Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 8: Persia and the Khoy Station

It was the first time I had set foot in Persia. Everything was new to me.

When you go abroad, strange questions rise up before you, and strange feelings, which are real enough, but whose cause is unknown and past explaining. So, for instance, when you cross the Transcaucasian frontier by rail and

enter the country of the Cossacks, or any Russian province whatever, then, though you know their language and their manners as well, you feel yourself a stranger, and alone. Here I had no such feeling — though I had come down into a backward corner, and was a stranger to its language, its manners, its religion and its race. Arablu is a place of bigotry, of filth, of ignorance. Perhaps my age was the cause of the conclusion I came to; and to test myself, I explained it to Nikol, who was twice my years. He smiled — after the fashion of Sarkis Ohanjanian — and gave me the answer, and gave it quite wrong.

— I feel the same, said he; and I know that all Armenians feel the same. True, it is not our country, and they are different from us in everything; but good or bad, they are our "hamshahirs" (fellow-countrymen).

Later on we took each other by the throat, we and these "hamshahirs." They are not merely no Persians: they are the descendants of the Seljuk, the Tatar, the Turk and the Mongol. And when I came to be in the truly Persian districts — which in face, in speech, in manners put one in mind of the Armenians — I saw that they, kin to me though they were, had not that taste and that smell which I felt in the districts of Artaz, Her, Zarevand and Atrpatakan.^t1

In history I did not go barefoot: I had read the chroniclers and various learned books, and for that very reason questions rose in me that I could not answer. I thought: "It is natural that this country should seem as near of kin to me as our own. When we were Nayiri and were not yet called Armenians, we knew this country; when we were Urartu and had a part to play — and were called Hayasa before that — we had our bond with this country. It was only after us that Darius wrote his history in our letters and gave us the name of Armen. And at last, when none of these were yet and the Medes were in these lands, we knew the Medes; we knew the very birth of Cyrus the Great. Cyrus was younger^t2 than our Yervand, and the companion of the first Tigran. Their house of Pahlavi was no stranger to us: the patriarch of that house was the elder brother of our first Arshakuni

king. Our own Saint Gregory, even, was the son of Anak, who was of the house of Pahlavi.^t3 The old tongue they used is as intelligible to the Persian of today as it is to us, the Armenians of today. It is plain, then, that we must feel kin to this country; perhaps we are brothers of one blood, or the sons of one father's brother. And if not even that, then we are at all events baptized into one and the same culture, one religion, one usage, and are so close to one another that the ancient Greeks could not tell us apart from the Parthian or the Mede. It was history that made this country kin to us."

Against that explanation of mine a voice rose in rebellion and said: — "The Sasanians were pure Persians; it was they who wished to melt us down, in culture and in nation; they killed the brave Vardan in this very place and made an end of Armenian independence. But the point is this: those nations — Mede, Achaemenid, Parthian, Arsacid, Sasanian, Persian and the rest — with whom you feel this kinship, have long since ceased to be, and are gone: gone with their language, their culture, their blood, and all that was theirs. The stock that lives here now is not the one you are looking for; they came from far Mongolia, after Genghis Khan. They are Mongols and Tatars, who made Tabriz and Maragha their capitals and a corner of Vaspurakan their summer residence, and who gave the springs of the river of Berkri the name of Abagha, after their leader. They came after the Seljuks and the Turks of Altai and of other far countries, and after the motley elements of the yellow race, of this kind and of that, whom lame Timur brought with him — and none of these has any connection whatever with the blood, the culture, the manners or the understanding of the Iranian peoples. To us they were executioners; they left not one stone upon another, and destroyed everything. The wreckage saved out of their hands is to be found in the streets of the city of Bombay in India, under the name of Gabr;^t4 and we, who took refuge in the mountains, are nothing but their captives. History, then, cannot be the cause of your feeling of kinship, of 'hamshahir-hood.' The answer to the question must be looked for in another direction."

And so there were two men within me, of two different reasonings, risen one against the other and contending; and the gap the one left open the other filled easily — though in what the two of them had opened up there was, on either side, a certain portion of the truth.^t5 These contradictions did not settle the question, and I could not understand why it was that, on entering the country of the Shah-in-Shah, I did not feel myself a stranger.

*

Arablu is a common village on the bank of the Arax, belonging to the broad estates of the Sardar of Maku. Neither the village itself, nor its lord, nor the lord of them all, the Shah-in-Shah of the Persians, understood what it was worth. Near that village a huge iron bridge has been built, below Shakhtakht, which is worth all Arablu by itself — though as yet no railway rushes over that bridge, and no carriages cross it, but only thin traffic on foot, with barley and wheat loaded on their donkeys.

Arablu can hardly be a hundred houses. There is stone there, but the houses are built of earth, like so many mole-burrows, without windows, the doors mere little holes, and everything filthy. The walls of the houses are ornamented with cow-dung, which serves as fuel for the winter. In place of streets there are winding passages that run on from quarter to quarter, filled with mud, with refuse, and with the carcasses of dead animals. In the stench and the filth of these streets the village children play, shaping all manner of figures out of the street-mud with the fingers of their hands and their feet.

The population seems to be made up of children and women; the males show few, and go by slowly, like bulls. They travel rather over the rooftops, so as not to meet the women, and at the same time to keep out of the mud of the street. The women are the braver: they do not fear the mud, and go to and fro through the streets, barefoot. They are moving pyramids, and creatures that present an attraction. You see nothing; but you imagine that under the veil drawn over the

head there is a being, black-eyed, red-cheeked, full-breasted, well-made, possessed of a beauty that it is forbidden to display. To show even their hair is a mortal sin. As in the whole East, so in Arablu, the woman is to be seen with the imagination; in reality you see nothing of her but her muddy feet, bare to the shins and above them, which fill you with disgust. Is it not from this that in the East the woman is not held to be a human being at all, but a beast — while for the covered upper part of her she is held a dream, a vision, and more to be worshipped than the gods?

There was nothing attractive in Arablu. It was a backward and dirty village, repellent from every point of view. No work, no pleasure, no craft, no earning of money. The people lived by theft and by smuggling. The visitors were, every one of them, suspicious characters. For all that, Arablu had made a great name for itself and was reckoned a desirable place, the possession of which had become a standing item on the Russian Empire's agenda.

