Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Next day, at the hour assigned, the first piteous convoy did in fact set out, beginning one of the cruellest tragedies that ever in recorded history has overwhelmed a whole people. Military guards followed the emigrants -- it was suddenly evident now that this vast force, summoned to reduce a hundred fugitives, had other minor, but all the more treacherous, duties assigned it. Every morning now the same heart-rending pageant was staged. Those fifty chief families of the town were followed by fifty others, less well-to-do, and, as the exiles sank in the social scale, their numbers increased. To be sure the vast war zones along every European front were equally crowded with refugees. But, hard as was the fate of these homeless people, it was nothing compared with that of these poor townsfolk.

  For many people it is depressing even to move house. A lost fragment of life always remains. To move to another town, settle in a foreign country, is for everyone a major decision. But, to be suddenly driven forth, within twenty-four hours, from one's home, one's work, the reward of years of steady industry. To become the helpless prey of hate. To be sent defenceless out on to Asiatic highroads, with several thousand miles of dust, stones, and morass before one. To know that one will never again find a decently human habitation, never again sit down to a proper table. Yet all this is nothing. To be more shackled than any convict. To be counted as outside the law, a vagabond, whom anyone has the right to kill unpunished. To be confined within a crawling herd of sick people, a moving concentration camp, in which no one is so much as allowed to ease his body without permission. Who shall dare say he can measure the depths of anguish which invaded the minds of these people of Zeitun, in that long week between the setting out of the first transport and the last! Even so young a man as the pastor Aram Tomasian, who, since he was not a native of Zeitun, had better prospects than all the others, became almost a wraith in those seven days.

  Pastor Aram -- he was called only by his Christian name -- had for over a year been the pastor of the Protestant congregation of Zeitun and head of the big orphanage. His appointment, at scarcely thirty, to the directorship of that institution was due to the fact that the American missionaries in Marash had considered Aram their most promising pupil and hoped great things of him. They had even sent him with a stipend for three years to Geneva, to finish his studies there. His French, therefore, was fluent, his German and English both very good. The orphanage of the American missionaries was one of the most pleasing results of their civilizing work of fifty years. Its large, bright rooms gave shelter to over a hundred children. There was a school attached to it, also open to children from the town. A small farm surrounded the institute, so that the orphanage supplied its own goat's milk, vegetables and other provisions. Therefore, to be director of this orphanage required not only scholastic ability, but sound, business-like common sense. Pastor Aram, attracted like most other young men by the thought of being independent, had embraced his new duties with enthusiasm. He had spent a very happy and active year and was full of projects. He had married, in the previous spring, shortly before beginning his new duties, Hovsannah, an old flame, a girl from Marash, the daughter of a pastor of the first generation of the seminary there. Whereas most Armenian women are soft-limbed and not very tall, Hovsannah was tall and well-developed. She moved slowly, never had much to say, and often gave the impression of complete detachment from her surroundings. Iskuhi, however, had once suggested to her brother that Hovsannah's quietness had sometimes a dash of malice and stubbornness in it. It was said as a joke, and seemed to be an unjustified observation, since what really malicious and obstinate married woman would ever have had her sister-in-law to live with her? The relationship was peculiar in the case of the nineteen-year-old Iskuhi. Aram worshipped his young sister. In her ninth year, after their mother's death, he had already fetched her away from Yoghonoluk to place her in the missionary school in Marash. Later he sent her to Lausanne, where she spent a year in a finishing school. The cost of this select ambition on his younger sister's behalf he had paid by many cleverly contrived economies. He could not imagine life without Iskuhi. Hovsannah knew it and had herself proposed this ménage a trois. The girl had been given a post as assistant teacher in the orphanage. She taught French. It was not surprising that Iskuhi should have inspired love, and not only in her brother. Apart from her magnificent eyes, the most beautiful thing about her was her mouth. Her deeply tinged lips had always a glistening, smiling sheen upon them, like her eyes, as though her mouth could see. The three had contrived a pleasant life together, quite unlike the usual life around them. The pastor's quarters were in the orphanage. Their bare look had soon vanished under Hovsannah's hands, for she had a gift for decoration and a sharp instinct for beautiful things. She made excursions into the town and surrounding villages to bargain with the Zeitun women for fine tapestries, wood-carvings, household gear, with which to enliven these rooms -- a pursuit which took up weeks of her time. Iskuhi was fonder of books. Aram, Hovsannah and Iskuhi lived for each other. This orphanage and its school were such worlds away from the rest of the town that the three flourishing people had scarcely noticed the oppressive atmosphere of Zeitun. The pastor's Sunday sermons had expressed, until well on into March, a heartening cheerfulness, more redolent of the peaceful joys of his own existence than of any clear-sighted estimate of what the government might intend.

