Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Haik commanded: "One foot first. The right! Your right foot!"

  Stephan, letting out little screams of terror, made useless movements. His legs had no strength left in them. Now came another, sharp command:

  "Lie over on your belly!"

  He bent forward obediently, so that he could just touch dry land with his finger tips. When Haik saw that Stephan had not the strength to fend for himself, he wriggled flat on his face to the marshy place. But even the stick, gripped by the struggling Stephan, was not enough to give him sufficient strength. Then Haik undid his turban cloth and threw it out to Stephan to knot round his chest. He held on like iron to the further end of it. It served as a kind of lifeline. After endless efforts Stephan could at last free his right leg, which had not sunk in so very deep. Half an hour had passed before Haik drew him up like a drowning man on to firm ground. Another half-hour elapsed before Stephan had recovered enough strength to stumble on, along the dangerous way, with Haik keeping hold of his hand. He was covered in slime, well up to his chest. In the air, it dried quickly, and under its thick crust the skin of his arms and legs contracted. It was indeed lucky that Stephan had put his shoes in his rucksack and thrown the rucksack far away from him on to dry ground while he was struggling.

  Haik firmly led his half-swooning friend. He did not reprimand him for his carelessness, but repeated several times, like an incantation: "We've got to be over the bridge before it gets light. There may be saptiehs there."

  All that was left of pride and ambition in young Bagradian came into play again. "Yes, I can walk . . . all right again . . . now.

  As they turned northward, the ground became firmer. It was less like walking on a mattress. Stephan let go of Haik and pretended he could step out briskly. A distant glitter, a breath of coolness. Haik sensed the Kara-Su river. Soon they were clambering up the dam on to the road, which lit up the night like a broad beam. The sentry box on the bridge was empty. The boys -- as though the devil were chasing them -- raced past this, the greatest of all dangers, which, luckily, had ceased to be perilous. But this time the smooth, easy highroad no longer seemed to comfort Stephan as it had that afternoon. That smoothed-out path of civilization took the last strength out of his legs. Beyond the bridge, he stumbled more and more. He began to walk in zigzags, and suddenly lay down on the roadway.

  Haik stood, staring down at him. Only then, he expressed despair: "I'm wasting time."

  Almost an hour beyond the bridge, the road, built over a long, high stone embankment, passes the outskirts of the big swamp, El Amk. The embankment is called Jisir Murad Pasha, and is the real beginning of the wide steppe country which stretches on for many hundreds of miles, away past Aleppo and the Euphrates, as far as Mesopotamia. But not so very far beyond this embankment there lies, on the northern side of the road, the most charming strip of hilly country, like a last green consolation before rigid death. At the foot of this little cluster of hills is a big Turkoman village, Ain el Beda, the "clear fount." But long before clusters of huts thicken to become this village, the road meets single houses, white farmsteads of wood or stone that catch the eye. Here, fifty years ago, Abdul Hamid's government had ordered a tribe of Turkoman nomads to settle down. No people make better or more hard-working peasants than do such converted nomads. It was proved by the well-built, well-roofed houses of this green and gentle strip of country.

  The first of these farms stood on the road-edge. An hour after sunrise its owner came to the door of his house, to sniff the wind, test the weather, look in all four quarters of the sky, and so spread out his little praying-mat that, turned to Mecca, he might perform the earliest of his five daily devotions. This pious man had been unaware of the two boys. He saw them out of the corner of his eye, squatting together, close beside his house, on their rugs, and going through the same prescribed praying motions. The sight of such early morning fervor in two young men pleased the Turkoman. But, as a peaceable Moslem, he had no thought of interrupting his own lengthy devotions with profane inquiries. Haik, by allowing him many halts, had managed to drag Stephan past the Jisir Murad Pasha embankment as far as to the verge of these little hills. The sight of peasant homesteads had caused him again to warn young Stephan to imitate his every movement and, above all, say as little as possible. Stephan could speak only a few words of Turkish, in an accent that would have betrayed him instantly. As to the Moslem prayer, said Haik, it would not be a sin if one kept on whispering fervent "Our Fathers." But this Stephan could not manage. As stiff and lifeless as a doll, it was the very utmost he could do to effect a wooden copy of Haik's fervent duckings. When it was over, he sank down at once on his praying-mat, to stare up at the fresh dawn sky through glassy eyes.

