The Chamichians of Ayntab

Ovsanna sat for a portrait with her son Jamil standing beside her, one hand tucked into his pocket. [120]

Jemile stood for a portrait with her family, the older girls holding hands and young Barkev leaning against his father. [121]

Some years later, the family gathered on the grass in Aleppo. Louder’s son George was there, and Nerses’s grandson Haroutiun. At the center sat Ovsanna and Jemile, encircled by the children. [122]

Before long, the family gathered again at the home of Louder Chamichian in Aleppo. Hanging above them was an enlarged portrait of Jurjy Chamichian—a portrait from a remembered world. [123]

In 1925, Ovsanna sent her stepdaughter Rosa Chamichian a photograph of herself with her son Jamil, addressing it to “Mrs. Rosa” and inscribing the reverse in Armeno-Turkish: 
Please accept this photograph of your brother and me as a keepsake….
Your mother,
Ovsanna Chamichian

Jamil sent this photograph with the following inscription in Armenian:
“I sent this photograph to your family as a token of love and remembrance.
Jamil Chamichian
20 September 1942
Jerusalem”

Later that year, Jamil sent the same photograph to his uncle, Dr. Louder Chamichian, inscribing it in Armeno-Turkish:

My dear Uncle
Dr. L. Chamichian
A remembrance from me to you.
Jamil Chamichian
Oct. 25 / 1942
Jerusalem. [126]

Markets and Hans near the Chamichian House, ca. 1910

“A lot of our goods came from our villages, but still we had to buy things from the stores.”

Less than two blocks from the Chamichian house stood Ağamın Kabaltı, a covered intersection lined with merchants’ stalls (its location is based on Murad Uçaner’s research). The nearby district of Balıklıgan, formally known as Balıklı Çarşısı (“Fish Market”), took its name from a spring-fed pool where fish once swam. Nearby were the Arasa, the Buğday (Wheat) Bazaar, the Copper Bazaar, the Almacı Bazaar, and several of the city’s principal hans (warehouse inns), including Kara Nazar Han, Millet Han, and Şire Han. Together these markets and hans formed the commercial heart of Ayntab. The location labeled “Early Morning Bazaar” comes from a Franklin W. Peers photograph captioned, “The early morning bazaar. Piles of red peppers in an unrivaled riot of color.”

Churches of Ayntab, ca. 1910

“You and I, along those Turkish blocks. Early in the morning to church it does something, you know.”

The Chamichian house stood a short walk from all of Ayntab’s churches, including the three Protestant churches—Kayajik Church (First Protestant Church), Hayik Church (Second Protestant Church), and Alay Bayi Church (Third Protestant Church)—as well as the YMCA. These churches were also known as Evangelical or Congregational churches. Alay Bayi Church was the only one located east of the Transversal. The Apostolic Church (St. Mary’s Cathedral, Սուրբ Աստուածածին Sourp Asdvadzadzin) was one of the city’s most prominent landmarks, its gold-plated cross visible across Ayntab. The map also marks the location of a khachkar, or Armenian cross-stone.

Probable Route of Annali Chamichian and Her Family from Ayntab to Akçakoyunlu, Winter 1916.

“We rented donkeys on which we placed our bedding. We walked by day and slept at night in the open. We went over the mountains. We went this way until we reached the station where they placed us on the train.”

This map reconstructs the probable first stage of the deportation journey of Annali Chamichian, her siblings, and the family of her uncle Nerses Chamichian after their expulsion from Ayntab in February 1916. Raymond Kévorkian notes that, apart from the first two deportation groups, which likely departed by the western road, “all the Armenians deported from Ayntab were sent toward the Akçakoyun railroad station.” Sarafian’s map labels the southeastern road out of the city as Դէպի Ագչէ Գօյունլու (“Toward Akçakoyunlu”), supporting the route shown here. In some areas, the route remains uncertain. Highlighted locations include known convoy stopping points such as Sazgın (labeled “Sarin”), likely the site of the deportees’ first overnight stop, and the railway transit camp at Akçakoyunlu (labeled “Aktsche K.” on the map). Contemporary accounts describe attacks planned against deportation convoys near Sazgın and identify nearby villages whose inhabitants participated in assaults on Armenians, including Tilbaşar (labeled “Tell Bâschar”), Mezra (labeled “Mezra’asy”), and Kantara. The local road network—including an additional road shown on another contemporary map connecting Kantara to Akçakoyunlu—helps explain how armed groups from these villages could quickly reach and intercept deportation columns. 

Sources: Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 944; Ümit Kurt, The Armenians of Ayntab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), 94–95.

Mule Cart Convoy. Night of 25–26 May 1920, Ayntab to Ulu Mezre.

“It rained all night.”

The refugees left after dark on 25 May 1920 as part of the French-organized evacuation of Armenians from Ayntab and traveled through rain and red mud before reaching Ulu Mezre the following morning.

Sources: Ray Travis diary, 26 May 1920; Agnes Cherchian Ward interviews with David Louis Cort, 2001–2003; Maurice Abadie, Les quatre sièges d’Aïntab (1920–1921).

Mule Cart Convoy. Night of 26–27 May 1920, Ulu Mezre to Kilis.

“Next morning, everything that was left on the floor, soaking in mud.”

After resting at Ulu Mezre during the day, the refugees set out again that evening and traveled through the night toward Kilis. Telegraph poles followed the road into the city. According to Ray Travis, a Turkish cavalry attack struck the rear of the convoy about 1.5 km outside Kilis. On the map, this corresponds to the final stream crossing before the city.

Mule Cart Convoy. Day and Evening, 27 May 1920, Kilis to Qatma Railway Station.

“We stayed in those carriages three nights and three days.”

After leaving Kilis, about forty to fifty families continued south, passing Azaz under the late-May sun. After crossing the Baghdad Railway, they turned northwest toward Qatma. That night they reached Qatma Railway Station and boarded flatcars for the journey to Aleppo.

Mule Cart Convoy. Day, 28 May 1920, Qatma Railway Station to Aleppo.

“That’s the beginning of Aleppo.”

After spending the night on flatcars at Qatma Railway Station, the refugees traveled south by rail to Aleppo. At the station, Agnes spotted her Aunt Rosa in the crowd. Rosa led the family to the house Hovsep had rented for them, “six windows and a door.”

