No Man's Land (71 page)

The more the news spread, the deeper the hatred grew and frothed.

There had already been some clashes between the Armenians and the Turks in some of the streets. As the latter had gone by the Armenians had insulted them, their religion, and Mohammed, and fighting had broken out.

Meetings were held at the premises of the Armenian Prelacy. They had wanted to send a telegram to the Patriarch in Constantinople to protest against the murder which had taken place. The town was surrounded by troops and at every street-corner stood armed policemen, who would not allow people to go about, arresting those who were already out in the streets.

But they only arrested the Armenians. To evade this, many of them bound white scarves round their fezes and went out that way. Seeing the white scarves, the soldiers took them for mullahs and let them pass. By the evening the town was filled with ‘mullahs'.

This state of affairs continued for three days and turned into a grim nightmare. The body remained in the house, surrounded by relatives.

There was no way of burying it.

The funeral took place at the end of the three days, and those who had been arrested were released in order to take part in it. Several thousand people were present at the funeral. They had even come from distant villages. The burial took place without any disturbances. Everyone had sobered down. They hung their heads almost as if in shame.

Why?

It had been revealed that Hagop Simonian's murderer had not been a Turk, after all, but a young Armenian. Furthermore, he had been one of the headmaster's pupils, who had finished school two years earlier and had become a teacher.

Why had this Hagop killed Hagop Simonian?

The murderer's name was also Hagop.

There was a pretty young girl who was related to the headmaster and with whom the murderer had fallen in love.

The girl's parents had sought the headmaster's opinion about his pupil, in order to make a final decision about the girl's future.

‘He is a mad, stupid boy!' the headmaster had replied.

To persuade their daughter the parents had told her what their relative had said, as he was one of the most intellectual people in the town. In her turn the girl had disclosed the headmaster's views to Hagop, to explain the difficulties which weighed down against her marrying him.

And so the mad and stupid Hagop had waylaid the headmaster in the middle of the night and had stabbed him there and then.

Not a single Turk had taken the slightest part in this murder. Ashamed, the Armenians kept quiet about it, but the Turks tried not to forget it.

*

A month after this incident, the wife of one of the fiercest Turks in the town, Ahmed Tchavoush by name, was found strangled in her own bed.

Ahmed Tchavoush was a town-crier, with a hoarse, stentorian voice.

Whenever there was an occasion for the Government to make an announcement they would call Ahmed Tchavoush, and they would enjoin him with the task. Suddenly, his voice would be heard to ring out: ‘…all defaulters will be hanged…' His declarations always ended with the pronouncement of this supreme punishment.

And suddenly, in the dead of night, Ahmed Tchavoush's voice was heard in our district: ‘The Armenians have strangled my wife and have escaped!' A violent bellowing followed these words; it was as if a wild animal was wailing. The voice came from his roof. He had gone up there and, marching up and down along the edge, with his upraised hands shaking in the air, he was roaring: ‘The Armenians have strangled my wife and have escaped!'

Everyone sat up in their beds in the middle of the night, awakened from their sleep and terrified, they crossed themselves and remained silent, waiting for whatever disaster might follow in the morning.

But the disaster did not wait until the morning; it came in the middle of the night.

Ahmed Tchavoush's house was filled with policemen and Turks.

The Armenians had entered Ahmed Tchavoush's house. They had tied him up, gagged him with cotton wool, and when he had tried to free himself, they had beaten him up, had strangled his wife in bed and had run away – this was the story Ahmed Tchavoush told the police and the Turks.

Even the Armenians believed this story, taking it for an act of revenge. It was Tchavoush who, some months earlier, had cut off the heads of two Armenian revolutionaries in public with a butcher's yataghan. He was the only man to have agreed to act as executioner. After this horrible deed, he had scooped up some of the blood with the palm of his hand, rubbed it into his beard, and had knelt down a few paces away from the severed heads and prayed to Allah.

