Once I Was an Orphan (Paperback) | Released: 15 Jun 2016

Mark and Kevork Toroian, born in rural Turkey to an Armenian family, narrowly escaped death in the genocide of 1915-1918. They were little boys at the time. Their parents, siblings, friends, uncles, aunts, and essentially all the other Armenians in their entire town died in the massacre. One of the two survivors, Mark, wrote it all down, after he had the luck to survive and emigrate as a college student. Mark's first-person story forms the principal narrative of this book. The younger brother, Kevork, also had sufficient luck to survive the genocide, but was forced to wait in Egypt for another three decades until an Act of Congress allowed him to emigrate to join Mark in the United States. Kevork's story - a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare - is laid out here in the form of letters, not narrative. We of the succeeding generation have kept the editing to a minimum, allowing the reader to see both the genocide and the obfuscation just as they were described by the actual participants, at the time when the events actually occurred. This book is not for the faint of heart. A companion e-book with the same title is available in Kindle format.The e-book is abridged in material ways, so please use the e-book for the sake of mobility, and regard this paperback as the complete story. http: //tinyurl.com/toroian-orphan
About the Author: Mark H. Toroian was born in the small town of Perry, Turkey, in the upper Euphrates valley. The year was 1910. Mark was 5 years old when the 1915 genocide began under cover of World War I. He and his younger brother Kevork were immediately orphaned, all their siblings, other close relatives, and indeed the entire Armenian population of their town and countryside having been killed. Over several years, the little boys Mark and Kevork were enslaved by a series of Turkish merchants, orchardists, blacksmiths, constables, herders and rustics in the villages and countryside of rural Turkey. They were often separated, but kept finding each other. The slavery lessened as the war died down, and the two of them lived in a succession of orphanages in Turkey, Syria, Corfu, Athens, Corinth and Cairo. As the war cooled even further, the orphan clientele aged out. These orphanages were gradually phased out one at a time, bringing about frequent moves, and increased stress of struggling to maintain contact. Mark and Kevork managed to stay together in their final orphanage, the Near East Relief Working Boys' Home of Cairo, Egypt. Both got jobs in the city, and began earning money. Mark worked for a printer, and learned the craft of photography. He learned English at that time, as well. He applied for a scholarship to Colorado State College, and won it. In 1929, at the age of 19, he bade his younger brother farewell, and took an ocean voyage to Ellis Island. He worked in the college cafeteria, and carried on a full time job in maintenance. On one vacation he was able to visit his elder brother Mike in California. Mike was 14 years older than Mark, and had emigrated long before the genocide began. After Mark graduated, Mike would play a pivotal role in finding an Armenian woman for Mark to marry. Mark married Sophia, and they raised two children. Around the time the first child was born, Mark wrote his story of his life in Turkey, his narrow escapes from the genocide, his nights sleeping in the warm ashes from the bath house, and more. Sophia typed it all up. It sat on a bookshelf for several decades, and is only now being put into print. Mark began the project of his life - securing an immigration visa for Kevork. Government inertia dragged this out for 30 years. The visa was finally produced by an Act of Congress signed by John F. Kennedy. Kevork arrived with his family in 1962. Mark passed away in 1972. He had put in a full career with the Department of Agriculture.