A Place Far Away

by Vahan Zanoyan

  Although Laurian was very much aware of Saro’s nervousness, he couldn’t let this go yet.

  “Tell me more about the father,” he said. “Samvel, right?”

  “Yes, Samvel Galian. Would you believe he was born in Siberia? I liked him. We got drunk a few times together. Quiet guy. Maybe one of the few in Saralandj who actually liked to read. I went to their house once many years ago and he was sitting there with a bunch of his children and reading to them. Who does that in Saralandj? No one! But go figure: Both parents are from Musa Dagh, and he was born in Siberia!”

  Saro, who had been quiet this whole time, showed the first sign of curiosity. “How did Siberia come into the picture?” he asked.

  Laurian was somewhat relieved, thinking that Saro’s nervousness was waning a bit. But he misread the question. Saro was even more nervous, because those who were exiled to Siberia during the Stalin years always had baggage.

  “How much time do you have?” asked Gagik, eager to start the story. But before Laurian could finish the phrase “not a lot,” he had already started.

  “It’s 1915,” said Gagik in an animated voice. “Armenians are being slaughtered like sheep everywhere in the old country. Most of them are citizens of Turkey. The men are rounded up and killed first, mostly by their own ‘brothers in arms’ in the Turkish army, where they are serving. At that time, the villages in the region were helpless. Mass deportations start, mostly to the Syrian deserts. Anyway, these folks in Musa Dagh are crazy, see? Crazy like me, right, Edik jan?” At this point Gagik could barely control his laughter.

  “Gago, please, let’s get to Galian. Siberia, remember?”

  “I’m getting there,” said Gagik, and continued, “When they get the deportation orders, they say fuck this, we’re not going. So they gather all their women and children and sheep and goats and donkeys and everything they have and climb up to the top of their mountain and set up camp. This is no fairy tale, Saro jan,” he told the Mayor. “This really happened! Now the Turkish soldiers come to the villages of Musa to deport them, and find no one! Only deserted homes! The Armenian peasants have already deported themselves!” The Crazy Gago laughter returned for a moment. “But not to some god forsaken Syrian desert to be slaughtered, but right there, on their own mountain, thumbing their noses at the Turkish army! Saro jan, I swear I’m not making any of this up,” he told Saro, who was more baffled by his passion in telling the story than by the story itself.

  “Gago, please,” said Laurian, who knew the Musa Dagh story well and was mindful of the time. “We do not have much time. We still have to return to Vardahovit today. What about Galian? It’s him we’re interested in.”

  “I’m coming to that, I swear. Listen, these peasants fight the organized Turkish army for forty days—well, actually Galian told me the battle went on longer than that, more than fifty days, but some Austrian novelist writes a novel about this and calls it the Forty Days of Musa Dagh, see, so now everyone thinks it was a forty-day battle. Anyway, they capture a lot of weapons and ammunition from the Turks, but, towards the end, their food supplies run out. There are a few thousand people on that mountain fighting for their lives. They know they won’t be able to keep up the fight without supplies and with winter coming. At this critical moment, a French warship appears on the Mediterranean Sea. So they send an urgent message saying, ‘We are a stranded population of Christians fighting annihilation by the Turks. Please rescue us!’ The French come through and rescue the entire population; they just take everyone on the ship and bring them to Egypt, to a seafront town called Port Said. They erect tents and dump the entire population of the seven villages of Musa Dagh on the beaches of Port Said.”

  “Gago, please tell us about Galian,” said Laurian, a bit too impatiently.

  “Okay, fine, what’s happened to you anyway?” snapped Gagik. It was his turn to sound impatient and bothered. “You’ve gotten more impatient instead of patient in your old age. You won’t let an old friend just enjoy telling a great story anymore? This is a great story that you just can’t rush through like I’m doing. But fine, here it is: Samvel Galian’s grandparents meet and get married in the tents at Port Said! Now isn’t that some story? Now listen to this. In 1919, the First World War ends. Musa Dagh is in a province of Syria called Iskenderoon. So after somehow living in these tents for four years, the French gather up everybody and return them to Musa Dagh. Samvel Galian’s grandmother is in the heavy months of her pregnancy with his father, Gregor Galian, during the journey back. Gregor is born the day they arrive, five minutes after they enter his father’s old ancestral house! Five minutes! Five minutes into the house and the kid is born! They say he is the first birth after the homecoming. Big celebrations. You can imagine, right?”

