Forty Days of Musa Dagh (37 page)

 

 

The quiet, which in spite of many soldiers lay over this square,
was odd and unnatural. Nor was it broken perceptibly by the presence
of a certain number of roughs, who had joined the saptiehs on their
way. The off-scourings of Antakiya and the bigger villages on its
outskirts poured their dregs into the valley of seven villages. On bare,
dirt-caked feet the scum came pattering -- from Mengulye, Hamblas,
and Bostan. From Tumama, Shahsini, Ain Yerab, and, further still, from
Beled es Sheikh. Eyes of unbridled covetousness darted up and down the
houses. Arab peasants from the El-Akra mountains in the south waited,
quietly squatting on their heels, on the fat event. Even a little group of
Ansariyes had come along -- the lowest pariahs of the prophet, nationless
half-Arab mobs of underlings, waiting to make the most of this rare
chance of feeling superior to somebody. There were also a few Mohajirs,
even now; war refugees sent by the government to the interior and invited
cordially to indemnify themselves with Armenian property. And, with such
simple plebeians, strange to relate, a ring of heavily veiled ladies,
in a half-circle of glowing timidity. There could be no doubts that
they came of the better classes. It could be seen by a glance at the
costly material of the cloaks drawn down over their faces, the texture
of their veils, the tiny mules or lacquered slippers which embellished
their braceleted feet. These women were the avid clients of the bargain
sale about to begin, and they waited impatiently. For weeks the whisper
had gone the rounds of the women's quarters of Suedia and El Eskel: "Oh,
haven't you heard? These Christians have the most marvellous things in
their houses, things we've never so much as heard of -- far too expensive
to buy." "Have you ever been inside an Armenian house, dear?" "I? No. But
the mullah's wife has been telling me all about it. You'll find cupboards
and cabinets with little towers on the top of them and pillars and
crowns. And you'll find very few sleeping-mats of the kind you lock away
in the daytime, but lots of real beds with carved flowers and forbidden
carved children's heads on them, beds for husband and wife as big as a
wali's carriage. You'll find clocks with gold eagles sitting on them,
or cuckoos jumping out of their insides and calling." "Well, there's
another proof that they're traitors, otherwise how could they ever get
furniture from Europe?" But it was just such household gear as this that
so powerfully attracted these ladies, to whom beautifully wrought brass
dishes, woven carpets, and copper braziers meant nothing.

 

 

The weird stillness was suddenly broken. The police chief, for some time
eager for a victim, had thrown himself on a villager imprudent enough
to come to his house door. The man was thrust into the middle of the
square. This police constable's face was characterized by two entirely
different eyes. His right eye was large and staring, the left little
and nearly closed up. His military moustache might threaten as fiercely
as it liked, his chin protrude itself as murderously -- his unequal
eyes condemned this police chief to a role of ferocious comicality, of
comic ferocity. Since he was always conscious of this defect, his fear
of making himself ridiculous caused him to exaggerate the authoritative
side of his personality. Therefore, though already by nature a bully,
he had also to play the bully's part. His staring eye did its best to
roll, as he bellowed at the captured villager:

 

 

"What's your priest called? What's the name of your mukhtar?"

 

 

The villager whispered an answer. The next minute a hundred voices were
shouting across the square: "Hello, Haigasun! Come out of your hiding-place!
Come on out, Kebussyan. Out with you, Haigasun and Kebussyan!"

 

 

Ter Haigasun had awaited the summons inside the church. After the holiday
mass, without having taken off his vestments, he had remained kneeling
before the altar with his deacons. He intended to face the saptiehs in
the glamour and sublimity of his office. This intention was entirely
characteristic. There was more in it than an empty gesture of ceremony,
there was a keenly psychological object. Every Oriental is filled with
sensations of holy awe by ceremonious pageantry and the splendor of
religious vestments. Ter Haigasun reckoned that his appearance as a
fully vested priest would mitigate the saptiehs' brutality. Slowly,
in purple and gold, he emerged from the doorway of his church. On his
head sparkled the tall Gregorian mitre, in his right hand he bore the
doctor's wand of the Armenian rite. And in fact this consecrated figure
served to dampen the spirits of the police chief, whose brutal voice
lost some of its certainty.

