Forty Days of Musa Dagh (30 page)

 

 

Aram described the eternal route, from stage to stage, with one's feet
getting worse every day, one's body swelling -- with fainting people
left to die on the roads, with people who dragged themselves along, till
gradually they got to be like beasts, with people who perished one by one,
under daily thrashings from the saptiehs. His words themselves descended
on the crowd like cudgel-blows. . . . Yet, strangely, not a cry had risen
from the agonized souls of these thousands, not one wild outburst. They
stood, still staring up at the small group of people round the house
door, as they might have at a group of tragic actors playing what did
not directly concern them. These vine- and fruit-growers, wood-carvers,
comb-makers, bee-keepers, silkworm-breeders, who had felt so long that
this would happen, could not grasp it with their minds, now it was
here. The haggard faces still looked puzzled and concentrated. The
life-force in them was still struggling to pierce the sick chrysalis
stage of the last few weeks.

 

 

Aram Tomasian shouted: "Blessed are the dead, for with them it is
all over."

 

 

Here, for the first time, an indescribable moan passed through the listeners.
It was not an outcry, but a long, sighing, groaning breath, a huge, swelling
sigh, as though not human beings were sighing, but the suffering earth
itself.

 

 

Aram's voice sharply capped this threnody: "We, too, want to get death
over as fast as possible. Therefore we must defend our homes, so that
all of us, men, women, children, may find a quick death."

 

 

"Why death?"

 

 

This had come from Gabriel Bagradian. A light, somewhere deep down in
his consciousness, seemed to ask him, even as he heard himself: "Is that
I?" His heart beat quietly. The strained vacillation was past and gone
-- for ever. Great certainty possessed him. All the muscles of his body
were relaxed. He knew with his whole being: "For this one second it's
worth while to have lived." Always, when talking to these villagers,
his Armenian had seemed labored and embarrassed. But now it was not he
who spoke to them -- and this knowledge brought him complete peace --
it was the force which had brought him here, down the long, winding road
of centuries, the short, twisted path of his own life. He listened in
amazement to this power, as it found the words in him so naturally.

 

 

"My brothers and sisters, I haven't lived among you. That's true. . . .
I was a stranger to my home and no longer knew you. . . . And then . . .
no doubt because of this, God sent me back from the big cities of the
West to this old villa, which was my grandfather's. . . . And so now I'm
no longer the guest, almost the stranger, I was among you, for my fate will
be exactly the same as yours. . . . With you I shall either live or die.
. . . The government means to spare me less than any of you, I know that.
. . . They hate and persecute my kind worst of all. . . . I'm forced, just
like all of you, to protect the lives of my wife and family. . . . And so,
for weeks now, I've been carefully thinking out what possible ways we have
of defending ourselves. . . . Listen here, I was terribly scared at first,
but I'm not now, any longer. . . . I' m full of hope. . . . With God's help,
we aren't going to die. . . . I' m not telling you this as a vain fool,
but as a man who's seen what war is, as an officer. . . ."

 

 

His thoughts found clearer and clearer words. The intense, concentrated
labor of the last few weeks was coming in useful. The number of fully
thought-out problems gave him more and more inner certainty. This
certainty of systematic thought -- thought, as he had learned it
in Europe -- raised him far above these dully resigned prisoners of
fate. This same sensation of playful mastery had been his as a young
man when at examinations he found that he could answer some question
with an exhaustive knowledge, which at the same time selected its own
method of answering. He disposed of Aram's desperate speech without once
mentioning it directly. It would be a senseless attempt, to defy the
saptiehs in the streets, at house doors. It might perhaps be surprisingly
successful for a few hours, but would only lead all the more inevitably,
not to a quick death, but to a slow one, by torture, with the rape and
befoulment of all the women. He, Bagradian, also wanted resistance. To
the last drop of their blood. But there were better places to fight in
than the valley, the village streets. He pointed in the direction of
Musa Dagh, whose peaks, towering behind the roof, seemed to look down
and take part in the great assembly. They probably all remembered the
old stories in which the Damlayik had offered help and protection to
escaping Armenians. "And it would need a very big force really to surround
and storm the Damlayik. Jemal Pasha needs every man he can get. He has
something more important to do than turn out a few thousand Armenians. We
shall easily finish off the saptiehs. A few hundred determined men with
rifles are all we need to defend the mountain. We have the men, and the
rifles too."

