Angel of Aleppo

Synopsis: Angel of Aleppo

Angel of Aleppo is a story of the Armenian Genocide. It takes the reader through history not widely told and highlights the little-known link between the Genocide and the WW1 Anzac experience. It puts into harsh focus the incomprehensible cruelty of the Ottoman Young Turks and their henchmen towards their Armenian citizens, but it is ultimately a story about faith and love and the redemptive power of forgiveness.

Angel of Aleppo is set primarily from 1915 – 1919 in Anatolia (southern modern-day Turkey), Aleppo and the Mesopotamian desert. It moves briefly to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1923, then plays out in Adelaide, South Australia, from 1927 - 1966.

In May 1915, Anoush, a young Armenian woman, and her fellow villagers are evicted from their Anatolian village by Ottoman soldiers commanded by Anoush’s nemesis Ibrahim bey, a young local warlord who is obsessed by her beauty. Anoush survives, but can her heart survive, after her mother is executed before her eyes?

A massive column of newly homeless evictees - women, children and old men - endure the infamous Death Marches as they are driven south via Aleppo to the Mesopotamian desert, suffering monstrous cruelties on the way.

Anoush meets Apraham, an elderly priest, who gives her stability when she needs it the most. With her younger sister Covinar, friends and Krikor, her first love, she escapes the caravan and heads west to the mountain near the Mediterranean called Musa Ler, but Ibrahim’s reward offer leads to her capture and detention in Aleppo.

Aided by German army medical orderly Armin Wegner*, she escapes again, learns to nurse and begins helping masses of diseased, starving Armenians. Anoush becomes known as the Angel of Aleppo, her courage and resolution inspiring all around her.

Determined to be the woman her mother raised her to be, she stays strong, even after she is forced to take her chances in the Mesopotamian desert. As the war ends, she loses the baby fathered by her first love, the ill-fated Krikor, and is captured by Ibrahim bey, but is rescued by Trooper Tom Mills of the Australian Light Horse.

By 1923, Anoush is nursing at the Australasian Orphanage at Antilyas, Beirut. When he comes to inspect the orphanage, Anoush meets the co-architect of the first Australasian humanitarian overseas drive, eminent South Australian Reverend James Cresswell*, who helps her find and ultimately marry Tom Mills. Over the subsequent years she remains close to Reverend Cresswell but feels cut off from her past.

As the years pass, Anoush is widowed and alone. She makes her way to the Adelaide War Memorial on the Genocide’s 50th anniversary, where her past reappears in the form of former Ottoman soldier, Mehmet. Can she forgive those who kill the innocent, or herd them into the desert at gunpoint? In her darkest moment, Mehmet gives Anoush the key to unlock and release both her pain and his own.  

*Wegner and Cresswell are actual historical figures. US Ottoman ambassador Henry Morgenthau Jr and 28th US President Woodrow Wilson make cameo appearances as well.