I do not know what name Arablu bore in old times, but it must certainly have been a place of importance, since it formed the rear of the plain of Avarayr. From that point Yazkert with his armies sought to push into the heart of Armenia, and there Vardan the general kept careful watch on this road.^t6 Certainly it was something, lying as it did at the meeting of the river Gaylatu with the Arax; and over it the roads ran southeastward to Tabriz of Atrpatakan, southward to Khoy, Zarevand and Mesopotamia, and from the west, by way of Artaz, to Baghrevand and all of inner Armenia. It was this position, no doubt, that made that backward and filthy place kin to me. In the directions I have named not one road was to be seen: it was the tracks through the marshes, the mountains and the valleys that served for roads — that showed the patriots their way, that whetted the appetite of conquering

states, and that gave robbers the means of taking plunder and of hiding their plunder within the borders of three empires.

Whatever Arablu might be — since it lay on the axis of the monasteries of the Apostle Thaddeus and of Saint Stephen, since its winds came off the two skirts of Ararat and its waters off the soil of upper and of inner Armenia — I had found out why it was kin to me: it was the underscoring^t7 of the wholeness of our lands, and that made even its ugliness and its filth dear to me.

*

Two days now we have been with Nikol. He is a pleasant companion in talk. He speaks of general questions, and dispels the tedium of Arablu. Nikol is waiting for someone — who did not, however, keep us waiting. It was Thadeos Amirian(*), whom we called Datash. He had settled the business entrusted to him on the other side of the frontier, and had come up with us.

Tados was a fiery young man who had been through a Russian secondary school. Though the hair of his head had thinned and his skull was in a fair way to becoming a moon, his shaggy hat and the chek[?] beard^t8 on his face concealed the fact. He was not a man to look behind him, or about him. He always looked forward, and was very decided in his resolutions. He was hardly in at the door before he turned to Nikol and said:

— Everything is arranged. If not today, then tomorrow, our

(*) This was that Tados whom Nikol had taken as his aide. In 1905, in the Armeno-Tatar fighting at Baku, he was again Nikol's aide. In 1906 he went with Zavriev to Mush. In the same year he became the scourge of the blackmailers who had appeared in the Caucasus, and re-established order. He took part in the volunteer bands of 1914. In the self-defense of Baku he played a conspicuous part. At the evacuation of Baku he joined the retreating party of Shahumian's Commissars, and with them was killed in Turkestan.^t9

goods will be here without fail, so there is no need for the three of us to stay. Let the comrade stay and bring them, and we will move on ahead.

— Are you sure? asked Nikol; and when he got an answer in the affirmative, he turned to me:

— Can you get the goods through to Khoy?

— Why not, if they bring them, I said — but in my heart I was displeased.

They gave me the list of the goods, and letters addressed to Kosti and Khecho, and themselves went off to Salmast.

The loneliness of Arablu seemed past enduring. The goods came neither that day, nor the next, nor the day after. I had to wait a whole week. My days went by heavy and tedious.

The people buried in this village held me unclean, "haram," and would not lay a hand on my dishes, my clothes, my bedding, nor even on the chair I sat in. I did not yet know that this was prompted by religious prejudice, and supposed that it was because these filthy people held me to be filthy that they avoided drinking water out of the same cup.

At last our goods arrived, and we took the road for Khoy. The road was not one for carriages. Caravans of camels and horses climbed those tablelands, to come up out of the Waters of Maku and the valley of the Arax and to go down into the Waters of Khoy, the valley of the river Tghmut. I was in the neighborhood of historic Avarayr, and the plain showing in the distance must be the plain of Avarayr, where our forefathers gave battle.

Traveling with me were Mashadi Ahmed and Mahmed. They were mounted, with their "varandil"[?] rifles^t10 at their backs. I had a horse as well, but mine was under a palan, loaded with the goods, and I on top of the load.

The road was dull, for I could exchange not a word with my companions: I was an Armenian, they

Tatars. They knew no Armenian, and I knew very little Tatar. All the villages on the road were Tatar, and so were the passers-by. Where I was, what places I was passing through, I had not the least idea. It was dangerous, for our loads were munitions and I was unarmed; I had only a "ten"^t11 hidden inside my clothes at my waist. I went with my heart in my mouth, waiting impatiently to reach Khoy. At last we came to Khoy, passed through the bazaar, went in among the streets, and halted before the door of "Charvadar" Hagop.^t12 He took us in and offered my Tatar companions a room. But me he brought down off the horse, mounted it himself, and ordered me to follow him on foot. He led me through crooked, twisting streets, went in at the yard of a house, and rode straight for the stable.

In the stable, where horses stood tied, a young man with a pitchfork in his hand was filling a basket with khushki (dried dung). Seeing him, Charvadar Hagop called out:

— Abi, take delivery of your amanats, which Mashadi Ahmed has brought along with this swallow (pointing at me).^t13 I am in a hurry to get home. Let us get the loads down; I am taking the horse.

The young man, smiling with one eye, asked:

— What is inside them?

— That is Kosti's affair, I answered.

— My lad, Kosti is standing in front of you; it is he who is asking.

I hesitated, for I had taken him for the stable-man — though his features were an educated man's.^t14

— Have you the list of these goods?

— Of course.

— Have you a letter?

— I have: one for Kosti, one for Khecho(*).

He went out of the stable and called:

— Khecho, Khecho, come down, and bring four janavars [brutes] with you.

A bearded man looked down from the upper floor, and five men like bears came pouring into the stable akhal-tapal (in haste).

(*) The Dashnaktsakan Khecho.

— Lads, carry it up to the room. Grish,^t15 you stay in the stable and finish the cleaning; I am coming up too.

Each of us shouldered something and went up with the goods. Upstairs the yapunjis had been made into beds, the big papakhs into pillows, and the rifles hung on the walls. It was a little barracks.

— Khecho, this lad does not believe that I am Kosti. He has a letter for you as well.

— Mo, khatakar[?],^t16 give him Kosti's letter and mine to me. What is your name? We never even asked. Though — there is no need to learn your name. Let it be Vardan; it is a good name; it was here that Vardan the general was struck down.

And so, for a short while, my name in Persia was Vardan.

Khecho's manner was strange; I felt myself in a hostile air. I did not know what to do, and stood there bewildered, dumbstruck. Luckily I remembered that I had the letters to give up, which I had sewn into the lining at my waist. I took them out and gave one to Kosti, the other to Khecho.

