Forty Days of Musa Dagh (48 page)

 

 

The old, good-tempered bimbashi with the rosy cheeks put on his glasses,
although there was nothing for him to read. He may simply have wanted
to point out that he was the most farsighted man in the room. He nodded
severely at the mülasim. "This misfortune is the direct result of your
stupidity and carelessness. It's down in regulations that you've got to
reconnoitre any enemy position before advancing on it. But, now that
it's got so far, I ask the Kaimakam: What's to be done about it? Must
we sacrifice even more of our men? Or shall we leave these cursed swine
in peace, to starve on their mountain? What harm do they do us? This
deportation is your business, not ours. Why don't you civilians get on
with it? If they really have got ten thousand rifles . . . ?"

 

 

The red-haired müdir raised his hand to speak. "They haven't five hundred,
not even three -- I ought to know, since I'm in charge of that nahiyeh,
and went to the villages."

 

 

The bimbashi took off his glasses, as purposelessly as he had put them on.
"I think it would be best to suppress the incident. They've deported
themselves. What more do we want? You've got all sorts of people along the
coast, Greeks and Arabs. . . . Am I to be asked to make myself ridiculous
by waging a little war under their noses? If I sweep up every detached
unit in the kazah, I shan't get together four regular companies. And
the Chettehs, the Kurds, and whatever other scum I could lay hands on
wouldn't only go for the Armenians -- they'd go for us! Believe me,
it's far wiser to say no more about it."

 

 

The morose yüs-bashi with the deep-set eyes had for an hour lit one
cigarette from the last. He had not said a word. Now he stood up, and
respectfully fronted his superior. "Bimbashi Effendi, will you allow
me please to express my most respectful surprise at what you've just
said? How can we possibly hush this matter up when a company commander,
three officers, and a hundred men have all been slaughtered? Even now I
suggest it's unforgivably slack of us to have delayed so long with our
report. The instant this conference is over, I shall have to draw it up,
at your orders, to be sent on to G.H.Q."

 

 

The bimbashi collapsed. His cheeks turned rosier still; first because
the major was right -- he always was -- and second because he was a Satan.

 

 

Now at last the Kaimakam seemed to rouse himself from his long, impersonal
meditations: "I shall liquidate this affair within my own province."

 

 

This was his astute bureaucratic way of proclaiming a highly involved
decision, to which fear of the Wali of Aleppo mainly contributed. Sharp
daily instructions kept demanding that the deportation order should be
enforced with an almost apoplectic zeal. The resistance of these seven
villages might break the Kaimakam, since it implied slack surveillance
and incomplete disarmament. Should the Wali receive a plain unvarnished
tale of the affair, the Kaimakam might look for the worst from him and
from Ittihad. His civil report would have to be most delicately phrased.

 

 

The old bimbashi remarked obtusely: "How can you liquidate it, when your
saptiehs are all on convoy duty, and your soldiers all at the front?"
He blinked, and glowered at the major. "As for you, Yüs-Bashi, I order
you, in your report to G.H.Q. to ask for four battalions and field
artillery. We can't surround a huge great mountain of that sort without
troops and without guns."

 

 

The yüs-bashi did not seem to notice the old man's rage. "Bimbashi Effendi,
I quite understand your order. His Excellency General Jemal Pasha has
all such matters personally explained to him. I think you may be certain
he'll back you up. These Armenian deportations are, after all, the work
of his friends. He certainly won't let a few lousy Christian peasants
play about with you."

 

 

The Kaimakam, who meanwhile seemed to have fallen asleep again, had
already decided his course of action. He must ally himself with the
strongest man in the room, the major, and, to that end, throw the old
bimbashi to the wolves. So the Kaimakam nearly yawned his head off,
and rapped the table with the ivory handle of his cane: "I dismiss this
session, and would request a few minutes' private conversation with
the yüs-bashi, to decide on our joint report to the civil and military
authorities. Bimbashi Effendi, I'll submit mine to you for endorsement."

