Armen Ohanian is suddenly transferred from her pastoral village in the Caucasus to the semi-Russian city of Baku where, with her brothers and sisters, she is per-secuted in school. Life becomes a nightmare filled with Cossacks and Tartars thirsty for massacre. The only rift in the clouds of persecution is the childlike romance with Rahim the son of a Mussulman baker--the only escape is the sudden marriage that determines the course of her whole future career.” (Asia Magazine, April 1922, p. 313)
THE DANCER OF SHAMAKHA
by Armen Ohanian
English version by Rose Wilder Lane
Illustrations by Wilfred Jones
Electronic version prepared by StarRaft.com
I. In Armenia
Ah, yes, I remember my childhood, fresh and rosy as the dawns of the Caucasus, from which the people of my country must have stolen the blinding colors for their scarfs and sashes. I remember the peaks of blue and white slowly unveiling themselves from the heavy clouds; I remember the yellow deserts emerging and stretching far, barren and sad, quivering at the feet of savage cliffs like pride subdued by barbarous masters. I remember the small Tartar villages clinging like eagles' nests to the brink of abysses, the red citadels, the Byzan-tine domes of churches, the slender, elegant minarets. I remember the chants of the muezzins saluting the rising sun and mingling with the grave ringing of Christian bells to glorify the same God at the same hour. My ears still hear the songs of birds and the metallic tinkling of orna-ments worn by the Armenian women. Veiled in red and carrying vases on their shoulders, they come and go from the distant spring, hastening to offer their husbands, with the smile of morning, the freshness of water in a copper bowl.
"The world awakens," said our old Tartar nurse, rub-bing together her wrinkled hands.
Ah, yes, indeed, old Nani, we saw the whole world awakening before our eyes. And beneath the cascade which fell from the cliffs to water our gardens, I was min-gling my happy shrieks with the cries of my sisters, plunging in the white foam. My mother, smiling to see us so joyous, gently coaxed us into the house.
But soon, clad in light garments, red, yellow and blue, with Turkish slippers on our feet and white turbans on our heads, we were climbing like monkeys up the fruit-trees. The servants begged us in vain to descend for the morning tea; we were happy, and, sitting on the branches, we bit into the juicy pears.
Then came the beautiful silhouette of my mother in the Georgian veils, with all her bracelets accompanying so prettily her grieved gestures. Her beautiful eyes looked up at us, pure and limpid as the diamonds that sparkled in her little crown.
"You little monkeys!" she cried. "Cholera is mowing down millions of people in the near-by cities. Whole villages have been buried! Come down quickly from those trees; it is death that you eat in their fruit."
The sunlight fell across a large carpet spread on the lawn. Kneeling on it, at the edge of a Persian cloth hand-painted and ornamented with Arabic writing, we awaited the solemn approach of our father. Our shoulders were chastely hidden beneath shawls from Kashmir, our feet modestly covered by shoes. Jests in a low voice, stifled laughter, the reproachful eyes of our mother trying to overcome by exaggerated severity her desire to laugh at our frolic. Finally the grave appearance of our father. The servants, bowing low, their veils dropped over their faces, respectfully turned their backs upon him. We all rose, with timid gestures.
A short prayer, and my father took his large cup, which awed by its important air our little cups suited to mere small girls. He drank slowly, in silence. A few seconds passed, insupportably long. At last they ended; my father departed. What joyous excitement! The shawls were thrown aside, the shoes kicked off; the ser-vants came to life again. Pushing our mother away from the samovar, each of us struggled to be first to pour herself a cup of tea, in spite of the energetic protests of our mother and the servants, who expected to see us scalded by the boiling water. Plates were broken; eggs rolled from one side of the cloth to the other; the honey was spilled. My mother, really vexed at last, rose and threatened to call our father. The very word subdued us.
Suddenly the voice of my father was heard calling from the terrace to my mother: "Hanum, where are your little savages? Have them take their books and papers and go to Toutouse to prepare their lessons."
Heavens, what desolation!
Half an hour later we were obliged to go, all four. The pile of books on our heads impressed our servants. We began to climb Toutouse, the little mountain near the entrance to our large fruit gardens. The climb was diffi-cult; the stones, already heated by the sun, burned through our thin slippers. The servants came in a line behind us, bearing on their heads and shoulders a quantity of little rugs, cushions, mattresses and shawls, while old Nani, guardian of our seraglio, followed at a little distance, knitting. She felt even more than we the misery of our hard fate. When we paused to rest, she overtook us, lamenting: "Your mother is a true hanum, knowing neither how to write nor how to read. What an idea, to make you languish, bent under books and bowed down over your stomachs just after breakfast!” She detested our books, and we loved her because of that.
The carpets were unrolled beneath the walnut-trees, and we sprawled upon the mattresses while the servants arranged cushions to support us more comfortably. A painted earthen pitcher filled with fresh water was placed beside each of us, by my father's order; thus we had no excuse for leaving Toutouse before noon.