Kosti turned to the lads:

— Come, let us open the khurjins one by one and check them. Let us see what presents Vardan has brought.

Khecho did not stir from his place; he took the letter — two lines of writing — and set to reading it long and long, as though it were Holy Scripture. I sat down on a sack of flour and watched.

In the khurjins were cartridges for the Mosin rifle.^t17 They counted them. "These are good; there are no old ones among them," said the lads. They opened one khurjin and many stood stupefied, for inside were empty bombs, and some of them had never seen a bomb. "What are these iron apples?" they said. They opened the next: revolvers. "Janim, these are Nagants; I like a Mauser. Why did you not bring Mausers, the whole lot of them?" They opened the next: boxes, and in them dynamite, detonators, sheet tin. "Janim, is this matmalat[?]^t18 — the devil's or a man's?" They found there three little spades, made of steel, as if they were chil-

dren's spades. "What are these toys?" They looked at me with the question in their faces, but got no answer.

Khecho got to his feet, took an empty bomb in one hand and a spade in the other. "This little spade is good for nothing. It has come out of the pot of your brains for a certainty. Put it aside. These bombs, too, are a plague on our heads. Lads, stand back; and no jghara^t19 — no smoking. In Kars these bangers^t20 ate the heads of Nahik and of Khashjan. Our own bombs eat our own heads. Put them aside. The rest are good; share them out among you. Three hundred fshanks [cartridges] apiece on your persons, three hundred apiece in the horse's 'dashi' khurjin. What is left, to the load of the 'yevteli' horse."^t21

Khecho was handsome in his height, like a poplar tree. His hair was ghruz (curly), his beard black. The crown of him swayed above me, and it seemed at any moment he would come down on top of me. I could see that for something or other he was displeased with me, as though I were his enemy. He kept giving me black looks. I could bear it no longer, and turned to Kosti:

— Was what I brought complete?

— It answered to the list.

— Then what does this man want of me? I came by Duman's order, and by his order I can go. If he is displeased, let him go himself.

The outburst was unlooked-for. Khecho's eyes, fastened upon me, wounded no longer. It was Sarbaz Khecho who unexpectedly threw himself in:

— You have carried it too far; the lad is right. Not a good-day, not a God-be-with-you — as though some mtori[?]^t22 had come among us.

The big Khecho said:

— If that is how it is, let us sing. "I want madzun, and they bring me tan; ah lad, cursed be your father's father; you with your snotty nose want a khzma;^t23 ah lad, cursed be your father's father"…

That song soured me the more. One or two joined in; the others were silent; and Sarbaz Khecho looked at me with pity. Kosti was smiling. Then, coming up to me, he said:

— Keep a wide heart. He is not a wicked or a bad man; his mind is kind, and he has ways of his own of "organizing."

Khecho cut the song off in the middle and, turning to Sarbaz Khecho, said:

— You have seen nothing of the world; you understand nothing. Nikol writes: — "There comes to you an intelligent military man out of Moscow, ready to die. Organize him in that little house of yours, and put him in harness." When he is an intelikent, how is one to organize him and put him in harness? Intelikentsia, intelikent^t24… do you know what those are? You do not know; I know, — and Khecho, kindling, poured out his bile. "To curry a horse, they take hold of the ghashavi() with a glove. A louse gets on them, and they take it for a wolf: they go out to war, and fancy themselves unhappy martyrs. It turns cold, or hot, and they rise up in battle against God. Let them go hungry one day: grumbling, ghalmaghal [uproar]. They have no last word: they orate for two hours and can hardly bring out one lablabu.[^t25] The salt is not there yet, and already they are making atar[?] and setting it alight.[^t26] Let them once get up into the mountains and see two harmless Kurds among the rocks — they take them for an army and make up all kinds of fairy-tales. Their tongue turns to the right and to the left alike. They talk, they preach, they drive men out of their wits; and once they have won a clapping of hands, they already count themselves heroes and martyrs. Let them but pass by a monastery or a fortress and take a liking to it: it was they who built it, they who defended it. And if they have the gift of writing besides, and one lie out of a thousand comes out true, then they are everything, and reckon themselves the managers of the affairs of the world and of the universe. There — that is your 'intelligentsia,' your 'intelligent*'… They are a curse, they are fleas. Understand that!"

Kosti was laughing, holding his sides. I listened attentively, and grew easier. Sarbaz Khecho objected:

— If that is how it is, then only the shepherds are any good. If that is how it

() Ghashavi* — a brush for cleaning domestic animals.

is, then Nikol Duman too is a flea and a curse; for he also, when all is said, has been a schoolmaster with an education, and is now the manager of oil-wells.

— No, I protest; do not turn my words aside. He is no "intelligent"; he is an "intelikinto." The intelikinto is the lord of our heads, the light of our eyes. Is it not so, Kosti?

DASHNAKTSAKAN KHECHO^t27

In Kosti's stead I answered:

— It is so, Khecho.

Years would have to pass before I could test and understand how many bitter truths there were in the judgments of Dashnaktsakan Khecho. At all events, with those judgments of his he "organized" me.

My assent was the cause of Khecho's smiling and kissing me; and from that day until his death — which, on Aram's testimony, is said to have come about in the saving of me — we were faithful comrades to one another.

For the Dashnaktsutiun the intelligent was not the ideal; the ideal was the silent and disinterested self-sacrificer, the "intelikinto."

Sarbaz Khecho began presenting the comrades to me, name by name, and this was not to the big Khecho's liking.

— If you are going to present them, present them properly to our intelikinto. Here you have Kostia: finished the Realschule,^t28 read psychology at Moscow, perfected himself in Germany and took his diploma in America — and is at present the manager of a barracks. Here is Khecho, graduate of the zoological faculty of the University of Berlin: himself a sarbaz^t29 and keeper of the horses. Make his acquaintance — engineer-technologist; sovet spegdi kotelchik of Baku;^t30 and he himself is Astur.

And so, presenting each man with his titles, he ended by not sparing himself either.

— I too am no common man; I am an educated person. Among the whole of us here the youngest is yourself, and so I beg you to look well after my horse. And another thing: you would do well to unpick that collar of yours and put it away.

I understood that Khecho, in his own peculiar fashion, wished to settle accounts with the conceits and the vaporings of my intellectual class. I submitted with a good grace, and laughed along with the rest.

