Home Is Beyond the Mountains (24 page)

THE FIRST WORLD WAR
lasted
from 1914 to 1918. Turkey fought in the war on the side of Germany. For much
of the war Turkey controlled the territory that is now the country of Iraq,
to the south of present-day Turkey. The British fought against the Turkish
army in this southern territory with the fighting spilling over into Persia
east of Baghdad.

Although Persia was neutral
in the war, Turkey invaded Persian territory in the north several times,
hoping to take land. This made the position of the Assyrian villages that
were near the Turkish border very dangerous.

The biggest invasion
happened in the summer of 1918. So many Assyrian villages were destroyed and
so many people killed that an estimated 80,000 Assyrians, along with many
Armenians who lived in Persia, took whatever they could carry and fled,
hoping to get behind the lines of the British army several hundred miles to
the south. This was a very difficult journey, and about half the people who
set out died on the way.

The British took
responsibility for the refugees who came to them. They quickly built large
camps using tents and equipment that were available because the war was
actually coming to an end. One of the largest camps was at Baqubah, north of
Baghdad.

Refugees arrived at the
Baqubah camp in the late summer of 1918. The war ended just months later on
November 11, 1918, but it took years for the details of the peace to be
worked out. During this time the Assyrian refugees were not allowed to
return to their homes. Many families and adults found ways to get to North
America, Australia, Europe or other parts of the Middle East, but many
others, including the orphans, had to wait three years or more before they
had a chance to return home.

In 1921 the orphans who had
been in the Baqubah camp were among the first Assyrians allowed to go back to
Persia. They were not sent to their villages in the north but to camps
farther south. One was at Kermanshah. The Hamadan orphanage opened in
1922.

All of the cities, refugee
camps and orphanages described in the novel are or were real places except
for Samira and Benyamin's home village, Ayna. There were dozens of villages
like Ayna scattered over the mountains, hills and plains between Lake Urmieh
and the Turkish border.

Susan Shedd was, of course,
a real person and so was Mrs. McDowell. All the other characters in the book
are fictional.

SORTING OUT THE FAMILY
story, the Assyrian story and the historical background made this book
challenging to write. I thank my editor, Shelley Tanaka, who patiently and
insightfully took me through many rewrites, and my friend Joanne Schwartz,
whose willingness to read and discuss successive drafts was both helpful and
encouraging.

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