Forty Days of Musa Dagh (52 page)

 

 

Yoghonoluk, grandfather's house. A wide, damask cloth, laid out for
breakfast, on the soft turf of the lawn. Everyone in respectful attendance
on the arrival of old Avetis Bagradian, to this ceremonious first meal
of the day. The silver kettle steams on a tripod. Baskets piled up
with apricots and grapes, melons on their flat dishes. Wooden platters,
with new-laid eggs, honey, and "apricot leather." Thin cakes of bread,
waiting under a spotless napkin to be broken by the master of the house,
after prayers. Gabriel is eight, and wearing the same kind of entari-kilt
that Stephan wears today. If only they'd hurry up with breakfast! Then he
could sally forth, on to Musa Dagh, to hunt out great secrets. Meanwhile
he looks down shyly at the damask folds. Perhaps a big snake is hiding
under them! A golden rustle announces Grandfather's approach. And,
strangely, his grandfather is himself no more than this -- this golden
sound; he gives it forth, he never emerges from it. His gold lorgnon on
its ribbon, his white pointed beard, his black and yellow morning robe,
his red Russia-leather shoes, never come into sight; his image remains
hidden, though forcefully present. On the other hand, Gabriel could
clearly see all the women slowly lifting their veils above their heads,
reverently turning their backs on the master, as custom ordains. Had
this been a real memory, or only a dream made up of fragments pieced
wrongly together? Gabriel could not be sure. But in any case, for no
apparent reason, Iskuhi had managed to weave herself into this carpet
of his childhood. She sat facing him on the grass. He, lost in the study
of her face, took a long time to remember that he must say something.

 

 

"I suppose you're fonder of your brother than you are of anyone else in
the world?" He made it almost sound as though he were blaming her.

 

 

The first Turkish shell dropped a hundred feet south of the Town Enclosure,
under the foremost, jutting point of the Damlayik. He hurried there,
in long, swift strides. On the way he met Dr. Altouni, riding a donkey.
The old man had to get down. Bagradian thrashed and kicked this beast till
it brought him to North Saddle, at a most unusual gallop.

 

 

 

 

This time the Turks had prepared their stroke. The bimbashi-commandant
of Antioch, that comfortable, boyishly rosy gentleman, with the little,
elderly, sleepy eyes, led the onset in person. Strangely enough, his
adjutant, the hatchet-faced and resolute yüs-bashi, had taken short
leave at about this juncture, and gone to Aleppo, to be quite clear of
responsibility. Since the bimbashi's wise and peaceable suggestions had
not prevailed in council against the Kaimakam, nothing now remained but
to sally forth, in all possible haste, against Musa Dagh. His annoyance
and rancor against his enemies lent the comfortable gentleman energy
and unexpected élan. He spent nearly the whole of one day in the
telegraph office at Antakiya. Its Morse apparatus was set in motion
in three directions, Alexandretta, Aleppo, and Eskereh, to muster up
all the small local garrisons and gendarmerie posts situated within
the district frontiers. In four days the portly colonel had drummed
together a fair contingent -- about a thousand rifles -- to back his
artillery. It was composed of the two companies of regulars, detached,
in the Antakiya barracks; two platoons of the same regiment, from smaller
towns; a big posse of saptiehs; and lastly a number of sharpshooters,
chetteh irregulars from the mountain around Hammam. He made use of the
half-battery which had recently trundled into the garrison.

 

 

