heard the Armenian word
The beautiful dark eyes of the young girls and the familiar nose
Hay em yev hay es toun (in Armenian letters)
and so I have to love you without my stir
this love, it comes from ancient villages
from soldiers zoravor
and fighting for our land
so that we'd be alive today - in Italy
the land of Capri and could say - Hay em, hay em yev hay es tun."

Capri August 2008