Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 10: The Monastery of Saint Thaddeus

When the Monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus was built, and who built it, and for whom — of that I know nothing. It is plain that it was built in the Armenian style, like all our monasteries; but there is another sweetness in it: its carvings and its ornament are like nothing I had seen until then. They could be the subject of a study and an appreciation all their own, which is beyond my understanding — so let us leave the monastery where it stands, since it has no wish to be gossiped about by us.

There were many rooms in the monastery, but few of them habitable. The brotherhood consisted of an old steward with sore eyes, a miller who was at the same time the servant, the sacristan and the man who saw to everything, and a vardapet,

come from Bulgaria; his eyes too were sore. Doctor Rouben^t1 talked, joked and swore, and raised an uproar in that silent brotherhood as though there were no vardapet standing in front of him.

— You go and finish your work, put out the candles, and come and let us drink a good chay (tea).

We gathered round the table with the vardapet, gave him his letters and newspapers, and he buried himself in them. The vardapet's name was Gevorg Nalbandian, but that name was not used. Vardan called him Endzayr, and Doctor Rouben stubbornly called him Antsayr.^t2 The Holy Father accepted both with indifference.

— Antsayr, this is no time for reading the paper; have you nothing for us? Has no courier come from the Land? — Rouben asked impatiently.

The vardapet, without answering, went out of the room and gave Vardan a sealed packet; to Rouben he said, "I am sorry to say there is nothing for you."

At first sight Gevorg Vardapet seemed a pitiable man. What was it that had forced this churchman, still young, full of energy, a man who had seen the world, to come and shut himself up in this monastery, which we rightly called the Solitary?^t3 Doctor Rouben would probably have had a livelier and a merrier life in the penal settlement of Sakhalin than this vardapet had here, where the society consisted of two persons only — a truly dull and tedious life. Gevorg Vardapet appeared to me as a kind of voluntary exile, and I wanted to get at the secret of his life. Was it faith, or was it the care of preserving the Monastery of Thaddeus, that had brought him here?

Three times a day this man looks at the sundial cut into the front of the monastery, and by its shadow pulls the bells — in place of the bell-ringer, who is far too busy with other work. Three times a day he goes into the church alone,

whether there is anyone there or not, performs the whole of the office, and when he, all by himself in that huge church, turns from the altar with the cross in his hand and calls out "Peace unto all,"^t4 it seems strange and it seems laughable, and you think: "In this peace, why and for whom is he saying this prayer?" There is nobody there, twelve months of the year, and no one watching either; so this vardapet believes in something, since he does his duty without a fault. When the office is over he takes the broom and sweeps out the Monastery of Thaddeus; then he goes out, locking the heavy iron doors fast behind him.

I envied the vardapet for having so full a faith.

— You are a lucky man, vardapet, I said to him one day when we were alone. I have been at Etchmiadzin and seen how they pray for show, or to cheat people; you are not of that kind, you are not able to cheat either God or anyone else. It is your inner faith that tells you to pray to four walls and a dome.

The vardapet looked at me from under his heavy lids with a fond look, and then, thinking, said: "I do not want to deceive you."

— I have not been deceived, I saw it myself: I came in at the open door of the church and hid behind a pillar while you were saying the Liturgy to four walls, all alone, in the middle of the lighted candles. It was laughable, your saying the Liturgy in your veghar,^t5 but it was the sign of your inner faith, and it was full of mystery, and it was great.

The vardapet looked at me and said sadly:

— If I had one tenth of your faith I should truly be a happy man. I have not so much as a glimmer of faith; I am an unbeliever. But I know that faith is the greatest weapon and the greatest self-defence, at least for the brute crowd, and for that reason I am not against it. I serve it without faith.

I saw from his face that he was not lying. I looked at him in astonishment, and it made him uncomfortable.

— It is you who are the lucky one — you do not believe in religion, but you have faith in the nation, and you are ready to give your life for it as this Thaddeus was. I too have some of your faith; but not so much that I forget myself. I am only a drifter^t6 made out of the two faiths.

— If what you say is true, why did you come and drop into this prison? You take the broom and clean up the dust, you go hungry and drink tanjur,^t7 you look at the face of a bleary-eyed steward,^t8 there is nobody here and you talk to the devils. Is the world a ruin? Was Bulgaria worse than this, that you came here to put up with us? I do not understand.

— Do you know what a hungry soul means? I am not merely a vardapet, I am something greater — I am a Tsayragoyn,^t9 and I know the road to being a Bishop and an Archbishop; but my soul is hungry. The hungry man is always a servant, a dog at another man's door. New apostles come and go from this place, as you have come and will go, and some of them will go for ever... I am the one who receives them and I am the one who sends them off; but I feel it, I envy them, because their souls are full, while mine stays empty. The cartridges, the weapons I send out from here, I count one by one, and over each of them I think: where will the man who carries this rifle be martyred, and whose body will this bullet pierce and kill? More than that I am not able to do — though even this is something.

