In the summer of 1915 when the military forces of the enemy were near, in what became known as the Shabin-Karahisar uprising, the entire Armenian population of 5,000 set fire to their homes and fields and climbed up the mountain to the remains of an old Roman fort at its peak.

[3] His memoir of that time, Four Years in the Mountains of Kurdistan, describes his life as a shepherd and servant, and how he grew from boyhood to a young man among the Kurdish tribesmen and chieftains, when Turkey was still the Ottoman Empire.

[citation needed] After escaping to Istanbul in 1919, Aram Haigaz was reunited with an aunt; he spent some time in an orphanage run by American missionaries, and also attended the Getronagan High School, where literature was one of his subjects, taught by famous writer and literary critic Hagop Oshagan.

He worked as an apprentice photo-engraver at The Daily Mirror, a New York City newspaper, and studied English at night, reading extensively the great world and American classics, from Kipling and Balzac to Poe.

His work was highly personal, and he wrote in a natural, conversational style about seemingly inconsequential events – what was in a sandwich, going to the wrong funeral, a stay in the hospital,[4] his son's graduation.

He received several Armenian literary awards and tributes [7][8] and in 1972, the Jubilee of his fifty years as a writer was marked with programs[9][10] in cities in the United States, Canada and Lebanon.