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Mikhael Khammo Pius: 1926- Mikhael (Minashe) K. Pius was born in 1926. His father and mother were Khammo Pius and Soriya Kakko of Mawana, Targawer, Persia, children of the tens of thousands of Christian Assyrians who agreed to fight on the side of the Christian Allies and were forced by the Moslem Turks, Kurds and Persians to abandon their homelands in Turkey and Persia and flee to the safety of refugee camps in Mesopotamia during World War I. Mikhael spent his childhood in Khatun Camp, Baghdad, where he was born, and his early boyhood in Maharatha Lines in R.A.F. Station, Hinaidi, Iraq, where he had his early education at Raabi Spania Shimshon's Elementary School. He lived in Civil Cantonment of R.A.F. Station, Habbaniya, for a total of 13 years and in 1941 completed the 9th Grade at Raabie Yacoub's R.A.F. Union School. He worked for NAAFI (Navy,Army & Air Force Institutes), a commercial supply corporation for British Military Services, as a sales clerk for four years in Mosul and in Baghdad during the war, and from 1946 to 1954 as audit clerk for the Air Ministry Audit Office in Habbaniya. He was employed from March 1954 to December 1955 as commercial correspondent by Bahoshy Brothers Co. before he joined Coronet Bookstore in Baghdad, a highly successful family business for 20 years in the 1950s and 1960s, before Baath Government's nationalization program of imports killed it. The business was established by his late younger brother Aprim ("Appy") Pius, a shrewd and resourceful businessman. Following the sale of the ailing bookstore, Mikhael ran, in partnership with a Youkhanna Baba, a fairly prosperous import commission office from 1974 to 1981. And after immigrating to California in October 1981, he opened and operated, jointly with his young son Yosip a video store in Modesto until 1993. He then sold it and retired, after 50 years of work, to pursue his love of writing. Mikhael says he was bitten and infected by the literary bug in 1948. He became a prolific contributor on sports, from Habbaniya in the early 1950s and from Baghdad from 1954 to 1958, to the then The Iraq Times. During the latter period he also contributed to Beirut's Arabweek and was the Baghdad sports correspondent (licensed by the Iraqi Ministry of Information) for The Daily Star, the Iraqi correspondent and sales representative for Gilgamesh Magazine of Teheran, and the Middle East correspondent for the Assyrian Star Magazine of Gary, Indiana, under the editorship of the late Joseph Durna. During these eight years, he had about 250 pieces--letters, sports and social reports, essays, articles, anecdotes, stories--published, in the above periodicals, as well as in a few American and English publications. After a literary dormancy of about 25 years, when he was absorbed in the family book business, Mikhael resumed writing in 1984. He experimented first with self--publishing, commencing with an exclusive irregular newsletter called Bil Khizmaany Wdosty (Between Kith And Kin), which he still puts out now and then. But in 1989 he began writing in earnest, mostly on the local history of Habbaniya, for Nineveh Trimonthly Magazine. He has a good working relationship with the magazine's Editor, Julius Shabbas, a school-mate and lifelong friend. To date, he has some 80 pieces in 22 consecutive issues of the magazine, not counting about 20 other pieces in other magazines, including Stanislaus's Today's Seniors, a monthly magazine with a circulation of 25 thousand copies. Mikhael produced 14 issues of a four-page monthly newsletter name-plated St. Thomas Tidings for Mar Toma Catholic Church of Turlock in 1992-93. Mikhael has been married to Blandina Ewan since 1952. They have two children. Daughter Lilly Thomas, 43, has four children, the eldest being 16, and son Yosip Pius, 32, is still single, living with his parents. Victim of two cardiac bypass surgeries in 1982 and 1990, Mikhael says he has been racing against time to complete some of his own personal writing and publishing projects, hoping to beat his heart and aging problems--to the finish line! Some of Mikhael K. Pius' writings Other Notable Features of Gailani Camp Articles are Copywritten by Author - Authorized by writer for publishing on this home page. All rights reserved. Updated April 28, 1997 Return to the History Page Index                                       Return to Home Page