Forty Days of Musa Dagh (29 page)

 

 

Samuel Avakian was amazed when he saw how the artificial foibles of weeks,
the hobbies of a bored idler, dovetailed to- gether into one startlingly
vivid plan of defensive action. They sat in Bagradian's study behind
locked doors, which were opened to no one. The mysterious strokes,
crosses, dotted lines, on the three maps, at which the student had
smiled as at a dreamy testing of his patience, revealed themselves now
as a unified, precisely thought-out system. The thick blue line along the
northern saddle meant a long trench set back against the stone barricades
(indicated in brown) of the rocky side. The thinner blue line behind
denoted a reserve trench; the little squares to the sides of these
trenches, flank-protection or outposts. Those figures, too, from two
to eleven, which filled up the side of the Damlayik facing the valley,
ceased to be meaningless numbers and became well-thought-out sectors
of the defense. So, too, did various inscriptions take on a meaning:
"Town Enclosure," "Dish Terrace," "Headquarters Peak," "Observers I, II,
III," "South Bastion." The last was the best inspiration of the whole
scheme. A garrison of two dozen men posted here ought to be enough to
hold off any number of assailants. Even women might be able to hold it.

 

 

Gabriel's face was aglow with eagerness. It had never looked so like the
young face of his son Stephan. "I'm starting to feel very hopeful."
He measured out a distance with Stephan's compasses. "I know what Turkish
soldiers are like. And all their best troops are at the front. The sort
of territorial off-scourings they'll have mustered up from Antioch,
with saptiehs and the irregulars in the barracks, are only good for a
little safe looting."

 

 

Suddenly confronted with this strange new military work, Samuel Avakian's
high, receding forehead took on a dull white look in contrast to the color
in Gabriel's cheeks. "But at best we can only count on a thousand men.
I don't know how many rifles and munitions they've got. And there are
regulars in every Turkish town -- not only in Antakiya, but everywhere.
. . ."

 

 

"We have a population of about five thousand five hundred," interrupted
Bagradian. "We need expect no mercy, only slow death. But Musa Dagh
isn't so easy to surround."

 

 

Avakian stared goggle-eyed through the window. "But will these five
thousand all want the same thing as you do, Effendi?"

 

 

"If they don't, they all deserve to perish together in Mesopotamian dust.
. . . But I don't want to live. I don't want to be rescued. I want to
fight! . . . I want to kill as many Turks as we have cartridges. And,
if necessary, I'll stay on alone on the Damlayik. With the deserters!"

 

 

It was not precisely hate. It was a kind of sacred, and at the same time
exultant wrath that glittered in Bagradian's eyes. It was as though he
rejoiced at the thought of standing out single-handed against Enver Pasha's
army, a million strong. It lifted him out of his seat and urged him up and
down the room, like a madman. "I don't want to live, I want to have
some value!"

 

 

The crumpled Avakian still refused to be talked round. "Very good.
We can defend ourselves for a time. And then . . . ?"

 

 

Gabriel halted his excited pacing and quietly sat down to his work again.
"Anyway, within the next twenty-four hours we've got to solve all sorts of
problems. Which would be the best place for the stockyard, the munition
dump, the hospital? And what kind of shelters can we raise? There are
enough springs, but what will be the best way to economize water? Here
are some rough notes in which I sketched out the routine for the armed
troops. Make a fair copy, will you, Avakian? We shall need them. In fact,
get all these notes here into shape. I don't think there's much I haven't
thought of. For the present it's all still theoretical, but I'm convinced
that most of it can be worked out. We Armenians are always priding
ourselves on superior brains. That's one of the things that's riled them
so. Now it's for us to prove that we really are so much cleverer."

