Forty Days of Musa Dagh (76 page)

 

 

The zikr ecstasy he now witnessed left Dr. Lepsius not only cold, but
full of a dark, surging uneasiness. The ceremony began as follows:
the sheikh's handsome son stood in a line of young men, all clad in
the same long, white cowl, against the west wall of the apartment. The
little boy, his small face preternatarally solemn, ended the right wing
of this line. There arose from nowhere the nasal, monotonous note of a
shawm-pipe. A man, standing with his eyes shut in front of a gold-carved
Koran lectern, intoned a sura, in humming, disturbing falsetto. The old
sheikh waved his hand in a scarcely perceptible little gesture. The shawm
and litany stopped together. The son flung back his head, listening,
as if he were trying to catch the lightest drizzle of rain upon his
face. Out of his throat came strangled sounds; the happiness seemed
too great, of being permitted to speak the syllables of that verse
which concentrates in itself the whole strength of the revealed Book:
"La-ilah-ila-'llah." "There is no God but God." Now all the others threw
their heads back, and the six syllables of their creed fused into a
crooning, murmurous hum. This, like the opening notes of a composition,
defined the theme that now was developed. Now the son's body was swaying
in a light, angular rhythm. As the "La-ilah-ila-'llah" defined its cadence,
he swayed from the waist towards the four corners of the hemisphere,
forwards, back, to right, to left. The fourfold beat passed into the
others. But there was none of the symmetry of drill or ballet in the
surge. Each obeyed his own law. Each individual in this brotherhood seemed
to be alone with himself, in ecstatic invocation of his God. And this gave
birth to a new rhythm, a far more manifold, higher symmetry than drilled,
imposed unity can effect; the symmetry of storm-swept woods, of lashing
waves. There must be full freedom and solitude of the ego before his God,
to make possible a higher community. The old sheikh, his caliphs, and
the others took part in these zikr exercises with slight accompanying
movements. The boy of the young sheikh bent his little body about, on
all sides, with desperate seriousness. Sometimes his poignant baby-voice
could be heard shrilling out of the general surge of the "La-ilah." After
about ten minutes the dervishes were bending at right angles, their cries
had risen into hoarse, unmodulated bellowings. Another slight sign from
the old sheikh. The ceremony stopped, suddenly. But now, superabundant
joy, a most intimate, happy satisfaction, seemed to have stolen into the
hearts of both participants and onlookers. Exhausted smiles lit up these
faces. The men embraced. Johannes Lepsius had to think of the early
Christian agape. But . . . ? The love-celebration here below him did
not come out of the mind, the spirit, but out of these wild contortions
of the body. He could not understand. Meanwhile two more men had come
into the room, through a little side door. They carried water pitchers,
dishes with food, even garments, before Sheikh Achmed, who kept breathing
over them. Now they had received healing power. After a pause the zikr
began again, on a level of still greater intensity. The holy number,
four, was in the ascendant. Therefore there ensued four ecstasies, each
broken into by a pause. The power and tempo of the last was of such almost
unbearable wildness that sometimes Lepsius shut his eyes with a feeling of
seasickness. As the last zikr rose to near its height, the little, thin,
dried-up old man with the twitching face suddenly leapt from the dais
down into the room, and began spinning, like a whirligig, to collapse
in epileptic writhings. The pastor turned to the doctor, sitting behind
him. Surely Nezimi would hurry down to the help of the epileptic. But
this well-dressed man, this man who had studied at the Sorbonne,
seemed himself no longer to know where he was. He twirled the upper
half of his body. His eyes were sightless. And between his lips, from
under the little clipped moustache, he too now babbled the long withheld
"La-ilah-ila-'llah." The pastor had never felt so uncomfortable. But his
feeling was not only one of dislike for the sight which seemed so foreign
and barbarous -- it was one of uneasy embarrassment at the fact that he,
with his western soul, should not feel sufficiently developed to enter
into the God-intoxication of the twirlers in the room below.

