Forty Days of Musa Dagh Read online

  Midway to Yoghonoluk the old gendarme, Ali Nassif, passed them. That worthy saptieh was one of the ten Turks who for many years had lived among the Armenians in these villages in peace and amity with them. Besides himself, the only Turks worth mentioning here were the five gendarmes at his orders, composing his gendarmerie post. They were often changed, but he remained, as firm as Musa Dagh itself. The only other representative of Ottoman authority was the deformed postman, who lived here with his family and on Wednesdays and Sundays brought the post in from Antioch.

  Today Ali Nassif looked worried. This scrubby functionary of the Sublime Porte seemed to be in a very great hurry. His pock-marked face glistened with perspiration under his Turkish cap. His martial cavalry sword kept clattering against his bowed legs. Usually the sight of Bagradian Effendi was enough to make him turn a reverent face; today he only saluted stiffly, though even his salute had a worried look. This change of manner struck Gabriel so, that for some minutes he stood looking after him.

  A few stragglers were still hastening over the square before the church of Yoghonoluk -- the late-comers who lived a long way off. Women in gaily patterned head-scarves and puffed-out coats. Men wearing the shalwar, in baggy trousers, and over these the entari, a kind of gaberdine. Their faces all looked serious and withdrawn. This sun had akeady the power of summer in it; the chalk-white houses glittered harshly. Most were single-storied and freshly daubed: Ter Haigasun's presbytery, the doctor's house, the apothecary, the big council-house, owned by the chief of Yoghonoluk's notables, that rich mukhtar Thomas Kebussyan. The Church of the Ever-Increasing Angelic Powers was built on a wide pediment. Unbalustered steps led up to its portals. Avetis Bagradian, its donor, had copied on a smaller scale a certain famous national edifice in the Caucasus. The voices of the choir, singing mass, flowed out through its open doorways. Away, beyond the dense congregation, the altar, pale with lit tapers, shone in the gloom. The gold cross gleamed on the back of Ter Haigasun's red vestment.

  Gabriel and Stephan went up the steps. Samuel Avakian, Stephan's tutor, met them. He had been waiting impatiently.

  "Go along in, Stephan," he ordered his pupil. "Your mother's waiting for you."

  Then, when Stephan had vanished through the buzzing congregation he turned quietly to his employer. "I only wanted to tell you that they've been here, asking for your passports. Travelling passport and passport for the interior. Three officials came from Antioch."

  Gabriel glanced sharply at the student's face, He had lived for some years as one of the family. It was the face of an Armenian intellectual. A rather sloping forehead. Watchful, deeply troubled eyes behind glasses. An expression of eternal surrender to fate, but at the same time a sharp look of being on guard, ready every second to parry an attacker's blow. Only after a few instants' concentrated study of that face did Bagradian ask: "And what have you done?"

  "Madame gave the officials all they wanted."

  "Even the passport for the interior?"

  "Yes, foreign passport and teskeré."

  Gabriel turned back down the church steps to light a cigarette. He drew a few deeply reflective puffs. The passport for the interior is a document which gives its possessor freedom to move as he pleases over the length and breadth of the Ottoman empire. In theory, without this scrap of paper a subject of the Sultan has no right to move from his village into the next. Gabriel threw away his cigarette and straightened his shoulders with a jerk. "It only means that today or tomorrow I shall have to join my battery in Aleppo."

  Avakian stood looking down at a deeply sunken wheel-rut, left by the last rains in the loam of the church square. "I don't think it means your marching orders for Aleppo, Effendi."

  "It can't mean anything else."

  Avakian's voice had become very quiet. "They made me give them mine, as well."

  Bagradian, who had begun to laugh, checked himself. "That only means you'll have to go to Aleppo to be medically examined, my dear Avakian. This time it isn't a joke. But don't you worry. We'll manage the military tax again for you, all right. I need you for Stephan."

