Dear Tornik, you have read holy Scripture, and you know that the old, old patriarchs had no fixed house or home. Their house was a tent that moved, here today, somewhere else tomorrow. The Arab tribes still live that way now. And not far from us, to the south, there are many tent-dwelling tribes, Kurds by race, who are called köchers, nomads. Their winter quarters are the wide warm plains along the borders of Nineveh and Babylon, where the snow does not fall heavily and the winter is not hard. They live under the tent, and their animals graze in the open all year round.
But in summer, when the heat turns fierce, all those tent-dwelling tribes move north with their many flocks of sheep to the cool mountain ranges of Korduk and the Taurus,1 where there are springs everywhere and pasture without end. For three or four months they enjoy that free mountain life, and at the end of autumn they move south again to the warmer lowlands. That is why these wandering tent-dwellers own more sheep than anyone can count, and droves of other animals that cost them no trouble at all. No stable, no byre, no winter fodder to lay in. Because they keep to raising livestock, they grow richer at it than the village people do. And they enjoy the sweetest peace of the natural life along with it.
Are you curious, Tornik, where the people of the first ages learned to build a house and live inside it, sheltered from the cold in winter and from the sun's heat in summer? Who gave them the example?
They say men learned the art and architecture of house-building from the birds and the animals. They saw the birds set their nests in the trees. They saw the swallow build her clay nest against the side of the house-beam, the eagle keep his eyrie on the high crags he loves, and the blind mole, nesting underground, shape the earth he throws out into a little mound. Then there is the ant, that provident, insignificant little creature, who builds not just a house but a granary next to his burrow, where he gathers his winter stores. And the bee, that thrifty housekeeper, lays out her even, measured cells in wax so that we cannot say whether she is building herself a nest or a honey-house, and she does it with such care that human wisdom is amazed by it.
Yes, Tornik, men with reason learn a great deal from the small creatures that have none. Those born craftsmen are our teachers. Do you see that mischievous spider, who braces himself in the corner of the wall and works without stopping, drawing fine threads out of his own mouth and weaving a net to catch flies? That is where men learned the craft of the loom and of weaving cloth. And from the nightingale's trilling and the voices of the other sweet-singing birds, from the roar of the sea's waves, from the sound of running water, from the rustling of the forests breathing as one, taking a little here and a little there, didn't the song-makers put together so many wonderful modes and lessons of music?
Well, Tornik, your Papik has wandered off the track again, leaving the proper order of our lesson to ask where men learned to build houses and to sing and all the rest. Let's get back to the village houses.
You know, Tornik, that every class of people on this earth lives according to its own development. City people, who are more developed than we are, and whose taste has opened up as they developed, know how to enjoy a comfortable life, and they build to the measure of their taste.
But the village people, who have no development and whose taste is shut tight, find their little houses quite good enough. Yet is the peasant's taste really so dull that he cannot build his house with even a little order to it? Watch how he answers me. Yes, I am a man too. I have some taste. I see the townsmen's fine houses, and do you think my soul does not want a fine house of my own? But then I think, I am poor, I am in debt, and for a poor man a hut is plenty. And so on. Meanwhile the rich householder reasons it out with his shrewd economy. If I make my house bigger, the guests will multiply and my expenses will double. And so on. The peasant householder's objection is fair enough, but underneath it lies the root cause I explained above. Along with their poverty, the village people are ignorant and have no taste. Because there are small things that could be put right at no cost at all, only a little work. And so I can show you this in a way you can see and touch, Tornik, so you look with your own eyes and take in the bitter, punishing hardship our village families live with in their daily work, let me give you an example. You see it all the time and you do not notice it. Your eye is used to it. You probably think this is simply how a village family has to live, or that it is their fate.
Get up, then, Tornik, and come with me to the house of our friend Brother Kirakos. It is exactly the hour when the village tonirs, the sunken hearth-ovens, are lit. Look. The tonir-house is full of smoke and fumes. The tonir is burning, and on the cross-iron over it stand the pots of tanapur and of the day's dish. On one side of the house two cradles are set, and the poor babies are crying, choked by the smoke, while their mothers think they are asking for milk. In one corner an old woman lies sick with the shivering fever, the ague. Now the tonir has burned down and the smoke has drawn off. The mistress of the house throws down her sitting-pad and settles at the rim of the tonir. One of the young wives of the house opens out the balls of dough on the tonir-slab and hands them over, and the mistress slaps them onto the tonir wall with the baking-pad. All this time the household mastiff lies sprawled in the doorway, paws out in front of him, his eye on the mistress, waiting for her to hand him the crust that comes out of the tonir.
