We left legally but had to renounce our Bulgarian citizenship and were not allowed to take any currency. We went to Beirut, which was the only country at the time that would accept Armenian immigrants from countries behind the Iron Curtain without any documents. We lived there for two years, waiting for our turn to come to the United States. In 1961 we came to the U.S. on the Fourth of July, so it’s a holiday that’s extremely meaningful to me.