All the soldiers and the field-workers who came and went before me and after me met this interesting man, so let us leave a little of the talking to them, that they may fill out what is missing. Let me say first of all that this man's faults struck the eye more than his unfeigned loyalty and his services did. That is how we have learned to reward faithful servants — or, as he put it himself, dogs, whose mistake is to bark for nothing, or now and then to bite.

*

The Monastery of Thaddeus is about 100 kilometres from Khoy, 25 from Maku, 40 from Bayazit,^t10 and 25 from Alagan, on the Turkish frontier. It lies off the main roads and out of the way, and for that reason we called it the Solitary.

From that point it was possible to reach the Turkish border in a single night — the Aladagh, or Alagan, mountain.^t11 By the first road one could cross to Bagrevand, by the second to Van, by way of Abagha. For our work this mattered.

Along the Persian and Turkish frontier, beginning at Maskhen^t12 and running as far as the country opposite the Monastery of Thaddeus and on to the neighbourhood of Kotur, lay the Haydar tribe; and to the north, the Jelali. To have these two tribes with us meant wiping out the frontier that ran between Persia and Turkey and establishing free passage from Erevan into Persia and from Persia into Turkey. From that point of view the Monastery of Thaddeus was a very important observation post — the more so as^t13 it was only 15 kilometres from the Kurdish centre of Kareni,^t14 which was the seat of Mustafa bey, the chief of the Haydar tribe. The monastery had to be made into a station of Armeno-Kurdish friendship.

Only 25 kilometres from the monastery was Maku, the centre of the district of Artaz. There sat the Sardar, who was nominally the Shah's subject and felt himself an independent king. To have the Sardar's friendship and goodwill was as good as freedom.

How many inhabitants Artaz had was hard to make out, but the Sardar's villages were said to be about 300. Among them there were Armenians in three places only: some 100 houses in Maku, about 100 houses in Kishmish Tapa,^t15 and 30 houses in the village near the monastery. So the Armenians were, in numbers, a trifling quantity among the Kurdish and Tatar elements. Nor was their quality very high — not one school; plain

villagers, a few small traders and an artisan. Above all of it stood out the magnificent dome of the Monastery of Thaddeus, the tallest and the most splendid thing in the province — and its head, Gevorg the Tsayragoyn Vardapet, who was himself dome-shaped, in his imposing veghar.

The Dashnaktsutiun drew an advantage it could not have replaced from that ancient monastery and from its unbelieving servant, "Antsayr" vardapet. This is how.

Once or twice a month, and always on the holy days of the Shia confession, our Tsayragoyn vardapet would put on his going-out clothes,^t16 set the awe-inspiring veghar on his head, and mount his horse. Two armed men — Hovhannes and Melkon — rode behind him, and this "procession" would set out for Maku, the Sardar's capital. First they would call on Mehrob,^t17 who was the vardapet's trusted agent and the Dashnaktsutiun's at the same time. Together with him they would go to pay a visit to the chief head of the Shia confession. Gevorg Vardapet knew the Shia religion and its history better than he did. There would begin a mutual pouring-out of feeling about brotherhood and about the kinship of our two unhappy confessions. Was not the Apostle Thaddeus a man of the same Allah, a man who came to carry the word of the Prophet Isa, and who was martyred in these very mountains, and over whom the monastery is built? And was not the Prophet Isa the forerunner of the Prophet Muhammad, and of Ali, his successor and heir, who was likewise martyred by unbelievers in the deserts where Kerbala is built? The two martyrs became a bridge for binding the men of the two confessions to one another and for establishing love and concord between them.

Then they would go together to visit the absolute ruler of the district, the Sardar, who was everything — after God. They expected no gift from the vardapet of Thaddeus; they knew that he was merely the guardian of four bare walls and had nothing, no income and no people to bring him revenue. It was they who wanted to help this spavor^t18 with a gift or with money, but the varda-

pet would not take it.^t19 That became the reason his credit rose, and that he became a vardapet with no interest of his own, a living martyr, a faithful servant of the martyred Thaddeus. The pith and marrow of what he said was plain and easy to understand. It was not false, even if there were errors in the argument.

— Your mourning for the death of Ali is our mourning too; it is the tyranny of Turan over Iran, and together we shall bring Turan down. We are at your side, and ready and faithful in your struggle. As Arshak and Vagharshak were brothers, so are we your brothers. We want nothing else of you; only know that we are your own people.

The vardapet's words were not spent for nothing. Those he talked with knew all this from other occasions and in other formulations. They also knew that the Armenians were with them in practice as well, in every circumstance. Watching and weighing the facts, they found that this learned vardapet, who had seen more of the world than they had and knew everything, was with them too; they had confidence and faith in him. And for that reason the small Armenian population and the Monastery of Thaddeus were placed in a privileged position in that rebellious and tyrannized country. The Armenians were reckoned loyal men and props of the Sardar; their coming and going and their safety were respected with a particular care. Vagabonds were forbidden to cross the Armenians' boundaries and do violence to them. The Armenians were given the right to arm themselves and, if the case required it, to defend their lives and their property. The Turks too were kept within certain limits and their arbitrary acts checked. The Sardar considered the Armenians his protégés, and had only one expectation of them: he wanted the men who carried arms, who were the soldiers guarding their own houses, to be at his side in a tight place, as his own "sarbazes."