• [1] This study concerns the family of Jurjy Chamichian of Ayntab’s Hayik Church. Other Chamichian families also lived in Ayntab, though their relationship to this family remains unclear. Among the better-known members of another Chamichian family was Armenag Chamichian, a teacher at the Vartanian Secondary School and later principal of the Cilicia Institute.
• [2] Houshamadyan, “ODA | Americas | Wistar Archive – USA,” accessed 8 May 2026, photograph caption noting that work on the dome of the Apostolic Church (St. Mary's Cathedral, Sourp Asdvadzadzin) began in 1893. Maurice Abadie, Opérations au Levant: Les Quatre Sièges d’Aïntab (1920–1921) (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle et Compagnie, 1922), 19, Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3393758b, describing the American hospital as having distinctive red-tiled roofs. “Trades and Photographers in Ayntab,” Houshamadyan, accessed 7 May 2026, noting that the Halladjian family belonged to Ayntab’s Armenian Evangelical community, that Hovhannes Halladjian learned photography in 1883–1884, returned to Ayntab in 1884, and for the next decade was the city’s only photographer. For the location of the photography studio, see Murad Uçaner’s unpublished historical map of Ayntab, shared with the author.
• [3] The title Maqdesi, signifying that Nerses had completed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, appears in family genealogies preserved by members of the extended Chamichian family, including Barkev Cherchian (grandson of Yacoub Chamichian) and Albert Papazian (son of Rahel Chamichian). George Chamichian Haig, in a letter to Barkev Cherchian dated 28 January 1975, recalled that his great-grandfather Nerses was among the first Armenians “to become Protestant in 1853” in Ayntab. American Board missionary Benjamin Schneider, in his report written at Ayntab in May 1853, noted that the Protestant church had grown to 700 members, with 38 added during the year. If George Haig’s dating is correct, Nerses—and perhaps other members of his family—may have been among those new members. Benjamin Schneider, “Report, Ayntab Station, May 1853,” American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, May 1853, 4, SALT Research, Identifier ABA001701366, https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/44346. Kevork A. Sarafian describes Bishop Mesrob’s encouragement of Gospel reading and his permission to import Armeno-Turkish Gospels into Ayntab (18–19); the arrival of Bishop Mgrdich Shahanian in 1853 and his later departure from the Armenian Apostolic Church to found the Anglican church in Ayntab (19); the founding and early growth of the Protestant congregation from 1848 onward and its worship in private homes (46–47); and the dedication of the First Protestant Church in 1855, the calling of Reverend Kara Krikor Haroutiunian in 1856, and the founding of the Second Protestant (Hayik) Church in 1865 (47–48). Kevork A. Sarafian, A Briefer History of Ayntab (Boston: Union of the Armenians of Ayntab, 1957), HathiTrust Digital Library. 
• [4] The family’s remembered origins in Urmia and Isfahan fit within a broader history of Armenian pilgrimage from Persia to Jerusalem. Ayntab, as a major town in Cilicia on the overland route between Persia and Jerusalem, would likely have been an important stop for Armenian pilgrims.
  Beginning in the early seventeenth century, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, Գրիգոր Պարոն-Տեր Krikor Baron-Der, transformed the Jerusalem pilgrimage into an officially organized institution. Official “summoners” recruited pilgrims from Armenian communities to join caravans bound for Jerusalem. Way stations for pilgrims were established along these routes leading from Persia through the Ottoman Empire to Jerusalem. See Nir Shafir, “In an Ottoman Holy Land: The Hajj and the Road from Damascus, 1500–1800.”
  Sarafian preserves traditions of Persian Armenian pilgrims stopping in Ayntab as early as 1700, including one who abandoned his pilgrimage to obtain permission to rebuild the Armenian church and three brothers who likewise abandoned their journey to enlarge the cemetery. Sarafian, Briefer History, 13. He also records the historical example of Murad Varjabedian, who interrupted a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1844 and remained in Ayntab to establish one of its earliest schools. Sarafian, Briefer History, 42.
  Just as a Muslim who completed the hajj became known as a Haji, an Armenian pilgrim returning from Jerusalem received the title Maqdesi (from al-Maqdis, Jerusalem). The title appears among prominent members of Ayntab's Armenian community. Among the sponsors of the opening of Ayntab’s rebuilt Armenian Apostolic church in 1876 were Mahdesi Adour Yaghoubian, Mahdesi Nerses Balian, and Mahdesi Sarkis Usda Ghadehdjian. Ani Voskanyan, “Ayntab – Churches (Part I): The Armenian Apostolic Church,” Houshamadyan.
  Barkev Cherchian’s family tree identifies the family’s earliest known ancestor as “NERSES (HAJI) CHAMICHIAN ՆԷՐՍԷՍ (ՄԳՏՍԻ) [Mqdsi] ՉԱՄԻՉԵԱՆ,” glossing the Armenian title Maqdesi with the English “Haji.” Albert Papazian’s family tree identifies him as “MAKDESI NERSES of AINTAB.”
• [5] In his letter to Barkev Cherchian, George Chamichian Haig recounts an earlier family tradition identifying Urmia in Persia as the place of origin: “As for the name Chamichian, I was told, long time ago that Chamichian family originally came from Urmia district of Persian Armenia—But I have located Chamichian names in Istanbul….” Ani Chamichian, personal communication in response to the author’s inquiry regarding family origins, recalled her father Jamil Chamichian’s account that the family originated in Isfahan and brought pistachio saplings with them. Annali Chamichian Basmajian, interview by Lorna Touryan Miller, 2 March 1984, unpublished transcript in possession of the author, identified the family’s origin simply as “Iran”; she refers to this figure as her “grandfather,” which would be Jurjy Chamichian. 
  Several family accounts also refer to a Turkish publication mentioning an Ottoman official named Ohannes Chamichian. Eunice Chamichian, “Origin of Chamichians,” unpublished family history, courtesy of Jason Keledjian, in possession of the author, writes: “According to a Turkish book written by a Turkish senator in 1968, one Ohannes Chamichian from Urmia Persia, a notable official,” was “assigned to the second in rank in the Ottoman government in Constantinople in the Treasury Dept. (Maybe Dairesi). He was assigned to Ayntab in or about 1750. He liked the city well and settled there.” Dairesi is Ottoman Turkish for “department” or “bureau.” George Chamichian Haig also refers to this publication, recalling that “Recently a Turkish Senator wrote a derogatory book about the Armenians and he mentions the name of a Chamichian as a high-ranking Ottoman official…,” adding that “most probably he came to Ayntab from Istanbul with governmental connection.”
• [6] Agnes Cherchian Ward, interview by David Louis Cort, Glendale, CA, June 2002, recalling that Nerses came to Ayntab in order to purchase land: “Purchase, purchase, purchase, purchase.” See also Chamichian Haig letter: “As far as I know, Chamichians were the first large land owners in Ayntab—I mean land, outside the city”; and Annali Basmajian interview, 1984, regarding Jurjy Chamichian: “He had a lot of property and land…. He had business with the villagers around.” Agnes Cherchian Ward likewise recalled that “He had seven vineyards, each with a different type of grape.” She also recalled that her great-great-grandfather Nerses was known as “Fistik Padishahi, the Pistachio King” (Ward interview, June 2002). Chamichian Haig also recalled that his great-grandfather “was called Fistik Padishahi.” Sarafian notes that the fertile valleys around Ayntab “produced all kinds of luscious grapes, walnuts, and other nuts, especially pistachio nuts, Fisdik which was a source of wealth for many” (Briefer History, 10).
• [7] Jurjy Chamichian appears among the lay leaders in a group photograph of the Hayik (Second Protestant) Church with Reverend M. G. Papazian in Kevork A. Sarafian, Պատմութիւն Անթէպի Հայոց, 3 vols. (Boston, 1953; reprint, Antelias: Cilicia Catholicosate Press, 2013), 3:509. For the location of the Chamichian house in the Turkish Quarter of Ayntab, see Grace Chavoor, personal communication to the author; and Murad Uçaner’s unpublished historical map of Ayntab, shared with the author. Annali Basmajian likewise recalled that she lived with her siblings and Uncle Nerses’s family in a large house, while also describing visits from her grandmother, suggesting that the extended family maintained more than one residence (Basmajian interview, 1984).
• [8] Agnes Cherchian Ward, interviews by David Louis Cort, Glendale, CA: December 2001 (pistachio harvest caravans) and June 2002 (family lands and orchards; dinners for neighborhood pashas and valuable ring). Unless otherwise indicated, Agnes Cherchian Ward’s recollections combine her own childhood memories with stories shared within the family, especially by her mother, Jemile Chamichian Cherchian. Speaking of her grandfather Jurjy, Agnes recalled: “Pasha is a great man in the clan. I don’t know how do they say…. Anyway, he was a respectable man. When he gave a dinner they would butcher four, five sheep, you know. And a big yard, one part is like the kitchen. They boil them, cook them, broil them, whatever. And they set big tables for all the neighborhood. Pashas like him. To come and enjoy dinner. And there was a ring that one of these pashas gave to my great-grandpa. Big green ring. Stone, you know, I don’t know what. It was gold, but a stone that was very, very valuable. Precious stones.”
