Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  This deep uneasiness still possessed him as he came into the innermost recesses of this so madly foreign world -- into the audience chamber of the sheikh. He had not perhaps been more uneasy on the day when he had been faced with Enver Pasha. Yet Sheikh Achmed received him cordially. He advanced a few steps to meet Lepsius and Nezimi Bey. In the big room there were also, of the sheikh's caliphs, the Türbedar from Brussa, the Agha Rifaat Bereket, the young sheikh, and the infantry captain. There was nothing here on which to sit save low divans against the wall. Sheikh Achmed indicated that Lepsius should take the seat close beside his. Lepsius had to squat on his crossed legs, like all the others. The old sheikh's eyes, which, besides their shrewd, keen knowledge of the world, had in them an inexplicable quiet, as of windless places, turned to the guest.

  "We know who you are, and what brings you to us. I have no doubt you will understand us, as we hope to understand you. Perhaps our brother Nezimi has told you that, here, we depend less on words than on the contact of heart to heart. Well, then, let us try how it is, with our two hearts."

  The German's coat was buttoned up. Sheikh Achmed, with his own white hand, unbuttoned it. He smiled a kind of apology. "You see, we want to get nearer each other."

  Dr. Lepsius spoke and could understand Turkish very well; his Arabic was also good. But Sheikh Achmed used a difficult mixture of these two languages, so that, when he became too idiomatic, he used Nezimj as his interpreter. The doctor translated:

  "There are two hearts. There is the heart of flesh, and the secret, heavenly heart, which surrounds the other, just as its scent surrounds a rose. This second heart unites us with God and other men. Open it, please."

  The heavy body of the old man, of possibly eighty years, bent forward attentively towards the pastor. A little gesture indicated that he was to shut his eyes, as his host did. A sure peace descended on Johannes Lepsius. The parching thirst, which only a moment ago had worried him, disappeared. He used this time to collect his thoughts, behind closed lids, and prepare the reasoning with which he intended to strive for the Armenians. God had led him here, in wondrous fashion, where perhaps he might find entirely unexpected allies. Monsignor Saven's wish that, not Germans or neutrals, but Turks themselves might be intermediaries -- that absurd wish -- had begun to seem feasible. When Lepsius opened his eyes again, the old sheikh's face seemed bathed in warm sunlight. But the sheikh said nothing of the results of this trial of hearts; he only asked the pastor to tell him what service he felt he could possibly render. The important conversation began.

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS (at first the Turkish words came stiffly and slowly; he often turned to Nezimi to supply him with the right expression): "Through the great goodness of Sheikh Achmed Effendi I have come here, into this honorable tekkeh, as a Christian and stranger. . . . You have even allowed me to be present at your religious exercises. The fervor and devotion with which I saw you strive after God has filled my heart with delight. Even if I, as an ignorant foreigner, cannot understand the innermost meaning of your holy customs, at least I was able to feel your great piety. . . . But, in view of this piety of yours, this religious feeling, the things that happen, are allowed to happen, in your country, seem to me all the more terrible."

  THE YOUNG SHEIKH (obtains with an upward glance his father's permission to speak): "We know how for many years you have been a warm friend of the ermeni millet."

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "More than simply their friend. I have devoted my whole life and strength to the ermeni millet."

  THE YOUNG SHEIKH: "And now you want to accuse us of what has been done to them?"

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "I am a foreigner. A foreigner has never any right to make accusations. I am here, not to accuse, but only to complain, about these things, and to beg your help and your advice."

  THE YOUNG SHEIKH (with an obvious stubbornness, not to be softened by pleasant words): "And yet you hold us Turks, in general, responsible for all that has happened?"

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "A people is made up of many parts: of the government and its executives, of those classes that stand behind the government, and of the opposition."

  THE YOUNG SHEIKH: "And which of these do you hold responsible?"

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "For twenty years I have known your conditions well. Even in the interior. I have negotiated with the heads of your government. God help me -- I must say it! To them alone attaches the full guilt of this wiping out of an innocent people."

  THE TüRBEDAR (raises his thin, fanatic's head, with its pitiless eyes; his voice and being dominate the room immediately): "But who was responsible for our government?"

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "I don't understand your question."

  THE TüRBEDAR: "Well, let me ask you another. Have Osmans and Armenians always lived together uneasily? Or was there not a time in which they lived at peace, side by side? You know our country, so I suppose you also know our past."

  JOHANNE5 LEPSIUS: "As far as I know, the big massacres did not begin before the last century -- after the Berlin Congress . . ."

  THE TüRBEDAR: "That answers my first question. At that Congress you Europeans began to meddle in the domestic affairs of the empire. You urged reforms. You wanted to buy Allah and our religion of us, for shabby sums. The Armenians were your commercial travellers."