The arrests began in the middle of the night and lasted until the morning. The prison was filled with Armenians. On the way there, they were beaten, wounded, spat at, and insulted.

On the evening of the incident, Tchavoush had told his wife that he was going to the village, which he often visited. He had gone to the market-place to hire a horse. There he had been promised one; but having waited in vain until late at night he had returned home, and had found his wife in the arms of a Turkish youth. Enraged, Tchavoush had strangled the young man and had thrown him into the well. Then he had strangled his wife and, leaving her in bed, had climbed up to the roof and had begun to roar: ‘The Armenians have murdered my wife and have escaped!'

This was what had really happened.

They brought out the Turkish youth's body from the well, and arrested Ahmed Tchavoush. The young Turk's parents were wealthy and influential. They pursued the case closely, and had Ahmed Tchavoush exiled to Konia and forbidden to return.

The arrested Armenians were not all released together, but one at a time, in gradual stages. Even the last one, on the very last day, was cross-examined in connexion with Ahmed Tchavoush.

*

A Turk had gone to an Armenian shopkeeper, and after choosing some material, he had asked the price.

‘Ten kouroush an arsheen,' the shopkeeper had replied.

‘Make it five,' the Turk had suggested.

‘I can't; it cost me eight, in the first place.'

The Turk had demanded that he sold it for five. The Armenian had refused. The Turk had left full of hatred, gnashing his teeth together.

A day or two had gone by, and an uproar had broken out in the street – the Turks were beating up an Armenian.

It was the shopkeeper who had refused to sell the material at five kouroush an arsheen. The Turk had met him again in the street, and had asked:

‘Well, will you sell it at five kouroush, you infidel?'

‘No!'

And the Turk had started to shout:

‘Help! Help! He insulted my religion! I was walking by quietly and he insulted Mohammed and our holy religion!'

And so the crowd had set upon the Armenian and had broken his nose and cut his lip. Whilst at every blow the shopkeeper had shouted:

‘I'll give it away for nothing, but I will not sell it at five kouroush an arsheen! You can take it!'

No one had bothered to ask why the man who was being beaten should be shouting these words, or what connexion they had with the holy religion.

*

Dikran, the goldsmith, had a vineyard near the slaughterhouse of the town. I had gone to the vineyard of a relative of ours, which was next to the goldsmith's.

At noon, a Turk, carrying a basket, entered Dikran's vineyard and asked him for some grapes. The latter did not want to give him any, but his mother intervened:

‘I should; he is a cur; he would only create trouble.'

So Dikran gave him some, but without filling the basket. The Turk demanded that he filled it completely.

‘It would be too heavy to carry,' said Dikran, playfully hinting that he did not want to give any more.

The Turk insisted on having a full basket. The mother intervened again, but Dikran was furious and refused.

‘You have enough there, and I gave it to you for nothing!' Dikran exclaimed. The Turk demanded again. They started fighting.

Dikran was a thin, delicate man; whilst the Turk was well built and strong. Dikran had the worst of the fight; he was thoroughly beaten and even lost a tooth. No one intercepted.

‘He is a cur, he would go and create a thousand and one mischiefs!' they all said and allowed him to be beaten.

Five days later, Dikran was summoned to court.

I went to the trial to see what would happen, in spite of my mother's orders to keep away from such places.

The Turk appeared in court with a white handkerchief tied across his forehead. Dikran was supposed to have struck him on the forehead with a stone and broken it. Dikran was condemned to two months' imprisonment, and he was beaten as they took him to prison; whilst in court Dikran begged them only to remove the handkerchief and see for themselves if there was a wound there.

But they refused to listen to him: there was the government doctor's report, and that was enough!

When they had taken Dikran to prison and we had come out of court, I saw with my own eyes how, once he was in the street, the Turk untied his handkerchief without the slightest compunction, and put it in his pocket. There was not a sign of a wound, not even the trace of a scratch on his forehead.

*

One day, in broad daylight, a terrible piece of news went round: an Armenian barber had cut the throat of a Turk whom he had been shaving!