At that time, the vardapet's and the Dashnak-

tsutiun's ambassador at Maku — unofficial, of course — was Mehrob, whom I met afterwards in Vaspurakan.

*

Once a month the vardapet would come out of his monastery for a few days and take the road to Khoy.

— Nothing is to be understood from letters; let me go and see what my superiors want of me, and what is going on in the world.

The "superiors" were the Dashnaktsutiun's representatives at Khoy and Salmast. At Khoy in those days it was Kosti (who was replaced by Malkhas), and at Salmast, Samson.

After seeing his official acquaintances, he would announce right and left that he had come to make purchases for the needs of the monastery... Without his veghar and without ceremony he would meet the men he had come to find, and although he had come without pack-horses, he went back with horses loaded — and what was in those loads only he knew, and where those loads were hidden, that too only he knew.

*

The rest of the time he did not leave the monastery; he stayed alone with the bleary-eyed steward and the servant. He spoke little — and indeed, with whom was he to speak? For that reason they called him the Friday-mouth^t20 and thought him inhospitable and ill-natured besides. No pilgrims came to the monastery. Where from, and how, in a country where a man's head was cheaper than a head of onion? And if they had come, they would have had nowhere to lodge, and would have been forced to shelter in the village. The guest-houses the monastery had once had were in ruins, and the vardapet had no intention whatever of repairing them. There were only two rooms in repair, in which he lived himself and into which the unavoidable and indis-

pensable passers-through had to squeeze. Men he did not know, of whatever nation, had no place in the monastery. "They may be more of us than we are,^t21 stronger than we are, and they may aghel our heads,"^t22 he would say; "they will eat up our stores, and they will understand what our solitude means."

The villagers, who were a kilometre away, did not come to the monastery either, so as not to see the inhospitable vardapet. There in the village lived Hovhannes and Melkon, who were the vardapet's trusted agents, his sarbazes and his deputies. Those who came to the monastery applied to them first, and then obtained the right to enter it. They had rooms in which to receive the monastery's guests, whether foreigner or Armenian, courier from the Land or fighting man. Only "gentlemen" like ourselves were sheltered inside the monastery, when the "guests'" identity was already clear to the vardapet. This behaviour of his was incomprehensible and repellent to strangers, and for that reason he was not liked at all.

It is not to be concluded from this that the monastery was cut off, and that its vardapet, drawn back into his shell, was left without news of the world, or that he was sewn away from the people and from the work. At the nearby point of Kareni he had Kurdish friends, from various strata, whose duty it was to visit the monastery's village once a week and give information about what had happened. The same at other points. They would come to Melkon's house, empty out their sack of news, eat, drink, and go away with the sack at their belt filled with a little flour and wheat. They went in order to come back again. Besides that, Mustafa bey of the Haydarantsi, the kaymakam^t23 of the Hamidiye^t24 regiments, had — so they say — fallen out with the Turkish government along with his tribe, and had settled along the Persian frontier, with his centre at Kareni.^t25 Alak of Bitlis (Armenak Okhikian) had established himself in his tribe as the Dashnaktsutiun's ambassador, and had so won Mustafa bey's heart that he had become an intimate of his family; under the name of a doctor he travelled about the districts under his

influence. While I was at the monastery he was arrested, at that very time, near the Turkish frontier, and taken to the prison at Van. Mustafa bey was making efforts to have him freed.

Opposite Mustafa bey's tribe, on the other face of the Alaghan mountain, the lord and master of the district of Abagha was again a Haydarantsi, the man called Mehmed Abdyl ("Gui Mahmad"), with the rank, I think, of a colonel of the Hamidiye. He was very sympathetic to our work and our aims. Khashan was his centre (in Abagha), while his official centre was Berkri. What business was carried on in that district belongs to the history of Vaspurakan; but it was from that district that, thanks to Gui Mahmad's goodwill, a regular courier and transport road had been opened toward the Monastery of Thaddeus. These "guests" passed through the nest of Hovhannes and Melkon, and the important ones the vardapet received, while to the unimportant Hovhannes and Melkon showed the road.

There was a third point as well, of the greatest importance for the intelligence, for the courier work, and in part for the transport work. Under his staff was the village of Kichmich Tapa; it lay 30 kilometres from Bayazet, and the same distance from the Tsaghkants mountains. The Tsaghkants mountains (Aladagh) were inhabited by Haydarantsi tribes, among whom Ali bek and his family were very sympathetic to us and worked with us. With him was Poghos of Kghi (whom they called Geghetsik Poghos);^t26 he was there on behalf of the Ken. Ken.^t27 of Erevan and of Yerkat. That point was a station for the couriers, for arms and for passing men through, and a centre of all the news. When the lines were endangered, Poghos would make use of the Tsaghkants mountains to get in touch directly with Kichmich Tapa, where the man who waited was Lid-mouth Hovsep,^t28 loyal to the vardapet and to Poghos. The vardapet was very anxious, because he had had no word from Poghos of Kghi for a long time, and Hovsep too had written that he was very anxious about him.