  Still Avakian did not raise his eyes from the wheel-rut. "Dr. Altouni, Apothecary Krikor, and Pastor Nokhudian certainly aren't of military age, though I may be. They've all had their teskerés taken away from them."

  "Are you certain of that?" Gabriel was beginning to lose his temper. "Who demanded them? What sort of officials? What grounds did they state? And where are these gentry, that's the main thing? I feel very much inclined to have a word with them."

  He learned that it was nearly half an hour since the officials, escorted by mounted gendarmes, had vanished in the direction of Suedia. Judging by their demands it could only be a question of village notables, since the common craftsman and peasant owns no teskeré, but at most a written permission from the market in Antioch.

  Gabriel took a few long strides to and fro, no longer noticing the tutor. At last he said to him: "Go on into church, Avakian. I'll follow you."

  But he did not so much as think of hearing the rest of the mass, whose many-voiced choral that same instant came out to him in an especially loud burst of devotion. His head was on one side, sharply reflective, as he wandered back across the square, walked a little way down the village street, and left it where the road forked to the villa. Without even entering the house, he stopped at the stables to tell them to saddle one of his horses, which had once been the pride of Avetis, his brother. Unluckily no Kristaphor was there to accompany him. So he took a stable-boy. He had not yet made up his mind what to do.

  But an hour's quick riding would get him to Antioch.

  2. KONAK - HAMAM - SELAMLIK

  The Hükümet of Antioch, as the government konak of the Kaimakam was often called, stood under the hill of the citadel. A drab but extensive building, since the Kazah Antakiya is one of the most extensive Syrian provinces.

  Gabriel Bagradian, who had left his boy with the horses at the Orontes bridge, had already waited some time in the big central office of the konak. He hoped to be received by the Kaimakam himself, to whom he had sent in his card.

  A Turkish government office like all the others Gabriel knew so well; on the mottled wall, from which plaster was crumbling, a clumsy portrait of the Sultan and a couple of sayings from the Koran. Nearly every windowpane had been cracked and repaired with oil paper. The filthy deal floor strewn with gobbets of spittle and cigarette-ends. Some minor official sat behind an empty desk, sucking his teeth and gazing out into space. An unopposed legion of portly flies were engaged in a fierce, disgusting concert. Low benches ran round the walls. A few people were waiting - Turkish and Arab peasants. One, not too squeamish, squatted on the floor, spreading his long garments out around him, as though he could not embrace enough of its filth. A sour aroma like that of Russia leather, made up of sweat, stale tobacco, sloth and poverty, infested the room. Gabriel knew that the district head offices of the various peoples had each its distinctive smell. But this stink of fear and kismet was common to all of them -- of little people receiving the impact of the state as a natural and monstrous force.

  At last the gaudily patterned doorkeeper conducted him negligently into a small room, differing from the other by its rugs, its intact windowpanes its desk, thickly strewn with documents, its attempt at cleanliness. The walls displayed no portrait of the Sultan, but a huge photograph of Enver Pasha on horseback. Gabriel found himself facing a young man, with reddish hair, freckles, a small, military moustache. This was not the Kaimakam, only a müdir in charge of the coastal district, the nahiyeh of Suedia. The most noticeable thing about the müdir were his long, scrupulously manicured fingernails. He was wearing a grey suit, which seemed a little too tight even for his measly person; with it a red tie and canary-yellow lace-up boots. Bagradian knew at once -- Salonika! He had no reason for knowing it except the young man's outward appearance. Salonika had been the birthplace of the Turkish nationalist movement, of frantic Westernization, boundless reverence of Western progress in all its f
orms. Doubtless this müdir was a hanger-on, perhaps even a member of Ittihad, that secretive "Comité pour l'union et le progrčs," which today held unimpeded dominion over the Caliph's state. He was excessively polite to his visitor. He got up and himself brought the chair to the desk. Most of the time his red-rimmed eyes, with the sparse lashes of red-haired people, looked past Bagradian.