  The Turkoman peasant, a man well past the prime of life, came waddling over towards the suspects. "Well, you rascals! Out on the road so early, eh! What are you after? What are you looking for?"

  Luckily he himself spoke patois, so that Haik's Armenian accent did not strike him as particularly strange. And into Syria, that great stockpot of the races, all languages are tossed together. So that the Turkoman's ear was not mistrustful.

  "Sabahlar hajr olsun!" (Good morning, Father!) "We come from Antakiya. Lost our parents on the road! They went on with their cart, to Hammam. We wanted to run about a bit and got lost. The lad here, Hüssein, was nearly drowned. In the marshes. Now he's ill. Just look at him! Couldn't you give us somewhere we could sleep?"

  With the motions of wisdom, the Turkoman stroked his grey beard. Then, taking the boys' part, he said, very justly: "What sort of parents can these be, who go losing their children in a swamp, and then go on again? . . . Is this lad your brother?"

  "No, but a kinsman, from Antakiya. My name is Essad. . . ."

  "Well, this Hüssein of yours really does seem ill. Has he been drinking marsh water?"

  Haik only answered this with a pious proverb. He hung his head. "Give us food and somewhere to sleep, Father!"

  None of all this deception was really necessary, since the Turkoman's heart was full of benevolence. For months now, convoys of Armenian exiles had come past his house. He had often helped Armenian sick, Armenian pregnant women, with food and drink, with shoes and clothing, beneficent, according to his means, quietly beneficent, without even thinking too much of the reward that he was laying up in the hereafter. But these works of mercy had to be done with circumspection, on account of the saptiehs. The crime of pitying an Armenian merited, by the new laws, the bastinado, prison perhaps, or, in very flagrant cases, death. Hundreds of goodhearted Turks all over the country, their hearts wrung by the sight of miserable deportees, had had strange experiences. The peasant looked well at the two tramps. Those thousands of Armenian eyes which had begged his charity on the highroad came into his mind. The results of his comparison were fairly easy to deduce, especially in the case of the one who was sick. Yet it was just this so-called Hüssein who aroused pity in the Turkoman, rather than the so-called Essad who, first, was not ill and, second, seemed smart enough for anything.

  So the master of the house called sharply, and two women at once came forth to him, an old and a young, who, quickly, seeing these strangers, let down their veils. They were given a gruff order and disappeared again with busy haste. The Turkoman led Stephan and Haik into his house. Next its smoke-filled parlor, in which it was almost impossible to breathe, there was a small, empty room, a kind of storeroom, lit only by an opening in the roof. Meanwhile the women had come with mats and coverlets. They spread two couches on the dry floor. When they saw Stephan's arms and legs, still masked over with a thick crust of slime, they brought in a flat tub of hot water and monstrous scrubbing brushes and began, with resolute, motherly strength, to rub down his arms and legs; in the course of which arduous work the elder even lifted her veil, since these were only half-grown children. Under the scourings of these peasant women the rigid crust not only flaked off Stephan's body, but off his spirit. Homesickness, long repressed, flooded his mind like boiling water. He bit h
is lips, his eyes blinked treacherously. Moved by this childish grief, the Turkoman women raised their voices in strange, melodious consolations -- not a word of which he could understand. Then the old woman brought them a dish of barley groats in goat's milk, a flat loaf, and two wooden spoons. As the boys ate, a numerous family of Turkomans made its appearance, grinning with delight at its own hospitality, some in the doorway, some in the storeroom itself, pressing the boys to eat their fill. But, in spite of their friendly words and the warm food, Stephan could scarcely swallow two mouthfuls, so sore and swollen was his throat. Haik finished up the whole portion, with the serious thoughtfulness of a worker in a heavy industry.