 

 

"You're the priest. You'll be answerable to me for everything that happens.
Everything! You understand?"

 

 

Ter Haigasun inclined his bloodless face in answer. In the strong
sunlight it looked like carved amber. He bowed his head and did not
answer. The head constable felt himself in danger of being polite --
that is to say, of becoming slack. His left, swollen eye had started to
twitch. These two sensations filled him with rising irritation. It was
high time to remind the müdir, his saptiehs, and this priest of his own
pulverizing authority. So with clenched fists he bore down on Ter Haigasun
but found that he had to halt in an uneasy posture of respect. All the
more, therefore, did his voice feel obliged to spread consternation,
the due effect of his own authoritative person.

 

 

"You'll deliver up all your weapons -- all of them! You understand?
You can look like a bazaar juggler all you want, but you're personally
responsible for every knife there is in the village."

 

 

"We have no weapons in the village."

 

 

This was perfectly true. Ter Haigasun spoke very quietly and steadily.
Meanwhile, in the dark hallway of the mukhtar's house, there was in progress
a minor tragi-comedy, which ended when the old village clerk with the
sly goatee came flying out of the door, which quickly slammed after
him. In this primitive fashion did Mukhtar Kebussyan, at this, the most
difficult juncture of his mayoralty, appoint his clerk to represent
him. The luckless pseudo-mukhtar, white as chalk, came stumbling into
the arms of the saptiehs, who thrust him forwards to their leader.

 

 

The clerk babbled an echo of Ter Haigasun: "We've got no weapons
in the village."

 

 

The head constable was greatly relieved by the sight of this trembling,
stuttering mukhtar. It fully re-established his own thunderous divinity.
He snatched a leather whip out of the hand of the nearest saptieth and
swished the air with it. "All the worse for you if you've got no weapons.

 

 

Here, for the first time, the red-haired müdir took a hand. This young man
from Salonika was anxious to show the Christian priest what a world of
difference there existed between his like and a loutish police chief
of the worst provincial variety. Ittihad did not stand for out-of-date
massacres. Ittihad's methods were of the subtlest. Ittihad, with iron
resolution, gave irresistible effect to the necessary raison d'etat, while
endeavouring, in so far as this could be managed, to avoid superfluous
harshness. Ittihad was so modern. It disliked the crude blood-baths of
former days; it was in fact quite proud of possessing "nerves." All of
which inspired the young müdir to a glance at his beautifully red-tinged
fingernails before he turned towards Ter Haigasun, full of that dangerous
amiability which all official persons invested with the powers of life
and death know how to use so tellingly.

 

 

"You know what we've decided to do with you?"

 

 

The priest looked him steadily in the face, still not answering.

 

 

The müdir, a trifle disconcerted, waved at a placard. "The government
has decided to migrate you. You're to be allotted other territory."

 

 

"And where is the other territory situated?"

 

 

"That's neither your affair nor mine. My only business is to collect you,
and yours is simply to march."

 

 

"And when must we leave?"

 

 

"It will depend on how you behave how much time I give you to get your
belongings into order and make yourselves ready to march according to
exact stipulations."

 

 

The village clerk had by now managed to control himself. He asked in a
voice of expectant humility: "And what are we allowed to take with us,
Effendi?"

 

 

"Only what each individual can carry for himself on his back, or in his
hand. All the rest, your fields, gardens, landed property, your houses,
with all such movable and immovable furniture as belongs to them,
goes to the state, by ministerial decree of the fifteenth of Nisan of
the present year. The Migration Law of Mayis the fifth provides that
you be allotted fresh holdings of ground in exchange for what you have
vacated. Every holder to produce the registered extent of his property,
to obtain a legal substitute from the government. Such a document must
bear stamps to the value of five piastres. These stamps are obtainable
at the district police headquarters."