• [9] The available evidence suggests that Jurjy Chamichian was likely born in the later 1840s, perhaps around 1848–1850. George Chamichian Haig recalled that Jurjy died at age sixty-five (Chamichian Haig letter), while Albert Papazian records his dates as 1850–1914 (Albert Papazian, Chamichian Family Tree, handwritten genealogical chart, 1980, in possession of the author). Odette Babikian also recalled that Jurjy was urged by his father to marry early and have a child soon afterward (Odette Babikian, oral communication to Jason Keledjian, ca. 2010, notes in possession of the author).
  Yacoub Chamichian was likely born between about 1866 and 1869. He was already married and had a child by 1888. Taken together, the evidence suggests that Jurjy and Anna Deukmejian married by the mid-to-late 1860s and that Yacoub was born soon afterward. An 1884 family photograph, in which Yacoub appears to be a young man, is consistent with this chronology.
  A separate family recollection suggests that Jurjy’s father, Maqdesi Nerses, may have been approximately sixty years old at the time of Jurjy’s birth, which, if accurate, could place Nerses’s birth in the 1790s (Babikian, oral communication).
• [10] Anitza’s husband was Hagop Deukmejian. In addition to the Deukmejians, other families connected by marriage to the children of Jurjy and Anna Chamichian included the Bulbulian, Markarian, Nazarian, Aposhian, Baradjiklian, Guezenian, Vasoian, and Papazian families. Jurjy and Anna’s daughter Rahel married Moses Papazian, and the Papazian house stood only blocks from both the Chamichian and Deukmejian houses. Because Armenian Protestants were a minority and relatively few Armenians lived in this part of the city, families such as these would naturally have known one another well through both neighborhood ties and church life.
  The location of the Papazian house is based on Murad Uçaner’s unpublished map of Ayntab. Moses Papazian is also listed among the merchants of the Millet Han and identified by Sarafian as one of only three occupants designated “Protestant” (Բողոքական), alongside twenty-one listed as “Apostolic” (Լուսաւորչական), making it more likely that he is the same Moses Papazian who married into the Chamichian family. Sarafian, Պատմութիւն Անթէպի Հայոց, 3:311. Reverend M. G. Papazian served as pastor of the Hayik Church, though the exact relationship between M. G. Papazian and Moses Papazian has not yet been documented. 
• [11] Eunice Chamichian, “Origin of Chamichians.” Eunice relates that when Jurjy’s first son, Yacoub, was born, Nerses Chamichian “sent a man immediately to the village called Orul to plant olive trees in a 200 acre land as a birthday present to his grandson Yacoub.” Orul (modern Sekili) is approximately 31 km southeast of Ayntab.
• [12] Sarafian, Briefer History, 184 (describing the “regular costume for men”); 186: “By common people, trousers were called ‘tchatal aghaj’ (a forked tree), or ‘setrak pantalon.’”
• [13] Sarafian, Briefer History, 186, on the adoption of Western dress among educated and wealthy men in Ayntab and the custom of seating men wearing trousers on benches along the walls of the church rather than on the carpeted floor.
• [14] The inscription appears to read ا ل كاتب ياخوب چامچيان (al-kātib Yākhūb, “The writer, Yacoub”), or possibly ا ل كاتب ياقوب (al-kātib Yāqūb), depending on the reading of one indistinct letter. Although several letters of the surname are indistinct, the visible letter sequence چا ــــ ن is consistent with a reading of Chamichian.
  Yacoub’s Ottoman inscription suggests that, like his younger brother Louder, he probably attended the Preparatory Department at Central Turkey College, where Osmanlı Turkish was one of the principal subjects, receiving five or six recitations each week. As early as the Seventh Form (roughly equivalent to the tenth grade), students were engaged in intensive study of the formal written language. The curriculum included Mesâlik-i Edebiyyât-ı Osmaniyye (“Principles of Ottoman Literature”), Ṣarf-ı Osmanî (Mutavvel), an expanded Ottoman grammar text, and Mihri’s Usûl-i Kitâbet (“Principles of Writing”), which emphasized penmanship and composition. Students also became familiar with the Persian and Arabic vocabulary and grammatical constructions that characterized literary Ottoman. According to the 1880 and 1901 Central Turkey College catalogs, instruction continued throughout the preparatory years, progressing from grammar, composition, and translation to increasingly advanced literary study. Students who entered the College Department went on to draft legal and other official documents, preparing them for professional life in the late Ottoman Empire. Central Turkey College, Catalogue of the Central Turkey College at Aintab, Vilayet of Aleppo, Turkey in Asia, 1880–81, 11–13; Catalogue of the Central Turkey College at Aintab, Vilayet of Aleppo, Turkey in Asia (Constantinople: Press of H. Matteosian, Bible House, 1901), 25–26.
• [15] Sarafian, Briefer History, 185: “The way the fez was worn on the head was more or less indicative of the character or position of the person. Most serious people, such as professors, pastors or those converted from a worldly life into a spiritual life, wore it straight right in front, continuous with the forehead. Those who wanted to be coquettish wore it to one side and forward, the tassel hanging in front. Most students wore on the crown of their heads a little of the hair or a bang or frill (kenkl) showing in front. While the ‘kabadayi,’ the real worldly class, wore it right at the back, the tassel dangling in the air.” Kenkl may represent Turkish kâkül, meaning a forelock or fringe of hair. Kabadayı was an Ottoman Turkish term for a swaggering neighborhood tough guy.
• [16] Ward interview, June 2002.
• [17] Haiganoush Markarian was born in 1870 (Barkev Cherchian family tree manuscript), in Aleppo, when her father was serving there as a minister (Chamichian Haig letter). She would have grown up in the congregation of Ayntab’s Third Evangelical (Alay Beyi) Church, where her father served as founding pastor from 1878 to 1893. The church itself was formally organized in 1879. Originally from Adana, Reverend Garabed Markarian was a graduate of the Marash Theological Seminary and was described by Sarafian as “a highly educated and eloquent preacher.” He also taught history at Central Turkey College from 1881 to 1887. Haiganoush’s son George Haig later referred to him as “My maternal grandfather, Badveli Garabed Markarian” and wrote: “My father had six children – Five from Haiganoish Markarian (daughter of Badveli Garabed Markarian) My mother was born in Aleppo when her father was a minister in Haleb – Badveli Markarian was from Adana.” Barkev Cherchian, unpublished family tree manuscript, in possession of the author; Sarafian, Briefer History, 50, 60; Chamichian Haig letter.
• [18] Family members pronounced the name Jemile as “Jeh-MEEL-eh” (Western Armenian: Ճէմիլէ). The author recalls being corrected by older relatives when he pronounced it “Ja-MEE-lah,” the Arabic pronunciation of her name.
• [19] Ani Voskanyan, “Ayntab – Schools (Part 4): Armenian Evangelical Schools,” Houshamadyan, accessed 7 May 2026.
• [20] Sarafian, Briefer History, 2.
• [21] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [22] Mihran Minassian, “Ayntab – The Periodical Press,” Houshamadyan, accessed 7 May 2026.
• [23] Voskanyan, “Ayntab – Schools (Part 4): Armenian Evangelical Schools,” noting that Armenian Evangelical schools replaced Armenian-lettered Turkish textbooks with Armenian textbooks in the 1890s. This shift was not universal, however. Central Turkey College (the American College), which served a broader student body, retained Turkish as its official language. The 1906 catalogue and 1910 bulletin state that “the official language of the college is Turkish” and indicate that instruction in most subjects was conducted in Turkish, with Armenian and English used only in limited contexts. General Catalogue of Central Turkey College, Ayntab, Turkey-in-Asia (1906), 24; Bulletin of Central Turkey College at Ayntab, Turkey-in-Asia (1910), 27.
• [24] Barkev Cherchian recalled that his father, Hovsep Cherchian, worked as a Bible salesman in Aleppo during the 1920s and sold Bibles in what he described as “Armenian character Turkish.” “They call it Armeno-Turkish,” he explained (Barkev Cherchian, interview by David Louis Cort, Glendale, CA, 1996).
  The Armeno-Turkish Bibles remembered by Barkev formed part of a larger body of Protestant literature printed in Armenian script and widely used among Ottoman Armenian Protestants. See İlahiler (Constantinople: H. Madteosian Press, 1923), an Armeno-Turkish Protestant hymnal preserved in the ARIT / SALT Research Armeno-Turkish Editions of Books collection. Although published after the war, it reflects the kinds of materials used in Armenian Evangelical congregations. The contents reveal the distinctly Protestant concerns of the community, with hymns devoted to the Bible (Kitab-ı Mukaddes), fellowship with Jesus (İsa ile müşareket), personal faith (Müminin ahvali), and repentance (Tevbe). Other sections address Sunday School, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the life of the church. The table of contents preserves occasional Armenian terms: the section devoted to Jesus Christ is titled Hisous Krisdos (Յիսուս Քրիստոս) rather than the Turkish İsa Mesih, while Giragi mektebine mahsus (“For the Sunday School”) combines the Armenian word for Sunday (Giragi) with a Turkish phrase.