 

 

He raised his hand, as though for an oath. "I engage myself, here, before
you all, to lead that defense in such a way that our women and children
will live longer than they would on a convoy. We can hold out for several
weeks, maybe for months. Who knows? Perhaps by then God will grant that
the war may be over. Then we're certain to be relieved. And, even if
peace doesn't come, we've still always got the sea behind us. Cyprus,
with its French and English battleships, is near. Mayn't we hope that
one day one of those ships will come down the coast, and that we shall
reach it with our signals, and get help? But, even if there's no such good
fortune in store for us, there'll still be plenty of time for dying. And
then at least we shan't need to despise ourselves as defenseless sheep."

 

 

The effect of this speech was by no means clear. It looked as though now,
for the first time, these people were being roused out of their torpor
to the full consciousness of their fate. Gabriel thought at first that
either they had not understood him or were rejecting his scheme with
howls of rage. This solid mass fell apart. Women screamed. An impact of
hoarse, masculine oaths. A lurching, this way and that. Where were the
furrowed and resigned grief-stricken peasant faces, and where the veils
of deathly quiet? A savage brawl seemed to begin. The men yelled at one
another, they shouted and tugged at each other's clothes, each other's
beards even. Yet all this was far less disputation than it was a wild
unburdening, a blowing sky-high of the rigid impotence, the stealthy
consciousness of death -- violently released by these first words of
trust and energy.

 

 

What? Among these thousands, who now bellowed and raved in this unchained
torrent of desperation, had there not been one to conceive this very simple
thought in the long days of suspense allowed them? A thought so close to
them by tradition? Had it needed a "gentleman from Europe," a "strong man,"
to come and speak it? Yes, the same thought had occurred to many among
these thousands, but only as an idle daydream. Nor, in their most secret
conversations had it ever forced its way to utterance. Till a few hours
before they had all still told themselves, lost in their artificial stupor,
that this nemesis might draw in its claws and drift away across Musa Dagh.
After all, what were they? Wretched villagers, a persecuted race on a
beleaguered island, without a city at their backs. There were few Armenians
in Antioch, and such as lived there were money-changers, bazaar merchants,
speculators in grain, and so by no means the right sort of agitators and
allies. And again, in Alexandretta there was only a very small, rich colony
-- bankers and war contractors -- who lived in ornate villas, just as they
did in Beirut. Such anxious magnates had not even a thought for the petty
mountaineers of Musa Dagh. There was not one such individual as old
Avetis Bagradian among them. They bolted the shutters of their villas
and crept into the darkest corner to hide. Two or three, to save their
lives and property, had gone over to Islam, submitted themselves to
the blunt, circumcising knife of the mullah. Oh, those people in the
far northeast had an easy time of it -- those citizens of Van and Urfa.
Van and Urfa were the two big Armenian towns, full of weapons and traditional
defiance. There were clever people there, the deputies of the Dashnakzagan.
There it was easy to talk of resistance and to organize it. But who would
dare speak such impious thoughts in wretched Yoghonolulk? Armed resistance
to the civil and military powers? Everyone born in these parts felt in his
bones a respect, mingled with terror, of the state. The state, the hereditary
enemy. The state -- that is to say, the saptieh, who could arrest or thrash
you for no reason; the state -- that is to say the filthy government office,
with its picture of the Sultan, its text from the Koran, its spittle-covered
tiles, where one paid one's bedel. The state meant huge, forbidding barrack
squares, where one served as a private under the fists of the chaush,
the onbashi, and where a special form of bastinado had been devised to
punish Armenians. So that therefore it is more than comprehensible that
-- apart from Pastor Tomasian's futile outburst -- it should have been a
stranger, a freed man, not a native, who hurled down the first systematic
thought of resistance into this crowd. Only such an emancipated foreigner
had the necessary freedom from guilty feelings to enable him to speak out
such a thought. And the people was still far from feeling at home in it.
It looked as if this brawl would never end. It kept increasing. Voices
snarled, and fists were shaken, in a fashion altogether incongruous to
these usually shy women and grave men. Naturally, too, the children, whose
mothers were either nursing them or carrying them pickaback, sharpened the
general hubbub with their wails. No doubt even they could sense in their
souls the peril of this moment and with shrill sobs struggled against
impending death. Gabriel looked down silently into the whirlpool.
Ter Haigasun came towards him. He touched Bagradian's shoulder with all
ten finger tips. It was the embryonic attempt at an embrace, a gesture
at once of blessing and abnegation. Gabriel may perhaps have read in
the depths of those resolute, humble eyes: "So we've joined forces then,
without saying a word to each other." This attempt at an embrace at once
embarrassed and held Gabriel rigid. Ter Haigasun's emaciated fingers
slipped down off his shoulders.

