Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Johannes Lepsius was so daring as to visit the Armenian patriarch, Monsignor Saven. Since they last met, what little there was left of life in it seemed to have ebbed out of that priest's dead face. This holy man abstractedly eyed his visitor. When he recognized him, he could not hold back the tears.

  "It'll do you no good, my son," he whispered, "if they know you've been coming here to see me."

  Now Dr. Lepsius heard the full horror of the truth, as it had developed in the weeks he had been away. The patriarch told it curtly, dryly, as though not in words. Any further attempt to help was worse than useless, it was superfluous, since the deportation law had already taken full effect. Most of the clergy, all the political leaders, had been slaughtered. This people now was composed of famished women and children. Any neutral or German help given to these Armenian women provoked Enver and Talaat to further savagery.

  "The best thing is not to try to do anything, but to keep still, and die."

  Had Lepsius not noticed how this house, the patriarchate, was surrounded with police spies? Every word they were saying would be reported next morning to Talaat Bey. And so, with terror in his eyes, Monsignor Saven asked his visitor to put his head close against his lips. In this way did Lepsius get news of the Armenian revolt on Musa Dagh, the defeat of Turkish regulars, that the mountain had so far proved impregnable. The patriarch's whisper became unsteady: "Isn't it terrible? They say the army has lost over a hundred men."

  Johannes Lepsius did not consider it terrible by any means. His blue eyes shone like a boy's behind sharp-rimmed glasses. "Terrible? Magnificent! If there'd been three Musa Daghs, we should have heard a very different story. Oh, Monsignor, I only wish I were up on the Musa Dagh."

  The pastor had said it far too loud. The patriarch's hand lay, stiff with fear, upon his mouth. As he took leave, Lepsius handed over some of the funds collected in Germany. The priest crammed the banknotes, as swiftly as though they were red-hot coals, into the patent safe in his office. Not much hope of their ever reaching their destination, Deir ez-Zor. The monsignor was whispering again, sharply, in the German's ear, something which at first was unintelligible.

  "It isn't we of the patriarchate, nor you, nor any other German, nor any neutral, who can help us. We should have to find Turks as intermediaries, you understand. Turks!"

  "Turks?" Dr. Lepsius murmured, recapturing a glimpse of Enver Pasha's face. "What a mad idea."

  What a mad idea, and yet already, independently of Dr. Lepsius, it was on its way to being realized. The pastor, in his hotel dining-room, had made the acquaintance of a Turk, a doctor of about forty. Professor Nezimi Bey was very well dressed and westernized. He lived in the Tokatlyan, but had his consulting-room in one of the best streets in Péra. At first Lepsius mistook him for one of the least uncongenial incarnations of the spirit which infused the Young Turkish world. But, in spite of his European science, of clothes admirably cut, appearances proved to be deceptive. They often got into conversation. Three or four times they arranged to have their meal at the same table. Lepsius was extremely cautious. He was forced to be so. The Turkish doctor was anything but cautious or reserved. The German started, and held his tongue, as the doctor began to vent his hatred of the policy of the people in control, his utter detestation of Enver and Talaat. Had they sent an agent provocateur? But, as he eyed Nezimi's pleasant features, considered his position, his way of expressing himself, his really surprising powers as a linguist, such suspicion seemed to be too absurd. Impossible that Enver should dispose of agents of this calibre. Yet Lepsius was still wary enough not to let himself be led into talking freely. He did not deny that he was doing his best, as a Christian priest, to mitigate the lot of his co-religionists. But he would not criticize, and confined himself to the role of attentive listener.

  Though Nezimi seemed not explicitly pro-Armenian he raged against the Committee's deportation policy. "Those fields of Armenian corpses will mean the end of Turkey."

  Lespius still looked stolid. "The vast majority of the nation is behind Enver and Talaat."

  "What?" Nezimi glared up at him. "The vast majority of the nation! You foreigners haven't any idea how insignificant that party really is. Above all, how morally insignificant! Why, it's composed of the shabbiest parvenu scum. When people of that sort insist on their Osmanian race, it's the worst insolence! These pure-bred Osmans mostly come out of the Macedonian stewpot in which the racial ragout of the whole Balkans floats."