• [25] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [26] Voskanyan, “Ayntab – Schools (Part 4): Armenian Evangelical Schools.”
• [27] Annali Chamichian Basmajian’s 1984 interview with Lorna Touryan Miller recalls that Jemile taught “in the orphanage,” while an earlier recorded interview conducted in 1977 by Mihran Basmajian and Sue Basmajian refers more generally to teaching “in the school.” Annali’s birth year is given as 1898 in Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller,Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 206, making it likely that her older sister Jemile had completed school and begun teaching by the time Annali and her younger brother George were still in the elementary grades. The most natural reading is that Jemile taught in a school attached to one of Ayntab’s orphanages. Ayntab contained several orphanages during the late Ottoman period, including the Halladjian Orphanage, founded in 1876 by Rev. Haroutiun Halladjian, and the Frearson Orphanage, founded in 1897 by Miss Frearson. Annali Chamichian Basmajian, interview by Mihran Basmajian and Sue Basmajian, 1977, transcript by David Louis Cort from an audio recording provided by Sue Basmajian, in possession of the author; Sarafian, Briefer History, 57–59.
• [28] Chavoor communication; Uçaner map.
• [29] Basmajian interview, 1984. This passage suggests that the Chamichians maintained multiple residences. Such arrangements do not appear to have been unusual among affluent Armenian families in Ayntab. Ümit Kurt’s map of Armenian-owned houses in Kayacık shows numerous examples of related households occupying adjacent properties, while Murad Uçaner’s unpublished map research suggests similar patterns in Kozanlı (Soğanlı Bucağı). Ümit Kurt, The Armenians of Ayntab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), xvi–xvii; Uçaner map; Murad Uçaner, personal communication to the author.
• [30] Annali’s recollections describe a world in which Armenians and Turks sometimes shared social circles and personal relationships. “We lived in a mixed neighborhood,” she recalled, “on the street where the ‘Beys’ lived, the rich people,” including both Armenians and Turks. Speaking of the wealthy women of the neighborhood, she remembered they “used [to] go visiting to each other’s home. They all lived in beautiful homes and took turns going around,” adding that “some of them were Turks.” At her uncle’s wedding, while most of the guests were Armenian, there were also Turkish guests: “a neighbor or two.” Turkish workers employed on the family’s farms sometimes stayed overnight in the Chamichian home when returning from the countryside. One of these workers, a “very nice man” known as “Belle Effendi,” “used to spend a lot of time talking with my grandfather.”
  At the same time, she spoke of the unequal and often precarious position of Armenians, noting that “the Turks ruled and the Armenians lived in separate quarters.” Recalling the death of her grandfather Jurjy, she explained: “Because my grandfather was wealthy and owned some mules which he used to have trained, the government wanted them. They frightened him and insisted on taking them. He came home very upset and frightened and while talking to my uncle, he had a heart attack and died. We were very scared of the Turks. When they got angry they used to scare us with guns. We used to just shake sometimes when we saw them…. Whenever there were uprisings, the Turks used to come and sit in front of our house, so that when the orders came, they would come in and rob us. In front of our eyes, they used to scare us.” Annali’s memories suggest that in her world, Armenians and Turks interacted as neighbors, visitors, and friends, yet Armenians remained conscious of their vulnerable position and never entirely escaped the fear of violence. Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [31] Ward interview, June 2002.
• [32] Sarafian, Briefer History, 189: “The houses of Aintab followed the oriental style of a row of rooms around a central, open courtyard. Quite often near relatives lived in the same yard, each family occupying one room or a unit. Two story houses were also common. In such houses, the first floor was used as a cellar or store-room. The kitchen and the toilets, which were shared by all the families, were always at the farther end of the yard…. A unit occupied by each family consisted mainly of a living room, a large pantry, khazna, and a cellar, kilar or bodouroum.”
• [33] Barkev Cherchian later recalled that the yard at the Cherchian home in Ayntab, where Jemile conducted an improvised wartime school during the First World War, “was not paved,” but had a dirt floor where children marched while she sang to keep rhythm. The contrast may reflect the difference between the relatively prosperous Chamichian family into which Jemile was born and the more modest Cherchian household she later entered through marriage. Barkev Cherchian, interview by David Louis Cort, Glendale, CA, 1997.
• [34] Basmajian interview, 1977.
• [35] Andrew Gregory, personal communication to the author, December 2024, recalling dishes his mother, Ruth Cherchian Gregory, learned from her mother Jemile. Ruth’s daughter Christine Gregory, personal communication to the author, June 2026, confirmed these recollections. The family nickname “bammer” for bamya was recalled by Arpie Cherchian Cort and Anne Cherchian House, personal communications to the author, June 2026.
• [36] Ward interview, June 2002. 
• [37] Basmajian interview, 1984.Basterma is cured beef, while yershig is the Armenian name for soujoukh, a spiced cured sausage. Barkev Cherchian recalled that Ayntab was known for its basterma and soujoukh, while Agnes Cherchian Ward later remembered soujoukh—in this case, a type of sweet (sharots, rojig)—as one of the treats children received at New Year’s. Barkev interview, 1997; Ward, personal communication to the author, ca. 1998.
• [38] Agnes Cherchian Ward, interview by David Louis Cort, Glendale, CA, June 2003.
• [39] Ward interview, June 2002.
• [40] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [41] The location described here follows a correction proposed by Murad Uçaner, based on interviews with longtime residents and descendants familiar with the area, placing the Ağamın Kabaltı one block farther east than on the map of Ayntab in Kevork A. Sarafian, Պատմութիւն Անթէպի Հայոց (Boston, 1953; reprint, Antelias: Cilicia Catholicosate Press, 2013), map prepared by G. H. Barsoumian and drawn by Garabed H. Nazarian (Aleppo, June 1952). Uçaner communication.
  Simonian’s 1883 map depicts the Uzun Çarşı (Long Market) with continuous shading from the vicinity of the Citadel to the Arasa, suggesting the overhead coverings that sheltered much of the market street. Nigoghos Simonian, Ayntab, map, 1883, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, https://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0003497200000000.
• [42] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [43] İbrahim Alisinanoğlu, “Tufa (Tuffa) Hamamı,” Gaziantep Miş Miş Facebook group, 1 September 2019, accessed 8 June 2026, noting that the bath was frequented jointly by Muslim and non-Muslim residents in the late Ottoman period. See also Tülay Karadayı Yenice and Meltem Ararat, “Turkish Bath Tradition: The Example of Gaziantep, Turkey,” International Journal of Intangible Heritage 17 (2022): 197–210, which identifies Keyvanbey and Hüseyin Pasha baths as generally used by non-Muslims in Gaziantep.
• [44] Sarafian, Briefer History, 180–83.
• [45] Basmajian interview, 1977.
• [46] George Chamichian Haig later described the Hayik Church as a large stone sanctuary with galleries, a high dome, a red marble pulpit, deep crimson velvet upholstery on the pastor’s platform, and a wall clock donated by students of Yale Divinity School. Surviving photographs of the church interior before and after its destruction preserve the raised platform, scalloped backdrop, railing, and clock described in his account. He also described scripture reading, prayer, congregational singing accompanied by an organ, sermons, and a benediction as regular features of worship. According to his recollections, regular services began at three o’clock in the afternoon, although Annali also remembered predawn services on Christmas and Easter mornings. Alice Shepard Riggs, describing a 1907 jubilee service at the church, recalled a “little cabinet organ,” along with worshippers seated separately by gender on a carpeted floor divided by a railing, while ushers maintained the aisle amid “a sea of red fezes” and “black silk charchafs or street veils” beneath the galleries. George E. Haig [George Chamichian Haig], “The Last Service,” Ararat (Summer 1980): 9, https://fliphtml5.com/fqpe/qipr/Ararat_1980_Quarter_3/; Basmajian interview, 1977; Alice Shepard Riggs, Shepard of Ayntab (New York: Interchurch Press, 1920), xiv, HathiTrust Digital Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t3cz36b8n.
• [47] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [48] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [49] Basmajian interview, 1977.