  Gabriel rather stressed his name. The müdir nodded, almost imperceptibly. "The highly esteemed Bagradian family is known to us."

  It cannot be denied that his tone and words produced a certain glow of satisfaction in Gabriel, whose voice became more assured. "Today certain citizens of my village -- I was among them -- have had our passports taken away. Is that official? Did you know of it?"

  After long reflection and fumbling among documents, the müdir announced that, with all the press of official business, he found it impossible to put his hand on every trifle directly. At last light dawned. "Oh, yes, of course. The passports for the interior. That's not an independent ruling of the kazah -- it's a new order from His Excellency the Minister of the Interior."

  Now at last he had found the crumpled sheet, which he spread in front of him. He seemed willing, on request, to read the full text of this decree of His Excellency Taalat Bey. Gabriel asked if the order were to be generally applied. The answer sounded rather evasive. The mass of people would scarcely be affected by it, since usually only the richer shopkeepers, merchants, and such like owned a pass for the interior. Gabriel stared at the long fingernails. "I've lived most of my life abroad, in Paris -- "

  Again the official slightly inclined his head. "We know that, Effendi."

  "And so I'm not very used to these deprivations of liberty."

  The müdir smiled an indulgent smile. "You over-rate the matter, Effendi. This is wartime. And nowadays even German, French, and English citizens find they have to submit to a great deal to which they used not to be accustomed. All over Europe it's much the same as it is here. May I also remind you that this is the war zone of the fourth army, and therefore a military area? It's absolutely essential to keep some control of people's movements."

  These reasons sounded so cogent that Gabriel Bagradian felt relieved. That morning's event, which had brought him to Antioch, suddenly seemed to lose its astringent quality. He had been hearing rumors everywhere of traitors, deserters, spies. The state had to protect itself. Impossible to judge such measures as this by the hole-and-corner methods of Yoghonoluk. And the müdir's further observations were of a kind to allay Armenian mistrust. The Minister had, to be sure, withdrawn all passports, but this did not mean that, in certain cases, new ones might not be procurable. The vilayet office in Aleppo was the competent authority for these. Bagradian Effendi must know himself that the Wali, Djelal Bey, was the most just and benevolent governor of the whole empire. A request, backed by recommendations from these offices, would be sent to Aleppo. . . . The müdir broke off: "Unless I'm mistaken, Effendi, you're liable for military service."

  Gabriel gave a short account of the matter. Yesterday, perhaps, he might still have asked the official to find out why no marching-orders had reached him. But the last few hours had altered everything. The thought of war -- of Juliette and Stephan -- oppressed him. His sense of duty as a Turkish officer had evaporated. He hoped now that the battery in Aleppo had forgotten him and he felt no desire to attract attention. But it struck him how well informed these Antioch officials seemed to be, of all that concerned him.

  The müdir's red-rimmed eyes transmitted his satisfaction. "So that now, Effendi, you are, so to speak, a soldier on leave. So, for you, there can be no question of any teskeré."

  "But my wife and son . . . ?"

  As he said this (it seemed to mystify the müdir), Gabriel felt for the first time: "We're in a trap. . . ."

  That same instant the double doors into the next office were pushed open. There entered two gentlemen. One was an elderly officer; the other, doubtless, the Kaimakam. This provincial governor was a big, puffy-looking man, in a grey, crumpled frock coat. Heavy, dark-brown pouches under the eyes, in the sallow face of a dyspeptic. Bagradian and the müdir rose. The Kaimakam paid not the least attention to the Armenian. In a low voice he gave some directions to his subordinate, raised a hand carelessly to his fez, and, followed by the major, walked out of the office, since he seemed to have finished his day's work.

  Gabriel stared at the door. "Are you making distinctions between officers, then?"

  The müdir had begun to tidy his desk. "I don't quite know what you mean, Effendi."