*

I had been in the Russian army, where the multitudes were ranged according to their quality so as to make up one whole machine. There a collective, single, fused individual existed — the army; and men were only its living parts.

I had been in the Revolutionary barracks of Kars, where men existed as individuals, and judged and expressed

themselves according to their powers; but there was a natural bond that joined them all together — one and the same moral and ideological understanding, and whoever stood outside it could not be counted a particle of the whole.

What I had not been in was that cheta air of men already making ready to go to their death, and it appeared to me a strange novelty. To make it understood, let me present the members of that band briefly.

Kosti was of Shushi, and, as Khecho had said, he had in fact finished the Russian secondary school, had attended the university, had been in the centers of Europe, and had set himself to go so deep into psychology that it would be possible to work on men near and far, and to bend friend and enemy alike to his will. By this means he hoped to hypnotize Sultan Hamid as well,^t31 and so to settle the Armenian Question. This educated young man, having of course failed in his scientific researches, had come to the conclusion that freedom could be wrested only by force and by organization. He was the representative of the Dashnaktsutiun at Khoy: he watched over the lines into the Land that passed through this point, sent on the bands as they came, and supplied them; but all this was so narrow a business for his powers that he envied us, who were going into the Land. "Even if we are not killed," he thought, "at least we will be with the people of our own country."

Kosti was our guardian, the man who fed us and cleaned the stable. He fed us a great deal of beans and lentils, and when he noticed discontent he would say:

— You are sworn to die; whatever you eat, the end is the same. Let the economizing be left to those who come after you.

We would laugh, and our spoons went to work. When Ter-Charvadar remarked that he should take a servant for the dirty work, Kosti would say:

— You reckon yourself a disciple of Hayrik and a son of Varag; you must have seen many a night of the Washing of the Feet.^t32 You are not so much as the

Apostles — why should I not wash your feet too? You tell me to hire a servant: with whose money am I to hire him — our grandfather's?

Kosti was always cheerful, and wished to keep those about him cheerful. Of all his psychological investigations only this one result had stayed by him. When we opened a book out of his sight, and kept a page and a paragraph in our minds, and asked him to find the page and read the paragraph out, he found it. We would think of something, and he would divine what we were thinking. This faculty inspired fear in one man and astonishment in another. He seemed a wizard, a supernatural creature. With such games we passed the time.

Only a few days did I spend at Khoy with Kosti, and with that our acquaintance ended. In 1909 I saw him once more, at Hamo's (Ohanjanian's) house, but he did not know me, and I too pretended not to know him. That does not mean that I had no news of him.

Kosti Hambardzumian was an enterprising field-worker, hard-driving, intelligent, and able to fit himself to circumstances. And — what is the essential thing — with his broad views and his learning he soon took an important place in our life. In 1905 he crosses from Persia into Transcaucasia and plays his part in the Armeno-Tatar clashes. In 1909, when the Dashnaktsutiun was under persecution, in those hard days he takes it upon himself to hold the organization together in Russia and to save it from final ruin. In 1914 he takes over the relief work of the front under the flag of the Union of Towns,^t33 on the borders of Vaspurakan in particular; in 1915–1917 he is at work on the reconstruction of Vaspurakan, and when Aram gives up the governorship of Van, he takes his place, assuming the direction of all affairs. At the evacuation of Vaspurakan he is with the people, as plenipotentiary. He takes part in the fighting in Persia and leads it, and is killed near Salmast, without living to see the independence of Armenia, whose declaration he had already had news of. His brother was the well-known Bolshevik Sako Ham-

bardzumian, who held important posts in the first period of the Sovietization of Armenia and who, with many another, was made a victim of the purges of 1937–38, carried out by Stalin and Beria.^t34

*

An interesting figure at Khoy was Ter-Charvadar, to whom they gave the names of Hagop and Mkrtich as well. He was no longer young; he counted himself among the founders of the Revolution, from before ever the parties were formed. He said that he had been a pupil of Hayrik's, in the monastery of Varag. At present, having fled out of the terrors of the Land, he busied himself with muleteering, and carried our goods from place to place besides. He was known not only to the muleteers of the province but to the leading Persian and Tatar men of Khoy. He had the name of an honest man, a man of his word, brave and dutiful. He was the trusted man of the district; and for all his title of "Charvadar," he was the Dashnaktsutiun's "ambassador" among the other races. After Kosti he was the second figure of the Khoy district, and all the practical business rested upon him.

Charvadar Hagop took part in the Persian revolution, and played a conspicuous part in it. In 1908–9 he was arrested several times; and though they called him by the mock-name of Ter-Charvadar, he held the office of vicar-general of the districts of Artaz and Her.^t35 In 1914 he crosses into the Land, and is killed in the region of Archesh.

*

The two men named above were the permanent members of the Khoy station, and we its temporary guests. Several of us had served in the Russian army and had risen to various ranks. The most full of life among them, and the one who had already made a name for himself in Persia, was Khecho of Daralagyaz,^t36 to whom they gave the name of "Sarbaz." With him was Grish, from Javakhk, who had finished as a non-commissioned officer in the Russian cavalry.

There was also Suren of Javakhk, who had likewise been a non-commissioned officer, in the infantry. These three had come long since from Transcaucasia into Persia, to work on the borders of Vaspurakan. To my question, why they had left the Russian army, they would answer like men insulted:

— What, did you take us for hayvans, that we should leave the work of martyrdom for our own nation and go and sacrifice our lives for the "onions" (the Russians)?^t37

These three, having the same military training, were the more closely bound to one another, and argued endlessly about the merits of the three arms of the service. When they learned that I too was a gunner and an officer, they began to hold me in a particular respect, new man though I was. That was a consequence of their soldier's traditions. But they were far more experienced than I: in Her and Zarevand and Artaz, the old Armenian districts, they were known men already. They were not only the carriers of our party's goods from the Russian frontier to the borders of Vaspurakan; they had become the scourge of the robbers who held the roads of communication and broke up the traffic.