 

 

 

 

This deep uneasiness still possessed him as he came into the innermost
recesses of this so madly foreign world -- into the audience chamber of
the sheikh. He had not perhaps been more uneasy on the day when he had
been faced with Enver Pasha. Yet Sheikh Achmed received him cordially.
He advanced a few steps to meet Lepsius and Nezimi Bey. In the big room
there were also, of the sheikh's caliphs, the Türbedar from Brussa,
the Agha Rifaat Bereket, the young sheikh, and the infantry captain.
There was nothing here on which to sit save low divans against the wall.
Sheikh Achmed indicated that Lepsius should take the seat close beside
his. Lepsius had to squat on his crossed legs, like all the others. The
old sheikh's eyes, which, besides their shrewd, keen knowledge of the
world, had in them an inexplicable quiet, as of windless places, turned
to the guest.

 

 

"We know who you are, and what brings you to us. I have no doubt you will
understand us, as we hope to understand you. Perhaps our brother Nezimi
has told you that, here, we depend less on words than on the contact of
heart to heart. Well, then, let us try how it is, with our two hearts."

 

 

The German's coat was buttoned up. Sheikh Achmed, with his own white hand,
unbuttoned it. He smiled a kind of apology. "You see, we want to get nearer
each other."

 

 

Dr. Lepsius spoke and could understand Turkish very well; his Arabic
was also good. But Sheikh Achmed used a difficult mixture of these two
languages, so that, when he became too idiomatic, he used Nezimj as his
interpreter. The doctor translated:

 

 

"There are two hearts. There is the heart of flesh, and the secret,
heavenly heart, which surrounds the other, just as its scent surrounds
a rose. This second heart unites us with God and other men. Open it,
please."

 

 

The heavy body of the old man, of possibly eighty years, bent forward
attentively towards the pastor. A little gesture indicated that he was
to shut his eyes, as his host did. A sure peace descended on Johannes
Lepsius. The parching thirst, which only a moment ago had worried him,
disappeared. He used this time to collect his thoughts, behind closed
lids, and prepare the reasoning with which he intended to strive for
the Armenians. God had led him here, in wondrous fashion, where perhaps
he might find entirely unexpected allies. Monsignor Saven's wish that,
not Germans or neutrals, but Turks themselves might be intermediaries --
that absurd wish -- had begun to seem feasible. When Lepsius opened his
eyes again, the old sheikh's face seemed bathed in warm sunlight. But
the sheikh said nothing of the results of this trial of hearts; he only
asked the pastor to tell him what service he felt he could possibly
render. The important conversation began.

 

 

 

 

JOHANNES LEPSIUS (at first the Turkish words came stiffly and slowly;
he often turned to Nezimi to supply him with the right expression):
"Through the great goodness of Sheikh Achmed Effendi I have come here,
into this honorable tekkeh, as a Christian and stranger. . . . You have
even allowed me to be present at your religious exercises. The fervor
and devotion with which I saw you strive after God has filled my heart
with delight. Even if I, as an ignorant foreigner, cannot understand the
innermost meaning of your holy customs, at least I was able to feel your
great piety. . . . But, in view of this piety of yours, this religious
feeling, the things that happen, are allowed to happen, in your country,
seem to me all the more terrible."

 

 

THE YOUNG SHEIKH (obtains with an upward glance his father's permission
to speak): "We know how for many years you have been a warm friend of
the ermeni millet."

 

 

JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "More than simply their friend. I have devoted my
whole life and strength to the ermeni millet."

 

 

THE YOUNG SHEIKH: "And now you want to accuse us of what has been done
to them?"

 

 

JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "I am a foreigner. A foreigner has never any right
to make accusations. I am here, not to accuse, but only to complain,
about these things, and to beg your help and your advice."

 

 

THE YOUNG SHEIKH (with an obvious stubbornness, not to be softened by
pleasant words): "And yet you hold us Turks, in general, responsible
for all that has happened?"

 

 

JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "A people is made up of many parts: of the government
and its executives, of those classes that stand behind the government,
and of the opposition."

 

 

THE YOUNG SHEIKH: "And which of these do you hold responsible?"