Arithmetic! How I detested it! Anahide was quick and sure with figures; so it was she who did my sums. Little Mariam despaired because of her writing; my father found it ugly. As mine was beautiful, I changed it a little and saved her, poor thing, from hateful efforts. For distraction, we changed our places every moment, pretending that the sunlight was moving upon us, and the servants left their sewing to rearrange our carpets, mattresses and cushions. We all found that the most difficult of our lessons was geography, for my father had the idea of teaching it to us in French, of which we knew only the alphabet.
"Île, île, li-li-li," repeated Anahide. "It is land sur-rounded by water. Lac, lac, cla-cla-cla; it is water sur-rounded by land."
From time to time, struck by a discovery, we dropped the books to discuss it and to explain it to the servants, whose astonishment at our culture flattered us agreeably. Thus Anahide informed us that Russia is above the Caucasus. That meant that one need only climb the highest mountains, like Elburz or Ararat, to be in Russia. Our sister Héguiné alone was plunged sincerely into the study of Persian history, from which she remembered only the stories of the jinn, the peri and the houri, without giving any attention to dynasties or kings.
It was believed in all that country that the wicked magic of some person envious of my parents had caused my sister Katariné to languish in a mysterious illness. We cared for her tenderly. We spoke of her as of a fleet-ing visitor. All the singers, all the musicians, all the charms and spells, had been tried in vain.
She knew, our Katariné, that she would leave us soon, and she waited tranquilly for death, happy to have been chosen by God to die before having sinned. She knew that when she was near to God, who loves little children, she would be able to befriend us all by persuading Him to be lenient toward those who were dear to her, and she began a thousand promises with the words, "When God has taken me to Heaven--"
Our old aunt Djavahir had asked the honor of sewing her shrouds before her death, according to the immemo-rial custom of the Armenians, and these shrouds were kept in a niche in our house, like sacred relics.
Katariné knew these things (for in our country we never hide death from those whom it approaches) and in spite of her nine years that knowledge gave her an aspect of wisdom and separated her from us. She spent the days resting on cushions near our mother, who, while embroidering tapestries, talked tenderly with her dying child. At night she slept in the arms of each of us in turn, and once a week she lay between Father and Mother on the balcony.
It was the sacred month of Muharram, in the springtime. Beyond our little olive-garden, the scrolled and painted mosque, usually so silently pointing toward Heaven its long minaret-finger, now opened wide its doors to throngs of the faithful. They came to mourn in that sorrowful month, the deaths of their saints, Hosain and Ali--Ali, the nephew, the adopted son and the son-in-law of the Prophet himself, and Hosain, the son of Ali, who will rise in the flesh to restore the true dynasty of Mahomet upon earth.
Every evening during the long month of mourning I was carried into the mosque in the arms of my Tartar nurse, to whom my mother, faithful Christian though she was, did not dream of refusing permission to fulfil her religious duties. I was too small to be questioned about my religion, and thus the doors of the mosque, so rigidly closed to all unbelievers, opened hospitably to the little intruder, who watched eagerly all the mysteries of that sacred place.
In the fantastic light of pine torches hundreds of men, naked to the waist and with shaven heads, danced around an old well that held the bones of those who had beaten themselves to death in the dance. Led by a chief who struck his head and slashed the air with a hissing sword, they passed before my eyes in an endless leaping circle, beating themselves with iron chains that scattered drops of blood. Under the red light of the torches, surrounded by agonized shadows, covered with streaming blood and sweat, they danced and chanted like visions from hell, while the drums beat like the pulses of monstrous things, and all around them, close against the walls, the crouch-ing women sobbed.
"Hanum Koutchoulou," admitted my old nurse, leading me home through the cool darkness, "it is true that your religion is easier than ours."
Indeed, our religion did not seem to be a very hard thing. Our household was contented to thank God for each meal and to call Him to our aid in time of sickness. Before sleeping and after rising, we earnestly repeated the Lord's Prayer. As it was in classical Armenian, of which we did not understand one word, we repeated it as a cabalistic formula and, like our Nani, we believed that it was a charm to frighten evil spirits.
In addition to these prayers we observed faithfully the Friday fast day, and the six weeks of Lent. During Lent we might not play the tarr or tambourine, wear gay dresses, or sing or laugh. The women wore black and sighed without ceasing; we children walked gravely. After six weeks of going without meat we had one hard day of fasting. This was the day of our Savior's death. It had been so painful to feel His long agony that it was a joy to know that it was ended. We slept tranquilly that night, having first looked at the beautiful garments we were to wear next day and at the colored eggs the servants had been preparing for us all that week.
In the morning all the world was happy; the bells of the churches were joyous. My mother, clasping us in her arms, smiling again with her beautiful eyes and soft lips, wished us joy, and told us that at last the Savior was saved. What happiness to know that He had mounted into Heaven! And what happiness to eat again kebab of mutton, cakes and fresh butter instead of horrid olive-oil!
We were quite convinced that our religion was better than that of the Mussulmans, and our old Nani, enlight-ened by us on that point, regretted very much that their mullahs had invented nothing to give them forgetfulness of their sins. She thought magnificent our way of wiping out ours by simply swallowing a little bread and some consecrated wine.