Khoy lay on a knot of roads. Those roads led on the one hand to Tabriz, on the other to the Sardarate of Maku, and lastly to Salmast as well. Along those roads came Kurdish bands, "Chrder,"^t38 who, for the right of passage, either took a toll or simply plundered the travelers — even the government officials and the post. At the dangerous passes the government had set guards, but these neither wished to put their lives in danger nor had it in them to prevent the robbery. The "Charvadars"^t39 were made up of untrained old men, irregularly armed, helpless and hungry. They often encouraged the robbers to plunder the terrified travelers, and took a small share of the plunder. This was the reason

why travelers, to make their own safety sure, looked for guards of their own. The Armenian janfedayis^t40 were held a trustworthy and a daring element, and the robbers and their confederates the "Charvadars" went in terror of them. And it was for this reason that the great caravans — often the state post, the officials, the troops themselves — would beg Kosti, or Charvadar Hagop (at Salmast, Samson),^t41 to give them trustworthy guard-companions for the rest of the road. The companions were appointed from among the daring, the disinterested, the disciplined and the conscious, and in general every eye was turned upon Khecho, upon Suren, upon Grish and the other comrades. The central figure among the chosen was Sarbaz Khecho, who had been through many adventures and many deadly encounters in the course of his escorts. He had won the name of a man whose road cannot be closed, who cannot be bribed and cannot be forced back. It was a wonder to everybody that he did his duty without payment and without gift. Among the robbers Khecho had the name of the bravest of men; among the people, that of an angel of safety. Many a fairy-tale and unbelievable marvel was told of them, as was natural in those years. They themselves counted all of it a farce, and dreamed only of the day when they should no longer be obliged to waste their time on the safety of Persians.

*

In our station there was a second and smaller group besides. These, like myself, were new-comers to Persia. Having been in the Russian army and taken rank there, they had afterward put themselves to work in Baku, on the one hand to make their living and on the other to get a party education. The giant of this group — in body — was called Astur; the second was named Ara-

kel, the next Serob, and yet another bore the name of Jalpapakh (his real name I never learned at all). Their difference from the rest was that they knew good food from bad; and, not having Sarbaz Khecho's adventures to tell, they told of the workers' demonstrations of Baku and of the fat wages of the "kotelni masterutiun."^t42 They were discontented that they had not been thrown into the fighting at once, and were being kept waiting to no purpose. That impatience was not to the liking of Kosti the "psychologist," who would say:

— Serob, Serob, where are you hurrying? why are you hurrying? Go slowly, and you go far; hurry, and you go a short way.

The short road to keeping the hurrying souls busy had been found by Dashnaktsakan Khecho, who with his inexhaustible jokes and songs left nobody time to think. He made the pastime so engrossing that it seemed knowing was superfluous, and judging a crime.

— I have no head for serious things, he would say; and then he would add: — we are on the road; if we get there, like a hanadz-varadz[?] man,^t43 we will do our thinking then; and if we do not get there, then it was all superfluous anyway.

So he closed every question. Our band seemed to be in one long keyf: we were all of us busy with song, with fable, with laughter and with chatter. It was as though we were the birds of the sky.

*

One day Dashnaktsakan Khecho received a telegram. His face turned very grave; he was no longer the Khecho of before. They all looked at his face, and rose silently to their feet. And Khecho began to give his orders:

You will be ready by evening. You, Arakel and Serob, will see to the horses. You — turning to me — will count the cartridges and divide them among the horses, and sew the khurjins up well; and Sarbaz Khecho will do the business outside.

We all say, "We hear,"^t44 and come out of the room. Only then did I understand that our chief was Khecho, and that we were all of us his submissive and obedient instruments.

It is evening. We lead the horses out and stand in a single row, one behind another, holding the horses by the bridle. Khecho comes out in silence, and we all stand to a wordless salute. He comes up to each one of us, looks at our clothes, our rifles, our horses, whispers something in Sarbaz Khecho's ear, and mounts his horse, commanding: "Mount." All together we mount our horses and move off, apart from one another, at set distances. In front goes Sarbaz Khecho; fifty paces behind him, Dashnaktsakan Khecho; and we go after him, two by two and at a slow pace. When we are out of the town we put the horses to it, and so ride on for hours, without a word, in the darkness. I come up to the man beside me and ask where we are going.

— Salmast, I suppose, is the answer.

A high gorge is before us. Sarbaz Khecho draws in his horse's bridle and says something to Dashnaktsakan Khecho, who turns to us and commands: "Ready." At once the rifles come down off our backs and the cartridges go in. The horses move slowly on, while Sarbaz Khecho climbs the mountain with one of us. They had gone far from us when suddenly we hear a noise. We put the horses to the gallop and come up with a party of more than ten men. They were the keepers of the roads, and they had been taken by surprise. We pass on without halting; only Sarbaz Khecho stays to make khosh-besh() with them, and, taking the aragh out of the khurjins, offers it to them. The guards were afraid of the fedayis, and of Sarbaz Khecho they were downright terrified — and here he is, standing and offering them aragh*. We wait a little on a height; and when Sarbaz Khecho comes up with us we push the

() Khosh-besh* — to exchange greetings and pleasant words.

horses on, so as to reach Salmast before the light broke.

Wearisome was that road: we went on without a break, ten hours, without coming down off the horses. When we reach a village and I get down off my horse like a dead man, I notice that the others show no sign whatever of fatigue.

— Good; you go and lie down, I will see to your horse, Khecho would say, without my asking it of him.

*

The village we had come to was Sanamerik. We had crossed out of the valley of the Tghmut and were in the valley of the Zola-chay, whose waters run down into Lake Urmia. Tired though I was, I had no patience: I went up on the roof to see this new world, which was formerly called Zarevand and is now called Salmast. Salmast, pressed into the bosom of Zaghooshi,^t45 is beautiful to look upon, and its fertile villages are bound to one another by poplar trees and by gardens. It did not show as a desert, like the plain of Avarayr.

The country seemed to be an Armenian world, and its masters the fedayis. From the direction of Ghalasar three horsemen appear, coming armed, in broad daylight, toward Sanamerik. I take them for government officials and want to draw back inside; but Sarbaz Khecho, standing at my side, laughs, and, looking through his field-glass, announces that it is Pokhik, Hagop and Gde who are coming toward us. He makes signs to them, and three iron men, blackened by the sun, come straight on for our house. Khecho and Suren, as old acquaintances, embrace them like kinsmen; with the rest of us they are civil. The new-comers get down from their horses and stay to eat with us.