 

 

Next day two long and involved accounts left Antioch. The very severe
acknowledgments took five more days in which to arrive. Musa Dagh,
so these orders ran, must be taken with what material was to hand,
and instantly cleared, whatever happened. The only concession to the
bimbashi was the loan of a couple of 10 cm. howitzers, already on their
way to Aleppo from Hama, and now to be diverted to Antakiya. It was seven
days before this artillery arrived. A very callow young lieutenant,
three corporals, twelve old reservist artillery men, and a few filthy
privates for dragging purposes, composed the crew. It would be almost
impossible to use howitzers of this pattern in the mountains.

 

 

 

 

In a sense Stephan had a more difficult time of it than his father,
whose earliest memories linked him to Musa Dagh. Yet Stephan, in this
short time, seemed to have forgotten his previous life, his fourteen years
of Europe. He had sunk, if one is to call it sinking, back into his race.
But not so Gabriel. Gabriel's very marriage had placed him between two
blood-streams. At first he had even felt it rather tactless that he, a
foreigner, should force a plan to save them upon these natives. Perhaps
that was the deepest reason for those solemn, yet disconsolate emotions
which invaded him on the night of August 4.

 

 

Stephan was different. Though two blood-streams ran in his veins, his
mother's seemed to have lost all influence. He had become what all the
others he mixed with were -- an oriental schoolboy. Why? He could not have
asserted himself among them otherwise. These pompously conceited, apishly
pliant schoolboys were not in the least impressed by the well-brought-up
young Stephan's western attainments. The most fluent written and spoken
French was no use here. When he told them of European cities, they only
ragged him. Howls of derision greeted his habit of carrying school books
under his arm instead of on his head as they did. What other way could
you possibly carry books? Had Stephan been soft, he would at once have
gone running to his father and begged to be taken away from school. As
it was, he took up the challenge. He had had to quarrel for several days
with his mother to get permission to wear Armenian dress. In his new
clothes Stephan, who was a handsome boy, looked like the young prince on
a Persian miniature. This Juliette could feel, but she felt more strongly
that this prince had nothing to do with Stephan, her boy. So they struck
a bargain. Stephan might go to school in "fancy dress," but must wear
ordinary clothes at home. Since after the flight to the Damlayik there
was no longer any "home" to be normal in, the contract fell through.

 

 

