Forty Days of Musa Dagh (81 page)

 

 

During this dance confused thoughts kept invading Stephan, they rasped
and cackled in him. "Everyone goes along a road. Why can't we go along
a road?. . . Oh, why are we Armenians?"

 

 

Haik shut him up, enraged: 'Don't talk such rot! Better look out where
you're going. Don't step where it's green. Understand?"

 

 

So then Stephan did his best to relapse into the mental coma which helps us
most to put up with bodily discomfort. He curvetted faithfully after Haik,
engaged in picking out a way full of the oddest curves on this perilous
crust. Thus they continued an hour -- two hours -- during which the moon
at times lighted their way benevolently, only to vanish in evil caprice.
Yet in spite of all the long way they had come, Stephan's exhaustion
seemed rather to diminish as the night wore on. Dregs -- half thought,
half emotion -- began to collect, like sediment, in his mind. It could
not be controlled! He had to say it, no matter how afraid he might be
of Haik: "I say, is it true that we aren't going to see our people"
(he avoided any more intimate designation) "ever again?"

 

 

Haik did not stop his figured progress. It was some time before, on firmer
ground again, he gave any answer. What he said, in spite of its Christian
certitude, was said with clenched fists, rather than with folded hands.
"I shall certainly see mother again."

 

 

It was the first piece of intimate self-revelation that Stephan had had
from Haik's lips. But, since Stephan, the lycéen, had not the certain
faith of a race of tough Armenian mountaineers, he became subdued,
and replied uncertainly: "But we can't ever get back on to the Damlayik."

 

 

It was obvious from Haik's savage growl, ready to spring, how much this
talk went against the grain.

 

 

"The Damlayik's behind us. If Christ wills, we shall get to Aleppo.
There Jackson will hide us in the consulate. That's what it says in the
letter." And, spitefully: "Of course, there's nothing about
you
in it."

 

 

But by now Stephan's thoughts were not in the least concerned with himself,
only with his father and mother, from whom he had so stupidly run away. Why?
He himself no longer knew. All life had strangely shifted its perspective.
The Damlayik had become the wildest nightmare, everything that had happened
before it, reality. The sole reality. Well-ordered, clean, just as it should
be. Jackson would put an end to all this nonsense. After all, it simply
couldn't happen that a Stephan Bagradian should find himself in such a
position that he would never see his parents again. His thoughts were
in a sense becoming Jackson's -- full of helpful schemes.

 

 

"Jackson'll cable. You
cable
to America, you know. Do you think the
Americans'll send ships to fetch our people?"

 

 

"How should I know that, you sheep?"

 

 

Haik's increasing pace betrayed his wrath. The awed Stephan was forced
to swallow down his need, and hurry to keep up with his leader. Though
there was no wind, he felt as though a gale were swirling against him,
preventing him from going a step further. Try as he might, he could not
manage to get all this straight in his mind. His head swam. A stark beam
of moonlight filled the whole world. An emerald-green streak of it streamed
in upon him. For a second he for- got their danger.

 

 

The scream pulled Haik up short. He knew instantly what had happened.
A shadowy Stephan struggled for life. He had already sunk in up to his knees.

 

 

Haik hissed at him: "Quiet! Don't kick up such a row!"

 

 

But uncontrollable panic forced scream upon scream out of Stephan.
He could not prevent them. He believed himself fallen between the jaws of
a slimy whale; the monster sucked him slowly in, turning him over on its
tongue. Already the pulpy, tumid mass was above his knees. Yet, in spite
of it all, the seconds in which he did not struggle were oddly peaceful,
and did him good.

 

 

Haik commanded: "One foot first. The right! Your right foot!"

 

 

Stephan, letting out little screams of terror, made useless movements.
His legs had no strength left in them. Now came another, sharp command:

 

 

"Lie over on your belly!"

 

 

He bent forward obediently, so that he could just touch dry land with his
finger tips. When Haik saw that Stephan had not the strength to fend for
himself, he wriggled flat on his face to the marshy place. But even the
stick, gripped by the struggling Stephan, was not enough to give him
sufficient strength. Then Haik undid his turban cloth and threw it out
to Stephan to knot round his chest. He held on like iron to the further
end of it. It served as a kind of lifeline. After endless efforts Stephan
could at last free his right leg, which had not sunk in so very deep. Half
an hour had passed before Haik drew him up like a drowning man on to firm
ground. Another half-hour elapsed before Stephan had recovered enough
strength to stumble on, along the dangerous way, with Haik keeping hold
of his hand. He was covered in slime, well up to his chest. In the air,
it dried quickly, and under its thick crust the skin of his arms and
legs contracted. It was indeed lucky that Stephan had put his shoes in
his rucksack and thrown the rucksack far away from him on to dry ground
while he was struggling.

