EFRONIA: An Armenian Love Story

By Stina Katchadourian - Translated By Herant Katchadourian

When eighty-two-year-old Efronia Katchadourian fled civil war in Lebanon for the United States in 1976, she brought little except pistachio nuts, dried figs, dates, and the searing memory of her secret, lost love - Ramzi, a Persian Moslem. Even if there was some hope that her family would eventually consent to the union, that hope was destroyed after the eruption of World War I and the massacre and deportations living within the Ottoman empire.

For half a century, Efronia told no one of her secret love for Ramzi. Only when she was in her late eighties, living in northern California with her son and his wife, did she write her memoirs, finally revealing the one love of her youth, which never diminished throughout her lifetime.

Edited by Marilyn Yalom

Northeastern University Press (1993)