*

From the explanations above it will be understood that the Monastery of

Thaddeus, isolated though it was, a hermitage fallen away out of the roads, had its affairs so arranged that it was at work night and day.^t29 The "Solitary" was a source of the world's news, thanks to the Kurds and the couriers. You will wonder at what I have set out here^t30 if you do not know the character of the Kurds.

The Kurd, and above all the wandering Kurd, is thirsty for news, because he cannot talk to his flocks; he starves for speech. Speech is necessary to him for his own existence and for the safety of the district as well. And so, whether he is on a mountaintop, or on the road, or in a village, he takes the measure of the traveller, weighs him, and gets information out of him, from the important down to the unimportant. He passes the news to his neighbour at once, and it spreads from mouth to mouth immediately; important news he shouts at once from mountain to mountain, signals it from his tent^t31 with signs, tells what he knows to acquaintance and stranger alike, asks questions — and the news goes through the air like lightning. No horseman can keep up with it, nor can a telegram overtake it.

The news "turns from a needle to a beam as it passes from mouth to mouth," but in essence it kept the kernel of the truth, and was never fabricated or false. Afterwards the couriers would reach the monastery with letters, in which the news, sifted of its exaggerations, gave the events in their nakedness. So the vardapet of the Monastery of Thaddeus knew all that passed in the Land, and what had happened and what was coming in the Caucasus and in Persia alike.

It was on the basis of this intelligence that the porters, the field-workers and the armed bands were sent off toward the Land. Some — the lucky ones — arrived; some stayed halfway. That depended on the valuing of the news collected. The Monastery of Thaddeus was in general seldom wrong, and its affairs went well, which gave a value to the judgment of Gevorg the Tsayragoyn Vardapet.

The vardapet was a modest man. He con-

sidered himself a servant of the Monastery of Thaddeus, and in that quality he submitted to his spiritual superiors — though they were no authority for him. He also submitted to the party hierarchy, and carried out the orders of men less worthy than himself. But the one authority for him was a certain person called Rostom, who had put him there and pushed him toward the Monastery of Thaddeus, and whom up to that time I had neither seen nor known who he was.

*

We had been at the monastery ten days already. Doctor Rouben had gone back to Khoy long since. No more uproar, no more laughter, not even conversation. Shahbaz Vardan had gone completely dumb; whoever looked at his face had his fill of that worried look. He went constantly to the monastery's mill, and had made work for himself — mending what was broken and breaking what was built. There was no talking with the steward, apart from exclamations. The vardapet's assistant was always busy. With whom, then, was one to talk? Only the vardapet was left, if I could make myself agreeable to him. In this I succeeded, and little by little he began to open himself to me.

It astonished me greatly that he knew the details of the fight at Thadi^t32 better than I did. He knew the roads we had come by, which I did not know; he knew the circumstances of our crossing the frontier and being spotted, which not one of us knew; he knew the enemy's forces, and he named the dead by name, above all the Kurds'. If I had kept in my mind what the vardapet said, I would have understood the character of the fight at Thadi in detail, without poetry.

I began to take an interest in past events, which were a little different from what I had heard until then; and mixing what I heard with what we already knew, I want to set out what happened on the frontiers in 1904, as much of it as has stayed in my memory.

Haji Levon's band. Levon was no haji, but that is what they

called him. He was a man of Akhaltskha, of that band which deserves to be called a band of heroes — Aslan, Usul Khacho, Ashrg^t33 and the others, modest, self-sacrificing and brave. Back when I was at Gyumri they had told me I was too late to go to Van: "Haji has gone already." This is how it was. —

Haji Levon's band, which consisted altogether of six horsemen, was carrying munitions with it. On the 17th of April, at the thaw, they set out from Salmast toward the Turkish frontier. The first day passed without mishap; on the second day six friendly Kurds came out to meet them and warned them that they had been betrayed and that the roads were held by the enemy. But to turn back was against honour. They call on God and go forward.

Reaching the Kurdish districts, the band is pursued by the Kurds. On their swift horses the fedayis push forward, and, laying a few Kurds out on the ground, open a road and reach the neighbourhood of the village of Lim. The Kurds give them no rest here either; they surround the fedayis, who are forced to dismount, take up positions and accept battle. Some of the horses are killed by the enemy's bullets, and the rest are slaughtered by the fedayis' bullets so that they may not fall into the enemy's hands. So the fight goes on until evening; a few more Kurds and gendarmes are laid out on the ground; but Hovhannes of Van, Joj Agha,^t34 is killed — he who was in such haste to reach Van and be the first to report to the comrades on the decisions of the General Assembly.