 

 

Haik firmly led his half-swooning friend. He did not reprimand him for his
carelessness, but repeated several times, like an incantation: "We've got
to be over the bridge before it gets light. There may be saptiehs there."

 

 

All that was left of pride and ambition in young Bagradian came into play
again. "Yes, I can walk . . . all right again . . . now.

 

 

As they turned northward, the ground became firmer. It was less like
walking on a mattress. Stephan let go of Haik and pretended he could
step out briskly. A distant glitter, a breath of coolness. Haik sensed
the Kara-Su river. Soon they were clambering up the dam on to the road,
which lit up the night like a broad beam. The sentry box on the bridge
was empty. The boys -- as though the devil were chasing them -- raced
past this, the greatest of all dangers, which, luckily, had ceased to
be perilous. But this time the smooth, easy highroad no longer seemed
to comfort Stephan as it had that afternoon. That smoothed-out path of
civilization took the last strength out of his legs. Beyond the bridge,
he stumbled more and more. He began to walk in zigzags, and suddenly
lay down on the roadway.

 

 

Haik stood, staring down at him. Only then, he expressed despair:
"I'm wasting time."

 

 

 

 

Almost an hour beyond the bridge, the road, built over a long, high stone
embankment, passes the outskirts of the big swamp, El Amk. The embankment
is called Jisir Murad Pasha, and is the real beginning of the wide steppe
country which stretches on for many hundreds of miles, away past Aleppo
and the Euphrates, as far as Mesopotamia. But not so very far beyond
this embankment there lies, on the northern side of the road, the most
charming strip of hilly country, like a last green consolation before
rigid death. At the foot of this little cluster of hills is a big Turkoman
village, Ain el Beda, the "clear fount." But long before clusters of
huts thicken to become this village, the road meets single houses, white
farmsteads of wood or stone that catch the eye. Here, fifty years ago,
Abdul Hamid's government had ordered a tribe of Turkoman nomads to settle
down. No people make better or more hard-working peasants than do such
converted nomads. It was proved by the well-built, well-roofed houses
of this green and gentle strip of country.

 

 

The first of these farms stood on the road-edge. An hour after sunrise
its owner came to the door of his house, to sniff the wind, test the
weather, look in all four quarters of the sky, and so spread out his
little praying-mat that, turned to Mecca, he might perform the earliest
of his five daily devotions. This pious man had been unaware of the two
boys. He saw them out of the corner of his eye, squatting together,
close beside his house, on their rugs, and going through the same
prescribed praying motions. The sight of such early morning fervor
in two young men pleased the Turkoman. But, as a peaceable Moslem,
he had no thought of interrupting his own lengthy devotions with profane
inquiries. Haik, by allowing him many halts, had managed to drag Stephan
past the Jisir Murad Pasha embankment as far as to the verge of these
little hills. The sight of peasant homesteads had caused him again to
warn young Stephan to imitate his every movement and, above all, say as
little as possible. Stephan could speak only a few words of Turkish,
in an accent that would have betrayed him instantly. As to the Moslem
prayer, said Haik, it would not be a sin if one kept on whispering fervent
"Our Fathers." But this Stephan could not manage. As stiff and lifeless
as a doll, it was the very utmost he could do to effect a wooden copy
of Haik's fervent duckings. When it was over, he sank down at once on
his praying-mat, to stare up at the fresh dawn sky through glassy eyes.

 

 

The Turkoman peasant, a man well past the prime of life, came waddling
over towards the suspects. "Well, you rascals! Out on the road so early,
eh! What are you after? What are you looking for?"

 

 

Luckily he himself spoke patois, so that Haik's Armenian accent did not
strike him as particularly strange. And into Syria, that great stockpot
of the races, all languages are tossed together. So that the Turkoman's
ear was not mistrustful.

 

 

"Sabahlar hajr olsun!" (Good morning, Father!) "We come from Antakiya.
Lost our parents on the road! They went on with their cart, to Hammam.
We wanted to run about a bit and got lost. The lad here, Hüssein, was
nearly drowned. In the marshes. Now he's ill. Just look at him! Couldn't
you give us somewhere we could sleep?"