Meanwhile scouts had investigated the trenches on the Damlayik, if not
reliably and completely, at least in part. The superstition was still
unbroken that there were twenty thousand armed Armenians. So the bimbashi
had enough arms and saptiehs at his disposal to make the smoking-out of
this rebels' nest a possible matter of hours. His tactic would consist in
a fully covered advance and sudden attack. That was essential. And both
covered advance and sudden attack were well contrived. Every observer
on Musa Dagh had been deceived. The colonel had split up his forces into
approximately equal divisions, which were to operate independently of each
other. The first marched on the night of August 13 with every possible
precaution into Suedia and encamped, neatly disposed and concealed,
in the ruins of Seleucia, under the South Bastion. The other corps,
comprising the commander and his artillery, came along a stretch of the
highroad, Antakiya-Beilan, and turned off it up wretched mule tracks
into the mountains. But here the bimbashi's strategic plan failed to
"click." It proved very difficult to get the two big howitzers uphill,
even though two men were kept continually shoving at the spokes of either
wheel, while others had to toil with the heavy barrels of unlimbered
guns for fifteen miles on the arduous hillside. The sumpter mules, used
as team, had proved themselves almost useless for gun-dragging. It meant
a delay of ten hours. This force, which had begun its march half a day
earlier than the other, only reached those heights of Musa Dagh which
extend northwards of the Saddle towards midday on August 14, instead of
in the night of the previous day. So that the double attack, timed for
the first hour after sunrise, was not delivered. The captain in charge
of the southern corps, who had not dared to let them show their faces
outside their hiding-holes in the scorching ruins, till they got the
pre-arranged signal (the first shell), was already fagged out by their
long vigil in the pitiless sun. A fifteen-hour march up mountain tracks,
without having rested the night before, only interrupted by three short
halts, lay behind it. The colonel should have said to himself: "I'll give
them a rest for today, and send word to the captain at Suedia to put off
the attack till early tomorrow." And, considering how easygoing he was,
anyone might have betted a hundred to one that this would be the old
gentleman's decision. Yet exactly the opposite happened. Easygoing people
are often also the impatient ones. If they find themselves entangled
in something they dislike having to do, they get it over as quickly as
possible. This bimbashi ordered the artillery mülasim to bring his guns
at once into position, had a very hasty meal served out to the men, and,
an hour later, led his companies, in long, thin skirmishing order, against
the Armenian Saddle trenches, where first they kept a very respectful
distance as quiet as mice, in the gullies, behind rocks and trees.

 

 

The bimbashi cursed the Kaimakam, the yüs-bashi, the general in charge
of transport, who, instead of proper mountain artillery, had sent him
these huge, unwieldy howitzers -- above all did he curse His Excellency
Jemal Pasha, for a "sour-faced, humpbacked swindler." In his opinion all
these political officers of Ittihad were nothing but a set of jumped-up
traitors and scum. It was they who had conspired against the old Sultan,
and were keeping the new one prisoner in his palace. Ridiculous subordinate
officers, who promoted themselves generals, Excellencies, pashas!
Once fellows of that description wouldn't have got as far as yüs-bashi!
And all this disgraceful pother with the Armenians was simply due to
Ittihad swine. In Abdul Hamid's golden days there might, of course,
have been an occasional set on the Armenians, but never the sort of
thing that such a highly placed officer as he, the bimbashi, would be
asked to command. The tired and irritable old gentleman waited with his
staff for the first shell. He had ordered the lieutenant in charge of
the howitzers to begin by dropping a couple into the living quarters of
the Armenians. Not even the so-called war-office "maps" of these Ittihad
swindlers were accurate, and the shells had to be aimed at the Damlayik
by the distances marked on these. The bimbashi reckoned that shells in
the camp would cause panic among the women and children, and so diminish
the men's morale.

 

 

This calculation was shrewd enough. The howitzers, however, succeeded more
by accident than aim. Out of twelve shots, three fell into the Town
Enclosure. These shells not only damaged some of the huts but wounded
three women, an old man, and two children, luckily not very seriously.
But the direct hit of a shell destroyed the grain depot, set fire to,
and burned up, all that was left of the cereals, together with what
remained of tobacco, sugar, and rice. The depot crackled and blazed; it
was a miracle that the flames did not spread to the huts, a little way
off. And the people's confusion was even worse than this disaster. On
the decads also the fire worked a ten-fold alarm. All who were off
duty rushed to their posts. Nurhan, "the Lion," within ten minutes
had the trenches entirely on the defensive. The orderlies and spies of
the cohort of youth were soon assembled behind the lines. When Gabriel
came galloping on his donkey, he found all parts of his machine in full
working order. A few minutes later the first scout came running in with
reports from the South Bastion. So that this Turkish raid had not quite
succeeded. It encountered surprised, but resolute, defenders.

