Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 5: My Circuit Riding

The New Year and the Christmas of 1904 I was to spend among the villagers. I was to stay at least a day in each village, share in its holiday, and at the same time do all the work that fell to a circuit-rider.

Winter in Kars and the country around it is bitterly cold. As they say: "Spit on the ground and the ground won't take it — it freezes." But I had a splendid escort: Garegin of Erzurum and Minas of Taron, two of the men saved from the Basen band, and old Saron the avenger, whom everyone knew. Their yapunjis hung from their shoulders, and their horses played beneath them. The papakhs [wool hats] on their heads were covered with cowl-like bashliks. Of the horses you could see only the legs, and their heads — with the white fountains of steam that puffed, gust by gust, from their nostrils.

Our faces could barely be seen under the bashlik. White icicles hung from our mustaches.

Our hands were in mittens, and though they were buried under the yapunji, our fingers still ached on the horses' reins. And yet it was a great pleasure — to be one with the horse and cut a road through the frost. It was a moving tent, smoldering and burning; on all four sides the snow was a dead shroud.

We visited the villages one by one, like ter-ters going round to bless the houses. The whole village, old and young, would crowd around us and invite us into houses as warm as a bathhouse. We could feel that the villagers looked at us as men lost beyond hope — who, though they had escaped their sentence, might yet be lost again. They looked at us the way a mother looks at her child and a father at his son; while the little ones found simple comfort in gazing up at Garegin's plane-tree height.

The center of attention was Garegin and Minas, who had just risen from the dead.

— A matagh to your feet — lay it out for me: how did it happen, that great battle? The whole world went tumbling one into another. Did the Osmanli get his lesson? — asked an old villager, his chibouk [pipe] in his mouth.

— Let me kiss your feet — welcome home to you. Ten of you went, and you came back one by one; ah, what a zulum [calamity] came down on our heads! — said an old woman, wiping away her tears.

Garegin and Minas, moved, would answer:

— What can we do, abla [auntie]? Our luck ran out; we came back to you alive. God willing, we'll join them too.

— No, no, no, don't even say it. God forbid — you have a mother and father too. Are you married? Do you have children? — the abla went on.

The others would break in.

— Hey, Varde, what are you blurting out, knowing and not knowing? What is it to you what they have? You there — tell us this: if intar [aid] had reached you, and the road held open, could you have got into the fortress of Erzurum?

Those simple, innocent questions left us at a loss; they gave away the people's own heart and longing. But grey-headed Saron would find the way out, and answer:

— No, Margar dear, you need cannon to get into Erzurum, and we have no cannon.

— Saron, forgive me, but you're talking off the point, — Margar persisted. — What do we need cannon for? My father used to tell how, in the fight for Kars, Mukhtar Pasha^t1 had gathered a great many cannon and held the fortress of Kars. The Russians said: "Our cannon are few; we can't take this fortress." Lazarev^t2 said: "No such thing — I'll take it." He called up the Armenian olas [lads], my father among them, and said: "Cannon we have none, none at all; but the fortress is ours, and we'll take it for certain." They all said: "Helbet [surely] we'll take it — the fortress is ours." They drew up their horses and mounted, drew their swords, and drove dümdüz [head-on], straight at Mukhtar Pasha's cannon; they took the fortress, and drove Mukhtar Pasha to Aladja-Dagh. Let a man have the heart, and the fortress can be taken without cannon too.

Let Saron and Margar go on with their argument; I would get to work. On those occasions I would call in the village Sub-Committee, go over the accounts in private, hear the report, and, if there was business to settle, settle it.

All this was very easy to finish inside an hour. What help there was in the mood of the moment — and above all in the presence of the soldiers riding with me, who, as everyone knew, had only yesterday been saved from certain death and were ready to go to death again! What man without a conscience would refuse to pay what he owed the party, or the school, or the other public charges? Who would hold a grudge against his neighbor and set the village against itself? The soldiers who had come back from the grave and rode at my side shamed the villagers. Petty quarrels that might have flared up were laid to rest, and the unity was complete.

And then you would see a party comrade come up to us and turn to the Sub-Committee:

— Look in your defter [ledger]: last year the hail struck my field, and I did not pay my debt in full. What do I still owe? Tell me, and I'll pay — my hala [means] are good just now.

The Sub-Committee man would look at his list and turn to him:

— Ako dear, all that is left is twenty kopeks. You owe nothing.

— No, janım, a debt is a debt — take the twenty kopeks, and one manat [ruble] besides, as jagha or as a gift, — said Ako, and laid 120 kopeks down before him.

Another would come up, a little sheepish, and turn to the Sub-Committee:

— Janım, that was empty talk I gave you. What am I — a Turk, a Russian, that you take no money from me for our school? I said it only to be saying something, that I have no children and would give nothing to the school — and you believed me? Aren't all the village olas [souls] mine? Collect the hakh [fee] for three olas from me.

The Sub-Committee man, his eyes wide, looked at Kiro and said:

— Kiro dear, you won't be left out. There, I've written it in — I was wrong.

