Birds Without Wings (46 page)

It is not possible to calculate how many Armenians died on the forced marches. In 1915 the number was thought to be 300,000, a figure which has been progressively increased ever since, thanks to the efforts of angry propagandists. To argue about whether it was 300,000 or 2,000,000 is in a sense irrelevant and distasteful, however, since both numbers are great enough to be equally distressing, and the suffering of individual victims in their trajectory towards death is in both cases immeasurable.

It is sometimes alleged that Tâlat Bey was colluding in a deliberate campaign of extermination without the knowledge of other government members. This is for others to argue about. What is decidedly strange is that many Armenians were deported even from places where they were not immediately behind the lines of the army, depending, it seems, upon the enthusiasms of local governors.

This can be the only explanation for the arrival of a band of irregulars in Eskibahçe, who came to remove the small number of Armenians resident there, including the only one with whom we have become acquainted, Levon Krikorian, apothecary, husband of Gadar, father of three young girls, and sometimes known as “the Sly.”

Ever since it had become known that bands of Armenians had effectively started a civil war behind the lines on the Russian front, Levon Krikorian and his family had had to put up with small insults. He sometimes heard the words “vatan haini” muttered as he passed by, and once there had been stones thrown against his shutters at night. He and the womenfolk had become anxious and worried, but not yet frightened.

The gendarmes in the meydan were initially puzzled when a nefarious-looking band of mounted and armed irregulars turned up and interrupted their lifelong games of backgammon, demanding in unfamiliar accents to know where the traitors’ quarter was, and brandishing an order from the governor that in fact no one was able to read. The gendarmes were impressed by the official-looking seals and flourishes, and, once they had understood that the traitors were the Armenians, accompanied the troops to their quarter, which consisted of no more than a few pleasant and spacious houses along one side of a small street up one flank of the hillside.

What occurred there that day did not seem particularly sinister. Whilst the troops lounged about in the meydan, their sergeant went from door to door in the company of one of the gendarmes, informing the occupants that they were to be relocated in the interests of the Sultan Caliph and for their own protection. They were to gather in the meydan at dawn, bringing with them only their most valuable possessions, so that these could be sold at their destination in order to help them begin a new life. They were also to compile a complete inventory of all possessions left behind, so that they could be compensated upon arrival with goods to a similar value.

The unexpected news almost struck people dumb, and it was only slowly that the reality of the situation began to sink in.

“We can’t just leave everything behind,” said Gadar, wife of the apothecary. “Why should we go? We don’t need protecting. No one will hurt us here.”

“How far have we got to walk?” asked Anoush, and her sisters Sirvart and Sossy wanted to know if they were going to Telmessos or somewhere nice like that. The girls were very typical of their race, with fair skin and dramatic black hair and heavy eyebrows. No doubt they would all grow up to be beautiful for as long as time condescended to bestow its conditional generosity.

Levon went down to the meydan to make enquiries, and found every other paterfamilias already there, asking the same questions. When he saw the troops he grew pale and agitated, and hurried back to his house. He ushered his wife into the back room and told her, “Gadar, it’s very bad. They’ve sent Hamidiye to get us. Hamidiye! Can you imagine? God knows where they got them from! It can’t be from anywhere here! It’s not good, it’s not good at all.”

“Hamidiye! God and the saints help us! Hamidiye!”

“Don’t tell the girls. We don’t want to alarm them.”

“Husband, we can’t go with them. We’d be better off in a pit of serpents. We should run away now, whilst there’s time.”

“Where could we go? They’ve got a document promising to protect us.” Levon did not believe in his own words, but he tried to comfort her: “It’s signed by the governor.”

“Who would protect us now? Everyone calls us traitors. No one wants us any more!”

“Calm yourself, Gadar, calm yourself.”

“How can I be calm? What about the girls? What about the girls? Tell me that!”

Levon knew in his heart that she was right, and could think of no convincing reply. “I’m going out for a while,” he said. “You and the girls carry on getting ready.”