  Both Laurian and Saro had to admit that the story actually was getting interesting. Gagik was encouraged.

  “So good old Gregor,” he continued, “our Samvel’s father, grows up in his village in Musa Dagh. If I am not mistaken, his father is from the village of Bitias, but do not hold me to that. We were a bit drunk when I heard that part. But at any rate he spends most of his summers in the mountain, not in any village, with his maternal uncles, who had about a thousand head of sheep and goats, a huge fortune, and lived way up in the mountain, grazing the livestock, and hunting wild boar, and did not come down to their home in the village until early winter. The exact same system of yayla that we have here, you know, Saro jan.”

  “Gago,” interrupted Laurian again, “I have to admit that the story is getting interesting, but are we going to get to Siberia and Saralandj anytime soon?”

  “Siberia and Saralandj are coming right up!” said Gagik. “Just bear with me a few minutes longer. In 1939, when Gregor is barely twenty and having a grand old time hunting boar in Musa Dagh, the whole region of Iskenderoon becomes Turkey. Don’t ask me how, but Turkey just annexes it and no one objects. Edik may know a lot more about this than I do. But one day it is Syria, and the next day it is Turkey. Something like that. Of course those villagers cannot go back and live under Turkish rule. They just waged a war against the damn Turkish army. So the entire population is mobilized once again and exiled, this time to Lebanon, to another remote village on the Syrian border called Ainjar. That is where Gregor finds himself in 1939. A faraway place, desolate, swampy, with mosquitoes and malaria. The French actually sponsor them again and build one room per family, and leave. Many die the first few years. Sorry,” he says, noticing the impatient looks from both Saro and Laurian, “but that is important. It is important because when our very own Soviet agents appear in the village of Ainjar in 1946 and 1947, they are talking to a tired, sick, half dead population and trying to convince them to go back to Soviet Armenia, where they say everything is so abundant people do not know what to do with the surplus! Samvel used to say that the elders told stories of how the recruiters would say the hens lay eggs in the streets and no one collects them, because everyone has so much!

  “So anyway, the Galians decide to come to the Motherland. Gregor, his parents, and two sisters, Arax and Mary, all board a ship from Beirut. Gregor is around twenty-seven and, according to Samvel, he is not very enthusiastic about leaving Lebanon. But his father insists. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I am an old man, and I have seen nothing but exile my entire life. I am not going to Armenia at my age to build a future. I am going so I can die on Armenian soil instead of some obscure corner in these foreign lands. I am tired of wandering in foreign lands all my life.’ So they get here. Imagine Yerevan in 1947. We’re talking famine conditions. Gregor’s father is very sick and cannot work. Gregor finds a job as a mason. But here is an incredible twist of fate. In 1949 they get exiled to Siberia. One morning the troops come to their home and say the entire family is being deported for nationalistic feelings unbecoming of a model Soviet citizen. You get that, Saro jan? Nationalistic feelings unbecoming a Soviet citizen! Remember those days, my brother? Anyway, Gregor’s father, who has returned to Armenia for no other reason than to die
in the Fatherland, dies in Siberia! The man who was afraid of dying in some obscure corner in foreign lands, dies in Siberia! Now that is hard to take.”

  There were tears in Gagik’s eyes, and his voice was calmer, more somber. Neither Laurian nor Saro dared interrupt him now, no matter how late it was getting.