Pokhik, with his square firm jaws, his long moustaches, his hawk's keen eyes, looks the comrades over one by one, and, struck by their huge faces, can find nothing to say. He says only "mashallah." Looking at my "Toysrg"[?] face,^t46 at my bent back (on the journey I had taken a wound in my back from the four rifles that

beat against it), he takes on a black look and turns to Sarbaz Khecho:

— Is this right? The three of us went to Nikol and begged that we might be joined to him and cross into the Land. He did not hold us layegh (worthy); he said there were plenty like you in the Land, that we were of no use; and he would not take us. Is it just that this handful of a lad should be worthy to go into the Land, while we, sons of the Land, who have shed our blood, should be unworthy? — He was looking at me, and he was very angry.

— Lose your sasd (your voice)! broke in Dashnaktsakan Khecho. Keep your belly-ache to yourself; this handful of a lad outweighs you and your comrades together.

I held my tongue, and understood the heart of the matter afterward. Sarbaz plastered over (smoothed away) the quarrel, and the affair was closed without a fight.

*

From Sanamerik we took the road in the evening for the village of Payajuk, which we reached in an hour; and they lodged me and Dashnakts. Khecho in the house of Manaterian. Khecho was known in that house.

— Karapet, you are to cure this "intelikento's" back with a brmbul[?] bed;^t47 he has hurt his back for want of tying a soft belt about it.

The Manaterian family were very rich. Their house was a prosperous one, and at the same time a station — for the fedayis, and for the schoolmasters as well. There came to see us there Armenak Aftandilian^t48 (to whom, at Tabriz, I afterward dictated these recollections), Gaspar Hagopian and Yeruand Frankian, who were schoolmasters in that village. The whole night went by in keyf and in eating and drinking. It was in none of our minds then that in the days to come we should meet again and grow intimate.

In a few days, when I had recovered, we had orders to pass over to Ghalasar, which was very near Payajuk and all but joined to it by its vineyards.

*

Our center was Ghalasar, where Nikol lived; they called us there. Samson, who was the representative of the Dashnaktsutiun at Salmast, received us as old acquaintances of his.

That day Nikol was to put his soldiers to their final examination. Kolot Sargis^t49 and I were judged useless, as men of a feeble build. Our grief was boundless; we were wounded, and we cursed our parents for not having made us a little more robust and sound. The chosen went off to the shooting-trial, and we followed them, downcast and sorrowful. When they had all finished taking their aim at four hundred paces, I too asked to be allowed to try. They were all astounded when I shot better than Nikol, and worse only than Sarbaz Khecho, and took second place among all the soldiers.

The two Khechos interceded for Sargis and me, but Nikol stroked our shoulders coaxingly and said:

— Come, lads, you are still young, you are students; why do you want to die for the sake of one trial?

We begged Nikol again, laboring to persuade him that we could endure it; but it was of no use.

— It is not worth sacrificing you for this fight; you are young yet, and in time to come we will have need of students like you.

Sargis, who had the greater revolutionary standing, and who came from the University of Geneva, said boldly to Nikol:

— And what sort of measure is that? Is Dr. Zavriev tougher than I, then, or of no use for the future? Why do you take him into your band?

— You forget, Sargis jan, answered Nikol, that if he is killed, men will at least be sobered by his death; but by your death what do we gain?

This conversation was taking place in the presence of the poor doctor, who said, laughing:^t50

— Look, look at the sort of reckonings he makes.

I explain that as a specialist in the making and the filling of bombs my presence is indispensable, since besides myself only Sargis understands that business. Besides that, I am an officer of the Russian army, and can therefore be of use. At last Nikol softens, and agrees to take us as far as Van.

NIKOL—DUMAN^t51

*

The next day we are to take the road. At night we gather in the church. Filling the bombs with dynamite with my own hands, I had been poisoned: my head ached, I was sick at the stomach, but I was afraid to show myself ill. Sargis noticed it, but at my request kept silent. Samson noticed too that I had turned yellow, but I explained to him that this was my natu-

ral color.

A flag was laid on the table, and on it the emblem of the Dashnaktsutiun, the cross, the Gospel, the rifle and the sword. They pray; Sargis makes a speech; Dr. Stepanian speaks as well. The fedayis gathered about the table look thoughtful and sad; behind them stand women and other people, with the tears running from their eyes. They are all silent, and it is as though with their gaze they were escorting the fedayis to the graveyard. The fedayis, full of sorrow, came up to take the communion; the ter-ter read what prayers he read, though perhaps nobody was listening to him. But his voice, in the mysterious half-darkness of that night, seemed to carry us away toward other worlds. Was it heaven, or was it Turkish Armenia, that drew us? One after another we all kissed the Gospel and went out at Nikol's order. We mounted the horses and took the road.

*

Only when we had gone a good way from the village did I find myself again and look attentively about me. Ahead of me rode Mato, and beside him the invaluable Avo of Van. Both knew those roads thoroughly, and had taken part in many a fight. Mato was a Kurd, and had been in his time our furious opponent (he had even taken part in fights against Nikol Duman); but now he was as furious an opponent of the Turkish government, and a warm friend to the fedayis.

Fifty or sixty paces behind them rode Dashnaktsakan Khecho, and behind him Nikol, whom the fedayis followed two by two. Last of all rode I, with the bombs loaded on my saddle, and after me Sarbaz Khecho, the rear-guard of the whole band.

On the road, when we had only just come out of Erevan, Nikol had said to me: "What we do not know is called death." I think he was wrong. Our horses were speeding forward toward the un-

known, and we ourselves toward the uncertainty of the morrow; and there was in it a mysterious dread that was at once alluring and terrifying: the unknown was sweet and precious, as precious as life itself. What did it matter that the women left behind in Ghalasar, with the tears in their eyes, called it death?

The band moved now at a gallop, now at a slow pace, through unknown mountains and gorges. All were silent; speaking was forbidden; only the horses broke the silence of the night. Daybreak was near when we climbed one of the great mountains of the frontier(), and in a hollow of it came down off our horses. This was our station for the day. Quickly we slackened the horses' dolans (the girths),[^t52] undid their tails, rubbed their eyes, pulled a few times at their manes, got the khurjins down; and my comrade and I began to walk the horses up and down, so that their sweat should cool. The others climbed silently and took up four positions, to guard us from above. Only Nikol and Zavriev, sitting in the heap of the khurjins, dozed. When the horses were rested we tethered them to the ground with ropes, that they might graze a little; then we gave them crushed barley out of the khurjins*. Nikol proposed that we should be sure to sleep. Mato was already sleeping sweetly.

— Look how this savage sleeps in the water, said Zavriev.