  "That's an old story, Professor. Usually the people who dwell on their race are the ones who have most need of something of that kind."

  Nezimi gazed sadly at Lepsius. "It's a pity that a man of your kind, who has made so close a study of our conditions, should still have no idea of the real Turkey. Do you know that all true Turks detest these Armenian convoys, even worse than you do?"

  Lepsius pricked up his ears. "And who are these true Turks, if you don't mind my asking, Professor?"

  "All those who haven't lost their religion."

  But Nezimi would say no more than that. That same evening he knocked at the pastor's door. He gave an impression of strange excitement.

  "If you like, tomorrow I'll take you into the tekkeh of the Sheikh Achmed. It's the greatest honor I could pay you. And there, besides, you'll be able to speak your mind about the Armenians, and perhaps find out some way of helping them."And he repeated: "I shall be doing you the greatest honor."

  So that, immediately after luncheon next day, Nezimi escorted Dr. Lepsius, as they had arranged. Most of the way was done on foot. That day a cool breeze off the Sea of Marmora tempered the sweltering midday sun. Flocks of herons and storks sped across the vivid afternoon sky of Istanbul, to their nests on the opposite side. The doctor conducted Dr. Lepsius along past Enver Pasha's Seraskeriat and the mosque of the Sultan Bayazid into the endless streets of Ak Serai. They walked interminably westwards. They had penetrated the ruined confusion of the innermost town. Pavements had ceased to be. Herds of sheep and goats flocked round them. The ancient Byzantine city wall, above a chaos of wooden houses, frowned on them with its crenellated turrets. But the pastor was by no means in the mood to rejoice his aesthetic sense at the spectacle of a highly picturesque, even if intensely squalid, neighborhood. Nor did that innermost heart of Islamic piety, which today was to open itself for his benefit, interest him as a new experience. Like all minds in the throes of some obsessing, tormenting struggle for an end, he saw it all solely in its relationship to Armenian woes. So that, anything but receptive to new experiences, he was already turning over suggestions and projects. It was these and not curiosity which inspired him to question his guide. "I suppose we're on our way to the Mevlevi dervishes."

  Lepsius, in spite of long sojourns in Palestine and Asia Minor, knew next to nothing about Islam. To him it was merely the fanatical enemy of Christendom.

  But since it is one of our saddest human weaknesses that we always know least of the very person whose mind we should penetrate to the core -- of the enemy -- the pastor had the vaguest notions of the world of true Moslem belief. He had only said "Mevlevi dervishes" because their very well-known name was familiar to him.

  Dr. Nezimi waved off the suggestion: "No! No! Sheikh Achmed, our master, is the head of an order, called by our people 'the thieves of hearts.'"

  "What a strange title for an order. Why 'the thieves of hearts'?"

  "You'll see that for yourself."

  Still, even on their way, the guide condescended to explanations. He informed the German that the flood of Mohammedan religion divides itself into two main powerful streams, the Shaariat and the Tarikaat. Let the Shaariat stand approximately for the concept of the Catholic secular priesthood, the idea of the Tarikaat would be falsified by comparisons with western monasticism. To be a dervish does not mean to renounce the world and withdraw for one's whole life into a tekkeh. Anyone might become a dervish, provided he fulfilled certain conditions, and he need not therefore renounce his profession or family. The grand vizir was equa
lly eligible with the tailor, coppersmith, bank clerk, or officer. So that thus the most diverse brotherhood was scattered up and down the whole country, and brothers knew one another everywhere, "by instinct," without further recognition.

  Johannes Lepsius asked, reflectively purposeful: "So that numerically these dervish orders constitute a considerable power?"

  "Not only numerically, Herr Doctor, believe me."

  "And in what does their religious life consist?"

  "You, I believe, would call it 'spiritual exercises.' But probably that's another misleading expression. We meet from time to time. We exercise our spiritual faculty. We pray. It's called 'zikr.' And everyone, once or twice in his life, has to serve the tekkeh, and live there some time. But the chief thing is, we obey our teacher and superior, out of the fullness of our hearts, from love."