 

 

Avakian felt profoundly disturbed. More even than by this general
catastrophe was he confused by irresistible waves of strength which
now seemed to emanate from Gabriel. There was about him not a shining
atmosphere so much as a hot, glowing one. The less he spoke, the more
quietly he worked, the more overpowering it became. Avakian felt this
influence so strong on him that he could not concentrate his thoughts,
could find no more words to express his doubts, had to keep on staring at
Gabriel's face, deeply engrossed over war maps. In this silent paralysis
he even failed to hear Bagradian's next order, and had to have it
impatiently repeated:

 

 

"Go downstairs now, Avakian. Say I shan't be coming in to lunch. Ask them
to send Missak up with something. I can't waste a second. And -- I'll see
no one before the meeting. You understand? Not even my wife."

 

 

 

 

By one o'clock the people had begun to arrive. The mukhtars, according
to arrangements, personally supervised the doors of the park wall, to
test the credentials of every member of the assembly. This precautionary
measure proved superfluous, since Ali Nassif and his gendarmes had already
set out for Antakiya without having cared to say good-bye to acquaintances
of many years' standing. Nor had either the Turkish postman's family or any
of the Moslem inhabitants of nearby villages secretly joined the throngs on
the roads to Yoghonoluk. Long before the time given out, the last groups
had been filtered through the sieve. Then the main entrance gates were
closed, and finally the garden doors. The people massed on the wide empty
space in front of the house. About three thousand men and women. There was
a big stable-yard just beyond the left wing, but at Ter Haigasun's request
this was roped off with clothes lines and kept free of people. The notables
had assembled on the raised terrace before the house. The few steps leading
up to it formed an excellent tribune for speech-making. The village clerk
of Yoghonoluk had placed his little scrivening-table at the foot of these
steps, to take down any important resolutions.

 

 

Gabriel Bagradian stayed as long as possible in his room, the windows
of which were turned away from the crowd. He was anxious not to fritter
away the plenitude of emotion which possessed him in haphazard talks.
He came out of the house only when Ter Haigasun sent for him. Sallow,
despondent faces stared up at his, not three thousand, but one face only.
It was the helpless face of exile, here as in hundreds of other places at
this hour. The mass, without needing to do so, stood there so painfully
jammed together that it looked far smaller than it was. Some way beyond
it, where ancient trees bounded the open space, there lay or squatted a
few stragglers, cut off from the rest as though their lives had ceased
to matter.

 

 

As Gabriel scanned this people, his own people, a sudden horror began to
invade him. His scared heart missed a beat. Once again reality looked quite
different from any concept which he had formed of it. These people here
were not the same as those he had seen day by day in the villages, the object
of all his daring calculation. A deathly severity and bitterness stared
at him from wide-open eyes. Such massed faces looked like shrivelled fruits.
Even the cheeks of the young were drawn and wrinkled-looking. He had sat
in these peasants' workshops and parlors but had seen as little of the
truth as a traveller driving through a village. For the first time now,
in this instant of overwhelming attention, was a deep contact re-established
between this uprooted "European" and his own. All he had thought and worked
out in his room was losing validity -- so alien, so uncanny, the sight of
these whom he wanted to impel his way. Women still in their Sunday clothes,
with silk head-scarves, strings of coins round their necks, and clattering
bracelets on their wrists. Many were wearing Turkish dress. Their legs
were in wide trousers, and they had drawn the feredjeh round their foreheads,
although they were devout Christians Proximity made such assimilations
inevitable, especially in the border villages such as Wakef and Kebussiye.
Gabriel stared at the men in their dark entaris, on their bearded heads
fezzes or fur caps. It was hot, and some had pulled their shirts open.
The flesh under their tanned and crowsfooted faces looked strangely white.
The white, prophetic heads of blind beggars, here and there in the mass,
stood out like searching assessments of guilt at a Last Judgment. In the
very front stood Kevork, the sunflower-dancer. Even this half-wit no longer
wore an expression of slobbering eagerness to be useful, but of reproach,
which included this and the other world. Gabriel passed an ice-cold hand
down the English tweed of his jacket. It felt as though he were stroking
nettles. And the question rose in his mind: "Why me, of all people? How
shall I speak to them?" The responsibility he was shouldering chilled him,
like a sudden eclipse -- a shadow of bats' wings. The shameful thought:
"Get clear of all this. At once, today. . . . No matter where. . . .
Ter Haigasun had begun slowly hammering his first words into the crowd.
They sounded clearer and clearer in Gabriel's ear. Words and sentences
took a meaning. The eclipse had passed across his sky.