The news spread like lightning. Everyone tried to shut their shops immediately and go home. Within fifteen minutes the shopping area of the town looked as it did on Sundays – deserted.

What had happened?

The barber had been shaving the Turk, when an Armenian acquaintance had come in and whispered in his ear:

‘What are you doing here? The Turks and the Armenians are fighting outside!'

This had been simply meant to be a joke.

The barber had thought for a minute: they had already started outside, and here before him was a ready-made opportunity. So he had taken advantage of it, and then he had hurried out, razor in hand, to join in the fray. When he had discovered that everything was quiet outside, the prospect of the consequences had horrified him. He had jumped on to a horse and had fled out of town.

That evening the barber's wife was taken to prison, was beaten, and persistently questioned:

‘Where's your husband hiding?'

*

The Ottoman Constitution was declared.

There was an outburst of greetings, kisses, embraces; an overflow of affection and of brotherhood.

The prison gates were opened, and out came the political prisoners, amongst whom were also my two teachers.

A celebration of freedom took place in front of the government house. Out came the Turkish revolutionaries and spoke about the Constitution.

It was the first time that I had seen Turkish revolutionaries. How was it possible for a Turk to become a revolutionary? That was what I had heard and believed.

I was on my way back from that celebration, tired, covered in dust, thirsty, and full of joy.

I met Shemsy in the street.

We had not greeted each other for a long time. He had called my father an ‘infidel', and I had called his a ‘cur'. We had often called each other by these names before and had made it up, but on that occasion we had directed them at each other's parents.

I, in particular, had been painfully hurt, because at the time when Shemsy had insulted my father, he was turning to dust in the cemetery…

Shemsy looked at me out of the corner of his eyes.

So did I.

I smiled.

He did the same.

I do not know how, but our feet moved towards one another and our arms embraced each other.

Shemsy dragged me to their home. The house seemed so strange to me – I had not been there for a long time. He led me in, ignoring the custom of segregating the womenfolk in their home. I kissed his mother's hand. I turned and saw Sanié, who stood there smiling. Our hands went forward in the way they do when one's heart wants to applaud.

It was a very long time since I had last seen Sanié without her violet veil.

She had lost a little, a very little, of her ethereal qualities, but she had become more full-blooded.

When I gripped her hand firmly, she blushed, her lips trembled and, turning to her mother, she whispered something. There was so much femininity in her whisper that, at once, I visualized her swimming in the pond, and the icy water quivering with the sunny warmth of her body.

*

The kisses and embraces did not help in any way, because barely a few days later ‘wise' Armenians whispered into the ears of others:

‘Don't be deceived!'

‘Wise' Turks also whispered:

‘Beware, the Armenians want to rule our country and abolish our religion!'

The clock seemed to have been put back.

*

When we were children, we used to play a game called ‘Armenians and Turks'. It was a simple game: there would be a mass of stones in the centre, called the ‘fortress'. The children would divide into two teams, to occupy the ‘fortress'. One of the teams would be called ‘The Armenians' and the other, ‘The Turks'.

‘The Turks are going in, boys!'

‘The Armenians are getting near the fortress! Attack them!'

It was looked upon as an innocent game.

And it continued so until the First World War. The same game was played during that war, with the exception that, this time, the sides were taken by real Armenians and real Turks and they were playing on real soil, roused by an immeasurable hatred.

No one, absolutely no one, ever told us not to play this game. Whenever we did the grown-ups, men with moustaches, men famed for their learning and for their seriousness, would watch us and smile. And they would usually be delighted when the ‘Turks' were defeated. The passions would become so heated that the ‘Armenians' would call the ‘Turks' during play by those insulting names which they did at other times.

We would always be faced with one difficulty at the beginning of the game: no one would want to be a ‘Turk'. We would be forced to draw lots. Anyone who drew ‘Armenian' would be enormously delighted, whilst those who drew ‘Turk' would be upset, reluctantly taking part in the game, simply to obey the rules of children's games.