  The blow almost stunned him. He saw his work all gone for nothing. But then he was seized with frenzied hope that the government would not dare close down the orphanage. Aram had soon pulled himself together. A word from Hovsannah, in the very first days of banishment, gave him back his strength. Only at such a moment as this did the full meaning of the Christian priesthood become evident. Thus spoke the pastor's daughter. Heartened by her admonishment, Pastor Aram began to put forth superhuman energy. He not only kept his church open day and night, to give spiritual comfort to groups of exiles as they departed -- he went from house to house among his flock, from family to family, mingled with the sobbing people, helped them with every penny he possessed, organized a certain order in the convoys, wrote cries for help to all the missions which lay along their route into exile, and carefully worded petitions to Turkish officials, wherever he considered them well disposed, begging letters and testimonials; attempted to obtain delays, haggled with Turkish muleteers -- in short did everything he could possibly have done in these grievous circumstances. Then, when he could do no more, could no longer console with the sufferings of the gospel, he would sit in silence, beside these people, dazed with grief, shut his eyes, close convulsive fingers, and cry aloud in his soul to Christ.

  The town emptied from day to day. The roads to Marash filled with long serpentine convoys, whose marchers seemed unable to advance. A watcher from the citadel of Zeitun might have seen them far into the mountains, and nothing could have aroused more horror in him than the creeping quiet of these lines of death, rendered more piteous still by the shouts and laughter of the armed escort. Meanwhile the dying streets of Zeitun were reanimated by carrion birds, pilferers, professional thieves, the dregs of the town, and robbers from the country round it. They infested the deserted houses and began in them a vigorous search for plunder. Carts and barrows trundled through the streets, sumpter mules came clattering in. Carpets, clothes, bedsteads, heaps of linen, furniture, mirrors were all piled up, in leisurely, undisturbed tranquillity, as though it were an ordinary, lawful house-moving. The authorities did nothing to prevent it. They even seemed to look upon such plunder as the natural reward of Turkish scum -- always providing that the Armenians were made to go peacefully into exile. The order that, of every craft, six representatives should remain in "Sultanieh," so that the drifting wreck of daily life might not be left entirely without its crew, had the ring of some barbaric fairy-tale. These lucky ones were not chosen by the authorities; the commune was ordered to elect them, a cunning intensification of punishment, since it inflicted a new, acute, mental agony.

  The fifth day had already dawned, and Pastor Aram had still rec
eived no summons. All that had so far happened was the visit of a Mohammedan mullah, a stranger, moreover, to Zeitun, who had come to demand the keys of the church. This Protestant church, as he courteously informed its pastor, was to be reconsecrated as a mosque, before evening prayer. Yet Tomasian still clung to the hope that his orphanage would be left in peace. He ordered that, from now onwards, everyone was to keep indoors, neither teacher nor child to show himself at the windows, and no loud word was to be spoken. The shutters were to be kept bolted all day, no lights were to be shown in the evening. A strained, death-like rigidity descended on this house, as a rule so alive. But it is just such mockeries of fate which provoke its onslaught. On the next day, the sixth, one of those official messengers who sped, like angels of destruction, gruesomely up and down the streets of Zeitun summoned the pastor instantly before the town commandant.