 

 

JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "For twenty years I have known your conditions well.
Even in the interior. I have negotiated with the heads of your government.
God help me -- I must say it! To them alone attaches the full guilt of
this wiping out of an innocent people."

 

 

THE TüRBEDAR (raises his thin, fanatic's head, with its pitiless eyes;
his voice and being dominate the room immediately): "But who was responsible
for our government?"

 

 

JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "I don't understand your question."

 

 

THE TüRBEDAR: "Well, let me ask you another. Have Osmans and Armenians
always lived together uneasily? Or was there not a time in which they
lived at peace, side by side? You know our country, so I suppose you
also know our past."

 

 

JOHANNE5 LEPSIUS: "As far as I know, the big massacres did not begin
before the last century -- after the Berlin Congress . . ."

 

 

THE TüRBEDAR: "That answers my first question. At that Congress you
Europeans began to meddle in the domestic affairs of the empire.
You urged reforms. You wanted to buy Allah and our religion of us,
for shabby sums. The Armenians were your commercial travellers."

 

 

JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "Did not that age, with its general development,
demand those reforms more urgently even than Europe? And, after all,
it was very natural that the Armenians, as the weaker, busier people,
should have wanted them most."

 

 

THE TüRBEDAR (flares up; his just wrath fills the whole room):
"But we don't want your reforms, your 'progress,' your business
activity. We want to live in God, and to develop in ourselves those
powers which belong to Allah. Don't you know that all that which you
call activity, advancement, is of the devil? Shall I prove it to you?
You have made a few superficial investigations into the essence of the
chemical elements. And what happens, then -- when you act from your
imperfect knowledge? You manufacture the poison gases, with which you
wage your currish, cowardly wars. And is it any different with your
flying machines? You will only use them to bomb whole cities to the
ground. Meanwhile they only serve to nourish usurers and profit-makers,
and enable them to plunder the poor as fast as possible. Your whole
devilish restlessness shows us plainly that there is no 'progressive
activity' not founded in destruction and ruin. We would willingly have
dispensed with all your reforms and progress, all the blessings of
your scientfic culture, to have been allowed to go on living in our old
poverty and reverence."

 

 

THE OLD SHEIKH ACHMED (attempts to bring a more conciliatory note
into their talk): "God has poured his draughts into many glasses,
and each glass has its own form."

 

 

THE TüRBEDAR (can still not manage to calm down, since he feels that
here he has found the right adversary on whom to vent his profoundest
bitterness): "You tell us our government is guilty of all this bloody
injustice. But, in truth, it is not our government, but yours. It went to
school to you. You supported it in its criminal struggle against our most
sacred treasures. Now it carries out your instructions, in your spirit.
Therefore you yourself must admit that, not we Osmans, but Europe,
and Europe's hangers-on, are in truth responsible for the fate of
this people whom you champion. And the Armenians are justly served,
since it was they who wanted to bring back these criminal traitors
into our country. It was they who cherished them, and acclaimed them,
in order that now they should be devoured. Can't you yourself see the
justice of God in these events? Wherever you and your disciples may go,
you bring corruption along with you. You may do hypocritical lip service
to the religion of the prophet Jesus Christ, but in the depths of your
hearts you believe in nothing but the blind forces of matter, and eternal
death. Your hearts are so dull that they know nothing of the powers of
Allah, which wither within them, unused. Yes, your religion is death,
and all Europe is the harlot of death!"

 

 

THE OLD SHEIKH (with a stern glance commands the Türbedar to control
himself; then he strokes the pastor's hand, as though to comfort and
propitiate): "Everything lies within God's purpose."

 

 

THE YOUNG SHEIKH: "It's true, Effendi, you can't deny it. The nationalism
which dominates us today is a foreign poison, which comes from Europe.
Only a few decades ago our whole people lived faithfully under the banners
of the prophet -- Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Lasas and many more. The spirit
of the Koran nullifies earthly differences of blood. But today even the
Arabs, who really had nothing to complain about, have become nationalists,
and our enemies."