In the night the band breaks the enemy's chain and reaches Varag safely, where it was already out of all danger.

The arsenals of Van are put in order — but the most indispensable thing of all for Van, its delegate to the General Assembly, was missing: he had been killed by the enemy.

The band of Yerkat and Poghos of Kghi. If it had so happened that he had persuaded me and I had decided to go with him to Nemrut, I would no longer have been in existence — so I thought, listening to the stories about him.

In the middle of May Yerkat and Poghos of Kghi take up munitions, money and 35 fedayis, and set out from Igdir. They cut across^t35 the frontier mountains, cross the plain of Alashkert, and reach the neighbourhood of Mirdajan,^t36 where, after resting, they take the road in the last days of May toward Akhlat, with Sasun for their goal.

Near Archesh, by the Armenian village called Soskun, in the valley of Khojalu, the band takes its rest, in the caves opposite. Poghos of Kghi (Tokhmakh) goes down with the two Abros to the mill of Soskun to bring back bread. He is recognized by Kurds who are there, and is killed without warning, along with one of the Abros; the other Abro barely escapes.

The Kurds raise the alarm, and soon tribesmen, gendarmes and troops surround the valley of Khojalu from every side, and, holding the mouths of the caves, demand surrender. The fedayis of course defend themselves, and put up a furious fight. They kill a good many Kurds. But now a bullet falls in the place where Yerkat was, and strikes a hand-grenade, which explodes and with it blows up the heaps of powder and bombs. The cave, with the men inside it, is shaken out of its place, and the rocks spit out the shattered fragments of the fedayis' bloodied bodies, burying under them the bodies of gendarmes and Kurds as well. Of the whole band, barely seven men are left alive; taking advantage of the general shouting and clamour, they leap out and climb the mountain. That little band puts up a good fight until evening and kills a few dozen Kurds and gendarmes. One of the seven fedayis, an old Russian soldier from the Kanaker country, called Gaspar, I think, wins a great re-

putation among the Kurds by his feats. He kills a good number of Kurdish "grandsons."^t37 When night comes on and the fighting stops, not one of the fedayis is able to find the road; only in the morning, when Masis^t38 appears, do they take it for their guide.

The Kurds, however, will not leave the fedayis in peace, and they, who will not surrender at any price, are again compelled to fight the enemy the whole day. Holding their positions behind rocks, they roll a great many Kurds on the ground, but they too are wasting away. In the end only two men are left alive, and Gaspar among them. Tired and hungry, they set off in the direction of Masis. The next day they are caught in a fight again with the pursuing Kurds. This time Gaspar's comrade is killed, and Gaspar himself falls half-dead into the hands of the Kurds, who, in honour of his boundless courage, do not kill him, but tend him and take him to the Pasha of Bayazit as a present. Gaspar stays in prison until the Constitution, and is then freed. What became of that hero is not known. To this day his feats are glorified in the songs of the Kurds.(*)

It was in the days of the disaster to Yerkat's band that Nikol Duman's band was at the same time attempting to cross by way of Thadi toward Varag. That we have seen already.

———

(*) At the end of 1908, when I passed through Bayazet, I saw Gaspar's prison, but he himself had got out. They told me again about his legendary courage — seasoned with superhuman legends.

I think that the hero mentioned in Y. Sargsian's childhood recollections must be that same Gaspar.

When, coming back from there, I was already at the monastery, one black day Gevorg Vardapet came back from his agents in the village like a man in mourning, and, barely able to hold himself in, said:

— Pokhik and his horsemen have been cut to pieces; not a man has escaped...

At that news I was struck dumb and turned to stone, as though a bullet had come and hit me in the head. Vardan, who was shaving a piece of wood with his knife and making something out of it, looked at the vardapet, blinked his eyelids rapidly, and called out:

— A man cannot leave his nest for more than this...

— Do not talk like that, Vardan jan; you too will fly up out of your nest one day, when the comrades in the Land call out "Help, help..."

Vardan did not answer; he threw the wood he had been shaving on the ground, folded up his knife and went away from us. I went away too, without a word. And the three of us became three separate parts; each of us was thinking about what had come down on his own head. The bleary-eyed steward's tanapur^t39 was going cold; it would not go down anyone's bok (throat).^t40

These exclamations settled hard on my heart, like two heavy stones.

