According to a family tree she was born in 1880, and while it is unknown if that year is exact it is approximately correct as she was older than her brother Haroutune who was born in 1882. Her parents died a week apart in 1892 when she was only about 12 years old. In autumn 1895 the Hamidian Massacres swept through Arapkir which resulted in over a thousand Armenians being killed, including her older brother Dikran. The Basmajian home was burned as were many other Armenian homes, however their cellar with the grain fortuitously did not burn and they were able to use it to help feed their starving neighbors during the difficult time that followed the massacre. Bilbil was married sometime later in the 1890s to a much older man widower Garabed Mukhalian, a successful textile merchant with children. Bilbil's younger brother Haroutune went to live with them as he had no other family, and so Garabed had him married off not long after when he was old enough at about age 18 around 1900. Garabed and Bilbil did not have children, and it is unknown if they were living in Arapkir in 1915 when the Armenian population was decimated by the Armenian Genocide. Some wealthy men like Garabed were able to bribe officials to avoid the deportations so perhaps that is how they were spared. They were living in Istanbul by 1925, so either they moved there prior to the genocide or more likely in the waves of survivors who left Arapkir in the early 1920s. Bilbil's brother Haroutune survived because he was work in the United States at the time, but his wife and two daughters were deported in 1915. Haroutune returned to Turkey after World War I ended and searched the region looking for them but despite reports on where they had last been seen they were never found and presumed lost. Haroutune returned from his searches and settled in Istanbul, so perhaps he was reunited with Bilbil there but it is unknown if they did while he lived there until 1923. In 1925, a new settlement for the survivors of Arapkir was established on the outskirts of Yerevan, Armenia in the Soviet Union and a call went out for its people to move there. Many promises were made, and Garabed and Bilbil decided to move, however those who went were sorely disappointed. Due to the Soviet system, wealthy people like Garabed had much of it confiscated and New Arapkir was an upstart village with many problems and poverty. Slowly a factory opened there for making socks, as Old Arapkir had a successful textile industry and so its people had a great deal of experience with it. Perhaps Garabed was involved with this initiative in New Arapkir as he was one of Old Arapkir's successful textile merchants. At that point he was in his mid-60s and it is not known how much longer he lived. With Bilbil's brother Haroutune now back in the United States, due to the great distance between them, World War II, and later the start of the Cold War, they lost contact. At some point, perhaps in the 1940s, her brother unexpectedly did receive a letter from Bilbil asking him for shoes, an indication of the poverty she must have been experiencing in Armenia. However her brother was suspicious of the letter, stating that it didn't sound like her or even that it wasn't actually her who wrote it at all. This could be due to the notorious censorship of all communication coming out of the Soviet Union, which led its people to write letters to family abroad in coded ways which would hopefully not tip off the censors to their true meaning. In addition, the Soviets persecuted people like her brother who had sympathies with an independent Armenia. As a result Haroutune did not respond out of fear, and knew that even if he sent shoes they would have been confiscated by the authorities, and unfortunately that is the last we know of Bilbil. It is presumed she lived the rest of her life in New Arapkir, and that she died in the 1940s or 1950s. While her death year is unknown, it was most likely before 1960 up until which time the New Arabkir community had its own cemetery, which was then closed and cleared unless a family member quickly arranged to move the grave elsewhere. Most were unable to, though those who that moved went to the new Zeytun Cemetery. As Bilbil and Garabed did not have children, there was likely no one to move their grave unless one of his children were living in the area and found out, however the likelihood of this is small. An online database of graves in Yerevan reveals no stone with their name at Zeytun or any other city cemetery, so it is most likely they had been buried at the original cemetery and never moved (though this is not known for certain either). The site of Nor (New) Arabkir Cemetery still exists as Arabkir Park on the edge of a bluff high above the Hrazdan River, and a couple gravestones can still be found in the park's wooded areas, while the rest stones are said to have been dumped into the gorge below.