  The inquisitive family departed. Stephan slept at once, but the canny Haik first made a few quick plans for tomorrow's route. He hoped that by evening Stephan would be feeling all right again, so that they might set out as the moon rose. Hammam could be easily reached in the night. If the road were clear, so much the better. If it were not, they could keep a little to one side of it, along the foot of the hills. And these hills would certainly be the best place in which to sleep tomorrow night, when they came past Hammam to the point where they would have to take their short cut, avoiding the wide bend of the highway. Notwithstanding these many contretemps, Haik was, so far, satisfied. The greatest dangers lay ahead, but the troublesome part of their route was over. Unluckily he had not reckoned with Stephan. Whimpers and groans roused him from the sleep of exhaustion to which, in this safe room, he had let himself surrender without scruple. Stephan, twisted with pain, sat cramped on his mat. Fearful colic seemed to cut his body in two, the results of his adventure in the swamp, El Amk. And now he was clean, Haik saw that his whole body was covered with mosquito-bumps. Impossible now to get any sleep! The people of the house were as kind as ever. The women heated up round stones to lay on the sick boy's belly, and brewed a tea that may have been beneficial but which was certainly nauseating, for he could not hold it down.

  The peasant had given "Essad" and "Hüssein" leave to sleep on his roof. They, who had lived weeks in the fresh air could not hold out in this stuffy den, smoky, verminous, rancid with the stench of frying fat. Now they were sitting on their mats, between pyramids of corncobs, piled up bundles of reeds, stacks of licorice roots. Stephan, shivering with fever, wrapped in a rug, never took his eyes off the west. At this, the hour before evening, the mountains over along the coast looked huge, even taller than they were, ridge upon ridge of them, tinted in the richest hues, from deepest sapphire to silver, faint as a breath. And they looked incredibly near. Had Haik and Stephan really had to walk for the whole night, and half a day, to get no farther? That last ridge, which broke off sharply over towards the south, must be the Damlayik. It stood like a petrified wild beast with the hunt in full cry after it. Its long back trailed away northwards. Its head ducked down, among the nearer heights. But its claws struck out wildly behind it, where the wide gap of the Orontes gave a suggestion of the sea. Stephan saw only the Damlayik. He thought he could distinguish the South Bastion, the knolls, the indentation of the ilex gully, the North Saddle, from which such ages ago he had taken leave without saying good-bye. What had made him do it, exactly? He strove to remember, but in vain. The Damlayik seemed to be breathing hard, it seemed to hover nearer and nearer, across the Aleppo road, above this peasant's house amid Turkoman hills, straight to Stephan Bagradian.

  Haik understood. The kindness of those who are really strong, which surrenders itself so easily to the fallen, invaded him. "Don't be afraid. We'll stay on here till you're able to run again."

  The feverish Stephan still gazed in ecstasy at the mountains. "They're quite near -- quite near. . . . I mean the hills are.

  But then he sat up with a jerk, as though it was high time to get along. Haik's menacing words assailed him sharply. He repeated them with chatterin.g teeth: "It isn't a question of you or me; it's a question of the letter to Jackson. . . ."

  Haik nodded, but not reproachfully. "It'd have been better if Hagop had squealed on you . . ."

  Stephan's shrunken little face was not angry now. It tried to smile. "That doesn't matter. . . . I won't make you lose any time. . . . I shall go back . . . tomorrow."

  Haik suddenly ducked his head, signaled urgently to Stephan to do the same. Down near the roadway, which had not, all that day, been much frequented, came a curious procession, with babbling cries, with cries of anguish. It was only a few saptiehs, herding on a small Armenian convoy towards Hammam. Convoy was an absurd misnomer. These were only the sweepings of old people and tiny children, raked together from some God-forsaken village. The saptiehs, whose business it was to have reached Hammam before midnight, cursed and pummelled the wretched crew till, like ghosts, they vanished round the bend.