What troubled the village assembly was Gaspar on the one side and Akho on the other, who had become enemies over money and other matters. Tangled together, the two of them were the village's open wound. But — to the relief of the villagers and the Sub-Committee — Gaspar, who was a hard head, came up to us with his mind made up and said:

— There will be no holier day than this. I am a matagh to your feet, now that you have come to the village. Gather round, all of you: I have taken off my silent, louse-ridden shirt and shaken it all out into the tonir [hearth-oven]; my jendek [body] has found its rahat [ease]. Ako, my dear — come, stand here at my side; you too, shake out your shirt.

Everyone was astonished — above all at the words "Ako dear." Ako, submitting, came and stood at Gaspar's side.

Gaspar went on:

— A man is a man, and he falls into sin when the devil gets into his belly through the plnj — through the nose. I wished Akho harm. Akho is no angel either; but I confess that I am the sinner. I won't make your heads ache. Let Akho be my judge, and let our Sub-Committee be the witness. Whatever they say I accept, and whatever punishment they lay on me is welcome.

Akho, moved, answered:

— Gaspar dear, I'm the sinner too; you be my judge — and he kissed Gaspar.

But Gaspar was a hard head, and said:

— No, no — first let us kiss the feet of these men of the nation, whom we are not worthy of.

And they knelt, and would have done it. But I push them away and point to Garegin, who refuses as well.

— What kind of kritik is this?(*) Stop it, make peace — we'll see about the rest later.

Garegin did not know that what Gaspar and Akho had done was no kritik, but a genuine change of heart — and that the cause of it was he himself and his comrades who had been martyred.

*

So, each day, we would go to a village. Without a speech, without a sermon, without argument or intervention, the work turned like a wheel on a greased axle. My part, and my comrades', was only a silent presence; there was no effort on our side, yet the work turned of itself.

For the most part — not seeing to the bottom of it — they credited that success to me, and sent glowing reports to the Kars Central Committee about our miracle-working labors. If I had been fool enough, it would not have taken much for me to believe that I really was something. But I knew that the people go to order and to sacrifice of their own accord, and not by any grace of mine. For the sake of the omelet, one puts up with the handle of the pan. The omelet was the national awakening, and the pan was the Dashnaktsutiun. I was only its cold handle.

() Kritik* — a critique; in the present instance, a comedy.

Two or three months passed in this way. I was preparing to visit the gorge of Kaghzvan when I received a letter from Sergei: he wrote that I should return to Kars at once.

*

Sergei and Hagop received me very warmly. By now they counted me their equal.

— Do you know how empty the places you have passed through have gone? You could jump straight into a dead man's place. May Menak and Khachik sleep in peace — that was how they put it.

About Menak I knew already; about Khachik I did not. I asked after Khachik. They told me he was a physician who had come from Bulgaria and had sworn to cross into Sasun or some other part of the Land, to be of use to the people and to the revolution. Until then he had been making himself useful there in the district of Kars. Wherever he went he bound the people to him by his gentle, kindly ways. He was a quiet man, of few words, and he organized the district with his smile and his soft manner. When Khan and Nevruz were forming their bands, there was no holding Dr. Khachik back any longer. "If you die, I'm with you; if you are wounded, I'm your keeper," he would say; and, shouldering his medicines, he had joined them and had set out to reach Sasun. But he had been among the first of the slain.

— That was how he too was sacrificed, — Sergei and Hagop would tell me sadly, and they listened in silence.

In the evening, as I was going with Hagop and Sergei to the meeting of the Central Committee, Hagop asked:

— Did Garegin come back afterward?

— Yes, I answered.

He fell silent, and I did not understand why he had taken an interest in Garegin.

Among many other matters, Hagop reported on a Turkish bey from Erzurum whose name I have forgotten. He argued that the man was a former officer of the Turkish frontier-guard, and that he now passed, supposedly, for an ordinary citizen. This Turk had become the link between the Turkish and Russian frontier troops; he would often come as far as Sarıkamış and Kars and meet with the Russian command. He was thought to be the one link in the military collaboration of the two powers. He had acquaintances among Armenians, Greeks, and Turks, and, wringing information out of them, he would go back to Turkey, cross the frontier again, and was forever meeting with Russian officers. At the time of our Basen fights he had been mixed up in the Russian dealings, and had twice crossed the frontier and come back into the Russian frontier-guard army.

Hagop proposed to put an end to the man's life and to break the link between the two operations.

The findings of the inquiry seemed highly probable. There was only one who objected, and said:

— If we break this link, a new link will surely be created between the two powers, and by new men.

But this objection too was set aside by the following observation:

— Until the new one gets the practice of the old, seasoned hand, we gain time.

So Hagop's proposal was accepted unanimously, and the carrying-out of the deed was entrusted to him.

When we came out, with Sergei and Hagop, Sergei turned to Hagop with concern and said:

— The main thing — is it to carry it out safely?

— No, — answered Hagop. — The main thing is reaching the verdict. Whoever brings the proposal has certainly weighed first whether it can be done. I have been thinking about this for several months now. If we strike him down on the road, it is nothing — but the day of meeting him cannot be fixed. If we catch him in Kars, that is easy. If we catch him at Karaghurdan or Karaghurut, the doing of it is nothing, but covering the tracks of the men who do it is hard. If we catch him at Sarıkamış, the doing of it is certain, but getting the men away is a little harder — still easier than at the frontier.