  “Look,” said Gagik, this time trying to control his tears rather than his usual Crazy Gago laughter, “now I am really going to cut it short. Gregor’s sister, Araxi, is supposed to be this incredible beauty. Before they get exiled, in Yerevan, she falls in love with this guy, also a recent immigrant but I’m not sure from where. He is totally madly in love with her too. They are supposed to get engaged in a week. He comes in the morning to see her as usual, and sees they are all gone. When he hears about the exile to Siberia, he is devastated. He wants to go to Siberia himself to find her. He goes to the authorities and pleads with them to send him to Siberia. But they say no, they won’t accept him! He stands in the street and starts cursing Stalin. Can you imagine that? In 1949, standing in the City Square, openly cursing the great leader for the privilege of being exiled to Siberia. The act is so preposterous that even the most tight-assed Stalinist apparatchiks do not take him seriously. The story is that the guy dies of grief, but no one really knows what happens to him. The Soviets in those days were not about to send anyone to Siberia because they asked to go! No sir! Siberia was reserved only to punish people, not to reward them! Now, Edik jan, my dear journalist friend, tell me that is not a great story in itself!”

  “It is a great story, Gago,” conceded Laurian, no longer trying to rush anything. This story was worth listening to regardless of how much relevance it had to their main inquiry.

  “Anyway,” continued Gagik, “Araxi ends up marrying someone else in Siberia. So do Gregor and Mary, his other sister. And here we finally come to Samvel Galian, who is born to Gregor and Martha Galian, in Siberia, in April of 1955. Martha is also originally from Musa Dagh, but a different village than Gregor. That part is over my head, Saro jan. I can never keep the names of the seven villages straight in my head. At any rate, Stalin has died by then, and almost all the political exiles are pardoned, and the Galians are released to return to Armenia. Now, why Saralandj? You may ask. Why indeed. A godforsaken place that probably looked like paradise to the Galians when they finally arrived there. There is no reason other than the family of Martha’s sister’s husband is from Saralandj. The Galians are recent emigrants and have no clear “home” to go to. So they come with Martha’s sister and her husband and settle in Saralandj, with Samvel a one-year-old baby. His beautiful aunt Araxi never makes it. She contracts tuberculosis in Siberia and dies before Samvel is born. Samvel has never seen her, but everyone in the village talks about her legendary beauty.”

  There was a long silence when Gagik was done. Each was carried away in his own thoughts.

  “How do you know all this?” asked Laurian, finally releasing the burning question of the investigative reporter within him.

  “Some of it comes from Samvel himself,” said Gagik. “As I said, we used to get drunk together once in a while. But the details come from his file. You know how detailed the files that they used to keep in those days were, especially on families who were exiled for nationalism. Samvel asked me once if I could get him the file on the Galians. Up to the year you got here, Edik jan, I tried but no one would listen to me. But after your visit, I do not know what happened, or maybe it was the times, not you, but all locked doors and safes seemed to be opening up. No one cared anymore. Things were crumbling right and left. No one gave a shit about Soviet secrets. I got his family file. I read it, and then gave it to him. It should still be in their house somewhere. But I’ve told you everything that matters already.”

  In part because he sensed Saro’s impatience and in part because he himself had to absorb all the new information, Laurian decides to end the meeting. Even though it was already late, they would be in Saralandj soon enough. At that point, Saro tried to convince Laurian to skip the visit to Saralandj.

  “We already know everything,” he said. “We won’t learn anything new there, I assure you. What if we are spotted nosing around the Galian house, and word gets to Ayvazian? It will blow our entire operation.”

  “Saro, I just want to see them. No harm in that. The stupid foreigner, on a tourist’s impulse, reaches Saralandj, formerly off limits to folks like me! Gago himself said that Ayvazian’s men have not been to the village for months, remember? They won’t know we are there. Besides, we really don’t know everything. We do not know how their daughter ended up in Moscow or Greece or wherever. Clearly Ayvazian is involved in that somehow, but how? We don’t know any of that.”

  “It’s already almost five pm. If we go to Saralandj now, and then try to go back to Vardahovit, it will be early morning by the time we arrive. Is it worth it?”

  “Saro, my friend, it is worth it. Please humor me. Worst case, we drive back to Yerevan and stay in a hotel for the night. My treat. We’ll drive fresh in the morning back home. Look, we’ve come this far, learned so much, let’s not stop now.”

  Saro could not argue with Laurian at that point. They still had a few hours of daylight, and Laurian was determined to pay a visit.

