Women and children in an AGBU Damascus refugee home, rescued from tribes in Aarbit in 1919 by Levon. Prapion Navabedian sitting next to the shelter’s supervisor Hmayag Ughurlian, Levon Yotnakhparian and his fiancee, Vartouhi Arekagian on the right.
My Grandfather, Levon Yotnakhparian, had joined the Ottoman military in 1909 just before WWI. Trained as a master tailor before joining, he often found himself repairing the uniforms of officers and enlisted men. A talent that saves his life as the Armenian soldiers are disarmed and forced into hard labor. After escaping from the military he works his way across the Syrian desert to Al Aqaba. A small town off the Red Sea where Arab and British forces had joined to drive the Turks out of the Levant. During his journey my grandfather dictates a letter to a scribe in Arabic about the plight of the Armenians and sends it to the King of the Arabs, Sharif Sayyid Hussein bin-Ali. He asks for Ali’s help. Sharif bin- Ali immediately writes a letter to his son’s Emir Faisal (King of Iraq in 1921) and Emir Abdallah (who became King of Jordan) stating that “we must defend the Armenians as we would our own, because they are the protected people of the Moslems.” This is the beginning of a powerful relationship between my grandfather and the Arab Hashemite Royals. They help him get to Al Aqaba then once there, he meets up with members of the fledgling AGBU that are looking for ways to bring survivors to safety. They see a capable and rugged individual in Levon Yotnakhparian and they ask him to lead a group back into the desert. He agrees and finds himself with a small group of men 5 Armenians and 14 of Emir Faisal’s men. Dressed as Duze to cover their identities they traveled back through the desert to find survivors of the massacres and bring them to safety. They found their way to Jabal ad-Druze under the protection of the Druze Sultan- Pasha al-Atrash. The Turks had discovered that Levon and his Arab escort were there, and threatened the Druze to give them up, but the Sultan al-Atrash refused. As my grandfahter’s band went out looking for Armenians, they were robbed by bandits. Eventually with the help of Emir Faisal’s letters that allowed Levon’s band to stop any military train and place Armenian survivors on board without charge or question. My grandfather and his expedition were able to bring over 4,000 of his country men, women and mostly children to safety in orphanages and camps in Damascus and Dera. One of those orphans was his own younger brother, Dickran. They had a wonderful reunion and then Dickran explained how he had left his mother with an Arab soldier while their caravan had been attacked by a band of Turks. Levon later found out that his father had been hung in the square of Urfa before the rest of the family was deported out of the city. To read the entire memoir, look up Crows of the Desert, in English and Armenian. By Levon Parian
For more information see the book, Crows of the Desert