 

 

With the motions of wisdom, the Turkoman stroked his grey beard. Then,
taking the boys' part, he said, very justly: "What sort of parents can
these be, who go losing their children in a swamp, and then go on again?
. . . Is this lad your brother?"

 

 

"No, but a kinsman, from Antakiya. My name is Essad. . . ."

 

 

"Well, this Hüssein of yours really does seem ill. Has he been drinking
marsh water?"

 

 

Haik only answered this with a pious proverb. He hung his head.
"Give us food and somewhere to sleep, Father!"

 

 

None of all this deception was really necessary, since the Turkoman's
heart was full of benevolence. For months now, convoys of Armenian exiles
had come past his house. He had often helped Armenian sick, Armenian
pregnant women, with food and drink, with shoes and clothing, beneficent,
according to his means, quietly beneficent, without even thinking too
much of the reward that he was laying up in the hereafter. But these
works of mercy had to be done with circumspection, on account of the
saptiehs. The crime of pitying an Armenian merited, by the new laws,
the bastinado, prison perhaps, or, in very flagrant cases, death.
Hundreds of goodhearted Turks all over the country, their hearts wrung
by the sight of miserable deportees, had had strange experiences. The
peasant looked well at the two tramps. Those thousands of Armenian eyes
which had begged his charity on the highroad came into his mind.
The results of his comparison were fairly easy to deduce, especially in the
case of the one who was sick. Yet it was just this so-called Hüssein who
aroused pity in the Turkoman, rather than the so-called Essad who, first,
was not ill and, second, seemed smart enough for anything.

 

 

So the master of the house called sharply, and two women at once came
forth to him, an old and a young, who, quickly, seeing these strangers,
let down their veils. They were given a gruff order and disappeared
again with busy haste. The Turkoman led Stephan and Haik into his
house. Next its smoke-filled parlor, in which it was almost impossible
to breathe, there was a small, empty room, a kind of storeroom, lit
only by an opening in the roof. Meanwhile the women had come with mats
and coverlets. They spread two couches on the dry floor. When they saw
Stephan's arms and legs, still masked over with a thick crust of slime,
they brought in a flat tub of hot water and monstrous scrubbing brushes
and began, with resolute, motherly strength, to rub down his arms and
legs; in the course of which arduous work the elder even lifted her
veil, since these were only half-grown children. Under the scourings of
these peasant women the rigid crust not only flaked off Stephan's body,
but off his spirit. Homesickness, long repressed, flooded his mind like
boiling water. He bit his lips, his eyes blinked treacherously. Moved by
this childish grief, the Turkoman women raised their voices in strange,
melodious consolations -- not a word of which he could understand. Then
the old woman brought them a dish of barley groats in goat's milk,
a flat loaf, and two wooden spoons. As the boys ate, a numerous family
of Turkomans made its appearance, grinning with delight at its own
hospitality, some in the doorway, some in the storeroom itself,
pressing the boys to eat their fill. But, in spite of their friendly
words and the warm food, Stephan could scarcely swallow two mouthfuls,
so sore and swollen was his throat. Haik finished up the whole portion,
with the serious thoughtfulness of a worker in a heavy industry.

 

 

The inquisitive family departed. Stephan slept at once, but the canny
Haik first made a few quick plans for tomorrow's route. He hoped that
by evening Stephan would be feeling all right again, so that they might
set out as the moon rose. Hammam could be easily reached in the night.
If the road were clear, so much the better. If it were not, they could
keep a little to one side of it, along the foot of the hills. And these
hills would certainly be the best place in which to sleep tomorrow night,
when they came past Hammam to the point where they would have to take
their short cut, avoiding the wide bend of the highway. Notwithstanding
these many contretemps, Haik was, so far, satisfied. The greatest dangers
lay ahead, but the troublesome part of their route was over. Unluckily
he had not reckoned with Stephan. Whimpers and groans roused him from
the sleep of exhaustion to which, in this safe room, he had let himself
surrender without scruple. Stephan, twisted with pain, sat cramped
on his mat. Fearful colic seemed to cut his body in two, the results
of his adventure in the swamp, El Amk. And now he was clean, Haik saw
that his whole body was covered with mosquito-bumps. Impossible now to
get any sleep! The people of the house were as kind as ever. The women
heated up round stones to lay on the sick boy's belly, and brewed a
tea that may have been beneficial but which was certainly nauseating,
for he could not hold it down.