  "Your teacher and superior is the Sheikh Achmed, Professor?"

  Though Lepsius had not directly asked who Sheikh Achmed exactly was, Nezimi supplied the answer:

  "He is a weli. You would say 'holy man' -- and that again would be a complete mistranslation. His life, which is a higher life than other men's, has enabled him to develop powers in himself. You know the French expression -- initiation . And as you'll see, the most splendid thing about him is that he's just an ordinary man."

  They stopped at a high wall. Fig trees, and the tops of cypresses, goldenrain and wistaria, betrayed a garden. Nezimi Bey tapped with his stick on the worm-eaten door, let into the wall. They were kept a long time waiting. Then an old man, heavily built, with mild, kind eyes, came and opened to them. The dark miracle of the garden disclosed itself. A cedar, many centuries old, stood predominant. The two rusty halves of a heavy chain dangled from the strong branches of the tree. Long ago, Nezimi told the pastor, the cedar had been chained in its youth, till its sap, rising in strength, forced the chain asunder. A symbol of the dervish's life. In this peace, strangely cut off from the din of streets, splashed a fountain. That too seemed fully emblematic of the Turkish reverence for water. A strange dark house bounded the garden to the right, to the left a bright one, in good repair. They entered the bright, wood house, having left their shoes. Nezimi led the German up dark close stairs to a kind of loggia, built over the big apartment of the tekkeh, which, with its slim wood pilasters and walls cut in filigree at the top, had the look of a vast pavilion. In its east wall, turned to Mecca, there was a throne niche, built in, with a raised mat. A few men squatted on either side of this raised divan. The doctor described them as "caliphs," as deputies or trusted followers of the sheikh, the men nearest his heart. They all wore the white turban, even the infantry captain, who oddly was one of them. Lepsius also noticed a little, spare old man, who must be suffering from a nervous complaint, since his thin, goat-bearded face kept twitching. One remarkably handsome man with a soft brown beard, wearing a long, shirt-like cowl, Nezimi called "the son of the sheikh." Beside this youthful-looking man, whose robe seemed to glint with a sheen of silver, there squatted a fifteen-year-old boy, the son of the son, as whitely clad as his father. But Lepsius's eyes were especially turned on one of these men, something in whose bearing and attitude showed him to be the master of them all, the strongest personality in the room.

  Thus did the pastor picture to himself the great caliphs, Bayazid, Mahmud the Second, perhaps the Prophet himself. A face tense with fanaticism, a blue-black beard forcing its way up the face almost to the sockets of the eyes. The staring look which rested on nothing, had no mercy in it, either for enemy or for friend even. "This is the Türbedar of Brussa," Lepsius heard, and he learned further that this title described a very exalted symbolic office, the guardian of the tombs of sultans and holy men. The man was also a great scholar, not only in the learning of the Koran but in several modern sciences also. The little old gentleman, sitting there facing him so quietly -- yes, that one there, with the white hands, twisting amber beads -- also fulfilled a high symbolic function, "Supervisor of the genealogical table of the Prophet."

  "Do these men always live in the tekkeh?"

  "No, it's a great and very fortunate coincidence that you should be visiting the sheikh today. The old gentleman over there, the supervisor, comes from a long way off, from Syria, Antioch, I think. He's the Sheikh's oldest friend, you know. His name is Agha Rifaat Bereket."

  "Agha Rifaat Bereket." Lepsius repeated it absent-mindedly, as though the name were not entirely unknown to him. But he had no eyes, either for the Agha, or for the thirty-five other people whose murmuring voices filled the apartment, but only for the proud Türbedar. Therefore he did not notice the arrival of the Sheikh Achmed until the instant when he took his place on the divan. Nezimi Bey had been right. Outwardly the head of this ghostly order, which must control the lives of a hundred thousand faithful, showed little of his dignity and powers. He was a corpulent greybeard, whose features expressed staid good nature, and did not fail to suggest a practical shrewdness in their estimate of the things of this world.