  This significant interlude seemed to cause Haik to make up his mind. "Yes. You'd better go back. But how? You can't get through the swamp without me. . . ."

  Stephan, to whom the mountain looked so near, had lost all sense of possible measurements. "Why not? It's not so far . . ."

  But Haik shook his head decisively. "No, no, you can't get through the swamp by yourself. You'd better go back by way of Antakiya. Over there -- see? It'll be far easier. . . . But, even that way, they'll cop you on the road. You don't speak Turkish. You can't pray like they do, and anyway, as you look now, the sight of you would be enough to make them wild. . . ."

  Stephan sank back dreamily on his mat. "I shall only walk at night. . . . Perhaps they won't cop me, if I do that . . ."

  "Oh -- you!" Haik growled this in scornful pity. He began to think how far back he could go with Stephan without wasting more than a day of his great mission. But young Bagradian, whose shivering, comfortable fever made everything seem so easy of achievement, lay there babbling: "Perhaps Christ Saviour'll help me."

  And, as things were, this really seemed, to Haik, Stephan's one chance. Apart from celestial aid there was not much prospect of his safe return to Musa Dagh. But, for the moment, it really began to look as though Heaven were on Stephan's side. For now the Turkoman peasant came climbing up a ladder on to his roof, and began to throw down bundles of reeds and licorice root. Haik sprang up at once and zealously helped him with the work.

  When the roof was clear, the peasant had a surprising inspiration. His eyes twinkled. He said to Stephan: "Where do you lads want to make for? Early tomorrow I'm going in to market, to Antakiya. Since you two come from Antakiya, I don't mind giving you a lift and taking you home. We'll be there by evening. . . ."

  And, proudly, he jerked his thumb towards the big stable behind the house. "I don't drive an oxcart, you know. I've got my little pony, and a wagon with real wheels."

  Haik pushed his imitation turban slightly askew, to scratch his reflective head, which his mother, Shushik, had clipped to the bone before he set out. "Father -- would you mind taking my cousin, Hüssein, here, to Antakiya with you? That's where his folk live. Mine don't. They're in Hammam. Pity you aren't going to Hammam with your horse. I'll have to walk it."

  The Turkoman studied the cunning one attentively. "So your folk live in Hammam, do they? Allah kerim, God is good, young man! I suppose I know everyone in Hammam. What sort of a business do they do there?"

  Haik answered this with a look of pained indulgence: "But, Father, didn't I tell you, they've only been there since yesterday? They live in Khan Omar Agha. . . ."

  "Yanasyje! May they be happy there! But Khan Omar Agha is full of military -- the ones they're sending against the traitor ermeni on Musa Dagh."

  "What's that you're saying, Father? Military? My folk knew nothing about that. Well, perhaps by now the soldiers'll have left again. After all, Hammam is big and they'll probably be able to find a shake-down."

  There was really nothing to say against that. The Turkoman, not having managed to unmask Essad, thought hard for a while, moved his lips without any sound, and finally left them alone again.

  Already, long before midnight, Haik got ready to leave. But, before he went, he d
id all he could for Stephan. He stuffed one of his sausages in the rucksack. God knew whether he mightn't lose himself and come to the end of his supplies. But Haik himself had no fear of finding as much food as he wanted anywhere in the plains of Aleppo. He filled Stephan's thermos flask at the stream which ran beside the house and brushed the caked mud off Stephan's clothes. As he did all this, with almost angry care, he kept repeating precise instructions as to how Stephan was to behave.

  "He'll be carrying in these goods of his to market. The best thing you can do is not to say anything. You're ill -- see? As soon as ever you see the town, jump out, but very, very quietly, mind -- understand? And then you'd better lie down in a field -- find some sort of hole -- a ditch. And there you can wait till it gets dark. . . . Do you see?"