ABSTRACT
Growing up as I did, in the orphanage in the basement of the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church, I was, until the age of fifteen, steeped in Protestant culture. They called it the Joğvaran , but it would have been more accurate to call it the Puyn , the Armenian word for “nursery,” because we weren’t all orphans. A few of us were, certainly, but for most of us, it was a nursery for children who had been brought to Istanbul from Anatolia, where there were no Armenian schools. And there were quite a few children with families that had fallen apart in some way, or who had lost either their mother or their father. In short, this orphanage was a nursery where orphaned, half-orphaned, poor, and abandoned children could find both shelter and education. My brothers and I, for example . . . Our parents had divorced, and we were left homeless. If it had not been for that nursery, who knows what would have become of us?