• [50] Sarafian, Briefer History, 192–94. Barkev Cherchian labeled the feature “TONIR թոնիր” in a diagram of a traditional Ayntab house drawn for the author in Glendale, California, in 2003. Sarafian includes the terms “tandur or tonir, or kursi.”
• [51] Sarafian observed that when the legs and feet of half a dozen or more people gathered beneath the same quilt, “friendly contact of feet” was likely, especially if “the neighbor’s pretty daughter happened to be sitting in the tandur.” As he remarked, “who could prove if these contacts were intentional or accidental?” Sarafian, Briefer History, 194. 
• [52] Khoja stories, humorous tales associated with Nasreddin Khoja, remained part of family life long after the family’s arrival in the United States. In the 1980s, Jemile’s children—Agnes, Barkev, Paul, and Helen—would still gather around the “Armenian table,” telling stories about Nasreddin Khoja and Khelok Tavit in Armenian while younger generations sat by the pool speaking English. One family favorite was “Khoja and the Pot,” in which Khoja persuades his neighbor that a borrowed pot first gives birth and later dies (Author’s recollection of family gatherings, 1980s–1990s).
  Barkev Cherchian later recalled eating spicy walnut jam around the tonir during winter evenings in Aleppo. In one childhood memory, eager to imitate the adults, he swallowed an entire walnut whole and nearly choked (Barkev Cherchian, personal communication to the author, Los Angeles, CA, 1998).
  Chamichian descendants still prepare coffee in the jezveh by allowing it to rise three times before serving. “They say that’s well done,” Helen used to say. They remain careful to place a dollop of coffee foam in each cup (Helen Cherchian Missirian, personal communication to the author, Los Angeles, CA, 2003).
• [53] Ward, personal communication to the author, ca. 1998. “Gaghandos! Bastuk, sejuk, verinler!” may be translated approximately as: “New Year! Bastuk and sejuk—give us!” The surviving fragment reflects the mixture of Armenian and Turkish found in everyday speech in Ayntab. Gaghandos comes from the Armenian word Gaghant (Կաղանդ), meaning New Year’s Day. Bastuk refers to thin sheets of grape fruit leather (known as pestil in Turkish), while sejuk is the family’s term for soujoukh, which in this case also refers to a type of sweet (sharots, rojig).
• [54] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [55] Basmajian interview, 1977.
• [56] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [57] Barkev Cherchian, personal communication to the author, ca. 2005, describing the three-day Easter observance in Ayntab and recalling that families snacked on leblebu (sweetened roasted chickpeas) and nuts along the way. Sarafian notes that the second day of Easter (Merelotz) was set aside for visiting the cemetery, while the third day of Easter was one of the traditional feast days for picnics. Elsewhere he describes family picnics at Kavaklık, where they carried “bread, kiahke and cheese,” ate beside the brook, and gathered chamomile growing along the water. Sarafian, Briefer History, 209. According to Arpie Cherchian Cort, Sarafian’s kiahke corresponds to the family term kakhge, used as an alternate name for choreg. She likewise recalled that her mother gathered chamomile, known in the family as babunej, to make tea. Personal communication to the author, June 2026.
• [58] The locations and routes described in this section are based on the Barsoumian–Nazarian map of Ayntab. Murad Uçaner notes that the district formally known as Balıklı Çarşısı (“Fish Market”) was commonly called Balıklıgan in the local dialect. The name derived from a spring-fed pool where fish once swam; the road through the district was known as Balıklıgan Yolu (“Fish Market Road”). Murad Uçaner, Hafızasını Kaybeden Kent: Antep (“The City That Lost Its Memory: Antep”) (Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları, 2021), 114–116.
• [59] Sarafian offers this description of Kavaklık: “Kavakluk, a very cool and shady place with a stream zigzagging through and islands of spacious verdure on both sides of it, provided an ideal spot for such picnics. For the children it was the nearest thing to paradise. For pure unadulterated enjoyment of nature and the exhilarating morning air of spring, many family groups would wake up long before sunrise, pack up some bread, kiahke and cheese and walk to Kavakluk, a distance of about two miles. There they would sit on the dew-sprinkled grass, eat their sandwiches, sniffing the crisp air and listening to the rippling of the brook and the twittering of birds in the trees. Then they would pick wild yellow roses or aromatic camomile branches growing along the water and walk back home in time for work or school.” Sarafian, Briefer History, 209.
• [60] Basmajian interview, 1984. Jajekh is a yogurt-and-mint dip.
• [61] Ward interview, June 2003. Agnes recalled that “Munevver Auntie was there” when relatives visited the prospective bride’s home. “Grandma” in the account refers to Hrome Bulbulian Cherchian. Although the exact relationship between Hrome Bulbulian Cherchian and the family of Reverend Hagop Bulbulian and Ovsanna Bulbulian is uncertain, all appear to have belonged to the relatively small Armenian Protestant community of Ayntab.
• [62] Sarafian, Briefer History, 201–03, 212. The formal engagement ceremony was known as khosk gab (“word binding”), during which the two families publicly confirmed the marriage agreement. Following the official engagement, the Chamichians likely hosted an engagement celebration with trays of pakhlava, and the Cherchians likely presented Jemile with the customary engagement gift, known as sini duzme, a large sugar loaf draped with a necklace of gold coins for the bride and surrounded by rows of apples, oranges, and sweets decorated with silver paper. Rev. Bedros Topalian succeeded Rev. Manasseh Papazian as pastor of the Hayik (Second Evangelical) Church in 1907 and served until his resignation in 1910. If Jemile and Hovsep became engaged in 1910, he was likely present at the official engagement to give the church’s sanction.
• [63] Basmajian interview, 1984. Sarafian notes that in Ayntab the newly married couple slept in the khazna, a storage room reached by a short flight of steps from the living room. Foods such as raisins, figs, and pakhlava, as well as the mother’s bridal chest, were stored here. Since family members commonly slept together in the main living room on bedding spread out at night, the khazna was the only private space in the house. Sarafian notes that newly married couples spent their “honeymoon” there and used it as their sleeping quarters until the birth of their first child. Sarafian, Briefer History, 190.
• [64] Agnes Cherchian Ward later recalled asking her mother why she had been given the name Haiganoush: “I said, ‘Why did you call me Haiganoush?’ Mom said, ‘Well, I thought every time I called you I would remember my mother.’” Agnes is the English form of Haiganoush. Agnes Cherchian Ward, interview by David Louis Cort, Los Angeles, CA, 1998.
  Annali recalled, “My mother died while giving birth to the sixth one. She was 37 when she died with the baby and I was about 10 years old.” Since Annali was born in 1898, her recollection places Haiganoush's death around 1908. This chronology also suggests a birth year around 1870, consistent with Barkev Cherchian's family tree, and would make Haiganoush about eighteen when her first child, Jemile, was born in 1888. Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [65] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [66] Reverend Hagop Bulbulian (1859–1912) was a graduate of Central Turkey College and Andover Theological Seminary. He served as executive secretary of the YMCA’s Niziblian Tankaran and as pastor of the First Protestant (Kayajik) Church and the Talas Armenian Evangelical Church before returning to the First Protestant Church. He died of cholera in 1912 and was remembered as a “sincere, devoted man of God” as well as an “Effective preacher and good pastor.” Sarafian, Briefer History, 60. 
• [67] Basmajian interview, 1977. Jamil Chamichian was born 1 February 1913 (Jason Keledjian, personal communication to the author).
• [68] Ward interview, June 2003. Agnes Cherchian Ward explained: “Grandfather orphans, they call ‘em. They don’t inherit much. Whatever grandpa gives them.”
• [69] Basmajian interview, 1984. Hans were large courtyard buildings where merchants stored goods, conducted business, and found lodging while traveling. Jurjy’s loss of his mule herd occurred within the broader system of wartime requisitioning established under the Tekâlif-i Harbiye laws. Introduced in August 1914 to meet military needs, these laws created Requisitioning Commissions throughout the Ottoman Empire. In Ayntab, the commissions specifically targeted Armenians and other non-Muslims, seizing livestock, merchandise, household goods, and other property without compensation while largely sparing Muslim notables. Armenian artisans were likewise compelled to produce goods for the military without pay. Kurt further shows that the Ayntab Requisitioning Commission confiscated commercial goods belonging to deported Armenians from the Ottoman Bank, deliberately undervalued them, treated them as abandoned property, and allocated them to the military. Ümit Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 123–24.