  The road from Ashtarak to Aparan is straightforward and in relatively good condition. It passes by mountains that have ancient historical meaning to Armenians. Arayi Ler, Ara’s Mountain, appears on the right. This is a small mountain that every Armenian child has heard about, and Laurian remembered the story of Ara Geghetsik, Ara the Beautiful, an Armenian king so handsome that the Assyrian queen Semiramis lusts after him, and when he refuses to go to Ninveh, her capital, she marches with an army on Armenia and, in spite of her orders to her troops to capture Ara alive, he is killed in battle. Semiramis believes that she can revive him by having the gods lick his wounds, but Ara is dead nevertheless. There are many different versions of what happens next, but most of them end on this mountain, where Ara and his spirit are said to remain until today.

  Laurian loved these stories as a child growing up in Switzerland, so for him seeing the actual monuments of the mythology for the first time as a grown man was one of the most touching experiences in his life. He saw it as a validation of a nostalgic childhood spent in close touch with the ancestral homeland spiritually and mentally, while the homeland remained unreachable and inaccessible physically.

  It was early evening when they entered Saralandj. The Galians live in the very last house, Gagik had said. There was only one road, with chickens running around and an occasional dog barking at them. Parts of the road were so narrow that the car barely made it between a fence on one side and a ditch on the other. But they climbed up, until the concentration of homes became sparser, and in the distance, some twenty to thirty meters from the rest of the homes, they saw a solitary two-room construction; it was the Galian residence.

  “Let’s see what this theater has to offer,” said Laurian to a nervous Saro, using a term from his journalistic days.

  VII

  On the fifth day in the Dubai jail Madame Ano appears in person. “Girls, we’re going home!” she declares jubilantly.

  She is dressed conservatively, with a long skirt and buttoned up blouse, a scarf on her head and no makeup. Lara almost does not recognize her at first. The “enforcer” Ali is with her. Ali is the person the girls fear the most. He is originally from Morocco, but has been in the Emirates for many years. He is tall and thin, with long curly shoulder-length hair, which he sometimes lets hang loose, and other times ties in a pony tail, but regardless of the style, it always looks greased, curly and pitch black. He is as comfortable in Western attire as in local Arab dress, and he is the man who disciplines difficult and insubordinate girls. All a pimp or manager has to do is call Ali and tell him that he or she is having problems with a girl. Ali visits the girl and usually an hour later the poor girl falls in line, fully docile and obedient. They don’t like to talk about it, but they all dread seeing
him.

  But this morning Ali is welcome for once. He seems to know everyone. Every police officer greets him like an old relative. The guards laugh and joke with him in flowery Arabic. Even Madame Ano, normally not one to be outdone, seems to be under his spell. Some last minute paperwork is sorted out to confirm the release orders, and the girls are on their way.

  Five days in prison has made them jittery and anxious to get back to their routine. They have not had a change of clothes in that time, and the use of one common bathroom has not allowed them enough time or space to tend to themselves. Although they are relieved and happy to be out, their movements seem awkward and uncomfortable as they come out and board small minibuses, each group heading to its own living quarters. Ano has retrieved everyone’s passports, which is an indication that the dispute has been resolved.

  Back in their housing complex the quiet hallways come alive again with the excited chatter and giggles of the returning girls. There is a rush to shower and change, the gloom and doom of the prison cell already a memory. Lara has just emerged from the shower when Ano calls and asks her to come to her apartment. Ali the Enforcer is also there, draped over an armchair and acting like he owns the place, sporting a broad smile. His headdress is off and his shiny hair rests on his shoulders.

  “We have negotiated a very good deal for you, Lara,” says Ano. “You will not have to go back to your old work any longer. No more working clients from all parts of the world. You will be exclusively for one man. You will live in a private house that he owns. Sometimes you will travel with him, maybe to Europe, as his companion.”

  Ano and Ali wait for some reaction from Lara, but there is none. She sits upright on a small side chair across from Ano, just having showered and changed into a clean miniskirt and shirt, an outfit that she has become used to while out in clubs, but which makes her self-conscious and uncomfortable in the room with Ali.