Forty Days of Musa Dagh (4 page)

 

 

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 forms. 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.