  Aram set forth in his priestly gown. His prayer had been heard. Not a trace of fear or excitement ruffled his dignity. He came, quietly erect, into the staff officer's presence. In the present case, unluckily, this bearing of his was a great mistake, since the bimbashi enjoyed the sight of tearful cringers. Then he was sometimes ready to wink, ameliorate, show himself kindly and humane. But Aram's certainty of manner stifled this benevolence at its source, since it was born of the contrast between his greatness and the miserable writhings of worms.

  "You are the Protestant pastor, Aram Tomasian, native of Yoghonoluk, near Alexandretta?" The colonel growled this warrant of apprehension before he hurled himself on the victim. "You leave with the last convoy, tomorrow morning. In the direction Marash-Aleppo. You understand?"

  "I'm ready."

  "I didn't ask if you were ready. . . . Your wife and other relatives to accompany you. You are to take only such baggage as you can carry. You will receive, as far as it is possible to supply it, a daily ration of one hundred direms of bread. You are permitted to purchase extra supplies. Any attempt to leave your column of march without permission will be punished by the officer in charge; with death, in the case of a second infringement. The use of vehicles is forbidden."

  "My wife is expecting a child," said Aram quietly.

  This seemed to amuse the bimbashi. "You ought to have thought of that before." He glanced again at his papers. "The pupils of your orphanage, as Armenian children, are naturally not exempt from transportation. They are to hold themselves in readiness punctually, and in full muster -- they and the whole staff of your institution."

  Pastor Aram retreated a step. "May I ask if any provision is to be made for these hundred innocent children? A great many of them are under ten years of age, and have never undertaken a long march. And children need milk."

  It is not your place to ask questions, Pastor!" the colonel shouted. "You're here to take my orders. For the last week you've been living in a military area."

  Had this bellow made the pastor break down in terror, the bimbashi, from superlative heights, might perhaps have conceded him his goats. But Aram continued, quietly stubborn: "I shall therefore arrange for our herd of goats to be driven out, so that the children may get their milk as usual."

  "You'll keep your insolent mouth shut, Pastor, and knuckle under."

  "Moreover, Effendi, I make you personally responsible for the orphanage building, which is the inalienable property of American citizens, under the protection of their ambassador."

  At first the bimbashi could find no answer. This threat seemed to have had its effect. Such gods subdue their tinny voices as soon as higher gods come into sight. After a long and, for a colonel, rather disastrous pause, he spluttered: "Do you know that I can tread on you like an insect? I have only to breathe, and you never so much as existed."

  "I won't prevent you," said Pastor Aram, and meant what he said, for a monstrous longing for death had overwhelmed him.

  Later, when Aram, Hovsannah and Iskuhi were asked which moment of their exile had seemed the worst, they all three answered: "The minutes when we were waiting for our transport to get under way." It was an instant in which their actual, concrete wretchedness seemed only half as acute as a kind of heavy desolation, a primitive horror within their blood, some awakened memory of a dim primal age before security of domicile had been won as a legal right, so that now this mass of a thousand people, dishonored, helpless, fused into one, not only felt the final loss of all its possessions, the onslaught of the perils of life, but became aware beneath all this of itself as a collective entity, a people robbed of the rewards of centuries of effort, the cultural fruits of a thousand years. Pastor Aram and the two women had fallen a prey to this general, unfathomable melancholy.