He took a flask of oil and a small cup from the kitchen, left the house and made his way up the hillside, through the maquis and past the Lycian tombs where the Dog eked out his anchoritic life. At the tomb of the saint he knelt down and prayed sincerely for protection, and then he poured the oil through the small hole in the top of the lid. He knelt once more and collected the oil from the hole underneath, whence it now made its leisurely exit, having passed over the holy bones. He anointed his own brow with a little oil, and then made his way home to do likewise to his wife and daughters. The oil that was left he sealed in its flask, and placed in his sash.

The family was wealthy by most people’s standards, but did not in truth have a great many valuables, and once these were collected together, they sat in their selamlik wondering what to say and do next. After a little while Gadar left the room silently and went out through the door into the street.

She made her way through the lifeless alleyways down to the aga’s konak, knocked on the haremlik door, slipped off her shoes and went in. She found Leyla Hanim lounging on a divan with Pamuk on her lap, alternately polishing her fingernails and eating pistachio nuts.

“Leyla Hanim,” she said, kneeling before her, “please save us.”

Leyla was astonished and a little amused, having heard nothing of the day’s alarms. “Save you? From what? When did I start being worth praying to?”

“They’ve sent Hamidiye to take us all away. Please ask Rustem Bey to save us.”

“But, Gadar Hanim, what are Hamidiye? Some kind of soldier?”

“Our families came here all the way from Van thirty years ago, just to get away from people like them. They’re tribesmen, horsemen, Kurds. They’re savages, and they hate us.”

“I’ve never heard of them,” said Leyla, who thought that things could not really be so bad.

“They’re not from here. Why should you have heard of them? Please ask Rustem Bey to save us.”

Leyla Hanim made a small gesture of helplessness. “He’s not here. He went to Telmessos, and he’s expected back sometime tomorrow.”

“When, though, when?”

“I don’t know. Really, I don’t know.”

Gadar put her hands to her face and began to wail, “Oh God, Oh God,
Oh God! My girls, my poor girls!” Leyla Hanim knelt down on the floor and put her arms around her to comfort her. This felt very strange to Gadar. Like everyone else in the town her opinion of Leyla Hanim had always been that she was merely a whore, albeit the whore of the aga, and it did not feel quite right to be embraced by her. Nonetheless, Leyla’s body was soft and motherly, and she smelled of warm perfumes and rosewater, and Gadar allowed herself to weep in Leyla’s arms for a while. When finally she stood up, she dried her eyes with the back of her hand, and said, “My last hope is gone. God be with you, Leyla Hanim.”

“And with you,” said Leyla, who by now was feeling tearful herself. Gadar raised her right hand a little and let it fall. “All we wanted,” she said, “was to live in peace and earn an honest living. Everything was very good.”

Impulsively, Leyla removed a gold bracelet from her wrist and presented it to Gadar. “Take and sell it,” she said. “I won’t miss it. I have others.”

“Thank you, Leyla Hanim. I take it in God’s name, out of necessity, and I am truly sorry,” said Gadar.

“Sorry? Sorry for what?”

“For all the things that have been said about you.” With this she turned and left, leaving Leyla’s ears burning with shame and indignation, even though she knew that Gadar had meant no offence. She took up her oud and played on it until her equable mood returned.

It so happened that Rustem Bey did return just before the column of the dispossessed took the fork that led southward. It was mid-afternoon, it was stultifyingly hot, and the walkers had had no food or water since dawn. Three old people who had been unable to continue had already been bludgeoned to death with rifle butts in order to save on bullets, and anyone with good footwear had had it taken from them and installed on the feet of their escorts. The stones were excruciatingly hot, and people’s soles were burned and bleeding. The women of the column had set up a continuous low moaning and keening, and the men blinked against the sweat in their eyes, muttered prayers to the ever empty sky and longed for it all to be over. Most had already been beaten at least once, and within half an hour’s march had been forced to hand over the valuables that they had been told to bring with them.

Rustem Bey heard the eerie moaning from some considerable distance, and was astonished when finally his horse brought him up to the column. He was even more astonished when he recognised the faces of people who
had been notable in the town only the day before. He could scarcely credit how abject they had become in such a short time.