  "I meant, are Turks and Armenians to be given separate treatment?"

  This seemed to horrify the müdir. "Every Ottoman subject is equal before the law."

  That, he continued, had been the most important achievement of the revolution of 1908. That certain habits of pre-revolutionary days should still persist -- as for instance the preferential treatment of Ottomans in military and government offices -- that was one of the things that could never be altered by act of parliament. Peoples did not change as quickly as did their constitutions, and reforms were far easier on paper than in reality. He concluded his excursion into political theory: "The war will bring a great many important changes."

  Gabriel took this for a hopeful prophecy. But the müdir suddenly jerked his freckled face, which, for no apparent reason, was twitching with hate.

  "Meanwhile let us hope that no incidents will force the government to relentless severity with certain sections of the populace."

  When Gabriel Bagradian turned into the bazaar at Antioch, he had made up his mind on two points. If they called him up, he would not shrink from any sacrifice to buy himself clear of the army. And he would await the end of the war in the peace and quiet of his house at Yoghonoluk, unmolested and unperceived. Surely, since this was the spring of 1915, it could only be a few months before peace was signed. He reckoned on September or October. Surely none of the Powers would dare another winter campaign. Till peace he would have to make the best of things and then -- back to Paris, as fast as possible.

  The bazaar bore him along. That deep surge which knows none of the ebb and flow, the hurry, of a crowd along a European pavement, which rolls on with an irresistible, even motion as time flows on into eternity. He might not have been in this God-forsaken provincial hole, Antakiya, but transported to Aleppo or Damascus, so inexhaustibly did the two opposing streams of the bazaar surge past each other. Turks in European dress, wearing the fez, with stand-up collars and walking-sticks, officials or merchants. Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, these too in European dress, but with different headgear. In and out among them, Kurds and Circassians in their tribal garb. Most displayed weapons. For the government, which in the case of Christian peoples viewed every pocketknife with mistrust, tolerated the latest infantry rifles in the hands of these restless mountaineers; it even supplied them. Arab peasants, in from the neighborhood. Also a few bedouins from the south, in long, many-folded cloaks, desert-hued, in picturesque tarbushes, the silken fringes of which hung over their shoulders. Women in charshaffes, the modest attire of female Moslems. But then, too, the unveiled, the emancipated, in frocks that left free silk-stockinged legs. Here and there, in this stream of human beings, a donkey, under a heavy load, the hopeless proletarian among beasts. To Gabriel it seemed always the same donkey which came stumbling past him in a coma, with the same ragged fellow tugging his bridle. But this whole world, men, women, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, with trench-brown soldiers in its midst -- its goats, its donkeys -- was smelted together into an indescribable unity by its gait -- a long stride, slow and undulating, moving onwards irresistibly, to a goal not to be determined.

  And Gabriel smelt the savors of his childhood. The whiff of seething oil of sesame, which came in sharp gusts across the street through crevices in the herbalists' vats, the onion-laden reek of mutton fricassees, simmering over open fires. The stench of rotting vegetables. And of humanity, more noisome than all the rest, which slept in the clothes it
wore by day.

  He recognized the yearning cries of the street-venders: Jâ rezzah, jâ kerim, jâ fettah, jâ alim -- so the boy who offered for sale his rings of white bread from a basket still chanted sentimentally. -- "O All-Nourisher, O All-Good, O All-Provident, O Knower of all things." The ancient cry of the ages still proffered fresh dates -- "Thou brown one, O brown of the desert, O maiden." The salad-vender retained his throaty conviction: "Ed daim Allah, Allah ed daim" -- that the Everlasting alone was God, that God alone was the Everlasting -- some consolation, in view of his wares, to the purchaser. Gabriel bought a berazik, a little cake spread with grape syrup. This "food for swallows" also brought its memories of childhood. But the first bite of it turned his stomach, and he gave the sweetmeat to a youngster who had stood in rapture, eyeing his mouth.