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "Did not that age, with its general development, demand those reforms more urgently even than Europe? And, after all, it was very natural that the Armenians, as the weaker, busier people, should have wanted them most."

  THE TüRBEDAR (flares up; his just wrath fills the whole room): "But we don't want your reforms, your 'progress,' your business activity. We want to live in God, and to develop in ourselves those powers which belong to Allah. Don't you know that all that which you call activity, advancement, is of the devil? Shall I prove it to you? You have made a few superficial investigations into the essence of the chemical elements. And what happens, then -- when you act from your imperfect knowledge? You manufacture the poison gases, with which you wage your currish, cowardly wars. And is it any different with your flying machines? You will only use them to bomb whole cities to the ground. Meanwhile they only serve to nourish usurers and profit-makers, and enable them to plunder the poor as fast as possible. Your whole devilish restlessness shows us plainly that there is no 'progressive activity' not founded in destruction and ruin. We would willingly have dispensed with all your reforms and progress, all the blessings of your scientfic culture, to have been allowed to go on living in our old poverty and reverence."

  THE OLD SHEIKH ACHMED (attempts to bring a more conciliatory note into their talk): "God has poured his draughts into many glasses, and each glass has its own form."

  THE TüRBEDAR (can still not manage to calm down, since he feels that here he has found the right adversary on whom to vent his profoundest bitterness): "You tell us our government is guilty of all this bloody injustice. But, in truth, it is not our government, but yours. It went to school to you. You supported it in its criminal struggle against our most sacred treasures. Now it carries out your instructions, in your spirit. Therefore you yourself must admit that, not we Osmans, but Europe, and Europe's hangers-on, are in truth responsible for the fate of this people whom you champion. And the Armenians are justly served, since it was they who wanted to bring back these criminal traitors into our country. It was they who cherished them, and acclaimed them, in order that now they should be devoured. Can't you yourself see the justice of God in these events? Wherever you and your disciples may go, you bring corruption along with you. You may do hypocritical lip service to the religion of the prophet Jesus Christ, but in the depths of your hearts you believe in nothing but the blind forces of matter, and eternal death. Your hearts are so dull that they know nothing of the powers of Allah, which wither within them, unused. Yes, your religion is death, and all Europe is the harlot of death!"

  THE OLD SHEIKH (with a stern glance commands the Türbedar to control himself; then he strokes the pastor's hand, as though to comfort
and propitiate): "Everything lies within God's purpose."

  THE YOUNG SHEIKH: "It's true, Effendi, you can't deny it. The nationalism which dominates us today is a foreign poison, which comes from Europe. Only a few decades ago our whole people lived faithfully under the banners of the prophet -- Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Lasas and many more. The spirit of the Koran nullifies earthly differences of blood. But today even the Arabs, who really had nothing to complain about, have become nationalists, and our enemies."

  THE OLD SHEIKH: "Nationalism fills up the burning void which Allah leaves in the hearts of men when they drive Him out of them. And yet! Men cannot drive Him forth against His will."

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS (sits with his legs crossed under him, as the personification of Europe accused; he does not however forget his object; therefore, he has listened amiably to the curses of the imposing Türbedar from Brussa; they hurt him far less than his squatting legs): "None of what you have said to me is new. I myself have often said much the same to my fellow countrymen. I am a Christian -- in fact a Christian priest -- and in spite of this I gladly admit to you that many of the Christians whom I meet are no more than lukewarm, indifferent lip servers . . ."

  THE TüRBEDAR (still obstinately righteous, in spite of Sheikh Achmed's silent reproof): "So you see that not we Turks but your Christians are the real guilty."

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "My religion commands me to see all guilt as the unavoidable heritage of Adam. Men and whole peoples cast this human guilt at one another, like a ball. It is impossible to assign its limits in time, or trace it back to any one event. Where should we begin, and where leave off? I am not here to speak even a word of reproach against the Turkish people. It would be a very great mistake. I am here to beg reconciliation."

  THE TüRBEDAR: "You come, asking to he reconciled, after having aroused the malice."

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS: "I am no chauvinist. Every human being, whether he lives it or not, belongs to a national community, and remains a part of it. That is an obvious fact of nature. As a Christian, I believe that our Father in heaven created these differences between us, to teach us love. Since no love is possible without diversity and tension. I too, by nature, am very different from the Armenians. And yet I have learned to love and understand them."

