Forty Days of Musa Dagh (91 page)

 

 

 

 

More than a week had passed since the Turks encountered their great defeat.
The wounded yüs-bashi, his arm in a sling, was already on duty again.
There were more regular troops and saptiehs encamped round Musa Dagh than
ever. And yet nothing happened. Nor was there any sign that anything would.
The men on the Damlayik watched the indolent comings and goings in the
valley and could not explain why, in spite of these threatening and
ever-increasing forces, they should be left in peace. Nor could they
know the reason. The Kaimakam of Antakiya had gone on a journey. Jemal
Pasha had summoned all the walis, mutessarifs, and kaimakams in the
Syrian vilayet round him, at his headquarters in Jerusalem. A series of
unforeseen natural events demanded instant measures to cope with them,
or the conduct of the war, indeed the whole life of Syria, the most
important war area, would be paralyzed.

 

 

Two plagues of Egypt, accompanied by sub-plagues and assistant-plagues
of all descriptions, had invaded the land from the north and east. The
eastern plague, spotted typhus, forcing its way as a localized epidemic
via Aleppo to Antioch, Alexandretta, the mountains along the coast,
was an appalling proof of cosmic justice. The drastic horror of this
illness distinguished it from the milder epidemic on the Damlayik, which,
thanks to fresh air, good water, severe isolation of all the infected, and
indeed to other, unknown causes, still kept within bounds. But the death
rate of Mesopotamian spotted typhus often stood at eighty percent. It
had descended from the cloud of disease which hovered about the steppes
of the Euphrates. Ever since May and June hundreds of thousands of dead
Armenians had been rotting, on that very unconsecrated earth, in that
godless common grave. Even wild beasts fled the stench. Only the poor
troops had to force their way through that unspeakable mass of putrescent
humanity. Columns of Macedonian, Anatolian, Arab infantry, with endless
baggage and lines of camels, were herded on in daily route-marches to
Baghdad. The bedouin cavalry clattered among them. The worldly wisdom of
Talaat Bey, in the Serail Palace of the ministry, might well have been
confounded by the perception of what strange results may emerge from any
attempt to exterminate a whole people. But neither he nor Enver let it
perturb them. Power and the dullest insensitivity have gone together
ever since there has been a world. The second, northerly plague had
certainly less of super-terrestrial consistency than the other, but
its actual effects were perhaps more formidable. It, too, seemed an
actual repetition of Biblical punishment. This plague of locusts swept
down from the Taurus into the plain of Antioch, and so over the whole
of Syria. The gullies, slopes, and ravines of that great mountain were
no doubt the birthplace of these tough nomads, who irresistibly swarmed
far and wide. Huge locusts, hard, shrivelled-looking insects, brownish,
like withered leaves, clearing obstacles in one wide leap, as though horse
and rider had grown together. They came on in different huge detachments,
army corps, covering the earth of hundreds of square miles of the sanjak,
so that scarcely a strip of earth remained visible. This planned advance,
the purposeful concentration of their descent, fully suggested that
more than mere blind instinct guided their wrath, that they had a plan,
and leadership. They seemed in fact to represent the big collective
idea of essential locusthood. It was really terrifying to watch the
descent of one of those swarms on a garden -- on elms, plane trees,
yews, even on the hardened sycamores. Each tree, in a few seconds, would
be wrapped in a kind of furniture-cover, a rain-proof sheet of rough,
dark serge. Every vestige of green shrivelled up and vanished under
the watcher's eyes, as though eaten by invisible flame. Even the trunk
was enveloped in whirling puttees of insects. Nothing suggested that
individuals made up the unity of the swarm. A single locust, caught in
the palm of a man's hand, betrayed the same pitiful fear as other insects,
and strove to escape. Back in the swarm, he realized his own true nature,
feeling his own pushful greed as the service of a great cause.

 

 

In August, east of the Syrian coastal area, as far as the valley of
the Euphrates, there was no longer one green tree. But with trees
Jemal Pasha did not concern himself. Harvesting, in northern Syria,
never begins before the middle of July and lasts several weeks, since
rye, wheat, and barley are not threshed at the same time as maize. The
Moslem lets his sheaves lie out for weeks, having little to fear from
rain. When the locusts descended in July, they found half the grain
still standing, the other half in loose sheaves in the fields. So that,
within a few days, in their fashion, they had gathered the whole Syrian
harvest, and by the middle of the month there was not a stalk left to
be harvested in fields stripped bare. On this Syrian harvest Jemal Pasha
had impatiently reckoned.