• [70] As Ümit Kurt observes, Armenians in Ayntab, though aware of deportations elsewhere in the empire, “did not consider the possibility that they could face a similar fate” (Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 90). Kurt places the arrival of the first Zeitun deportees in Ayntab on 3 May 1915; see Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 89: “on May 3 they saw their first convoy, comprising three hundred women and children from Zeitun, pass through their city,” and 90, noting that deportees were held in the Kavaklık neighborhood. 
• [71] Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 90.
• [72] Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 93, gives 1 August as the date when “only Orthodox Armenians” departed from Ayntab, though he also cites Ms. Frearson’s recollection that the first departures took place on 30 or 31 July (300). On the deportation of Catholic Armenians, see Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 97, noting that orders were issued on 19 September and that Der Vartan Vartabed Baghchedjian and his Catholic community were deported later that month. For the deportation of Protestants, see Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 100, noting the departure of the first Protestant convoy on 19 December 1915; see also Raymond H. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 944, describing the deportations as beginning “in falling snow.”
• [73] The precise date of the deportation order received by Nerses Chamichian’s family is uncertain. Protestant deportations from Ayntab began in December 1915 and continued into early 1916. The first four Protestant convoys, sent between 19 and 23 December 1915, are described by Kurt as departing via Akçakoyunlu for Deir ez-Zor. Deportations resumed on 4 January 1916 and continued through March. Since Annali Chamichian and her siblings traveled by way of Salamiyya rather than Deir ez-Zor, they belonged to one of the later Protestant deportation groups and departed sometime between January and March 1916. Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 100–101.
• [74] Deportation orders appear to have been posted and communicated publicly by town criers (dellals), who traditionally announced government decrees in streets and public squares. Kévorkian notes that the initial deportation order in Ayntab was “posted up and announced by the town crier the morning of 30 July” (Kévorkian, Armenian Genocide, 942). Survivor testimony confirms this practice: “The town crier called out that we had to leave the town” (Miller and Miller, Survivors, 70). Another witness recalled: “The two town criers called out: ‘People, don’t be afraid. Close your doors, put your money in the banks or entrust it to your Turkish friends. It will not be long before you come back. The government assures you’” (Stina Katchadourian, Efronia: An Armenian Love Story [Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993], 111).
  We even know the names of two dellals in Ayntab. A properties list dated 1 June 1916 records “Dellal Yakup” and “Dellal Mustafa” purchasing liquidated Armenian goods (Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 135). These may have been the same dellals who announced the deportation orders that sent Nerses Chamichian and his family into exile.
• [75] Armenians in Ayntab were required to register their movable and immovable property within a day of receiving deportation orders, submitting petitions to the Ayntab Liquidation Commission (Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 127). These declarations were often recorded through the Ottoman Bank, which documented properties on behalf of deportees before transferring them to the Commission for liquidation and auction (Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 133–34). The Ottoman Bank branch in Ayntab was located in the Kayacık district, according to Uçaner communication.
  A building in Kayacık originally constructed in 1877 as the American Girls’ School was later repurposed as the Ottoman Bank and subsequently served various civic functions, including the Finance Assessment Office and Kayacık Primary School (Gaziantep City Archive and Research Center [Gaziantep Kent Arşivi ve Araştırma Merkezi], “Kayacık İlkokulu,” Nakşiye Güzel Album, Instagram post, 23 June 2025, accessed 7 June 2026, https://www.instagram.com/p/DL16Y0_CJFy/). The site appears to correspond to the American Girls’ School shown on Simonian’s 1883 map, labeled “A. B. Seminary of Girls,” and to the “Ali Bey House” marked as number 8 on the Barsoumian–Nazarian map of Ayntab. It lay one block southwest of the First Protestant Church. Simonian, Ayntab map; Barsoumian–Nazarian map of Ayntab.
  For a reproduced image of an Ayntab property register submitted to the Ottoman Bank following deportation, see the webpage accompanying Ümit Kurt, “The Armenians of Ayntab” (Ottoman History Podcast), https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2024/02/kurt.html.
  The CUP clubhouse served as the headquarters of the local Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the ruling political organization of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. According to Ümit Kurt, local CUP leaders and other notables played a central role in the deportation of Ayntab’s Armenians and the confiscation and plunder of their property. Kurt argues that, alongside the government's official channels, “another special network dealt with the process of confiscation and seizure through the CUP.” In his words, local actors associated with the CUP in Ayntab were “active agents of the process” (Kurt, The Armenians of Ayntab, 124–25).
• [76] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [77] Basmajian interview, 1984; Kévorkian, Armenian Genocide, 944, noting that “the Protestants were ultimately deported via the Akçakoyun railroad station.”
• [78] Basmajian interview, 1977: “So we on the donkeys and horses…. Oh, before then my brother, Joe… had a few liras and he sewed it in his waist-shirt and they gurrulus they picked, they tried to get money and he didn’t give it and they took him over, but finally they released him. And he came to Aleppo. After that we came to Aleppo with my uncle’s family with the little things what we have.” The meaning of the word transcribed here as “gurrulus” is uncertain, but in context Annali appears to be referring to armed men or gendarmes who stopped deportees along the route.
• [79] Basmajian interview, 1984.
• [80] Basmajian interview, 1977: “You know who tried to get hold of us? My sister’s husband, Hovsep, enişte. They took us to a big hotel, and we were over there. We cleaned the places of the horses, horses and asses, cleaned the place, and we slept over there.” Enişte is Turkish, meaning “sister’s husband.”
• [81] Basmajian interviews, 1977 and 1984. In 1984 Annali recalled: “We went all the way like that to the Baghdad station and lived in barns until they kicked us out of there. We went to a village called Selemiya.”
• [82] Basmajian interview, 1984. For the broader context of epidemic disease among deportees, see Vahé Tachjian, Daily Life in the Abyss: Genocide Diaries, 1915–1918 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 130: epidemics were “permanent calamities to which all the deportees were vulnerable,” with malaria, typhus, and cholera “destroying the nucleus of the family and undermining the struggle to survive.” Even when attentive to hygiene, deportees concentrated along transit routes and in overcrowded settlements “were constantly exposed to zones infested by infectious diseases of all sorts.”
• [83] For the worsening economic crisis in the final years of the war, see Tachjian, Daily Life in the Abyss, 70–71. By 1917, “unparalleled inflation” had plunged deportees into crisis, driving prices beyond what ordinary families could sustain. Many Armenians in Salamiyya survived by “doing odd jobs,” but when “the existing means of survival began to disappear” and “starvation loomed,” they were compelled to leave. Tachjian notes that this desperation “compelled them to abandon hospitable, comparatively secure Salamiyya” and seek work in larger cities such as Hama, Homs, and Aleppo. At the same time, travel restrictions eased. Whereas earlier travel required official permission (a vesika), by 1917 deportees “enjoyed greater freedom of movement, albeit within a restricted area,” and thousands took to the roads looking for work.
• [84] Annali’s statement “We dressed like Turks and ran away to Aleppo… We changed our names too” may refer either to literal disguise, to the widespread survival strategy of adopting Muslim names and identities, or to some combination of the two. Tachjian notes that in regions such as Salamiyya, this process of strategic Islamization became nearly universal among Armenian deportees, driven both by the threat of deportation into the desert and by pressures within the community to comply outwardly as a means of survival. Under these conditions, the organized Islamization of Armenian deportees “took place smoothly and encountered no noteworthy obstacles” (Tachjian, Daily Life in the Abyss, 159). In many cases the process consisted primarily of registering new Muslim names and obtaining new identity papers, while deportees continued using their Armenian names privately. One survivor later recalled that “nobody seriously considered us to be Muslims” (Tachjian, Daily Life in the Abyss, 163).Annali’s brother George later referred to himself as “Abdulrahman” and “Abdul Khalik” (Lowell Thomas, “Rugs and Rebels,” Ararat [Summer 1980]: 8, https://fliphtml5.com/fqpe/qipr/Ararat_1980_Quarter_3/). These names are reminiscent of “Abdullah” and “Udullah,” the names assigned to Armenian converts (Daily Life in the Abyss, 162).