 

 

Ter Haigasun stood motionless on the top step. Only his lips and the cross
on his breast moved very slightly as he was speaking. The pointed hood
shadowed his waxen face; his black beard, with its streaks of grey,
stood out from deeply furrowed cheeks. His eyes, which he kept half shut,
formed mysterious shadows. It looked not as though he were experiencing
at that moment the first stirrings of infinite thoughts, but as though
he had already lived through them, had weighed and pondered, and now,
arrived at his conclusion, was at last able to seek repose. Although,
like all Eastern languages, Armenian lends itself to tropes and images,
he spoke in curt, almost arid sentences.

 

 

They must see exactly what the government meant to do. There could scarcely
be any among the elder people present who had not had a taste of the earlier
massacres, if not in their own persons, then at least through the deaths
and sufferings of their kindred over in Anatolia. Christ had watched over
Musa Dagh with undeserved mercy. For many long and blessed years the villages
had been left in peace while Armenians in Adana and other places were being
killed off in their tens of thousands. But they must clearly distinguish
between massacre and exile. The first lasted four or five days, perhaps
a week. A brave man had almost always the chance to sell his life dearly.
It was easy to find a place in which women and children could hide.
The blood-lust of excited soldiers soon died down again. Even the most
bestial saptieh sickened at the thought, once it was over. Though the
government had always arranged such massacres, it had never admitted
having done so. They were born of disorder, and vanished in disorder again.
But disorder had been the best part of such rascally business, and the worst
to fear from it had been death. Banishment was a very different story.
Anyone might think himself lucky who was released from it by death,
even the cruellest. Banishment did not pass, like an earthquake, which
always spares a certain number of people and houses. Banishment would go
on till the last Armenian had either been slaughtered, died of hunger
on the roads, of thirst in the desert, or been carried off by spotted
typhus or cholera. This time it was not a case of unbridled, haphazard
methods, of whipped-up blood-lust, but of something far more terrible --
an ordered attack. It was all to go according to a plan worked out in
the government offices of Istanbul. He, Ter Haigasun, had known of such a
plan for months, even long before the misfortune of Zeitun. He also knew
that not all the efforts of the Catholicos, of patriarchs and bishops,
all the threats of ambassadors and consuls, had availed. The only thing
that he, a village priest, had been able to do had been to keep silence,
no matter how hard it had seemed to do so, so that the last happy days
of his poor flock might not be destroyed. That time was over at last.
Now they must look things squarely in the face. Nobody, in these
discussions, need make the futile suggestion of sending petitions and
delegations to the authorities. All that would be a waste of time. "Human
compassion is at an end. Christ crucified demands of us that we follow
Him in his passion. There is nothing left us but to die. . . ."

 

 

Here Ter Haigasun paused for a scarcely perceptible instant, before
concluding on a new note: "The one question is -- how?"

 

 

"How?" shouted Pastor Aram Tomasian, and pushed his way quickly out beside
the priest. "I know how I mean to die -- not like a defenceless sheep,
not on the road to Deir ez-Zor, not in the filth of a concentration camp,
not of hunger, and not of the stinking plague -- no! I mean to die on
the threshold of my own house, with a gun in my hand. Christ will help
me to it, Whose word I preach. And my wife shall die with me, and the
unborn child in her womb. . . ."

 

 

This outburst had almost broken Aram's chest. He pressed his hands on
his midriff, to get his breath again. Then, more quietly, he began to
tell them what life had been in the convoy, what he himself had had to
suffer, though only in the mildest form, for a very short time.

 

 

"No one can possibly know what it's like, beforehand. One only begins to
realize at the last minute, as the officer gives the order to move off,
as the church and houses, when you look back on them, get smaller and
smaller, till they vanish. . . ."