That night we have sent Melkon to Khoy; in the small hours the vardapet has disappeared — he has gone to Kareni to gather news. At midday the vardapet came back and said:

— The report is confirmed. The black news that came from various sources has been verified, and there and then we learned the following. —

The annihilation of Pokhik's band. Word comes from Van to Salmast and Khoy that Sasun has long since fallen, but that now the fighting is beginning in Van. "Alive or not alive, come to our help." When Pokhik and the lads hear this, they are of one word and decide to cross into the Land at once. There is talk, too, that Nikol is against crossing into the Land in arms; but there were men who objected that Nikol is not of the Land, that his heart will not ache for it, that he let off a couple of pshots,^t41 ran back and disappeared, and that this is why he is against going into the Land

at all. Saying so, they decide to go by the skirts of Mount Araul,^t42 but to avoid crossing Jukh,^t43 and to go instead under Saray, straight toward Varad.^t44

They are fourteen horsemen. The guide is again that Mato who had saved our band by his loyalty and his coolness. There were also Sahak and Gre, of the Assyrians of the Saray country, both of them old and brave fedayis and familiar with all the local conditions. Except for a few, the members of the band were old soldiers, grown up in the mountains of the Land and veterans of many fights, so that they were all confident of reaching their goal. That confidence, however, was not justified, and they all died — in my opinion for a very simple reason, which they had failed to take into account and which was the object of Nikol Duman's chief anxiety. Nikol's instruction was: "go by such deserted roads that neither the sound of the horses' hooves is heard, nor is there anybody to see us, by night or by day; or, if they do see us, let them at least see us late." That was possible only in winter, up to the month of April or the end of it. But at that season the snow hindered the marching. Travel was possible, then, at the end of May, according to the weather, skirting the heights of Araul, when shepherd and nomad have not yet gone up into the mountains. At other times the road taken was inevitably made out hour by hour, was noticed quickly, and that became the cause of the death of those who went.

Pokhik set out a week or two after us; the mountains were already covered with shepherds and nomads, and his band's movements were noticed everywhere. Although Mato was taking them by the same road by which he had guided our band, that road was already a trap, and it led into the gorge of Uaghi,^t45 where the troops of Saray, the frontier guards, the Hamidiye regiments and the mob were waiting beforehand. At daybreak Pokhik's little band was already in a heavy fight, and by midday

its account was closed.

Nobody of the band escaped who could give even an approximate idea of what had happened. Those who told the story were the Kurds, who remembered that fight with respect. "They had taken almost the same positions in this fight as the first time. But this time we were ready, and we knew how many of them there were and how they were disposed. When the sun rose we had come up to them without a sound, to within a few hundred paces. At the signal given by the troops of Saray we attacked from all four sides, each man at the position marked out for him. Of the three positions we took two; nobody would surrender, and we killed them. One position was left, held by four men, with a flag run up over it. We got in among them, and we were all mixed together in the rocks. They fought with the Mauser and with the knife. Not counting the wounded, eight bodies were left in the position, and the flag still standing. After midday we attacked again, and this time we found two bodies of the die-hard fedayis. We took the flag down, but the other bodies we did not find; we thought they had run off and got away. A hundred paces off, in a cleft of rock, we found the place of the two of them. Do what we would, they would not surrender. One was a Russian; the other cursed in Kurdish. There were men who understood, and they said that this one was Mato, Kaghdatsi Mato.^t46 However much we tried to persuade them, they would not surrender. 'Agh jan Fidanam,' he was calling; 'Agh bav e Haydarbem,' he shouted.^t47 One bullet reached his head, and he died. We took the head off him and carried it to the Vali of Van as a present. The Russian fought to the end, and even came near to breaking out through the middle of us. One soldier came up behind him and got him in the back with a dagger, and the fight was over. We gathered up our own bodies — far more than their number."

From these accounts it was possible to conclude that in the position over which the flag was hung it had been Pokhik. That Mato was at his side was certain, and so was Su-

ren, who by his stubbornness recalled the brave men of Gugark.^t48 I became greatly attached to him at the time of our fight, when my hand shook at shooting the father over his son's body, and he was not afraid but struck the old man down, guided by the principle that in a fight there is no sparing. So much for what I heard about the fight.

A few words too about the men I knew who took part in Pokhik's band. They were: Pokhik; Hagop;(*) Suren; Mato, who was a Kurd; and Gre and Sahak, who were Assyrian by origin and Nestorian by religion, but were more Armenian than the Armenians and spoke our language. The rest I saw, but I have forgotten them and never spoke with them.^t49

I have already spoken of the meetings and the conversations I had with Pokhik and Hagop. At first they made a bad impression on me, but afterwards I was impressed by them in the best way possible. These two were each other's opposite in appearance: Pokhik was dark, Hagop fair, like a German; but the jaws of both were broad and firm, as headstrong men's jaws are. They were broad-shouldered, burnt by the sun, and grim-eyed — though the one's eyes were dark and the other's blue. The reason for the likeness between the two was that out of the same country — out of the chasms of the Lernapar^t50 — they

———

(*) Hagop was the man who carried out the terror-act against Darmo. He had killed his own old comrade, by decision of the party. Darmo was one of the soldiers of Vaspurakan and was known for his courage. But he had one fault: he would turn other men's wives' heads, and sometimes used violence on the common people as well. That was unpardonable, both by the Party's rules of discipline and by the conduct and morals rooted among the comrades. And so they brought the order for a death sentence, which Samson signed, and it was carried out.