  They had all sprung up, and were crowding eagerly, avidly round the old sheikh, to kiss his hand. Not until all the others had stilled their love and reverence to the uttermost, by means of this gesture, did the Türbedar bend down over the soft, fat right hand of Achmed.

  The zikr ecstasy he now witnessed left Dr. Lepsius not only cold, but full of a dark, surging uneasiness. The ceremony began as follows: the sheikh's handsome son stood in a line of young men, all clad in the same long, white cowl, against the west wall of the apartment. The little boy, his small face preternatarally solemn, ended the right wing of this line. There arose from nowhere the nasal, monotonous note of a shawm-pipe. A man, standing with his eyes shut in front of a gold-carved Koran lectern, intoned a sura, in humming, disturbing falsetto. The old sheikh waved his hand in a scarcely perceptible little gesture. The shawm and litany stopped together. The son flung back his head, listening, as if he were trying to catch the lightest drizzle of rain upon his face. Out of his throat came strangled sounds; the happiness seemed too great, of being permitted to speak the syllables of that verse which concentrates in itself the whole strength of the revealed Book: "La-ilah-ila-'llah." "There is no God but God." Now all the others threw their heads back, and the six syllables of their creed fused into a crooning, murmurous hum. This, like the opening notes of a composition, defined the theme that now was developed. Now the son's body was swaying in a light, angular rhythm. As the "La-ilah-ila-'llah" defined its cadence, he swayed from the waist towards the four corners of the hemisphere, forwards, back, to right, to left. The fourfold beat passed into the others. But there was none of the symmetry of drill or ballet in the surge. Each obeyed his own law. Each individual in this brotherhood seemed to be alone with himself, in ecstatic invocation of his God. And this gave birth to a new rhythm, a far more manifold, higher symmetry than drilled, imposed unity can effect; the symmetry of storm-swept woods, of lashing waves. There must be full freedom and solitude of the ego before his God, to make possible a higher community. The old sheikh, his caliphs, and the others took part in these zikr exercises with slight accompanying movements. The boy of the young sheikh bent his little body about, on all sides, with desperate seriousness. Sometimes his poignant baby-voice could be heard shrilling out of the general surge of the "La-ilah." After about ten minutes the dervishes were bending at right angles, their cries had risen into hoarse, unmodulated bellowings. Another slight sign from the old sheikh. The ceremony stopped, suddenly. But now, superabundant joy, a most intimate, happy satisfaction, seemed to have stolen into the hearts of both participants and onlookers. Exhausted smiles lit up these faces. The men embraced. Johannes Lepsius had to think of the early Christian agape. But . . . ? The love-celebration here below him did not come out of the mind, the spirit, but out of these wild contortions of the body. He could not understand. Meanwhile two more men had come into the room, through a little side door. They carried water pitchers, dishes with food, even garments, before Sheikh Achmed, who kept breathing over them. Now they h
ad received healing power. After a pause the zikr began again, on a level of still greater intensity. The holy number, four, was in the ascendant. Therefore there ensued four ecstasies, each broken into by a pause. The power and tempo of the last was of such almost unbearable wildness that sometimes Lepsius shut his eyes with a feeling of seasickness. As the last zikr rose to near its height, the little, thin, dried-up old man with the twitching face suddenly leapt from the dais down into the room, and began spinning, like a whirligig, to collapse in epileptic writhings. The pastor turned to the doctor, sitting behind him. Surely Nezimi would hurry down to the help of the epileptic. But this well-dressed man, this man who had studied at the Sorbonne, seemed himself no longer to know where he was. He twirled the upper half of his body. His eyes were sightless. And between his lips, from under the little clipped moustache, he too now babbled the long withheld "La-ilah-ila-'llah." The pastor had never felt so uncomfortable. But his feeling was not only one of dislike for the sight which seemed so foreign and barbarous -- it was one of uneasy embarrassment at the fact that he, with his western soul, should not feel sufficiently developed to enter into the God-intoxication of the twirlers in the room below.