His father was an Assyrian survivor of the Assyrian genocide , that took place in present-day Turkey , who had taken refuge with his parents in a Beirut slum . He married in 1938 a Lebanese Maronite young woman from Bkassine ( near Jezzine ) , then joined the Free French Forces after De Gaulle 's Appeal of 18 June . After the war , the family got the French naturalisation and was hosted by its new fatherland in a slum near Marseille . The father was sent in Madagascar till 1950 to repress the anticolonial insurgency , then again in Indochina in one of France 's colonial wars . In 1963 , the family , including 8 children , tries a comeback in Lebanon , and settle in Ain al-Remmane , but this attempt led to a fiasco , and two years later the family turned back to Marseille , Henri left school at 15 , became a crane driver , and afterwards entered the French '' Poste ''
Assyrian genocide
Assyrian genocide
Henri Jibrayel