 

 

The locusts had made short work of the whole commissariat plan of the
current war year. The price of bread shot up. In spite of the most
stringent countermeasures, the inflated Turkish pound dropped well
below its nominal value. These August days, in which Musa Dagh defended
herself so gloriously, also saw the first deaths from famine in the
Lebanon district.

 

 

Such was the state of affairs when Jemal Pasha summoned the meeting
of Syrian governors at his headquarters. That powerful gathering was
almost as perturbed as the Council of Leaders on Musa Dagh. The walis
and mutessarifs were no more able to stamp trainloads of grain out of the
earth than the mukhtars, ewes and sheep. But the potentate's speech was
short and not conciliatory. By this or that day the Aleppo vilayet was
to deliver so and so much corn to the commissariat. The officials turned
pale with fury, not only at these outrageous demands, but even more at
the pasha's tone in making them. Only one among them was all zeal and
humility, and to be sure, in view of the disastrous business of Musa Dagh,
he had very good reason for being so. The puffy, brownish face of the
Kaimakam of Antakiya listened with intense enthusiasm to every word that
fell from Jemal's lips. All the other governors haggled and bemoaned, but
he promised to do the impossible. Even if he could get no rye or wheat,
at least he would send maize, as much as was needed. But might he, please,
be given the necessary transport? Jemal, in the course of one of these
sessions, even got to the point of holding up the Kaimakam of Antakiya
as a shining example to all the rest. The Kaimakam seized this chance
for which he had striven with so much wisdom, and begged for a short
interview after the sitting. This was a direct infringement of the laws
of official hierarchy, but the Kaimakam hoped, by direct intervention,
to win over the imperious chief of staff to his side. In Jemal's room,
besides the Kaimakam, there was only Osman, the barbaric head of the
picturesque bodyguard. The district governor of Antakiya obsequiously
accepted a cigarette.

 

 

"I'm addressing myself directly to Your Excellency because I know Your
Excellency's generosity. Your Excellency will no doubt have guessed
my petition."

 

 

The small, stockily built Jemal, with his hunched shoulder, faced the
Kaimakam, fair and square, whose loose, heavy bulk towered over him. The
general's thick, Asiatic lips pouted spitefully through black surrounding
meshes of beard.

 

 

"It's a disgrace," he hissed, "a filthy disgrace."

 

 

With bowed head the Kaimakam registered tribulation.

 

 

"I venture to agree entirely with Your Excellency. It's a disgrace.
But it's not my fault, it's my misfortune, that this disgrace should
have happened in my Kazah."

 

 

"Not your fault? It'll be the fault of all you civilians, if we lose the
war because of this infamous nonsense with the Armenians and perhaps go
utterly to bits."

 

 

The Kaimakam seemed deeply shaken by this prophecy. "It's such a misfortune
that Your Excellency should not be guiding our policy in Istanbul."

 

 

"It is a misfortune, you can be sure of that."

 

 

"But I, after all, am no more than a minor official, who obediently must
receive the government's orders."

 

 

"Receive? Carry them out, my good sir, carry them out! How many weeks has
this scandal lasted already? You can't manage even to dispose of a few
ragged, half-starved peasants. . . . What a success for His Excellency
the War Minister, ha, ha! and His Excellency the Minister of the Interior!"

 

 

And the short, sturdy Jemal went across to the gigantic Osman, to smack
him on the chest with the palm of his hand, so that every accoutrement
hung on this waxwork jingled.

 

 

"My people'd have done it in half an hour."

 

 

Osman grinned. The Kaimakam too smiled, bittersweet. "Your Excellency's
advance on the Suez canal was one of the greatest campaigns in our whole
history. You must forgive me, a civilian, for presuming to seem to give an
opinion. . . . But to me it always seems that perhaps the greatest feature
of the campaign was that it should have cost Your Excellency so few men."

 

 

Jemal emitted a little laugh. "Right, Kaimakam. I'm not so magnificent
as Enver."