 

 

This official chant came forth so mildly and melodiously from the lips
of this young, carroty müdir that it sounded like some regulation for
fruit-growers. The benevolent müdir raised his forefinger. "It will be
best for you all to create as little disturbance as possible -- not
to destroy any property, but to hand it over entire, just as it is,
to the state."

 

 

Ter Haigasun opened his hands and spread them out towards the diplomatic
young man from Salonika. "We don't want to keep anything, Müdir. What
good would it be to us? Take whatever you find. Our doors are open."

 

 

The müdir's smooth tone had begun to rile the head constable. It was
undermining his authority. After all, in the last resort, he was the head
of this expedition, and this quill-driver a mere accessory person sent
by the Kaimakam. If he let this mealy-mouthed clerk go on much longer,
everyone would cease to believe that he was chief of police of the town
of Antakiya. He opened the staring eye a little wider, with bloodshot,
buffalo ferocity, came two steps nearer Ter Haigasun, and seized him
by the thickly embroidered stole. "Now you'll get together six hundred
rifles and have them piled up here before me!"

 

 

Ter Haigasun stared a long while at the place where the rifles were to
be stacked. Suddenly he took a step backwards, with a violent jerk which
almost overturned the head constable. "I've already told you that there
aren't any rifles in the villages."

 

 

The müdir smiled. It was his turn now to get what they wanted, without
any shouting and rolling of eyes, by sheer astute political methods.
His voice had a kind, thoughtful note in it, as though he were trying to
give the Armenian his excuse. "How long have you been head-priest in the
village, if you'll forgive my question, Ter Haigasun?"

 

 

The vague benevolence of this put Ter Haigasun on the alert. He answered
softly: "About fifteen years next autumn, after the vintage."

 

 

"Fifteen years? Wait. So, in the year of the great revolution, you'd been
just eight years in Yoghonoluk. Now try and remember. Didn't you receive
some chests of rifles in that year, allotted you to do your share in the
struggle against the old government?"

 

 

The müdir asked this by sheer intuition; he had only been in office
since the war broke out. He supposed inductively that Ittihad would have
sought the same allies in Syria as in Macedonia and Anatolia. He did not
know he hit the mark. Ter Haigasun turned his head to his acolyte, who
had still not dared to come down the church steps. This quick movement
beckoned the other priest as witness. "Perhaps your priests may have to
do with weapons, Müdir. That is not the case with us."

 

 

At this dangerous juncture the village clerk began to whine:
"But we've always lived here in peace. This has been our country for
thousands of years."

 

 

Ter Haigasun stared absently at the müdir. He seemed to be trying hard
to remember. "You're right, Müdir! The new government did distribute
arms at about that time, in various places all over the empire --
even to Armenians. If you're old enough, you'll also recollect that
all communes receiving them had to give a written acknowledgment when
they arrived. The Kaimakam, who was a müdir like yourself in those days,
organized the distribution. He'll be sure to have kept all the receipts
-- one doesn't throw away an important document of that kind. Well,
I don't suppose if there'd been any weapons in the villages, he'd have
sent you to us without the receipt for them."

 

 

This was undeniable. And it was true that in the last few days the
Record Office of Antakiya had been turned upside down to find such
receipts. Most of the nahiyehs had delivered them -- only the Nahiyeh
of Suedia and the surrounding district seemed really to have been sent
no weapons in 1908. The Kaimakam certainly declared that he seemed to
remember the contrary but could give no proof of it. So that Ter Haigasun
had quietly found the right way out.

 

 

The conviction he displayed envenomed the pleasantly diplomatic smiles
of the müdir, whose voice became edged. "What's a written receipt? A mere
scribble. What does that prove, after all these years?"

 

 

Ter Haigasun waved an indifferent hand. "If you don't believe us,
look and see for yourselves."

 

 

The police chief, eager to put an end to this long, superfluous discussion,
brought down his whip with a swish on the priest's shoulders. "Yes,
we'll look all right, you son of a bitch. But you two are under arrest,
you and the Mukhtar. I can do what I like with you. Your lives are at
my sole discretion. If we find any weapons, you'll be nailed up on the
door of your church. If we don't, I'll have you roasted over a fire."