Forty Days of Musa Dagh (56 page)

 

 

Mairik Antaram stayed with Hovsannah. With sharp words, even with
fists, she cleared the tent of its intruders. Decisively she set
about the duties which for many decades she had performed. Yet, old
as Mairik was, she could still, even today, not help at a childbirth
without some thoughts of the two miscarriages which dated back to her
earliest youth. Iskuhi stroked her sister's forehead with hands as cool
as ice, in spite of the heat. She kept eyeing Mairik with shy anxiety,
afraid of missing some direction. All the energy of the doctor's wife
could not keep people out of the hut; they kept on returning, to give
advice, encourage, ask how things were getting on. Gabriel too came in
for news. Iskuhi, in the midst of all this bustle, was still struck
by the haggard paleness of his bearded face. Also she felt surprised
that Juliette should remain scarcely half an hour with Hovsannah --
they had lived together so long, in a single family. Aram, the husband,
was in and out every twenty minutes. But he always went again. He was,
he kept saying, more needed than ever; after yesterday's victory over
the Turks he must keep an eye on the general discipline. Really his own
excitement, and worry about his wife, drove him round in circles.

 

 

The women of the people were shaking their heads over the fact that
Hovsannah Tomasian did not scream as she lay in labor. They sensed
some pride behind it. It was perhaps the pride of shame. Nunik, Wartuk,
Manushak, had long since come back into the foreground. Nunik herself
squatted inside the tent, watching all Antaram's laborious efforts with
reflectively professional eyes, much as a world-famous surgeon might
watch the work of a village barber.

 

 

After more than eight hours' labor pains Hovsannah at last brought
forth a son. This child, who in its mother's womb since Zeitun had known
much fear and suffering, was unconscious, and did not breathe. Antaram
shook the tiny body, still covered with blood and afterbirth, while
Iskuhi had to breathe into its mouth. But Nunik and her colleagues,
who knew better, seized like lightning on the afterbirth, to pierce it
with seven needles, owned by seven different families. They cast the
whole into their fire. The life which, to escape its fate on earth, had
taken refuge in this dead matter, must be freed by fire. A few seconds
later the child gurgled; he began to breathe, and then to whimper. Mairik
Antaram rubbed him all over carefully with mutton fat. The crowd, grown
silent, began applauding. The sun sank. Pastor Aram, with all the clumsy,
rather absurd, pride of a young father, took up the little wrinkled
thing, which should grow to a man, and held it out to the people. They
all rejoiced and praised Tomasian, since this was a male. The broadest
jokes went the rounds of the fighters. None of them could remember the
real future. It remains uncertain which of them was the first to notice
the little, round fiery birth-spot which this true son of Musa Dagh bore
above his tiny heart. The women put their heads together to consult as to
the meaning of this sign. But Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak, whose profession
it was to decipher such omens, would say nothing, bound up their veils,
took their staves, and so retraced their steps, well recompensed. Their
old brown legs moved in long strides. Again they were like the mimes of
an ancient chorus as, under the rising moon, they took their way down
mountain slopes towards the graves of the past.

 

 

 

 

Not more than three days and nights had passed, and scouts were already
announcing incomprehensible movements in the villages. Gabriel climbed
at once to his observation post. His field-glass certainly showed a most
active scurry, in sharply differentiated forms. Long lines of oxcarts
across the plain of the Orontes, along the highroad between the villages,
on the paths and cart-tracks leading off it. Big crowds in these villages
themselves, people in fez and turban, darting in and out, in obvious haste.
Gabriel tested every strip of ground with his spy-glass, but could not
make out one soldier's uniform, and not many saptiehs. On the other hand
he noticed that this time it was not the familiar populace of Antakiya,
or its suburbs, that invaded the empty streets. Today's incursions looked
far more opulent, and seemed to have a definite object. Great stir on
the church square of Yoghonoluk. Little turbaned shapes were clambering
up the fire escape of the church, and moving about in the empty bell
tower, to the side of the big cupola. The long-drawn, thread-like notes
of a tiny voice grew audible, perceptible rather, sent out to the four
quarters of the globe. It was the prayer-cryer of the Prophet, standing
above the house of Christ, giving out of himself his plangent sing-song,
which causes every Moslem heart to beat faster, and which seemed to be
bringing in the faithful from every cluster of huts, village, market town,
in the empty land. The fate of the Church of Ever-Increasing Angelic
Powers, built by Avetis the elder, was therefore sealed. The mad desire
to answer this desecration with a shell flashed into the grandson's
mind. He checked his impulse. His basic principle -- always to defend,
never attack -- must be broken least of all by himself. And the mountain,
towering secretively over its enemies, as though shamming dead, threatened
more effectively. Provocation could only weaken their defence, since it
gave the Turks, the ruling people, their moral right to punish rebels.