But we were so tired that, though the snow-water had gathered under us, we too slept.

It was not yet noon when they woke us. We went up to take the positions, and the others came down to rest. The sheep of the distant villages came near us; the shepherd took fright and made to run when he saw us, but we set his mind at ease.

The dark had not yet fallen when we mounted the horses again and went on our way, though Kurd Mato warned us that there would be fighting the next day if we went forward now. "Not to mount is one

(*) (It was Aratul.)^t53

shame; to come down, two," said Nikol, and ordered us to move forward in the same silence and the same order.

Soon we are nearing the frontier. Down from the mountains we go into the abyss; we pass along tracks where men can hardly move with horses. Happily nobody fell into the abyss; only Serob, I think, hardly got off with his life, and that thanks to Sarbaz Khecho. When we came near the frontier guards, Nikol ordered the rifles to be kept ready and the men to come down off the horses. Holding the horses by the mane, we climb up through the rocks. From far off voices and the barking of dogs are heard; we bear away to the right and to the left according to those voices, we climb the mountain, we come down again, until we reach the highest peak, and go at a gallop along its slopes. One or two rifle-shots are heard. Have they noticed us, or is it chance?

We hold on our way through a deep gorge, which forks in two. In one of the two we halt, and settle our horses. It is dawn already. We have taken six positions; in the highest position is Nikol; my share has fallen to me — to defend the mouth of the gorge, with Grish and Suren. Opposite us are Serob of Shamakhi, Sarbaz Khecho and little Sargis; above them Dashnaktsakan Khecho, Arakel and a third soldier whose name I do not remember have taken a position; opposite them, above us, Avo and Khuyetsi Khecho;^t54 and higher than they, Nikol, Mato, Dr. Zavriev and Tados.

Instead of a khanjal hanging at my side I had a little German spade. I wanted to make use of my German lesson, and before sleeping I dug myself a trench, which made a convenient position to lie in. Grisha and Suren made use of my spade as well. An hour later we were ready to sleep. Grish kept watch, and the two of us slept.

When Grish woke us, we saw before us, among the rocks, men, horsemen, parties coming on; with beating hearts we waited to see what would happen. It is hard to explain the strange

agitation a man feels the first time he is beset by an enemy. Your breast rises and falls panting; you want to run forward a moment sooner and strike, or be struck; but there was no order from Nikol, though the enemy was already at four hundred, at two hundred paces from our position. At last the noise of the Kurds was heard from above, and the volleys came down like rain. From all four sides the rifles began to work, and my own rifle was working too.^t55 I grew easier, as though the agitation of my soul had gone off with my first bullet.

The fight grew fiercely hot in front of our positions and Sarbaz Khecho's. The enemy wanted to destroy us and take our positions, so as to be able to get into the gorge and carry off our horses. The enemy poured down from the mountains and was at a hundred paces already; some of them have come close to our horses, and some are under our very rocks. Suren pulls out his "ten," springs out of his trench, and with his bullets drives off the Kurds who had come near us. From all our positions a furious fire rains down on the assailants, who draw back to the other face of the gorge and go on firing from behind the rocks. It seems they have taken fright; we feel ourselves the victors; Grisha begins to sing, and we all join in. The song passes from our position up to the positions above. But from Serob's side we hear no sound of singing: a bullet has struck him in the temple, and, propped against the rock, holding his rifle straight before him, so he has stayed, as though he were alive. His dying in that posture was of use to us, for the enemy kept taking aim at him and wondering that he did not fall. Bullet after bullet strikes him, but to no purpose. The enemy's attention is fastened upon him.

After noon there was another strong attack upon our positions; but because the positions above, with their fierce volleys, would not let the enemy come near ours, this attack too went off unsuccessfully. All they could do was to carry off two horses from us. At three o'clock military bugles sounded; our positions above were pouring out an infernal fire, but we did not know what was happening up there, and that caused us

fear. Avo came past us, carrying water; from him we understood that there was fighting up there. "But it is nothing," he added. The sound of the Mosin rifles comforted us: we knew that our men were still alive, and that we should win. Our men bring the enemy's furious attack to a stand at last; but poor Avo, who had wanted to set our minds at rest, falls on the way back, in Nikol's position, at Zavriev's side, taking a mortal bullet in his side.

It is dusk already. We are glad that the dark is falling: what can the enemy do in the dark? When the dark had fallen altogether, everything grew still. Whether our comrades in the positions above us have been killed, or whether the enemy has fled, we do not know. Kurd Mato comes to our position and orders us, on Sargis's part, that only two of us are to stay at the mouth of the gorge, and to fire single shots, to mislead the enemy. Grish and I stay in our position and fire one shot at a time; I try to roll a bomb down from the rock, but the bomb does not go off. Meanwhile our comrades are gathering at the end of the gorge. At last we too draw back, and mount our horses, coming warily up to the place that had been pointed out to us. I was afraid that our comrades might all be gone already; but they were there, in the shadow, though few — hardly ten men. We stayed there a little longer, but Mato kept urging us to get out of that pit a moment sooner. Neither Nikol was there, nor Zavriev, nor Tados, nor the Khechos; we knew that Serob was dead, but of Avo we had as yet no news. We climb up a steep slope; if it had been daylight we would perhaps not have dared to drive the horses over those abysses. We reach the summit of the mountain, where there are men; some of them, in their simplicity, are rejoicing and calling out, "Duman! Khecho!" Suren, Mato and I, who were hardly thirty paces off, understood that the enemy was in front of us. They too were taken by surprise, and were struck dumb when we drew our revolvers. The cries of "Lo, lo, fedayan"^t56 were heard, and hundreds of rifles opened in the dark of the night. We were cutting the chain, following Mato;

the bullets came from every side; one bullet struck my horse in the haunch,^t57 another Arakel's horse, which reared on its hind legs and came down on the ground with Arakel. He was in front of me; I halted a little, Arakel caught at my horse's tail, and again we went forward at a gallop and came up with the lads. We were a good way from the enemy by now. Arakel climbed up on my horse's back. Mato in front, Sargis at my side, we rode on. Suddenly the two Khechos came out before us as though by a miracle. At first we thought they were the enemy and made to fire, but we knew him by Sarbaz's voice. The Khechos joined us, and we went on our way.