• [85] Basmajian interview, 1977.
• [86] Basmajian interview, 1977: “My Aunt Mary made a big, big package, bundle. All the beds, bedding, pillow. Quilts and soup to eat. We had to manage ourselves with that. For awhile we lived like that.”
• [87] Basmajian interview, 1984: “In Aleppo we again had rented a house for the four of us: two sisters and two brothers. We had something to spread underneath us and a blanket on top of us, and that’s how the four of us slept.”
• [88] Basmajian interview, 1984: “My brother and sister worked at the ‘emalet khane.’” Basmajian interview, 1977: “And afterward, when you start to work with the refugees, we used to go spin some wool. And they used to give a loaf of bread every day.” Annali’s brother George’s obituary also mentions going to Aleppo “to labor in the Turkish military workshops” (“Lt. Col. George Haig: Fought Against Ottoman Empire,” The Armenian Reporter, 11 November 1982, 6).
  The Ottoman term imalat hane (literally, “house of manufacture”) referred generally to a workshop or manufacturing establishment. Tachjian notes that during the war thousands of Armenians found employment in Ottoman military workshops, where labor provided an important means of survival for deportees (Tachjian, Daily Life in the Abyss, 177, 199). After the war, however, the term often referred to relief-run workshops that employed Armenian refugees. Barkev Cherchian, recalling its later use in Aleppo, associated the term with the Relief Society and recalled that relief authorities organized local weavers into a centralized workshop and appointed his father, Hovsep Cherchian, as supervisor because he spoke English and knew the trade (Barkev interview, 1997).
• [89] Aleppo was captured by British-led forces on 26 October 1918, shortly before the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918). See Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914–1920 (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 380.
• [90] Ward interview, December 2001.
• [91] Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 101–2. Ümit Kurt notes that “families of soldiers, officers, and medical officers who had been drafted into the Ottoman Army” were among the groups exempted from deportation “in order to meet the army’s needs.” At the same time, he observes that exemptions were applied inconsistently: “Families of Armenian soldiers—some ranked as high as captain—who served in the Ottoman Army on various fronts were also deported” (102). Reflecting on the survival of his own family in Ayntab, Barkev remarked simply: “We were lucky” (Barkev interview, 1997).
• [92] Ward interview, December 2001; Barkev Cherchian interview, 1997. Agnes Cherchian Ward stated that her father had volunteered for military service rather than waiting to be drafted and regarded this decision as the reason the family escaped deportation. Barkev Cherchian, however, preserved a detailed account from his father describing his conscription into the Ottoman army after reporting to the draft office—later identified by Barkev as the Depot near the Citadel—and appearing before military officials with his ailing father.
• [93] Louder Chamichian is identified as a captain in the Ottoman army (Hratch Yervant Kestenian, A Portrait of Armenian Student Life at the Syrian Protestant College, 1885–1920 [MA thesis, American University of Beirut, 2015], 106). Annali Basmajian recalled: “My doctor uncle was in the army. But my other uncle got orders that he has to leave his house. We did not get any such orders, but we all went with my uncle and his family” (Basmajian interview, 1984). This suggests that while Nerses received deportation orders, her doctor uncle Louder did not. 
  Baboian places Louder in Ayntab in early 1920 (in February, on 4 April, and on 9 May), indicating that he had returned to the city by that time (Kevork Baboian, The Heroic Battle of Ayntab, trans. Ümit Kurt [London: Gomidas Institute, 2018], 29, 60, 103). A later family recollection from Louder’s daughter Odette similarly held that because her father served as a physician in the Ottoman military, his family was not deported with the first waves of Armenian deportees; according to Odette, they remained in Ayntab until 1920 or 1921, and her brother George was born in Aleppo in the summer of 1921 (Jason Keledjian, email to the author, 22 March 2015). Taken together, this evidence suggests that Louder’s wife and young family remained in Ayntab during the deportations and later joined other members of the Chamichian family in Aleppo.
• [94] Basmajian interview, 1977.
• [95] Ümit Kurt notes that among the officially exempted groups in Ayntab were thirty to thirty-five families of Armenian soldiers, officers, and medical officers serving in the Ottoman army. This category is especially relevant to the Chamichian family, since both Jemile’s husband Hovsep and her uncle Louder Chamichian were serving in the Ottoman army during the deportations. Agnes later recalled that the family was spared because Hovsep was serving in the army, and Annali said that her “doctor uncle” was in the army. Kurt further notes that Armenian military physicians from Ayntab whose service exempted their families included Hovsep Mahdesian, Vartan Piranian, Albert Apelian, Aram Der Boghossian, Hovsep Yenikomshouian, Movses Kupelian, Avedis Nakashian, Avedis Jebejian, Yervant H. Khrlopian, and Movses Babigian. Louder Chamichian appears to have fallen into this category as well. By the end of the war, he was serving as a captain and military physician in the Ottoman army (Kestenian, Portrait of Armenian Student Life, 106).
  In addition to military families, Kurt identifies several other exempted groups, including 370 Armenians employed in army production workshops, together with sixty-five to seventy dentists, jewelers, goldsmiths, tinsmiths, kettle-makers, veterinarians, tailors, masons, painters, saddlers, and bakers, along with their families. He also notes that thirty Armenian families converted to Islam and thereby managed to remain. Elsewhere, Kurt estimates that “only around two thousand Armenians were allowed to remain” in Ayntab. See Kurt, Armenians of Ayntab, 101–102, 307–308.
  Raymond Kévorkian likewise describes approximately 2,000 Armenians remaining in Ayntab, but notes that many exemptions were temporary, with some Armenians remaining only “for a few months, depending on circumstances.” He further observes that Armenian women and children who sought refuge in the city “were not systematically rounded up.” Kévorkian, Armenian Genocide, 942–943.
  The Chamichian family illustrates the complexity of these exemptions. Annali recalled that while her “doctor uncle” Louder Chamichian was serving in the Ottoman army, her uncle Nerses Chamichian was ordered deported. “We did not get any such orders,” she wrote, but she and her three siblings nevertheless accompanied their uncle and his family because “we had no one to stay with.” Looking back, she bitterly regretted the decision: “We should not have gone. We should have stayed. No one told us to stay.”
  Taken together, the evidence suggests that the ability of Armenians to remain in Ayntab depended on a patchwork of military service, skilled labor exemptions, temporary protections, conversion, and other exceptions that may not have been fully understood by the families themselves. Barkev later recalled that when the deportation orders came, Jemile told the authorities, “My husband is in the service. I cannot go.” According to the family memory, the response was simply, “Okay.” Annali’s memoir provides a complementary perspective: she and her siblings received no deportation order, even though they ultimately accompanied her uncle’s family into deportation. She likewise admitted that she did not know how her stepmother Ovsanna had managed to remain in Ayntab: “I don’t know how she did it, but she stayed.” Basmajian interview, 1977; Barkev Cherchian interview, 1997.
• [96] Barkev Cherchian interview, 1997.
• [97] Ward interview, June 2002. Agnes Ward was born in 1912 according to Barkev Cherchian, unpublished family tree manuscript, in the possession of the author.
• [98] Kévorkian, Armenian Genocide, 944: “In August 1915, the authorities requisitioned all non-Turkish schools and all churches.”
• [99] Basmajian interview, 1984: “So my oldest sister used to take care of us. She was a teacher in the orphanage.” Basmajian interview, 1977: “When my mother died my sister have to teach in the school.” George Chamichian Haig, letter to Barkev Cherchian, 28 January 1975, writing of Noonya: “she was my 2nd grade Teacher.”
• [100] Barkev Cherchian interview, 1997: “Every kid would bring some amount of money. There was a little income coming in.”
• [101] Ward interview, June 2002.
• [102] Maurice Abadie, Opérations au Levant: Les Quatre Sièges d’Aïntab (1920–1921) (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle et Compagnie, 1922), 30–46, Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
• [103] Lorin Shepard, “Fighting the Turks at Ayntab,” Current History 14 (1921): 591, reporting that fighting began in Marash on 19 January 1920; that the French withdrew three weeks later; that two-fifths of the city was destroyed; and that 10,000 Armenians were killed. Ray Travis, unpublished diary (digitized), 12–13 February 1920, describing the refugee column fleeing Marash toward Islahie: “The weather was severely cold and many of the weak ones dropped by the wayside to freeze or to starve to death”… “more than a thousand refugees had perished in the snow”; scans courtesy of the Yates County History Center; available through Houshamadyan.