Then, turning to me, Hagop said:

— Set your mind at rest, and leave that business to me. I have only one request of you. Sound Garegin out — is he willing to go on a terror-act (ahabekum)? I want the vengeance of the Basen bands taken by the hands of the men who fought in those fights. They must be given that satisfaction; it will console them. I authorize you to ask, without revealing any explanation or detail — no name, no place. Only this: is Garegin willing to enter this dangerous work? If yes, you say nothing further. If no, I authorize you to tell him not to let slip the chance of taking the vengeance of the Basen bands and cooling his heart.

In the morning I found Garegin and asked:

— Garegin, why don't you take part in the terror-acts?

Garegin looked me in the face and said:

— Aren't you ashamed, making such a proposal to a jan fedayi — a fighter to the marrow? We can wage war with drum and zurna, we can cut men down — but we cannot raise a hand quietly, by stealth, on a man we happen to meet. That is not my work. If there is a fight, say so, and I am ready to go this very moment.

I was forced to deliver Hagop's second message:

— Garegin, I said this to you because I am afraid someone else will take the vengeance of the Basen bands, and you will be sorry for it.

— That is a different thing; that is my right. Well — is there something like that in hand?

— There is nothing at all. I spoke only to test you, — I said, and closed the matter.

I went to Hagop and reported the outcome of the conversation on the spot. Hagop listened and said:

— Keep clear of Garegin. He is no use for such work. He is a man for a fight.

Five days had passed since that day. Hagop had said he was going to Alexandropol on business. Sergei and I were eating face to face in an eating-house. Garegin came in — we had not run into him for a week. He came in and settled himself at my side. His face was solemn. He ordered three glasses of oghi [spirits] and asked:

— Where is Hagop?

— He is in Alexandropol; likely he'll be back soon.

Garegin laughed and said:

— It serves you right: you laughed at me, and he, it turns out, has laughed at you. I know you don't drink, but today you're drinking to the bottom. Let us drink to the memory of our fallen of Basen — may they sleep in peace. Try not drinking, if you can! — he said, and drained his glass.

We drained ours too, and understood that the Turkish bey had already given up the ghost. We fell silent and asked no question.

In the evening the news went round the city that a Turkish colonel had been shot in the forehead and the chest, in broad daylight; that the killers had got away, and that an inquiry was under way.

In the morning Hagop appeared and said that Besua and Garegin had been the killers.

Who Besua was I do not really know, but I know that he was one of Garegin's countrymen. Garegin was annoyed with him: he had left Garegin no time to do anything, but without a moment's hesitation had put the bullet in first, between the two eyes of the Turkish spy. Besua too was one of the men saved from the Basen band. I think he was the one who — under the name Mikayel, in the fight at Olti, after the Sarıkamış terror-act — was bayoneted by a Russian soldier. He had been thought dead, but afterward had recovered, and, after one misadventure and another, had become — I don't know what.

Garegin was killed in the fight at Olti. His corpse had been photographed, stripped naked, together with Bikov and his soldiers. That degrading photograph would become the cause of Bikov's death.

*

We are in the common lodging-house — our shelter, anchored in Zor [the gorge]. The wind blows through the chinks of the door, but the yapunjis in which we are wrapped protect us.

For a bed, under me there is only a rush-mat, with a coarse rug on top of it. My ribs ache from their hardness. The best of it is that lice have crept over me, and the fleas give no rest either. I am forever scratching.

The one lying at my side is Sergei. He too is in my plight.

— You're not asleep either? Let us go out and walk a little.

That was the very thing I too had been wanting. We went out into the street.

The street was asleep. Only, in the houses — piled one on top of another, climbing terrace by terrace — some of the doors were opening, and housewives were shaking out their dust-cloths. And the morning bells were breaking the silence.

Toward that house where the bomb had gone off, and Isajan with his comrades had vanished, Sergei would not look. His head hanging, he went down into the gorge, and there, before the bath-house, fell into gentle, peaceable talk.

Sergei had a remarkable gift. Whoever it was, he would get close to him. About himself he said nothing, but every last detail of the man in front of him interested him. He would take in the other man's work, his situation, even every fold of his family life, as though the man were laying out his whole self.

When I came up, Sergei said to me:

— What do you say — shall we take a bath?

— Good, let's, — I answered.

— Sergei dear, on my eyes — but you have come too early. The water will not be hot yet, the bath will not be warm. You'll have to wait half an hour, an hour.

— What is half an hour? Throw on one more apirish, make a coffee too, and there — your bath will be ready, — said Sergei to the bath-keeper.

The bath-keeper, with a happy face, as though gold had fallen on him from heaven, warmed to his task and ushered us in. We sat down, ringed with soft cushions, while he ran off, woke the furnace-man, roused the kiseci [scrubber] from his place, and hurried him off to fetch the barber. The kiseci, with a frightened face, half-naked, half-dressed, ran for the barber. And the bath-keeper blew under the ibrik — the coffee-pot — to make the fire flare up and the coffee-water boil.

— Really, this is good. You know, if the ishkhan had not been killed so suddenly — the day before, we had promised each other that we would go to the baths. He went without getting that murad [wish] of his....