had been born. When they talked to each other I understood nothing of it. These two were intimates. They were the comrades of Zato, of Shero and of Bagik,^t51 and so they were old soldiers. They loved the big Vardan, who said his last word after everyone else; but Nikol they did not much love, because he said his last word first, and said it to your face. For that reason, though they respected him, they had no taste for him. Pokhik and Hagop had for a long time been the comrades of Nikol and Vardan — or rather their soldiers. They had taken part together in the Derik fights, and had been through many adventures in the transport bands. In the end it was thanks to them that Vardan had become commander-in-chief at Khanasor, Nikol only a commander of fifty, and Pokhik, who was his soldier, a commander of a hundred. Pokhik was astonished that at our coming he was not accepted by Nikol even as a plain soldier; he did not find it insulting and did not explain it by spite, and he understood that the sole reason for it was that he was not thought necessary for the Land.

For long years their close comrades had been Kurd Mato, Gre and Sahak (the Assyrians) and Avo, who was killed in our fight. They had shared in Pokhik's adventures, and in these two fights they were united again in the other world.(*)

Suren was not their old comrade. He was younger

———

(*) If we have many victims for the Kurds' sake, Mato was of those Kurds who were martyred for the Armenians. Just as the blood of Seydo and of Zaven is to be valued in the name of the Kurdish cause, and those men will one day be precious to the Kurds — as Tokhmakh and Poghos of Kghi will be, or Keri of Dersim and his comrades^t52 — so too, for us Armenians, Mato's blood will be precious and of worth, and more to be valued than that of all the old Armenian comrades who fell with him.

and, for them, "from a foreign country"; but for all that he was much valued as a trained military man. He was a section-commander and a drill instructor. Pokhik had need of him, and so separated him from his pair — from Grish and Sarbaz Khacho.^t53 What his real name was we never knew. He was a man of Akhalkalak, from the village of Khanchali, I think. What I knew about him I have said already, but his handsome face I can never forget. He ought not to have died such a death, even if he did know the trade of killing well.

The loss of Pokhik and of his band weighed heavily on all of us, and Vardan and I, who had come here to go by that same road, thought that to hurry and to be stubborn was to do the devil's work. And we were patient.

*

The mountaintops are free of snow and covered with green. The shepherds have climbed the mountains step by step with their flocks.

— There is no moving; we must wait, if we do not want to fall into the state of Yerkat and Joj Agha, said Vardan.

I agreed with him. And now a new black report came from the direction of Maku and Kishmish Tapa.

The Hunchakians' band. — It was not the Dashnaktsakans alone who were possessed by the violent urge to help Sasun, but the whole Armenian population of Transcaucasia; even the organizations opposed to the Dashnaktsutiun were straining toward Sasun. At the beginning of July a Hunchakian band of fourteen men crosses the Russian frontier and enters Alashkert, meaning to go on to Sasun and the Plain of Mush. The Kurds and the Turks get word of the band and surround it near Uchkilise.^t54 A long and desperate fight takes place, in the course of which the band puts up a heroic resistance. In the end they are all killed, taking more than twenty of the enemy to the grave with them.

This news came to complete our grief. It is true that we had no information about who the men of this band were, or who led them, but it caused us the same pain and drove us to re-examine the value and the purpose of dying.

— The common purpose and the common pain drive all Armenians to the same martyrdom, said the vardapet. But without speaking out loud, I was reflecting within myself: "Martyrdom is a mindless bullet torn out of a rifle's muzzle." I grew savage and grew bold; I wanted to change something, but I did not know what was to be changed.

*

I had come to certain conclusions about the ways of crossing into the Land. I thought it out of place to throw one's head away for the sake of a journey, for the sake of having sold chalum. "We shall have to fit ourselves to the conditions, since the conditions will not fit themselves to us." Thinking so, I took my clothes off me and, stripped naked, sat down in the sun. I had made up my mind to scorch my whole body in the sun, to blacken it, and to look like the village chluts.^t55

The little brotherhood was thrown into agitation. The bald steward laughed and covered his eyes; the miller-sexton looked on in astonishment, evidently taking me for a man gone mad; the vardapet asked me, "What is this for?" and, getting no answer, looked into Vardan's face. Vardan only smiled and did not utter a word.

In a few days my body was tortured and blackened all over, and filthy. The hardest of all were my hands and my feet: my fingers were thin, and my palms would not grow hard. I worked them to make them thicken and harden, but blisters opened, sores formed, and still they would not turn into a labourer's hands. My feet were more obstinate still. Where there was soft mud and dung it was very pleasant to tread, and to walk along a dusty road; but off the road, the stones that fell under my foot tormented me and forced me to sit down.

Vardan asked me nothing, but he read my mind without any explanation from me. One day he said to me: "Let us go for a walk." We went out and made for the mountain, over grassy meadows, over soft ground. It was pleasant to skip barefoot among the flowers. A man's spirits rise too, and grow lively, when he is pressed to nature with his whole body and kisses it. I am already framing theories and looking for the reasons for the happiness of animals. I began to boast to Vardan that he could not keep up behind me, with his heavy boots and his clothes. Vardan, sweating, made signs of agreement.