 

 

 

 

This was the day of Sarkis Kilikian's triumph, and of that of the South
Bastion. In this region the enemy was still without experience. Turkish
spies had not dared to advance too far into the wide, bare half-circle
of this declivity, with its stony slopes and terraces of boulders. The
captain in charge did not even know whether, behind the jagged blocks
of these dominant rock towers, there was a garrison. The Mohammedan
population of the thickly peopled plain of the Orontes, the inhabitants
of the market towns of Suedia, El Eskel, and Yedidje, excited by this
war on the mountain, affirmed that, for many days, nothing had stirred
among these rocks, that no fire was seen at night there. But the company
leader was cautious, and assumed Armenian entrenchments, at any rate
on the southern edge of the Damlayik, even though appearances might
suggest none. He had long since divided his men into frontal attackers
and a surrounding-party. The first was to be composed of regular troops,
the second of chettehs and saptiehs. While the ones climbed straight
up the slope, the others, directly opposite, where the half-circle of
mountain verged on the sea, above the hill-nest Habaste, were to descend
on the rear of what they supposed the Armenian positions. The Turkish
captain did not spread out his men in skirmishing order, but disposed
them in long single file, to present as narrow a surface for fire as
possible. Since the temple ruins of Seleucia, which had given cover to the
troops, stood on a wide ridge, about two hundred feet above sea level,
the attackers had only a bare heap of stones, of about the same height,
to get across, to come to the edge of the strong slope crowned by the
South Bastion. This slope was not unassailably steep, afforded firing
cover on every inch of it, and was therefore, in the opinion of the
bimbashi, far better designed for attack than any of the wooded sides
of the Damlayik, which behind each tree stem gave firing-cover to the
Armenians. And besides, from the village street, visible at every point
of the mountain, the advance up the hill could not have been camouflaged.

 

 

In the South Bastion the command was still very unstable, a grave defect
in Bagradian's general scheme of defence. In his view, because of the
steep, barren ground below it, this part was far less menaced by attack
than either the North Saddle or the ilex gully. Therefore its fairly
numerous garrison contained the undependable underworld of the Damlayik,
those deserters and pseudo-deserters whom he wanted to keep as far as
possible from the people. The section leader was an ex-regular from
Kheder Beg. A slow, phlegmatic peasant, unable to assert his authority
against these quick-tempered recalcitrants. Teacher Oskanian, the general
superintendent appointed by the war committee, had made himself ridiculous
on the first day by his pedagogic ruthlessness and pomposity. The exacting
dwarf was quite unable to inspire in these hard-bitten men, with whom life
itself had dealt so drastically, the respect he considered his due.
It is therefore obvious that the strongest personality of this sector,
Sarkis Kilikian, should gradually have gained the upper hand.

 

 

His humiliation by Bagradian seemed to have worked a change in the
Russian. He no longer played at being a guest without obligations,
consenting to live in camp for the time being, but submitted without
a murmur to its discipline. More, he busied himself in his sector as
a very inventive fortress engineer. He strengthened and raised the
loosely piled up blocks of limestone, which served as the parapet of
their trench, though the work took several days of restless industry.
He had also contrived a primitive but effective machine, which increased
to annihilation point their power of repelling an attack. Behind each
of the three walls facing the hillside, at a fair distance from one
another, he had constructed rectangular, gallow-like erections, made of
oak stems. To the crossbeam of each of these gallows there hung level,
fastened by strong ropes, a thick battering-ram, with at the end a kind
of gigantic table top, or iron-studded shield. The ropes which worked
this mechanism could be lengthened or shortened, so that the point of
impact of the battering-ram might be thrust full against the wall. When
the very heavy shield-plate came hurtling, from a certain distance,
pendulum-wise, against the stone heaps, it gained a driving force that
no human strength could have achieved.