We were both silent when the bath-keeper brought in the hot coffee, and sugar with it.

— Would you like a narghile [water-pipe]?

— No, — we said; but the bath-keeper began to explain the wholesome, healthful properties of the narghile.

At that moment the barber burst in, all in a fluster, with the kiseci. I sat down, had my hair put in order, and went into the bath. Sergei, behind me.

— What a good thing we've done: whatever filth there is, we wash it away. From here we'll go to your house, drink a good tea, breakfast like human beings, and spend a few days at your house — soft and sweet. I've sent word ahead by the barber, — said Sergei.

I looked at Sergei in astonishment. He noticed, and went on:

— What do we know about what tomorrow will bring us? Let us have the taste of it in our mouths, at least — and go like that.

We finished. The kiseci gave us a fine drubbing — cracking the bones of our backs by kneeling on us, and thinning our hides with his scrubbing-mitt.

The coffee was ready. We drank that too, and when we wished to give the bath-keeper his money, he said:

— Sergei dear, a matagh to your feet — why do you dishonor me? How am I to take money from you?

— Very well — take the barber's money, at least.

— Janım, what business is it of yours? He too, I know, will take offense.

We tried to pay the kiseci, but he too scowled:

— Are we as unworthy as all that?

We went out. The phaeton — the carriage — stood at the door. "Get in, it is paid for," the bath-keeper called. We took our seats, humbled. When the horses started off, Sergei said to me: "Ishte [look] — it is these dogs, sons of dogs, who by behaving like this make our life count for nothing and death a thing to be wished for."

That was my last bath in Kars....

*

We are in our house. The door opens with a laugh, and in the kisses and the noise we settle in around the samovar. What can I tell you? — every one of you has had a mother, a sister, a brother, and feels the moments of meeting and of parting better than anything I could say. There was a gaiety of parting in it that soured the sweetness a little and gave it a maykhosh [bittersweet] taste — all the more to be craved, all the more to be drunk.

My mother said to me:

— Mbnika,(*) when do you leave?

I shrugged my shoulders, and she understood from that that I did not know either. She and I were silent, busy with our tea. But the one who made the most noise was Sergei, with his pealing laughter and his jokes.

— Hey, abla, rest assured we have come without our guests. We left them behind in the bath and came away. Shut the door, and, as for a man setting out on a long road, spread the soft bedding and cover it with a white sheet — we mean to sleep sweetly, sweetly. We'll get up, eat, and sleep again, until we tire of resting.

() Mbnik* is the shortened, endearing form of Minas — Turkeni's baptismal name. — A. Kh.

— Very well, Sergei dear; but you tell me this — the guests on you, how many days have they left, two, or more? — and my mother and Sergei fell to laughing at each other.

For two days and three nights we were cut off from the world; we slept, rose, ate, drank, and slept again. On the third day, still lying on our backs, we fixed our eyes on the ceiling — which was itself a sign that my weariness had passed. The human creature is a strange machine: when the spirit of everyday life is idle, when it is not tired but filled with vigor, it must at all costs busy itself with work or with some bodily motion. And if there are no such outlets, it makes work for itself — to spend itself, to be occupied. It sharpens the imagination and the mind and drives forward questions that have nothing to do with everyday life. It must, at all costs, get inside the soul of the man in front of it and wear itself out over what is passing and turning within him.

Sergei's eyes gazed unblinking at a single point. Now and then he knitted his brows. I did not disturb him. My mind wandered around Sergei and his Shushi comrades, some of whom had already parted from him forever. And I thought that the rest, too, would soon part from him, and that perhaps he in turn would part from me, as his comrades had. Already I saw the martyr's crown on his face, and I grieved, and I envied. Sergei's Shushi circle, many of whom I had never even seen, moved through my head, and their whole company seemed to me a city of martyrs.

— Fellow, are you daft? — Sergei called to me. — Are you struck dumb? Why don't you answer? Say something — what are you thinking? Say something; I want to test whether my guess is right.

I looked at Sergei, who was sitting up in the bed. Under his black brows his eyes had gone wide with wonder, and, holding his chin in his fingers, he pleaded with me: "Mean cholum — a matagh to you — out with it now, a-ah…"

I could not help laughing.

— What kind of Madonna pose is that you have struck?

— Halata! — I was mulling over empty, idle things: over you, and those donkey Karabaghtsis of yours.

— Amazing, — Sergei straightened up, exclaiming. — I knew you were thinking about them. So whenever you think, I can guess it. Watch yourself! What conclusion did you reach?

— If you want to talk seriously, I'll tell you; if not, it stays with me.

Sergei wanted to talk seriously; and because, up to that day, his views and mine had never come to a common denominator — and because I had the very same disagreements with Jamalian^t7 too, decades later — I will set down that idle-hour conversation.

I began to explain my "demons." He listened seriously.

— You have certainly sifted lentils or wheat with a karmagh — the coarse stone-sieve — or watched it done, I said. Whatever is dust and fine grain falls through the bottom; those are the useless parts. In the sieve two layers form: one light, made up of the small grains that rise and cover the surface; the other made up of the heavy, full grains, which lie beneath the first. And since we also turn the sieve round about, all the grains in it — those on the surface and those beneath alike — arrange themselves by their size and weight, parallel to the radii of the sieve: the light and the small toward the center, the big, the heavy, and the full toward the ends of the radii and the rim. Do you agree?