 

 

As he watched all this mysterious stir in the valley, Bagradian asked
himself how many more onslaughts they could drive back. In spite of the
spoils of double victory, and Nurhan's workshop for making cartridges,
the munition supply was very limited. It made his heart stand still to
remember how the smallest slip, the most trifling failure, must lead
to irretrievable disaster. There was no middle way for those on the
Damlayik; it was either final victory, or the end. His tactical skill
was merely useful to put off that end as long as he could. To achieve
that object the capital sum of wholesome fear which, after two defeats,
they obviously inspired in the Turks, must not be frittered away. The
new population of the valley increased every minute. But this time it
did not mean an attack, of that he was certain, after long and minute
investigation. Perhaps they were only holding a demonstration, perhaps
this was the solemn investiture of a Christian district by Islam. In front
of the church door of Yoghonoluk he made out a small group of men in
European dress. The müdir with his officials, presumed Bagradian, glad
to see no officer among them, come to get the hang of the situation. All
the same he ordered that the trenches were to keep on the sharpest alert,
set a double guard at every observation post, and groups of scouts at
all possible approaches to the Damlayik, as far down as the vines and
orchards, so that no surprise attack at night should be possible.

 

 

Gabriel had judged correctly. It was the freckled müdir who stood in
the church square of Yoghonoluk. But a greater than he, the dyspeptic
Kaimakam in person, had come to have a look round for himself. There
was excellent reason for it. This last, disastrous defeat of a force
of regulars had made things happen in Antioch -- things which entailed
important consequences.

 

 

 

 

Between the Kaimakam and the poor, rosy-cheeked bimbashi a life-or-death
struggle had started instantly. That forthright veteran of the simple
barrack squares of former days was in no way up to the latest Ittihad
finesse. Only now did he begin to get some inkling why his deputy, and
keen competitor, the yüs-bashi, had chosen this moment to go on leave.
By granting it he had walled into the trap. Very soon now the major would
have ceased to deputize. It began by the Kaimakam's slyly contriving to
stir up popular hatred against the bimbashi. In Antioch there was only
one hospital, superintended by the civil authorities. Soldiers without
much the matter with them were ill in barracks, but if hospital treatment
became necessary the military command had to put in a request to the
Kaimakam. The Kaimakam made skilful use of his red tape. But, in any case,
he had finished the colonel. Yet the thing might have gone dragging
on for weeks, with piles of reports and investigations, before they
removed him from his command; and, to pursue his policy in the kazah, the
Kaimakam needed dependable Ittihad collaborators, not indolent dug-outs,
survivals of the days of Abdul Hamid. He and the major had judged the
event with sufficient accuracy, and made their arrangements together.
A few hours before the bimbashi got back to Antioch, the disconsolate
herald of his own downfall, a long line of oxcarts with dead and wounded,
the victims both of guns and avalanche, had come into the town, at the
dead of night. No light shone in the windows of the Hükümet. When these
carts halted outside the hospital, its superintendent categorically
refused to admit their occupants. He had been expressly forbidden to
take in soldiers without written permission from the Kaimakam. Curses
and threats left him unmoved. The surgeon, by the light of an oil lamp,
and of the moon, in the open air, put on the most necessary bandages. He,
too, had neither space nor permission to admit two hundred extra patients
into his wretched lazaret. In despair he sent off an assistant to the
Kaimakam, to get his instructions. It took a very long time for the
messenger to come back without any. The Kaimakam was so soundly asleep
that nobody had succeeded in waking him. So that at last it had to be
decided to take these screaming, or groaning, men to barracks, where at
least they could have a roof over their heads. Meanwhile the sun was up,
it was full daylight. An indescribable impression was made on the people
of Antioch by these carts, slippery with blood. And when, at almost the
same instant, the poor bimbashi, so tried by fate, rode with his staff
across the Orontes bridge into the town, he was welcomed with stones,
and could scarcely get back to his quarters, by devious lanes. Only now,
with crowds thronging the market place, did the Kaimakam, whose sleep
was so deliciously long and tranquil, send necessary permission to the
hospital. The long line of cart-loads of wretched men jolted slowly back
there. The carts had been given careful orders to trundle through the Long
Bazaar. This repeated sight of sallow, agonized faces, bandages stiff
with blood, provoked an uproar. A furious crowd collected in front of
the barracks, and broke all the poor bimbashi's windows -- and windows,
in these parts, were valuable luxuries. Not only that! What was left of
the military arm had grown so timid, so subdued, so scared of the mob,
that it closed its barrack gates, like any terrified little shopkeeper.
In every collection of massed humanity there slumbers a primitive hatred,
easily roused, against its rulers. As it heard the deathly quiet behind
barrack gates, this mob grew aware that it had triumphed, and opened
fresh fire. His officers kept imploring the bimbashs to let them turn
out the guard with fixed bayonets, to clear the square. But the old man,
stretched on his sofa, could heed no counsel. He could only whimper:
"It isn't my fault," again and again. Utterly worn out by this strain and
hardship, he sobbed except when he fell asleep, and slept whenever he was
not sobbing. The garrison had to endure the further disgrace of requesting
police and saptiehs to rid the square of its turbulent populace.

