Among the general humanitarian disaster that is playing out in Iraq and Syria and nearby regions, the Yazidi community with their unique and ancient religion – monotheistic, but apparently unrelated to Islam or Christianity or Zoroastrianism – have come in for special and genocidal attention from ISIL. Perhaps none of us had even heard of them before 2014, but because they have been in the news, and because LDS Charities has helped refugee Yazidi women replace their unique religious clothing, some of us are beginning to be faintly aware of their plight, if almost completely unfamiliar with their culture.

In a somewhat similar way, the Assyrian culture of the same region, a century ago, was and remains unknown to most of the world. Too few people are aware of the Armenian Genocide of that generation; far fewer know that a similar attempt at ethnic cleansing was carried out at the same time and in much the same manner against the Assyrians. The Assyrians of that era – modern Assyrians, not the ancient civilization of Sennacherib who fought against Babylon and the Kingdom of Judah – were, and are, a people with a unique form of Christianity (Nestorianism), who now number perhaps 300,000, less than a third of their numbers of a century ago.

Khoshaba Odisho, born about 1856, was married and had a young family when the Assyrian Genocide took the lives of an estimated quarter million Assyrians in 1914-1915. A native of Urumia, Odisho somehow managed to bring his family out of the war zone just before the worst of the genocide and, via England, make his way to the United States and to California. We find them listed on this passenger manifest – the man who filled out the form didn’t even bother to record their names, but instead listed them as Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Master [Initial] Odisho. They are Khoshaba and Eva, parents, with their children Moressa, Lillian, Mary, John and William (or, more likely, these are the anglicized versions of their birth names).

Khoshaba introduced himself as a Nestorian clergyman in the United States. Maybe that was true, or maybe it was an adopted identity that was more likely to garner sympathy for the desperately poor immigrant refugees. In later years, Khoshaba presented himself as a bookseller – but really, he might have been an authentic clergyman, although without a congregation or any community of fellow Assyrians in the United States.

In 1918, Khoshaba traveled around the West, mingling with Armenian refugees. He approached Joseph E. Robinson, president of the LDS Mission in Los Angeles, who invited Khoshaba to speak to the Mormon congregation there. Khoshaba introduced his family, welcomed by the Latter-day Saints as “unusually intelligent and attractive.” Khoshaba sought financial contributions from the Latter-day Saints, both for his family and for the needy Armenians. I don’t have any idea whether his appeals in California produced any LDS donations, but Khoshaba sensed LDS sympathy and hoped to speak before other LDS congregations and solicit support; he especially hoped to meet with Armenian Latter-day Saints who had emigrated to Utah. President Robinson told him he would need permission from Church leaders for that, and gave him a letter of introduction to leaders in Salt Lake. Khoshaba caught the next train to Salt Lake City.

Khoshaba presented himself at the door of the Church Administration Building in Salt Lake City in mid-May 1918, and sent in his letter of introduction. Joseph F. Smith was home sick in bed, and his counselors were unavailable, so Khoshaba met with George F. Gibbs, the First Presidency’s secretary.

The meeting did not go well. I cannot be entirely sure, because my record of their meeting is so scant, but it appears that Khoshaba took too much for granted, based on the strength of his letter of recommendation from President Robinson in California, that the Church in Salt Lake City would provide him with financial assistance and a list of addresses of Armenian members whom he could approach for donations. Secretary Gibbs, annoyed by the Assyrian’s approach, told him that the Church’s assistance in such things was rendered through “legitimately organized societies such as the Red Cross,” and he, Gibbs, would not, under any circumstances, provide him with a list of names and addresses of Armenian members. Khoshaba seems to have pressed insistently for help, although I can hardly credit Gibbs’s report that Khoshaba demanded “to be given lands” by the Church – I think that must have been a misunderstanding. Gibbs also appears to have been offended by Khoshaba’s use of the title “ministers” to refer to Latter-day Saint leaders.

In any case, it was a distressing, uncomfortable, unsatisfactory meeting on both sides. Khoshaba had counted on some kind of assistance in Utah, and was uncertain how he would make his way back to California. At the beginning of their meeting, Khoshaba had presented a silver Persian coin to Gibbs, saying it was a gift for President Smith and very old and rare; before leaving Gibbs’s office, Khoshaba retrieved the coin and took it with him. On his side, Gibbs was offended that Khoshaba had acted as though “I had cut off both his legs and arms and turned him adrift,” and more than a little angry with President Robinson for having cooperated with Khoshaba to the extent of giving him that letter of recommendation. “We are being applied to continually for help from outside sources, the impression having been made that we are immensely rich and are doing more along the lines of charity than any other church.” Don’t encourage this kind of appeal, Gibbs made clear to Robinson.

Khoshaba did make it back to California, somehow, perhaps with the help of the Episcopalians of Ogden, before whom he spoke a few days after his Salt Lake City failure … but he was not to prosper. In December 1921, he had another encounter tied to Salt Lake City, sort of. While walking along the train tracks in Pasadena, Khoshaba Odisho was struck and killed by a Salt Lake freight train, an accident described in gruesome detail in the newspapers.

His family struggled to make their way without their husband and father. Two of the children won favor with a California philanthropist, who educated, clothed, and in general made life easier for the entire family. In some ways, perhaps, they made their own lives easier – there is evidence that some of the children, when grown, concealed their Middle Eastern origin by styling their surname as “O’Disho.”