6
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
ship that brought my parents, my two brothers and me to the
New World had docked not so far from this very pier. "What
had happened since then was nothing short of a miracle, but
because it happened in a land of everyday miracles, few took
notice.
I was then a gawky boy of twelve, with six English words in
my vocabulary: "Yes," "no," "hot dog," "ice cream"—the last
four picked up from the son of a returning missionary aboard
the Meghali Hellas, which had left the Hellespont a month
before it anchored here. I was born of Armenian parents in
Alexandropolis, Greece, in 1909. My first twelve years were
spent in a world wracked by war and violence. There was the
first Balkan War, and the second Balkan War, then World
War I, which really began as a Balkan clash and spread far
beyond the boundaries of the Balkans.
The cruelest war was that waged by the Turk against the
defenseless Christians of the Near East. The Armenians, the
most defenseless because they had no government to raise its
voice in protest, suffered most. One million were martyred.
The number of maimed and orphaned no one knew. Their
bleached bones stretched from Turkey to what are now the
Syrian and Iraqi deserts. The River Euphrates ran red with
their blood. No one knows the number in our family and
among our friends who were massacred or driven by the Turk
to suicide. Turkish officials wallowed in stolen wealth—wealth
that later helped Kemal Ataturk finance his army and dictatorship. Providentially, the American Near East Relief and Red
Cross came to the rescue of those who survived this Turkish
genocide. Every Armenian today feels eternally grateful to
them, and to all of America.
That painful Old World chapter closed when I began a new
life in a New World. All that we had dreamed of before coming here now came true. On our arrival in 1921, father bought
a home in Mineola, Long Island. In its cramped backyard we
had a garden, raised chickens, and kept innumerable pets,
which multiplied with such fecundity that father would ex-