 

 

And now the Kaimakam gave its most adroit turn to the interview:
"The mutineers of the seven villages are extremely well armed. I'm not
a soldier, Your Excellency, but I shrink from sacrificing another life
against them. Your Excellency, as our greatest general, must know,
even better than I, that a mountain fortress can't possibly be cleared
without mountain artillery and machine-guns. Let those cursed Armenians
be victorious! I've done all I could!"

 

 

Jemal Pasha, whose savage temper it was his constant effort to control,
still could not force any calm into his voice.

 

 

"Apply to the War Minister!" he shouted. "I haven't any mountain artillery,
or machine guns either. People talk of my power -- I'm the poorest commander
in the empire. These gentlemen in Istanbul have robbed me of my last
cartridge. And anyway -- it's none of my business!"

 

 

The Kaimakam became very grave and crossed his arms, as if in salaam,
upon his breast. "Your Excellency must forgive my daring to contradict
you. But this matter does, perhaps, concern you a little . . . since
not only civil servants are being made to look ridiculous in the eyes of
the whole world by this defeat, but even the troops of the Fourth Army,
which bears the famous name of Your Excellency."

 

 

"What do you take me for?" scoffed Jemal. 'You don't get me to bite
so easily."

 

 

So, to all appearances crushed to earth, and yet, inside himself,
not quite so hopeless, the Kaimakam retired from the presence, past
the highly decorative Osman. Nor did hope deceive him. This same Osman
came after midnight to his quarters, to rouse and lead him at once to
Jemal. The Syrian dictator was often pleased to prove, to himself his
power, to others his originality, by such surprise invitations at all
hours. He did not receive his late visitor in uniform, but wrapped in
a fantastic burnous, which gave his by no means irreproachable figure
the aspect of a picturesque bedouin sheikh.

 

 

"Kaimakam, I've thought over that whole business of yours, and I've
reached some decisions . . ."

 

 

He struck the table with the flat of his red, plebeian hand. "The empire
is being sacrificed to crazy and incompetent careerists."

 

 

The Kaimakam waited, in mournful confirmation, for what would come. Osman
paraded his splendors in the doorway. "When does that fellow get a chance
to sleep?" the governor of Antioch reflected.

 

 

Jemal paced up and down the room. "You're right, Kaimakam, this disgrace
of yours affects me also. It must be wiped out, it ought never to have
been, you understand me?"

 

 

Still the Kaimakam waited, saying nothing. The little general's spitefully
bearded face glanced up at him. "You have ten days, after which the whole
thing must be wiped out and forgotten. . . . I shall send you one of my
most efficient officers and everything necessary. . . . But you answer
to me, mind! . . . I want to know nothing more about it."

 

 

The Kaimakam was clever enough not to say a word in reply.

 

 

The general took two steps back. Now he really did look like a hunchback.
"I want to hear no more of this whole business! 1ff have to hear any more
of it, if it is not all got smoothly out of the way, I shall have all
those responsible shot . . . and you too, Kaimakam, will go to the devil!"

 

 

 

 

The freckled müdir, installed in Villa Bagradian, was roused twice that
day from his kef-siesta. The first time to receive a letter from the
Kaimakam, apprising him of his immediate arrival. But when the sergeant
of the saptiehs appeared a second time to drag him out of the cool
villa into grilling midday heat, he showered wild curses on the head of
that unfortunate disturber and longed to thrash him. And yet, once in
the church square of Yoghonoluk, the müdir quickened his pace, since a
really unusual sight awaited him. In front of the church stood a yayli,
not drawn by horses even, but by mules. Nor was it even a proper yayli;
it was an old-fashioned coach of some kind, with high wheels. Inside the
coach sat an old gentleman whose garb and being suited it to perfection.
A dark blue robe of silk reached down to his feet, clothed in the softest
goatskin slippers. Around his fez, this very distinguished-looking old
gentleman wore the tarbush cloth of the pious. The ancient's soft, almost
spinsterish fingers kept counting the beads of an amber rosary. The müdir
perceived at once, in this old gentleman, an Old-Turkish patrician,
a partisan of the opposite camp, which, in spite of the revolution,
still retained vestiges of its power. Then he remembered having met the
old gentleman before, on two or three occasions in Antakiya, where people
had saluted and done him reverence.