 

 

At the moment when the howitzers opened fire and scouts ran in to report
that Turkish rifles were beginning to clamber up the slope from above the
temple ruins of Seleucia, the commandant appointed by Bagradian lost his
head completely. He crouched down before a chink in his wall of stones,
and stared at the slope, but could not manage to give an order. The doughty
little Hrand Oskanian turned white as paper. His hands shook, so that he
could not manage to pull back the lock of his carbine, to insert the first
cartridge. His stomach turned, and the giddy Oskanian nearly toppled. Ten
minutes ago a threatening Mars, the somber teacher had no strength left,
even to get out of the way. His voice failed. He followed Sarkis Kilikian
like a puppy. So that the leader, with chattering teeth, stood begging
orders of his subordinate. The Russian's agate eyes were as dead as
ever. Deserters, and the rest of these decads, gathered round him at
once, as their natural head. No one paid any further attention to the
slow-witted peasant from Kheder Beg. Kilikian said almost nothing. He
strode into the midst of this knot of defenders and pointed out those
amongst them whom he designed to man the rock towers, stone parapet and
supports. Platforms on high heaps of stone had been set up behind the
battering-rams. Two men climbed each of these, to let the rams hurtle
against the walls at a sign of command. The Russian followed the same
tactic as Bagradian on August 4. He waited for the crucial second. But his
dead, patient impassivity was a hundred times steadier than Gabriel's.
As, at last, the advance-guard of the Turks appeared on the edge of the
stone slope, he took out his primitive tinderbox, to try to light a
cigarette. Oskanian beside him twitched and panted: "Now, Kilikian --
now! Right away." Having striven in vain to set light to his strip of
tow, Kilikian's free hand gripped the teacher, to prevent his jumping
up too early, to give the sign. The Turks, lulled into security by their
safe clamber, and the utter quiet of the mountainside, had begun to get
slack. They came into line, gossiped and formed wide groups. Not till
they were midway up the slope did Kilikian let out a long whistle. The
battering-rams with their huge shield-plates came thundering down on
the loosely built-up walls. The lighter stones of the uppermost layers,
spurting up in a cloud of dust, whizzed down like cannonballs, while
the heavy limestone blocks of the upper structure toppled slowly over,
and crashed after them, in great, wild leaps, among the Turks. Even these
first effects were terrible. But now the Armenian mountain itself took a
hand, to complete the decimation, so cruelly that this natural landslide
will not be forgotten by future generations along the Syrian coast. The
defence walls had been built between jagged pyramids of rock. The force
of the rams shook even the natural limestone crown to its foundations,
and tore huge sections of jagged rock down into the valley. The force of
this indescribable, stony assault was too much for the many loose boulders
which strewed the face of the incline. With all the terrific hissings and
cracklings of some never before experienced surge of breakers, they began
to slide, tearing down, in a monstrous deluge of lime and chalkstone,
all who were still alive among the Turks. It was more than a ghastly
avalanche of rock. The Damlayik itself seemed to have broken loose from
its anchor, and to be sliding down. This hailstorm spattered on over
the ruins of the upper town of Seleucia, overturning columns, crushing
in ivy-covered walls. For ten whole minutes it still looked as though
the mountain itself were seized with an impulse to advance on Suedia --
to the very mouth of the Orontes. The western group of the Turkish corps
was grazed by this avalanche, just above the village of Habaste. Half
the men were lucky enough to get clear. The other half were killed
or maimed, the village itself in part destroyed. In fifteen minutes a
silence, as of death, lay over everything. The avalanche stood peacefully
and slyly in the glare. Dull, crackling thuds from the howitzers came
from the direction of the Saddle. When every pebble had come to rest,
Kilikian blew his whistle a second time. The amazed deserters and their
comrades began to advance. The whole garrison of the South Bastion, led
by the Russian, strolled down the slope and, without haste, slaughtered
the Turkish wounded and stripped them bare. It was done with the most
nonchalant thoroughness, without a thought for the fierce battle which
their comrades in the north had to sustain. Sarkis Kilikian changed his
rags. He put on a brand-new Turkish infantry uniform and, in this new
kit, in spite of the smears of blood on the dead man's tunic, postured
as though he felt himself reborn. But Hrand Oskanian, who had climbed the
highest point in the line of rocks, was firing in the air like a lunatic,
to establish his personal share in this victory. It surprised him more
and more, as he let off this imposing clatter, to consider what a trifle
bravery is -- to a brave man.