 

 

Meanwhile Pastor Harutiun Nokhudian was doing his best to subdue the
crowd. The small, spare man had to struggle with his wife as he was
doing it, who thrust herself against him and did her best to prevent his
saying anything imprudent. He could only manage to make himself heard
by degrees. His reedy voice had to strain itself to its highest pitch:
"Christ strictly enjoins us not to withstand authority. Christ strictly
enjoins us not to resist evil. My office is the gospel. As the shepherd
of my flock, I must disapprove of all recalcitrance."

 

 

This pastor, whom Bagradian always considered as an ailing, timid little man,
showed great resolution in defending his own point of view. He described
the consequences of armed resistance as he foresaw them. Such a revolt
would at last give the government its right to change an infamous decree
into a ruthlessly vindictive extermination. And then death would have
ceased to be a meritorious discipleship to Christ's passion, it would
have become the lawful punishment of rebels. Not only would the souls
of all these here assembled be cursed by God for impious rebellion,
but its last effects would inevitably be felt by the whole people --
it would be used against all Armenian sons and daughters. They would
have given their masters the welcome pretext to brand the Armenian millet
before the whole world as disturbers of the common peace -- as traitors.
A good woman, even if her husband ill-treats her, has no right to surrender
her house to strangers. Such was the view of Harutiun Nokhudian -- whose
own domestic arrangements did not go very far to bear out his contention,
since the wife of his bosom was his tyrant, and not only in what concerned
his health. His strained vocal cords nearly gave out.

 

 

"And which of us shall say for certain that our banishment must necessarily
end as Ter Haigasun and Aram Tomasian prophesy? Are not God's decrees
inscrutable for them also? Has He not the power to send help from all
sides? Are there not human beings everywhere, who can pity, even among
Turks, Kurds, Arabs? If we keep our trust in God, shall we not find
food and shelter everywhere? Even among strangers? Is it not possible
even now, while we despair, that help may be on its way? If it does not
reach us here, at least it may reach us in Aleppo. If not in Aleppo,
at least we may hope for the next halting-place. Our bodies may have
to suffer bitterly, but our souls will be free. If we have to choose
between sinful and innocent death, why should we choose to die in sin?"

 

 

Nokhudian could not finish his speech, for his thin voice was thrust out
of the way by the deep, decisive tones of a woman. Could this bellicose
matron in black really be little mother Antaram, the doctor's wife? Was
it really Mairik Antaram, the helpful, the succouring, the little mother
of village mothers, from whom the very people she helped and advised
scarcely ever heard a long speech? She was so excited that her black
lace shawl had slipped half off her hair, not yet entirely grey and
parted down the center. Her bold nose jutted imperiously from her
flushed face. That vigorous torso, springing up from between wide hips,
held high her erect head. The clear blue eyes were netted in a thousand
belligerent wrinkles. And yet Antaram Altouni's magnificent wrath made
her look young again.