— Yes, if we leave other circumstances out of account, — answered Sergei.

— If what I say is right, then it is not hard to work out where the true Armenians are — the ones worth dealing with, and worth laying down your life for.

Sergei listened thunderstruck; I set him at ease and went on:

— Let us suppose that Armenia is round, and is like a sieve.

Let its center be Manazkert, and its edges Syunik, Gugark, Vaspurakan, and Mokk — that is, our four ancient principalities, or else the Taurus and the Lesser Caucasus ranges. The axis of the sieve passes through Manazkert; the sieve rises and falls to the height of Masis. The horizontal radii of the sieve run out — one to Shushi, another to Sper, another to Bashkale, another to Kharberd — and these four radii turn from left to right, faster than a millstone.

Now pour into that sieve, in place of lentils, five million Armenians, and turn it fast. Once the dust, the refuse, has been sifted out, the rest arrange themselves according to their weight and their pith. That is: the hollow, the empty, the light, the sapless, the small — the coward of the human element, the witless, the man with no initiative and no daring, and so on — gather around the center. And, on the contrary, the full, the heavy, the audacious, the brave, the enterprising — that is, the true Armenians — gather and range themselves along the radii, according to their weight. Now, from this natural phenomenon I conclude:

a) Shushi lies turned to the tip of a radius, and that is why it, together with the other radii, concentrates within itself the most useful, the strongest, the most decisive cultural and physical stock of Armenia and of the Armenian people. And I conclude that without the border-provinces neither an Armenian people nor an Armenia can be brought into being. Your own vigor proves it — yours, and Tuman's, and Duman's, and Vardan's.

b) When you come from the tip of the radius toward the center, the central part of Armenia is either held by Bero Hüseyin's pasha-tribes^t3 — the tribal horde — or is empty, or is held by passive, uncultivated, thinly scattered Armenians, who must be revived by the border-provinces. Otherwise they are lost.

c) I am amazed at you and Tuman, who strive, like Menak, to sacrifice yourselves for central Armenia. That is as good as beating water to make it thicken. I prefer the road of little Nikol, of Vardan, of Duman, and I would rather do what I can for Vaspurakan than for Erzrum-Taron. Come — change your road.

Sergei looked at me and did not answer; he picked at his nose and muttered a Russian saying: "Slyshal zvon, da ne znaesh gde on" — "You have heard the ringing, but you do not know where it is."

— Come, answer, or agree, — I said, finishing my say.

— Wait, don't hurry; to root out foolishness is harder than to build a monastery.

Sergei began, solemnly:

— Since with your wonderful sieve you want to give a scientific grounding to the content of Armenia and of the Armenian people, and to what we must do, let me begin with the sieve as well. The very word karmagh — "stone-sieve" — shows that the tool was made to separate the dirt from the good grain. And, to my mind, what falls into the sieve divides into four kinds; with that I agree. And do you agree with me that, in general, there is no uniform, single-race element?

I agreed.

— You turned Armenia into a giant sieve and poured five million Armenians into it. Cut that down a little, because those five million have their chaff too, which, when you shake your sieve left and right, will fall through the bottom. What falls through is what carries the Armenian name but is nothing in itself — degenerate, worm-eaten, without progeny or tradition, deformed, a part crumbled to dust. Take those siftings off your count; reckon them neither as number nor as quality; write them off as manure for the ground.

When you shake it left and right, the surface is covered with a thin, light layer. Our grandmothers lift off that layer and, turning their fingers into a rake, set it aside. They shake the sieve up and down, left and right, until those light parts can no longer bury themselves in the mass. They set them aside until they are gone. Afterward they give them to the pigs and the donkeys, for they are not lentils but the lentil's stalk, the straw, or other plants that have nothing to do with the lentil grain. In this way what is in the sieve grows lighter again, but the quantity of lentils does not lessen, and their quality rises.

From this simple cleaning you draw conclusions that have no foundation. You say that the central part of Armenia is either empty or held by Bero Hüseyin's tribes — which is plausible, but not true, because beneath those tribes there are Armenians pressed down as raya [subject peasantry]. It is true that these superfluous and foreign forces take up a great deal of room in the sieve of Armenia; but when we, like our grandmothers, pick out that straw, that stalk, and set it aside, what remains at the bottom of Armenia's sieve is the pure Armenian stock, which holds the floor of the center.

Your conclusion is a fantasy. When all the chaff has been lifted off, top and bottom, what seems to remain in the sieve is the clean lentil. Now you turn the sieve fast about its axis and rightly observe that the lentils range themselves along the radii: the full, the big, the heavy near the walls of the sieve, at the ends of the radii, and the small, the light at the center. And you find that the strength, the force, the mind, and all the good qualities of the Armenian people must be sought in the four marches that surround Armenia. And so, you say, the center of Armenia is nothing and the border-provinces are everything. As proof you bring Shushi, and me along with it. I thank you; but, being myself from the tip of that radius, I can see your error.

