Persia

Persia is a place of refuge and passage in the family history Rabo Karabekian recounts: after surviving the Armenian massacre, his parents cross into Persia, are taken in by Persian Armenians, and set out together for Egypt. Their crossing links the violence that drove them from their homes with the migration that eventually brought them into the orbit of Rabo’s family story.

The route out of the massacre

Rabo’s mother and father did not meet in the village where the massacre occurred. She escaped after nightfall; he had survived separately, hidden in a privy behind the schoolhouse where he had been a teacher. They crossed the lightly guarded border into Persia about seventy miles from the massacre site, bringing two distinct experiences of survival into the same route out.

Refuge and onward passage

Persian Armenians took the fugitives in. After they decided to go together to Egypt, Rabo’s father did most of the talking because his future wife had a mouthful of jewels she had gathered while escaping. At the Persian Gulf, she sold some of the jewels to buy passage for them on a small freighter bound for Cairo by way of the Red Sea. Persia was thus not their final destination but the setting in which shelter, partnership, and the means to continue their journey came together.

Place in the family history

The passage through Persia belongs to a larger history of displacement following the Armenian massacre. Rabo’s account emphasizes that his parents had been separated before the crossing and that their meeting and decision to travel together came only after they had reached safety. In Cairo they encountered Vartan Mamigonian, another Armenian survivor, whose subsequent offer of work drew them into a new stage of their migration. Persia therefore marks the transition from escape to a shared journey, rather than a permanent home.