Rustem Bey realised immediately what had happened. He had heard about the deportations, and in principle was not at all sympathetic to the victims. He had been as outraged as everyone else by the treachery and perfidy of these citizens who had turned against the Sultan, deserted the army and then attacked it from behind. He had found himself scowling at every Armenian he passed in the street, resenting them suddenly for the first time in his life. However, he was intelligent enough to know that none of these particular Armenians had ever been near the front, and none of them had ever attacked anyone, from behind or otherwise. Indeed, Levon Krikorian had been stalwart in the event of each of his few illnesses, advising the aga on remedies that had often worked.

As his horse drew up to the stationary column, Rustem Bey became aware of a forest of hands raised up to him in supplication. He looked down at all those agonised faces, and heard their desperate, inarticulate cries for help. He was confused and paralysed for an instant, but then he spurred his horse over to the sergeant who was obviously in charge and summoned up his courage. Assuming a lordly air of great importance, which was, after all, merely the reflection of a reality, he asked very directly, “By whose authority do you take these people?”

The sergeant, intimidated and surprised, dug into his sash and produced the firman. “By the authority of the governor, efendi,” he replied. Rustem Bey took the document and pretended to read it. The elaborate official calligraphy and fantastically convoluted wording would have made it all but unreadable even to the literate, among whose number Rustem Bey did not in fact find himself. Nonetheless, the governor’s official seal was very familiar to him, and he knew that the document was a valid one. Silently, he handed it back to the sergeant.

A woman took hold of his leg and looked up at him, pleading, “Save us, save us, Rustem Beyefendi, for the love of God save us.”

“The order is from the governor,” said the aga. “I can’t do anything about it. Otherwise, by God’s will, I would save you.” He looked down at that small sea of upturned and hopeless faces, and shook his head sadly. “These are evil times,” he said. “Satan is abroad in the world.”

He looked around at the ruffianly and narrow faces of the Hamidiye, and was suddenly surprised when he noticed that, ludicrously, they were all draped with expensive women’s jewellery. He addressed them directly. “I know the governor,” he informed them. “If these people are mistreated,
you will all be shot. Each one of your turbans will be without a head, each one of your horses will be without a rider, and each one of your bodies will rot on the surface of the earth without a shroud. I shall obtain a fatwa and each one of your souls shall be locked out of paradise for ever.”

The tribesmen were genuinely cowed by this impressive threat, and there was a moment’s silence during which it became clear why the column had been stationary when he had drawn up to it. From behind a clump of trees nearby came suddenly the sound of screaming. Now Levon Krikorian clasped his leg, and cried, “My girls, my girls! My girls, efendi, my girls!”

Rustem Bey kicked the sides of his horse, and rapidly circled the trees, at the other side of which he found a party of five cavalrymen, who, having thrown the girls to the ground, were tearing gleefully at the clothes of all three of Levon’s daughters, preparatory to a rape in which, no doubt, all the troops had been hoping to take their turn. The girls were struggling hysterically, and had managed to begin screaming because they had somehow loosened the gags from their mouths.

Feeling that he had no choice, or as if he had been taken over by some valiant spirit that was not his own, Rustem Bey took his silver-handled pistol from his sash, drew near, and declared loudly, “In the name of the Sultan Padishah, terror of the world!”

Surprised and a little bewildered, the tribesmen stopped and looked up at him, and the girls remained dishevelled on the ground, staring at him with huge and desperate eyes.

“In the name of the Sultan,” repeated Rustem Bey.

There was a long silence, during which Rustem Bey assessed the degree of stupidity of the rapists, and they in their turn assessed his importance. It was very clear that he was not only rich and distinguished, but a man of great authority. His boots shone, his breeches were of fine cloth, his sash was of red silk, his fez was beautifully brushed and his fine moustache was waxed. His pistol sparkled in the afternoon sun, as did the handle and sheath of his yataghan, and he rode a fine and spirited bay horse that made their own mounts seem paltry by comparison. Every one of the troopers had the same thought, namely that here would be a gentleman well worth robbing. None of them felt quite daring enough, however, especially as Rustem Bey held his revolver in his right hand, which rested on his horse’s neck, and was quite casually pointing in their direction.