Home Is Beyond the Mountains
Page 20
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.
Acknowledgments
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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