It is midday, the daughter says to her mother. It is time, mayrik, I have to take the bread out to the workers. The bread and the food are made ready, and the brisk girl goes off to the field with the load on her back. And now the village gzir2 comes in. The mistress has a guest. With a sigh she tells the young wife to break a few eggs and make him an omelet.
You see, Tornik, a villager's house is a patriarch's tent. The door is always open. And now the village poor start arriving, one after another. An old woman came shaking, stick in hand. Mistress, I would die for your soul, I caught the smell of the fresh bread and came. My orphan grandchildren are crying with hunger. Give me a loaf and a little soup to carry back to my little ones. The old woman took what she asked for and went off blessing the house. Another came, and took, and went, and so a good many came, and took, and went. Last of all came a shameless beggar who would not settle for one loaf. The mistress lost her temper, took the black poker of the tonir, laid it across his back, and drove him out of the house. Did you see that, Tornik? By the time the mistress finished her baking, half the bread was gone.
Now let me come back to this tonir-house, which would be very easy to improve. Do you see? The tonir is built in the middle of the house, and in the ceiling there is only one yerdik, a roof-hole, for the smoke to escape by, though with the house door open the smoke goes out through the doorway too. Suppose we move the tonir and set it in a suitable corner of the house. Over that corner we build a wide smoke-hood, and the hood is easy enough to make. Stand two slender posts, weave pliant willow between them, and plaster the gaps with straw and clay. On the roof, in the same line, we raise another hood, a cubit and a half high at least. Then watch how the smoke draws up, and the house is left entirely clear of it.
Well, Tornik, judge for yourself. What difficulty, what expense is there in this small improvement? So why doesn't the villager think of it? Don't you know the reason? I have said it many times, and I will say it again. He cannot read and write. Letters and books are what open a man's mind and teach him to think. But do not be surprised at the unlettered villager, and do not blame him. Let's go to the city. Look at the householders of Van, every one of whom has built his tonir in the middle of his house too. There is only one difference. The townsmen's houses are high enough, and they have plenty of openings, not just in the ceiling but in the walls as well, so the smoke of the house draws out easily. But the ceiling is still black with soot. And when the house starts to leak in the rains, you will see the black drops ruining the floor and everything spread on it. Sometimes the very old houses drip in the spring even without rain, a silent drip, which is worse, because the floor coverings, the tonir-cover and the family's clothes all get stained with soot, and it is hard work to get that sticky soot-black out of the cloth and scrub it away.
So do not say to me, Tornik, the townsman can read and write, he is developed, he has seen the capital, Bolis,3 and taken his idea of cleanliness from there, so how is it he still cannot think of something and improve his own house? And if that is how things stand, what advantage does the lettered man have over the unlettered, when the way of life and the housekeeping stay the same? Let me answer you, Tornik. First, you should know that not every man who can read and write can run a household. Second, though the new generation of townsfolk has taken the incomplete schooling of today's schools, that is nowhere near enough to run our life well, because with that half-finished, skimming education we cannot work our minds hard enough to pull out the old, deep-rooted prejudices. Townsman and villager alike will go on living in soot-black houses, and they will say, our fathers and our grandfathers lived in these houses and we will live in them too. It means nothing to them that the family is suffering in the smoke and the soot, and that sometimes their eyes go dim with it.
When I say the townsfolk are developed, do not take me to mean they are really and truly developed and enlightened. If you gathered up all the intellectual light they have, it would not add up to one dim lamp. It is only that, next to the unlettered village people, they have a small advantage.
Tornik, the mind's eye of townsman and villager alike is still clouded, covered over with film. We do not see the things of the world straight and true. Like the blind man Jesus healed, we too see the people walking about as trees.4 To tell a tree from a man you need light and clear sight, and that comes only from education. As long as we have no light-giving grace of education and knowledge, our household life will stay just as it is. Learning, it seems, has decided that the dark, soot-black house is what we deserve, until the day the people's mind's eye opens and sees the light and can tell a man from a tree. And then, if we are still alive, we will come out of these soot-black houses into light and progress, and be free of that choking smoke and soot of ignorance.
That is all I will say about the village's plain buildings, Tornik. But the daily life of the peasant people is very wide, and it holds a great many other things. You, Tornik, were born into village life, so I leave its portrait to you, to study for yourself out of your own experience. Now I am going to talk about the village church, the priest and the people, which for you is a spiritual lesson.
Notes
- Korduk is the mountain country of ancient Corduene (Kordvats), south of Lake Van toward the Bohtan country. With the Taurus it walls the highland off from Mesopotamia. ↩
- Gzir means the village crier and beadle, the headman's summoner, who also quartered official guests on the households. ↩
- Bolis is Constantinople. ↩
- Mark 8:24, the half-healed blind man of Bethsaida, who saw people as walking trees. ↩