— Let us go back by the short road, and take in the mill on the way, he said, and changed the road. I followed him through stones and thickets with my teeth clenched. The stones, sharp as knives, had made my walking unbearable, while Vardan, without looking back, was flying along in his thick boots like a mountain goat. I limped, my feet were bleeding, I wanted to scream with the pain, to protest, but I held myself in. At last I am forced to sit down. Vardan was crying with laughter, and I was crying too, but from the pain. He took off his socks, gave them to me to put on, and added:

— Dog, son of a dog, what did you think, then — is it easy to have a mountaineer's feet? It takes a long time yet to turn a foot into a donkey's hoof.

At that point I explained that I wanted to travel in disguise. He listened, and closed the question by saying "perhaps."

*

Three travellers stopped in front of the monastery gate. When they saw me naked they shied a little. I was watching one of them attentively, who was walking on bare feet with his trekhs^t56 hung over his shoulder. I envied him, that the wearing of trekhs had become a burden to him.

— Is the Holy Father "da i" (is he here)? I understood that

he was an Armenian and was speaking Armenian.

— The Holy Father is "derr dagh e" (there he is),^t57 I answered, and led him in.

The half-naked newcomer, lost in his tatters, who was coming from Abagha, drew a packet out of his sacking and, kissing the Holy Father's hand, held it out to him. I had a violent longing to touch those letters, to read them, to kiss them. So many comrades had been martyred before the altar of the Land, so many comrades had died and gone without ever seeing the Land, that a scrap of paper from the Land, a letter, was reckoned a holy thing. To take them in one's hands, to read them, to understand them, was for hierophants, and was not permitted to ordinary men. I turned to the vardapet when we were left face to face alone.

— Vardapet, I suppose you do not doubt my resolve to sacrifice myself for the Land. I have made this one attempt; nothing came of it; I will try again, and perhaps something will come of it. Only, without reading the Land's letters, without understanding its pain directly, if I am to die, perhaps at the last moment I shall be in great pain. Vardapet, those letters are not addressed to me, I have no right to read them, but I very much want to read them seriously, and, if it is fated for me to die, to pass my last moments without pain.

The vardapet looked, and looked into my face, and his eyes filled with sadness; then he stayed standing a few moments and, holding the packet out to me, said:

— I know that you are one of the sworn. Whatever may be written in them, it becomes you to know it better than the man to whom these letters are addressed. I have no right, and I do not read what is not addressed to me. Do as you like.

I wish he had not had that confidence in me. I went off alone and tried seriously to understand the situation in the Land. The letters were a few, written in convulsive days; they left the impression neither of an arsonist's letters nor of a fireman's, but of a wretch surrounded by fire, on whom the flames are closing in, who screams "yandum, yandum"^t58 and

calls for help. But he himself is so confused that he pours the naphtha into the fire and the water into the naphtha, while the fire devours the country.(*)

These letters left a very bad impression on me. I have to say that at that time a kind of break had come about in me. My being shut away in the monastery^t59 and cut off from the world on the one hand; the failure of our band on the other; and finally the information I had had from Van, that my fellow seminarians there — Hamazasp (Bagheshtsian), Zelund (Meloyan), Artak (Darbinian) — were not Dashnaktsakans at all but conservatives, ringleaders of the Armenakans^t60 — all this had become the reason why I began to doubt whether revolution and insurrection were suited to their purpose. I had, as it were, turned conservative, and in my mind a rank counter-revolutionary. I had begun to incline toward the notion that the cultural level of the people must first be raised, the Turkish-Armenian people prepared, and only then the Turkish system of government gradually changed. Although baptized in battle, I wanted to fall back and become a teacher like Portugalian,^t61 or go into business like Slak.^t62 These two had become an example to me, though I had never seen them.

My mind was storming in these doubts when a letter came signed by Koms,^t63 in which he said

(*) Here ends that part of Rouben's recollections which he himself reworked. The material that comes after this, which goes into Volumes I and II (Volumes III, IV, V and VI, which were printed earlier, have been reworked throughout by Rouben), consists of his notes, which he used in putting his recollections through their final editing. There are also several passages reworked by the author which come after this point in Volumes I or II. We shall note each of them in its place. (Editor's note — A. Kh.)^t64

that the situation of the Land, and of Sasun in particular, was very grave, and that it might fall if quick help did not come from outside; and so he proposed sending bands into the Land, or making attacks along the frontiers, so that the whole Turkish force should not be concentrated against Sasun.

I wrote a letter in reply, explaining that in present conditions Transcaucasia could hardly bring any substantial help to the Land, and that even if attempts were made in that direction they would fail and would give occasion for new and useless victims. Setting out my doubts and my reflections, I advise taking a stand on the ground of peaceful activity.