  THE TüRBEDAR: "Have you ever cared to reflect how much the Armenians love and understand us? It was they who, like an electric wire, conducted your devil's restlessness into the midst of our peace. And do you take them for innocent lambs? I tell you that, whenever they get a chance, they coldly slaughter any Turk who happens to be at their mercy. Perhaps you may not be aware that even your Christian priests are delighted to do their share in that kind of murder."

  JOHANNES LEPSIUS (it is the first time that he has had to check himself from answering sharply): "If you say so, Effendi, I can only believe that such crimes have been committed, here and there. But don't forget what your hojas, mullahs and ulemas have done to stir up your people. And besides, you are the strong, the Armenians powerless."

  THE TüRBEDAR (who, besides being learned, is skilled in polemic; he knows the art of retreating at once from the realms of the dangerously particular, into the fortified region of generalities): "You have strewn calumnies through the whole world against our religion. The most malicious is that of its intolerance. Do you really suppose that, if we had been so intolerant, there would be one Christian left alive in the empire governed for centuries by the Caliph? What did the great Sultan who conquered Istanbul do in the first year of his reign? Did he banish Christians from his territory? Did he? No, he set up the Greek and Armenian patriarchates, investing them with power, splendor, freedom. But what did you Christians do in Spain? You drove the Moslems, who had made their homes there, into the sea, by thousands, and burned them alive. Do we send you missionaries, as you us? You only send out the cross before you so that the Baghdad railway and the oil trusts may pay better dividends."

  THE OLD SHEIKH: "The sun is arrogant and aggressive, the moon mild and full of peace. The Türbedar speaks harsh words, but not to you, who are our guest. You must understand that our people also are embittered at the misrepresentation of our religion. Do you know which word most frequently beautifies the Koran, after the name of God? The word: Peace! And do you know how it stands in the tenth sura: 'Once men were a single brotherhood. Then division came between them. But had God not sent forth His commandment, their division would have called down judgment upon them.' But we too strive, just as the Christians do, after a kingdom of unity and love. We too do not hate our enemies. How is it possible to hate if the heart has opened itself to God? To bring peace is one of the chief duties of our brotherhood Listen; even this Türbedar, who speaks so harshly, is one of our most zealous peace-makers. Long before your name became known to us, he was working on behalf of the exiles. And not only he! We have our peacemakers even among soldiers." (He beckons to the infantry captain who, presumably as the youngest and least initiated brother of the order, is sitting on the mat farthest away from him.)

  THE CAPTAIN (comes shyly to take. his place next the old sheikh; he has big, gentle eyes and a sensitive face; only his carefully trained moustache helps him to the severity of an officer).

  THE OLD SHEIKH: "You visited the Armenian concentration camps in the east, on our behalf?"

  THE CAPTAIN (turns to Johannes Lepsius): "I am staff captain in one of the regiments attached to the headquarters of your great countryman, Marshal Goltz Pasha. The pasha's heart is also full of grief and pity for his Christian co-religionists. But he can do very little to help them against the will of the Minister of War. I reported to him, and was given leave for my task

  THE OLD SHEIKH: "And which places did you visit on your journey?"

  THE CAPTAIN: "Most of the concentration camps for exiles are on the banks of the Euphrates, between Deir ez-Zor and Meskene. I stayed several days in each of the largest."

  THE OLD SHEIKH: "And will you tell us what you saw there?"

  THE CAPTAIN (an agonized glance at Lepsius): "I would much prefer not to tell you in front of this stranger."

  THE OLD SHEIKH: "The stranger must learn to see that the infamy is that of our own enemies. Speak!"

  THE CAPTAIN (stares at the floor, seeking for words; he is unable to describe the indescribable; his negative, hesitant words convey none of the stench of a reality at which he still shudders with disgust): "Battlefields are horrible. . . . But the worst battlefield is nothing compared to Deir ez-Zor. . . . Nobody could ever imagine it."

  THE OLD SHEIKH: "And what was worst?"

  THE CAPTAIN: "They're no longer human. . . . Ghosts . . . But not the ghosts of human beings . . . the ghosts of apes. It takes them a long time to die, because they chew grass, and can sometimes get hold of a piece of bread. . . . But the worst thing is that they're all too weak to bury their tens of thousands of corpses. . . . Deir ez-Zor is a horrible cloaca of death. . . ."

  THE OLD SHEIKH (after a long pause): "And how can they be helped?"

  THE CAPTAIN: "Helped? The best anyone could do for them would be to kill them all off in one day. . . . I've sent a letter to all our brethren. . . . We've managed to find homes for over a thousand of the orphans in Turkish or Arab families. . . . But that's scarcely anything."

  THE TüRBEDAR: "And what will the consequence be, if we take in these children, and care for them lovingly in our houses? The Europeans will only insist that we stole them, to sully and mishandle."