Now, among the big and small lentils there are all sorts of stones, and sometimes chickpeas and other heavy grains. If you eat them, you break your teeth. To make it edible lentil, you have to pick it over grain by grain, throwing out the excess, the stones, and the rest. Note one thing more: their skin is thick, not fine like that of the others. It is better to eat the small lentils and to keep the big ones for sowing.

So — lay your scientific grounding out in front of me; my conclusion is a different one. I grant that in the border-provinces there arise strong individualities, devoted Armenians, brave men, above all men of initiative. But to conclude from that that the strength, the wholeness, the salvation of the Armenian people must be sought in the border-provinces — that is an illusion.

Sergei had shaken the foundation of my theory, but had not yet brought down its walls. I was bewildered and amazed. I asked what his point was. He explained:

— You are right when you look for the strong individualities in the border-provinces. I would add the diaspora as well. That confirms your theory of the "centrifugal" law. In Russia the Yermaks(*) gave the empire ambition and a rotten grandeur by their adventuring. But what else did they give it? We too have had our Yermaks, our adventurers — Tzimiskes^t5 and a good many Armenian emperors. But tell me — apart from harm, apart from hollow ambition, what did they give to Armenia and the Armenian people? These centrifugal forces, as you know better than I do, have brought nothing but harm and ruin.

() Yermak* — the Cossack chief who conquered Siberia and annexed it to Russia. — A. Kh.

Let us come to our border-provinces, the marches, the ones you are so taken with. One of them at least — Karabagh — I know well, because I am its child. Your eye and your ear are filled with tales of generals, of princes, of meliks. You have heard of the millionaires of Baku, of the oil-men, of the famous wielders of bomb and pistol, or of the self-satisfied, patriotic allurements of the Dumans and the Vardans. And, impressed by all this, you have concluded that the flower, the strength, the mind, and the drive of the Armenian people turn within Karabagh, and that it, and border-provinces like it, must be our goal and our starting-point. No error can be greater or more harmful than that conclusion. Here is why.

In the border-provinces of Armenia the good and the bad of the Armenian people are packed together, mixed one with another. The Armenian too has his selfishness, his vainglory, his rancor, his guile, his overblown arrogance, his faintheartedness, his witless obstinacy, his adventurism, his denial of the collective, his rejection of tradition, his foreign-mania, his self-will — which one of them am I to name? These weigh the individual down like lead. And, being heavy, they too gather — by your own centrifugal theory — at the rim of the sieve. Now you will say that on those rims are gathered, likewise, the likes of Duman — men endowed with virtue, with self-possession, with disinterestedness, with courage, with patriotism, and with other good qualities. True. But what is that worth, when it is mixed in with the negative? Do you understand? When you mix the positive and the negative, you get zero. Sow alfalfa in a wheat-field, and you will reap no harvest. And so never hope that with Karabagh, or any other borderland, you will save Armenia. On the contrary: if there is no Armenia, those border-provinces are lost — no Armenian will remain there. Let there be an Armenia, and those border-provinces, if they do not turn assimilated, will hold on, attached as restless frontier-guards, like the Russian Cossacks. And so you err when you strain to go to Karabagh or Vaspurakan; and we are the ones in the right, who strain toward Upper Armenia and Taron.

When Sergei held these views, how did it happen that he later became Aram of Van? How did it happen that I myself did not become one like Aram? That was perhaps chance — but perhaps, too, something else: a subconscious thing that, though it steers us, is not itself there.

*

By Sergei's understanding, our homeland is like a walnut, made up of a kernel, a shell, and a green husk that guards the shell. The kernel falls on the upper sources of the Araxes, the Kura, the Euphrates, and the Aradzani — that is, Shirak, Kars, Upper Armenia, Taron. The shell falls on the middle courses of those same rivers, with the course of the Chorokh added. The husk falls on the lower courses of those same rivers, with the valley of Lake Van and the head-springs of the Tigris valleys added.

And Sergei would conclude:

— Let there be a kernel, and it will itself make the shell. The shell, once made, makes its own husk. If you have shell and husk but no kernel, the walnut is hollow. Therefore our first aim must be to set free the kernel of Armenia.

This, then, is the cause of our disagreements, — Sergei adds.

— The Armenian people, too, is of three kinds, each completing the others, but of a different nature. We carry the Armenian name around with us, we work for it, and yet we neither know it nor look to see where it is. Not every Armenian who bears the name is truly a free Armenian. The Armenians outside Armenia — in whatever classes they live, from Kizlyar, Mozdok, Armavir, Stavropol, Rostov, and Nor Nakhijevan as far as Kharkov and Kherson — you cannot tell what they are: Armenian or Circassian, Russian or Cossack; as though they were an apricot grafted onto a plum. Look at his face, his nose — he is Armenian; listen to his tongue, watch his soul — he is Russian. And sometimes the reverse: look at his face — he is Russian, with his flaxen hair and his tip-tilted nose; look inside, hear his tongue — he is Armenian. He is a mule that recalls each of its two different parents, and he is Armenian only in so far as the soil of Armenia and of its true Armenian people still lives in him; without that soil and that breath he is not Armenian.