Yes, Stephan was completely changed. But no one knew what efforts it had
cost him to go back, in this fashion, to the primitive. He could wear the
same clothes as the others. But at first they were disastrously clean,
and without one rent in them. This cleanness was a serious drawback --
and he admitted that he had only himself to thank. He still found it hard
not to dislike himself for having dirty hands and feet, thick black nails,
and uncombed hair. When one day, still in Yoghonoluk, he had managed to
get lice in his head, so that Maman, with squeamish hands, tied a napkin
soaked in petrol round his hair, he had felt thoroughly miserable. Stephan
had permanent disadvantages, as compared to the other village boys. His
feet, for instance, no matter how much trouble he might take with them,
dabble them as he would in slime and dust -- to how many dangerous climbs
had he not exposed them? -- remained white and pampered. He could achieve
no more than tan, blisters, kibes, which, besides being very painful,
gave Maman her pretext for keeping him in the house. How he envied
the other boys their impervious feet; brown, shrunken claws, vastly
superior to his. Stephan had really to suffer before he could establish
his position. The village boys let him feel he was not their equal,
that not all the splendors of Villa Bagradian, including Avakian and
the household staff, impressed them enough to make him acceptable. What
assets had Stephan to strengthen him in this curious struggle? Ambition,
energy, which he usually turned against his own body, and one other
quality which these village boys did not possess. Even Haik, already
past fourteen, muscular, tall, and well set up, the undisputed head
of the gang, could not boast the purposeful concentration, the planned
logical thought, which Stephan had brought with him from Europe. As a rule
these Orientals forgot a scheme before they had half carried it through;
they were swirled about by their short-lived notions, instinctive urges,
like leaves in the wind. Anyone watching them after school might have
fancied them a pack of excited young animals, rushing here and there to
no end, impelled by one vague impulse after another. When, like a swarm
of birds, they alighted on some wide, unguarded orchard, this might be
considered a purposeful enterprise -- but far more often they would all
go darting off into mountain thickets, urged on by demons, or cluster
about a stagnant pond, or rush through the fields, to twirl and wallow in
their sensations. Such excursions often ended in a religious, or better,
a kind of pagan ritual, but of this they themselves were, of course,
unaware. it began by their forming a ring, clasping each other, humming
faintly, till their heads began to loll, till their voices, their swaying
rhythm, rose and rose, till at last they all burst forth in a howling
tumult, beyond description. On many this rite was of such potency that
their eyes turned up, and foam stood out on their lips. They, in their
simplicity, only practised the ancient, well-known attempt of certain
dervishes to get into secret touch with the primal force of the universe,
by means of such epileptic self-conquest. They had seen no grown-up do
anything like it, but their need for such exultant self-conquest was in
the very air of this countryside. Naturally Stephan, the European, was
the puzzled, hopeless spectator of these ecstasies. He, of necessity,
lacked one strength -- the very faculty most predominant in the lives
of all these other boys -- a kind of clear-sighted rapport with nature,
impossible to put into words. Just as a good swimmer can lie, sit,
stand, walk, or dance, entirely "in his element," in the waves, with a
physical ease that is indescribable, so were these children of Musa Dagh
indescribably "in their element," in the country that lay around it. They
were interwoven with the very nature in which they lived. Their hills
were as much a part of them as their flesh, so that to differentiate
between outward and inward became impossible. Every leaf that stirred,
every fruit that dropped, the rustling of a lizard, the faint plash of
a far-off waterfall -- these myriad stirrings had ceased to be mirrored
by their senses; they formed the very heart of those senses themselves,
as though each child were himself a little Musa Dagh, creating it all with
his own body. These bodies were like carrier pigeons, whose inhuman sense
of direction can never err. They were like slender, pliant dowsing-rods;
their twitchings proclaimed the hidden treasures of the earth. Young
Stephan, who for far too long had had his feet upon dead pavements, had,
it is true, an adroit and active, but a numbed, body by comparison.

 

 

But when the villages set up their camp on the Damlayik, when these aimless
rovings came to an end, and discipline and purposeful activity were required
of schoolboys, Stephan's prestige increased by leaps and bounds. The
reflected glory of his father's leadership contributed. This cohort of
half-grown boys ranged from ten to fifteen years of age. Of the few girls
none were older than eleven, since girls of twelve in eastern villages are
already considered to be ripe. And Ter Haigasun had given orders that even
the elder among the boys must go to school in their hours off duty. They
seldom managed it, since either their masters were in the trenches,
or shirked classes, which they considered entirely unnecessary. Hapeth
Shatakhian led the scouts' group, Avakian set the orderlies their tasks,
but, apart from these, the three hundred or more boys of the "cavalry"
were left to their own devices most of the day. They strayed about the
Damlayik plateau, making every knoll, crevice, gully insecure. They
would even dare to play in the trenches and embitter the lives of the
decads, drilling under Nurhan's scourge, by inquisitive and sardonic
hanging about. These aimless wanderings were forbidden. Then they grew
impudent, and began to break the bounds of the camp, strayed off on
to the heights beyond the Saddle, which faced the valley, or into the
rocks and stream beds of the coast side. It was strictly forbidden on
the Damlayik to go outside the Town Enclosure. But the gang managed never
to be caught. Stephan and Haik, of course, were involved. Sato, too, had
slipped in among them and now she was not to be got rid of. Although the
Bagradian family had given shelter to this strange bastard, the villagers
still objected to having her in contact with their children. So that Sato
depended entirely on the good, or bad, temper of the gang. One day they
thrashed her, the next they let her come along. She lived on the verge,
here as everywhere. She scurried over sticks and stones with them, never
close behind the rest, but always a good way to the side. When the gang
squatted together in the ilex gully, or in any other place out of bounds,
bragging, thinking vaguely of new schemes, or only, as its habit was,
intensifying the quality of existence by wild, collective swayings
of the body, Sato's thirsty eyes would stare across from out of her
solitude. Then the eternal, gabbling pariah mingled her voice with that
of the choir and, still apart, gave imitations of their wild swayings.