  An overcast day of low-hung clouds, which veiled the familiar heads of the mountains of Zeitun: far better than a sunny day to march on. But this outward gloom of the day seemed to load down the backs of the exiles more heavily than any of the bundles they had been permitted to take with them. This first step had something deeply significant, something sacred, in its sheer terror, and which flashed upon every soul like lightning. Families herded close together. Not a word, not even the crying of a child. But already, after the first half-hour, when the last outlying houses were behind them, these people felt a certain relief. The primitive childishness of all humans, their poignant, frivolous faculty of forgetfulness, gained the upper hand for a certain time. As a single timid chirrup is heard at daybreak, and instantly the whole choir has joined it, soon, above the heads of this whole transport, there arose an entangled skein of jagged children's voices. The mothers quieted them. Even the men called out this or that to one another. Here and there a faint laugh was already heard. Many old people and children were riding donkeys, also laden with bedding, coverlets, sacks. The officer in charge allowed it to be. He seemed, on his own responsibility, at his own peril, to wish to mitigate the harshness of this order of banishment. Aram, too, had procured a donkey for his wife. But most of the time they walked beside it, since she feared the joltings of the ride. Although it would have been more prudent to send them on to the head, the orphans brought up the rear of the convoy. After them came only the herd of goats, which the pastor, neglecting orders, had fearlessly caused to be driven forth. At first the children enjoyed it all as an adventure, a delightful change. Iskuhi, who kept among them, did her very best to encourage these high spirits. Nobody could have seen the strain of her sleepless nights. Her face showed only delight in the moment, the joy of life. Tender and weak as her body seemed, the all-powerful resilience of her youth had surmounted everything. She even tried to get the children to sing. It was a pleasant song from Yoghonoluk, where people sang it at their work among vines and orchards. Iskuhi had introduced it into the school at Zeitun.

  "Days of misfortune pass and are gone, Like the days of winter, they come and they go; The sorrows of men do not last very long, Like the buyers in shops, they come and go."

  But Aram Tomasian came hurrying back at once to forbid their singing. The young pastor covered twice or three times as much ground as the others. He would be seen at the head of the convoy, then at the rear, among the stragglers, always with his big gourd hung from a strap, out of which he kept offering drinks of raki. And he gave out courage, cracked jokes, adjusted differences, doing his best to bring some shape and order into life, even such life as this. Everyone had a duty assigned him. Among the craftsmen, for instance, shoemakers were entrusted with the task, during every halt, of quickly repairing all broken shoes. Though there were very few Protestants in the convoy, Tomasian was the only priest, since all the Gregorians and Catholics had been sent forth in the first days. So that the pastor had charge of all these souls. He evolved his own particular method of making these exiles keep up their courage. Only what seems aimless is unbearable; he knew that by his own experience. Therefore he kept repeating, in a voice full of the stoutest confidence: "We shall be in Marash by tomorrow evening. There, it will all be different. Probably we shall stay there some time, till orders come to send us home again. And its as good as certain we shall go
home. The Istanbul government can't possibly be behind all this. After all, we have deputies and national representation. In three weeks from now it will all be arranged. But what matters most is that you should all be well when we get to Marash and that we should keep up our strength and courage."

  Such speeches had a soothing effect, even on the naturally pessimistic, on those who were too intelligent to believe in the innocence of the central government. Despairing faces began to brighten. The miracle was due not only to this rosily pictured future, but to an aim, a definite, firmly defined thought: "We shall be in Marash tomorrow." In the long rests the young officer in command of the Turkish escort showed himself a very decent fellow. As soon as his men had finished their cooking, he offered the pastor the use of their field-cookers, so that warm food could be cooked for the weak and ailing. But, since tomorrow they would be in a big town, even the strong did not trouble to economize their supplies. And for the next few hours the march took on a new ease and confidence.

  And when that evening they encamped in the open fields and stretched out, weary to death, on their blankets, they could thank God that the first day had passed off tolerably. Not far from their camp there was a big village, called Tutlissek. In the night a few mountaineers, yailadjis, came out of the village to visit the Turkish guards. The men squatted together in dignified conference, gravely smoking, and seemed to be discussing a serious matter. When, just before dawn, the Zeitunlis awoke and went to collect their goats and donkeys, to water them, all the beasts had vanished.