 

 

All this delighted the Kaimakam. He, with the manicured müdir from Salonika,
had meanwhile repaired to the local telegraph office. This time these
gentlemen between them composed a masterpiece of political acumen and
tactful insight. A dispatch to His Excellency the Wali of Aleppo. This
voluminous telegraphed document contained eleven hundred words, and
covered ten closely written forms. A document as involved and subtle
as the deed drawn up by a needy but ambitious solicitor, as glib as the
most liberal newspaper editorial. It began, with colorful emphasis, by
describing the recent disastrous efforts to "liquidate" -- these heavy,
yet so unnecessary, losses (with figures attached): stigmatized as the
unheard-of military delinquency that indeed it was, this surrender of
insufficiently guarded howitzers to a set of rascally mutineers. The
Kaimakam then dismissed the unhappy business with a resigned suggestion
that any attempt on his part to influence military decisions was almost
bound to be misinterpreted. On the other hand he felt it very urgent to
insist on the highly uncertain state of public feeling in this matter,
so outraged, for the moment at least, as to demand, even by street
demonstrations, the instant removal from his command of the present
bimbashi. And he, the Kaimakam, had not a sufficiently strong force
of militia and saptiehs at his disposal to control any really serious
outbreak. Therefore the popular outcry would have to be conceded to
without delay, and would His Excellency be so kind as to remove and
punish by court martial the present responsible commandant? All this,
the Kaimakam continued, was merely the indirect result of dual control,
since the Syrian vilayets were subject both to their civil governors and
the High Command of the Fourth Army. For so long as such dual control
continued, he could guarantee neither peace in the kazah nor the so
desirable completion of the enforcement of the edict of deportation
against Armenians. He gave lucid legal demonstration that measures
to ensure the migration of the Armenian millet were a process of the
civil arm, in which even the most highly placed officers had no warrant
to act independently. In their case military competence was fully
comprised in the concept "auxiliary." But the use of such auxiliary
troops depended, by the text of the edict, solely on such decisions as
the civil authorities might arrive at. The present prevailing practice
was therefore illegal, since the High Command frequently acted at its
own discretion, in many cases withheld its auxiliary, forces, acted
in a manner hostile to district governors, and would even sometimes
commandeer the gendarmerie -- a section of the civil arm -- for its
own objects. Such dangerous practices had resulted in stirring up the
Armenian population to a resistance which, if it spread, might entail
unpredictable consequences to the whole empire. The Kaimakam closed this
very unusual service telegram on an almost threatening note. He could only
undertake the liquidation of the armed camp on Musa Dagh on condition
that he were given full control of all effectives. For that purpose he
must have military auxiliaries, so armed and of such strength, at his
disposal as to make possible the complete and thorough clearance of the
whole mountain. Nor could it be a question of undertaking such punitive
action with an officer unversed in the particular circumstances. He begged
most urgently that the present deputy-major might be promoted military
commandant of Antakiya, since this Armenian undertaking ought to be left
entirely in his control. Otherwise -- should these minimum requests not
be considered possible of fuffilment -- he, the Kaimakam, ventured most
respectfully to suggest that the disaster above described had better
be accepted as a fait accompli, without any further counter-measures,
and the rebels left to their own devices on Musa Dagh.