When you draw near to Armenia, it is ringed, like a walnut, with a whole, hard shell. That hard shell is your four marches, which surround Armenia proper and the Armenian people. That shell — inside which lie your cherished holdings, Vaspurakan and your beloved Karabagh — is a necessary part of Armenia and of the Armenian people, but it has no separate vitality of its own; it has life only so long as it stays closed around its kernel. Its life hangs from those hair-thin veins by which the kernel binds it to itself; through them it is fed and receives life. Cut those veins, and it dies and is severed from the Armenian people; it becomes firewood, while the kernel is left defenseless.

Do you want proof? Take our own Shushi, which is already on the road to degeneration. Because the routes of communication with Armenia have dwindled while those with Baku and Russia have grown stronger; because the economic and cultural ties with the kernel of the land have slackened, while, through a unifying administrative partition, the ties with Turkey have strengthened — the Armenians of that district have now become three parts: two parts are against the interests of the Armenian people, and one part alone works for the good of Armenia and the Armenian people. There has already been created a class that does not exist inside Armenia. Its center is Baku and Russia, while its claws and talons are Karabagh. That class is the men of money, Armenian by origin but the vanguard of the international and of the Russian. They claim the right to lead the Armenian people, yet they reckon that people a mere pedestal for dragging out an animal existence under the Russian roof. That class has become an evil to the wholeness of the Armenian people; it has become a bait for the neighbors; it has become a hook in the Russian's hand for catching the Armenian people. It is our enemy — it has ground the Armenian name to pieces.

The cultured class has become the same evil as the first. Aren't they my own comrades — Tsaturian, Narimyan, Zaghar, Muryan^t8 (Social Democrats) — who, by their zeal, their strength, their preparedness, are perhaps worth more than the rest of us? Yet they are servants of the Russian might, and instruments of the Armenian people's fusion into it, even if in words they are against it and unwilling. When even the "Nameless" and the "Fatalists" are fixed on the notion that the national idea is a superstition and that internationalization must be our aim — don't such men help to cut the ties of the Armenian people and add water to the Russian's mill? They may repent, but the harm will be done.

There remains the third part — made up of the likes of me and of the peasants — whose ties with Armenian life have not yet dried up. But how much good can they do, when they are only a third of the whole?

Start from these indications, then, so that you can put a right value on our border-provinces and grasp that it is not they that matter, but solely and only the kernel of Armenia, without which the whole Armenian people is doomed to annihilation. If that kernel dies, all are dead. That is why I would give my life for the kernel of Armenia.

*

Sergei's views on the various elements of the Armenian people had shaken my "sieve" theory. And, if I had not wholly given it up, I was beginning to think in earnest that the shell of the walnut, without the kernel, is a useless thing.

I am myself a child of that kernel, and all the outland Armenians and the foreigners give us the demeaning name "kro." Perhaps it was for that reason that I had never seen the worth of those "kros," in whom the life, the very essence, of the Armenian people lies hidden.

Sergei had dispelled the nightmare of my self-underrating, and my mind turned to the monasteries and churches of central Armenia, which are unlike others. They have no windows that look onto the street, but all of them have high domes, through which they take the light of heaven; and under that heavenly light guilty and guiltless alike are put to the test. Through my mind fly the Armenian villages that survive still from the time of Xenophon,^t4 and their houses, which persist stubbornly to this day. Winding and rambling, endless narrow lanes forming a maze; no windows at all, only a hole here and there, opened in roof or wall, as though they were the doorways of moles' burrows. You enter by the hole, and the slick, muddy yard leads you to the inner room of the house, which is the very likeness of our domed monasteries. Many beams, cross-lashed one to another, rise and turn into a vault. At the crown of the dome a round window is opened, through which God's light comes and, like a flue, cleanses the air. The inner room, too, has no business with the street; it is with itself and with its own household.

The family, elsewhere, is those few souls who are married and, parted from their own families, have set up a house apart. At most they keep one little dog or one cat with them, to amuse the household. Not so with the house in the kernel of Armenia. The Armenian house is like Noah's ark. Under its roof, as members of the family, not only human beings but the offspring of all the household animals are sheltered and fed. So long as the grandfather smoked his chibouk, so long as the grandmother, keys at her side, kept the household, the people lived together under one roof with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, though their number ran to several dozen. The animal members of the family ran into the hundreds, and a whole herd would come out of the door — yet they were all true members of the one house.

The house of Stepan, a villager of Gandza near Lake Parvana, comes before my eyes. The members of the family were seventy souls, and some hundreds of animals besides. They knew one another and loved one another.

I remember the great wolf-throttling dogs that stood at their doors, past which people would edge warily, out of fear; while the little ones just turned toddlers — barely begun to walk — gnawing at their bread, would grip the mastiff's tail and play at horses, and the mastiffs, tongues lolling, would sniff them over.

I remember, out of the dark house — horns thrust out, dazzled by the sun — the buffalo and the oxen coming out in a rage, as though spoiling for a fight; but a single lad, from the midst of the herd of fierce buffalo, would give them his command like a king — to go right, to go left…

I remember the young wives who, sweat pouring from them, washed the animals' grime with water and with a pochay — a brush, a besom — as though cleaning their own children's cradles; while the young man of the house scoured the flagstone floor of dung and litter, spread dry brushwood under them, and made the animals' bedding. The fodder, the hay, and the barley came in great panniers, and a portion was made ready for each in the mangers.