• [104] Ward interview, June 2002.
• [105] Barkev Cherchian interview, 1997.
• [106] Baboian, Heroic Battle, xx (“The Armenians did not yet suspect an imminent attack”); 46, describing stones and tiles pulled from old houses to build barricades.
• [107] Baboian, Heroic Battle, 114–115. On 24 May 1920, Captain Renaud informed the Armenian National Union that shortages made it “extremely difficult to provide the Armenians with supplies,” and that 6,000 people would need to leave the city with the convoy. Father Nerses Tavoukjian’s statement approving “the departure of those who wish to leave” was adopted that same night, and notices were posted on the walls of the city the following morning.
• [108] Baboian, Heroic Battle, 114: “The following statement by Father Nerses Tavoukjian was adopted. We will approve the departure of those who wish to leave. However, the men who can contribute to the self-defense of the city will remain here. A special committee composed of three people will control the departure of people…. Those who wish to leave must sell their supplies to the Provisions Committee and hand over their weapons to the Military Body.”
• [109] Ward interviews, December 2001 and June 2002.
• [110] Travis diary, 25 May 1920: “The Turks in the hills had evidently seen the crowds gathering” and began shelling the area around four o’clock. One shell struck a wagon but failed to explode; “The French answered immediately with three batteries.” Travis’s diary entries for 24–28 May 1920 preserve a near day-by-day account of the convoy’s departure from Ayntab and the conditions surrounding the evacuation. On 25 May he recorded that the French had requested the evacuation of “5,000 or 6,000 persons” and estimated that the convoy included approximately 4,000 Armenians, 650 orphans, and 200 rescued women.
• [111] While describing the bombardment, Agnes first recalled the word top: “Top. Topat lal? Topat.” Barkev translated, “Cannon.” Agnes then continued: “I could hear the cannon roa--ring.” Ward interview, June 2002.
• [112] Agnes first referred to the vehicle as an araba: “Araba?” Barkev translated, “Carriage. Horse-drawn carriage.” Agnes immediately corrected him: “Not horse.” When asked whether it was mule-drawn, she replied, “Mule.” Ward interview, June 2002.
• [113] Travis diary, 26 May 1920: “Shortly after six o’clock this morning the aeroplane came and landed. The observer reported the column as having arrived at Ouloumashe [Ulu Mezre]. Everything has been quiet along the road, and they are evidently meeting with no opposition.” 
• [114] Travis diary, 27 May 1920. By seven o’clock in the morning, Ray Travis recorded the arrival in Ayntab of General de la Motte by aeroplane from Kilis. The general reported that the convoy was “two hours out of Kilis” when he departed the city around 6:30 AM. This places the head of the convoy at Kilis on the morning of 27 May, at approximately 8:30 AM. The distance from Ulu Mezre to Kilis is approximately 43.5 km, measured from Karte von Mesopotamien und Syrien, sheet 1b (Aleppo), prepared by the Cartographic Department of the Royal Prussian Survey (Kgl. Preuß. Landesaufnahme), May 1918, scale 1:400,000, Princeton University Library (HMC01.4206). At likely convoy speeds for a refugee column traveling with carts, animals, and children, the journey would have required roughly 14–17 hours of movement. On that basis, the convoy appears to have departed Ulu Mezre sometime in the late afternoon or evening of 26 May.
• [115] Abadie, Opérations au Levant, 22: “Toutes ces lignes sont aujourd'hui détruites” (“All of these telegraph lines are now destroyed”). Telegraph communications were still functioning in late 1919 but were progressively disrupted in the months that followed. Reports from December 1919 and January 1920 indicate that telegraph lines were being cut, in some cases severing communication entirely. By February 1920, the telegraph line between Ayntab and Kilis had been cut, and approximately fifty poles had been uprooted (Abadie, Opérations au Levant, 42). Contemporary maps show the telegraph line following the road into Kilis for the final six kilometres after the route turns westward toward the city (Karte von Mesopotamien und Syrien, sheet 1b [Aleppo]).
  Travis diary, 28 May 1920: “We learned to-day that the rear guard of the column that arrived in Kilis yesterday morning was attacked by Turkish cavalry when 1½ kilometres out from Kilis, and a French captain, a medical officer, killed.” The same map shows a substantial stream crossing approximately 1.5 km east of Kilis along the convoy’s approach route (Karte von Mesopotamien und Syrien, sheet 1b [Aleppo]). Such crossings would likely have slowed the long refugee column and caused carts and pack animals to bunch together, leaving the rear guard especially vulnerable to cavalry attack.
• [116] The distance from Kilis to Qatma was approximately 26 km (Karte von Mesopotamien und Syrien, sheet 1b [Aleppo]). Although mule-drawn carts could travel at roughly 2.5–3 km per hour, large refugee convoys traveled much more slowly. Progress depended on repeated halts for watering and resting exhausted animals, particularly in the late May heat. Even without extended halts, the journey would likely have required roughly ten hours, with additional hours added for watering and rest stops. If the refugees departed Kilis after only a brief rest late in the morning, they may have reached Qatma station after dark on 27 May.
• [117] W. J. Childs, Across Asia Minor on Foot (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1917), 410, Internet Archive: “You are told that entering Killis from the north you will find the language Turkish, but when passing out to the south will hear only Arabic. And this was my experience to the letter both in entering and leaving.”
• [118] Rosa Chamichian, Annali Chamichian, and Jemile Chamichian Cherchian in Aleppo. Scanned from the photograph album of Agnes Cherchian Ward. The original photograph has since been lost.
• [119] Nerses Chamichian and family in Aleppo, 1924. From top left, clockwise: Efron, George, Henry, Levon, baby Hermine (or Anayis), young Hermine (or Anayis) seated on the chair, Nerses seated, and Meriye seated. Digital copy courtesy of the Chamichian, Chavoor, and Keledjian families.
• [120] Jamil and Ovsanna Chamichian. Photograph in the possession of the Chamichian, Chavoor, and Keledjian families.
• [121] Jemile Chamichian Cherchian with her family in Aleppo, ca. 1924. Mother Jemile holds baby Paul; father Hovsep holds young Barkev, who had traveled in the mule cart convoy as an infant. Alice sits in the chair. The two sisters from the mule cart convoy, Agnes in white shoes and Ruth, hold hands. Photograph in the possession of the Cherchian, Cort, and House families.
• [122] The family in Aleppo, early 1930s. Counterclockwise from top right: George, son of Louder Chamichian; Haroutiun, grandson of Nerses Chamichian; Barkev Cherchian holding a ball; Alice Cherchian; Agnes Cherchian in a white dress; Helen Cherchian; Paul Cherchian; and Jemile Chamichian Cherchian. At center is Ovsanna Chamichian. Photograph in the possession of the Cherchian, Cort, and House families.
• [123] George Chamichian, younger brother of Jemile and Annali, visited Aleppo from the United States in 1936. During his visit he gave this photograph to his nephew Barkev Cherchian—the infant who had ridden on a mule cart from Ayntab in 1920. Dr. Louder Chamichian, wearing a patterned tie, is seated just right of center beneath the woman wearing glasses.
• [124] Reverse inscription in Armeno-Turkish:
  Պէն վէ պիրատէրին պու / ֆօթէկրաֆըմըզը եատիքիար— Ben ve biraderin bu fotoğrafımızı yadigâr — Please accept this photograph of your brother and me as a keepsake.
  հալընտա քապուլ վէ հիֆզ / էտէրէք պիզի խաթր— hâlinde kabul ve hıfz ederek bizi hatır... — Accept and preserve it as a keepsake...
  [Partially illegible] ...նիզի — [Partially illegible] ...nizi — Translation uncertain.
  արզու էտէրիզ — arzu ederiz — We wish... / We hope...
  Վալիտէն — Validen — Your mother.
  Հովսաննա Չամիչեան — Hovsanna Chamichian — Hovsanna Chamichian.
  Please accept this photograph of your brother and me as a keepsake, preserving it... The concluding phrase is partially illegible. It ends with the expression arzu ederiz (“we wish” or “we hope”). The missing words may either express the hope that Rosa would remember her family or form part of a conventional expression of good wishes.
  Photograph in the possession of the Chamichian, Chavoor, and Keledjian families.
• [125] Reverse inscription in Armenian:
  Ի յիշատակ սիրոյ ձեր ընտանիքին կը ղրկեմ այս նկարս։ — As a keepsake of my affection for your family, I send you this photograph.
  Ճէմիլ Չամիչեան — Jamil Chamichian.
  Ապրիլ 20, 1942 — April 20, 1942.
  Երուսաղէմ — Jerusalem.
  Photograph in the possession of the Cherchian, Cort, and House families.
• [126] Reverse inscription in Armeno-Turkish:
  Սէվկուլու Ամմիմ— Sevgülü ammim — My dear uncle.
  Տօք. Լ. Չամիչեան — Dr. L. Chamichian — Dr. L. Chamichian.
  զիգրիյէթ պէնտէն սիզէ — Zikriyet benden size — A remembrance from me to you.
  Ճէմիլ Չամիչեան — Cemil Chamichian — Jamil Chamichian.
  Հոկ. 25, 1942 — 25 Hog. 1942 — October 25, 1942.
  Երուսալէմ — Yerusalem — Jerusalem.
  Photograph in the possession of the Chamichian, Chavoor, and Keledjian families.