We notice that in the shadow there is something moving and darkening. It must be the enemy. Without a sound we rode toward the shadow. When we come near, they ask us in Turkish who we are. We answer in Kurdish. They took care not to fire; but when we had gone two hundred paces off, they opened a volley on us. At that moment we were crossing a watercourse. As my horse jumped, Arakel fell off, dragging me with him; but I had hold of my horse's mane and stayed hanging in the air, my head below and my feet above. My rifle had fallen out of my hand to the ground. I saw Arakel come up to me — but instead of lifting me and setting me on my horse's back, he took up my rifle and went off, leaving me hanging. My horse turned his head toward the enemy and was going that way. The bullets whistle. In despair I shout, "Arakel!" Suddenly a horseman comes up to me and, springing to the ground, sets me straight on my horse, in the enemy's very sight. We fly off toward the comrades, who are waiting for us and slackening their pace. That horseman was Sarbaz Khecho.

Our little band wants to move on. "Arakel may fall into the enemy's hands," I say to my comrades, and propose that we wait. At that moment I suddenly see Arakel — mounted on Sargis's crupper. My astonishment and my fury mixed together, I give him a foul curse, and, drawing my revolver,

shout at him:

— You lose your own rifle and take mine, and leave me there, and get up on Sargis's crupper? Give me my rifle and get down off that horse, or I will not leave you worth a dog's penny.

Arakel, in his wretchedness, gave me my rifle, but did not get down off the horse; Sargis forbade it. Sarbaz Khecho came up to us at this uproar, saying that we would look into the matter later.

Putting Mato^t58 in front, we quickened the horses' pace, under fire and under bullets, and moved forward.

Before us the barking of dogs and the shouting of men were heard. We were going by a road that led to Kotur, by which we had already crossed the Turkish frontier and entered Persia. To go in there was dangerous too, and so we climb a mountain and go on driving the horses at full speed, and so drive on until daylight, and reach the summit of another mountain. Mato halts and tells us that the danger is over now. We come down off the horses, which are broken and spent. My horse is swimming in sweat and in blood, and my heart ached and ached for him. But I looked at the wound, and there came before my eyes Serob's pierced temples, Arakel's horse rearing like a statue and crashing to the ground, and Arakel himself holding on to my horse's tail, and how we ran through the fire. I remembered myself hanging from the saddle of this wounded horse, my feet above and my head below, going toward the enemy — and at the last my rescue, thanks to Sarbaz Khecho. The going over of these things again moved me beyond measure. I left my horse and went across to the lads. They were sitting eating bread, and Arakel, his head in his hands, was thinking. In my fury I gave him such a shameless curse as had never been in my mouth before.

— What do you want, brother? I was confused; do what you like. He answered with such despair that I was ashamed of myself.

Sarbaz Khecho had become my advocate, and was telling how it had happened; and broad-minded Sargis said:

— We understand; tell no more of it; the lad lost his head.

The big Khecho cursed us both; and Mato, seeing that a fight might break out, struck up the song of Nikol Duman in Kurdish, and so put the quarrel out. They were all hungry. They ate bread and were filled. My horse, wounded, would not eat. I was troubled, and had no appetite either. There was one more, I think, who did not eat: that was Arakel.

*

In the distance the valley of Salmast came in sight; we were safe. But after this fight it was not convenient to go down by daylight. There were wounded horses, and so we took the road slowly and on foot, and reached Sanamerik at night. On the road we did not speak to one another; each had his own thoughts, but one thought was common to us all: we had had seventeen men and seventeen horses, and now eleven men and ten horses were left. Where were the six men and the seven horses? That Serob and Avo^t59 had been killed was certain: we had taken their weapons and left them lying as they were, in the very positions where they had fallen. Certain, too, that one horse had been killed and two had passed into the enemy's hands, and that at the very first attack. But what became of the three horses that Tados took down below their positions? What became of our band's chief, Nikol Duman, of his aide Tados, and of Dr. Zavriev?

Three Khechos (Sarbaz, Dashnaktsakan Khecho and the Seydavartsi) had gone to Nikol Duman's position, but had found troops there, who received them with bullets. They had barely escaped with their lives. Where were Nikol and the others? Had they been killed, or were they alive and holding the enemy off, cut off from us? These thoughts tormented me. The nearer we came to Salmast, the more the men's anxiety grew.

— What will our position be if tomorrow news comes that Nikol has reached Vaspurakan? said Grish.

— Such a miracle cannot happen, answered

Suren.

— Why not? When have you heard of his turning back from the middle of a road? Then we are all of us lower than a traitor, and deserve to die like dogs.

— Let us be counted traitors, if only he is alive, said the big Khecho.

— That he is alive I have no doubt, Sarbaz Khecho affirmed.

— Why do you think so? Did we not go into the positions and not find them?

— It was at dusk that there was fierce fighting at their position; when they cut them off from us, the fight was still going on. Night came, and the sound of their rifles died strangely away. That was the time when we went to look for them, and came upon the enemy. So they were lost to us. Afterward, as we were drawing away, I heard the sound of Mosins far off, and it seemed to me the fight was going on still; so they had come up against a barrier and cut a road through it. I am convinced that Nikol has not been killed; he is alive.

With these suppositions we came into Sanamerik again. Astonishment, joy, sorrow and fear were in all our eyes. They received us as though we were strangers, as though we were sacrificial oxen run away from the matagh. They asked us no questions, and we, with our noses hanging, said nothing. But now there comes Pokhik, his chest thrown out, his face darkened, glowering, with his aides. I thought that after the unpleasant words of a few days before, when he had kept his grudge against Khecho and against Nikol, he would wound us out of spite; but the very opposite happened: that man rose in my eyes, and I saw in him an unhewn greatness.

— Brother Khecho jan, lads jan, may your vow be accepted, may your suffering be accepted, that you have borne these four days. You look sorrowful; I too am sorrowful. What has hap-

pened has happened; there is no use thinking of it now. You are welcome, and you have come upon my eyes.^t60

These words seemed to break the ice, and from under it a clear spring gushed up. Dashnaktsakan Khecho fell on Pokhik's neck and, calling him "Akhper jan," began to kiss him; and Pokhik said:

— I heard you had come, and had come short of your number, and that my dear Avo is not with you either. I came with one question only: can I be of any use to those who did not come back?

This mountain man had taken us captive, and had won our sympathy. In my eyes he became a mountain tsetun,^t61 which, though it was hard to eat, had a taste and a smell that were immortal.