I remember the hour of eating, when all the members of the family came home. Each spoke in his own tongue: the cow lowed, the dog whined, the goat bleated, the horse neighed, the ass brayed, the hen clucked. And they all hurried to their mangers. And when all were duly in their places, their herd-boys ran to the inner room crying, "Granny, I'm hungry," and pulled out their spoons and fell on the tanabur [yogurt soup].

When these pictures raced through my head with the speed of lightning, the backward "kro" family of central Armenia turned into a universe — where beast and lamb, the speaking and the speechless, having found one another and formed a single family, had created the strength of one soul, founded not on a narrow, selfish love, but on a broad love of nature.

I came to see that love and marriage too — which had seemed a simple matter — held a different content for Shirak, Akhalkalak, Kars, Taron, and Upper Armenia. Whereas everywhere else love and marriage are a factor in the individual's happiness and in the making of his present, for the Areg aunts perched at the upper sources of the rivers it was not so. They reckoned the present a bridge to the future. Their true aim was not the present but the future. They weighed the matter when they wished to bring a bride into the house.

— Leave love aside; I have nothing to say against the bride; everything is as it should be, and they love each other too, but one thing is missing — the bride's hips are not round. Will she bear children? That is the question. I am against it.

And old Aunt Areg would undermine the match.

When they wished to take a bridegroom, they would weigh it:

— What do I want with the bridegroom's wealth, his good looks? Does he love my daughter — good; but he has one lack: he is tinapas — consumptive. I am against it.

And they would undermine the match.

I came to see why they — whether beast or human — were held in honor and were sacred when they were with young. The household animal, so long as it was not barren, they would never slaughter. And when by mistake they slaughtered a hen of their house and found the "kurnit" — the clutch of forming eggs — in its belly, they would curse themselves and would not eat the meat of that slaughtered hen.

I came to see how the bride of a house, however quarrelsome she might be, if she gave a child each year, was honored, and her willfulness became bearable. "The laying hen is a cackler; no harm — she is the apple of our eye," they would say. But the bride of a house who was unable to bear children was held in lesser honor, even if she was the more graceful. God help the bride who stayed barren: even if she was an angel out of heaven, she was counted a punishment of God. And they would put up with a husband bringing a second wife into the house alongside a fruitless bride, though the law forbade it.

The same held when the fault of the barrenness lay on the man's side: "Janım, he has no harakhat — no potency; why did he take a wife and settle down? Let him leave her and go — let him become a tiratsu, a monk," — that was how they closed the matter, breaking the law but saving the creation of the future.

I thought to myself: "Sergei is right. From Taron all the way to Gugark, these Armenians in their red skullcaps and red aprons have made members of their family of the dog and the cat, since these are enemies to their enemies. They have made the bull a gelded ox and taken it for friend and brother, because it is a fellow-worker. Its flesh they never eat, since it is of their own house. The cow and the other animals are sacred, since they conceive. Their own children they see the same way. Whatever holds the future is good and sacred; whatever does not serve the future is fit for the market and for eating."

Now — could it be that the secret of the Armenian people's economic strength, of its endurance, lies in this receptivity? Could it be that the self-defense of the Armenian people lies in this mutual honoring of man and beast — and that this is what really keeps the Armenian people in its number and its quality? And I was leaning toward Sergei's opinion, but it was hard to give up all at once my "sieve" theory; while Sergei went on trying to dissuade me, not knowing that I was already half broken down.

— Listen, listen, — he said. — In the kernel of Armenia the classical tongue, grabar, was created. Sahak and Mesrop^t6 were the ones who built it, and they made one nation and one language. Then the border-provinces arose — the Cilician, the colonies, Constantinople, or Kanaker with its Abovian — and said, "The grabar has grown old; it has become unintelligible to the people," and threw their weight behind the spread of the vernacular, ashkharhabar, and the forgetting of grabar. Perhaps they were right. But which vernacular? — that they did not understand. If they had taken as their foundation the language of the Armenian people who sit at the sources of the Armenian rivers, it would have come to something: that is the ring binding south and north, east and west, one to another; that is the true Armenian, and the bridge of the old and the new. But this they did not do, and they turned up their nose at our tongue as well. That is not all. Vramshapuh, Sahak, and Mesrop by their tongue made Armenians of non-Armenians, while the new reformers made of the Armenians an Eastern Armenian and a Western Armenian — as though these were not one nation.(*)

() Years later Jamalian too had the same preoccupation, but he found the solution in giving resurrection to the cultivated classical tongue, grabar*.

Sergei, though a man of the border-provinces, having landed in Kars, had become a man of Upper Armenia. And I, who was of the Upper-Armenian people, granted him the right by my reason, yet in my heart I stubbornly stayed a lover of the border-provinces. I don't know why. Perhaps because "the neighbor's bride always looks the fairer."

*

It was the fourth day of this carefree life of ours under our family's roof. My brother, when he came home from the market for the midday meal, brought a letter ordering us to set out that very day for Gyumri — Alexandropol.

Neither I nor Sergei knew why we were being summoned. Nor did the household suppose anything out of the ordinary. Only my mother seemed sad, and asked in earnest:

— Son, when will we see each other again?

That question weighed heavily on me....