Their Muharram was harder than our Lent. In the middle of the night, awakened by the red light that the torches threw upon the domes of our churches, I heard the wild sound of their drums and their terrible shrieks. With old Nani I climbed to the roof of our house, where all the Mussulman servants crouched, moaning, tearing their hair and their garments and covering their heads with ashes, while the procession of penitents passed below. In spite of myself, I burst into tears, and the servants, deeply touched that a Christian should shed tears for their Prophet, crawled to my feet, gratefully kissing my hands and the hem of my nightrobe.
In bed, after repeating "Our Father", I added, "Dear, dear God, how happy I am that Thou hast created me Chris-tian and not Mussulman! I should never have been able to pull out my hair and to tear my flesh, nor to see my father and brothers killing themselves in honor of the Prophet."
But humbled by the sincerity and self-sacrifice of those unbelievers, I felt that they were more generous than we, because their Prophet received from them a profounder love than we gave our Savior, tortured, crucified and dead to atone for our sins.
Upon the inflamed horizon the sun, draped in ragged blue clouds, fell like an old king in anguish. It was evening in the Caucasus.
On the trails appeared the slowly moving gray and black files of the flocks, urged down to the folds by shep-herds and their dogs. On the footpaths that led to the springs the red veils of the Armenian women moved to and fro. Their bracelets tinkled, the copper heels of their shoes made delicate clinking sounds upon the slabs of stone. One by one they went down to the pool; in twos and threes they returned, enriched with the fresh water that brimmed their balanced jars and with the village news gleaned from the gossip at the spring. The bells of the leaders of the flocks chimed; the dogs barked. A laborer passed with his scythe. My brothers were returning from the hunt. They were burned by the sun, happy over the number of pheasants slung on their guns.
There was no twilight. In a moment, night painted black the blue of the sky, and the first stars pierced the darkness. Dinner was ready on the balcony. In the middle of a large cloth spread on a carpet the candles stood pro-tected from the wind by glass shades. From copper plates many kinds of vegetables and several tiny mountains of vari-ously colored rice poured out their odors of spices and saffron. In a large earthen basin filled with snow a golden melon crushed heaps of grapes, plums and cucumbers. A sheepskin filled with wine lay beside a po-rous clay vase of cool water. The pheasants, in rows on the platters, all with their little feet crisped and their breasts stuffed with raisins and onions, awak-ened in us an instant of mel-ancholy compassion, without diminishing in the least our eagerness to eat them. Before each of us, on a painted plate, our bread, thin and transparent as paper, lay ready to serve as fork and napkin. Not having dreamed of forks or napkins, we wrapped the bread about our fingers in order to eat daintily.
We stood while awaiting the entrance of my father and brothers. They entered in hier-archal order, and my brothers ranged themselves at my father's right on little mats laid around the cloth. In the same order we were placed at the left of our mother. The Christian servants came to stand behind us. The Mussulman servants were ab-sent; they took their meals apart because their religion forced them to regard us as impure.
A short prayer. Then the men took off their high fur bonnets, which they laid behind them on the carpet. The women kept their veils lowered, but we young children were freer; our faces were uncovered, but the movements of our mouths were uncertain and difficult for fear of show-ing our teeth, which in modesty we must hide. We chil-dren listened to our elders in silence, and replied with gestures. There was continual movement around us; a neighbor arrived; a few peasants came to talk of business affairs with my father. They were at once invited to share our dinner. From time to time the servants carried around the platters of food, walking across the cloth on naked feet that moved carefully among the dishes. Their veils fluttered like butterflies above the candles.
It was night, the mysterious night of shadow and stars. My father talked with the peasants, my mother sat on the balcony holding in her arms our beautiful fading Katariné. I was alone in the garden. The breeze touched my cheeks like invisible fingers. Outside the walls of the garden music called me. Its many voices came from the camp of the sick, our summer visitors. For miraculous waters sprang from the white breasts of our mountains into hundreds of basins cut in the rock; these pools were able to cure all the sicknesses of the world.
During the torrid hours of blazing sun the miraculous springs were filled with bathers. At the first breeze of evening these came from the waters and prepared for the night's festivities. At that hour we saw the Mussulmans prostrate on their rugs, the Christians telling their beads, the Jews with little black cubes tied to their brows, the pagans making their offering at little fires. Tartars, Armenians, Circassians, all forgot their centuries of hate and lived and prayed, each in his own way, in amity together.
Music and song rose like an incense from the clustered tents. Here a flute, monotonous and full of longing, wailed to the stars the yearning of the East for the Infinite; there a savage drum gave sound to the rhythm of the universe; near by a nasal voice mourned the losing of all human joys in death; and far out on the plain a shepherd with a reed glorified the rising sun and the song of birds. Other shepherds in a group sang naïve, happy verses, while the Arab and the Persian drew from their breasts the melody of their unutterable longings for happiness.
To my childish heart these voices brought a sense of beauty and of pain, and the mystery of existence seemed to penetrate like a mist the red veils and the silken folds that wrapped my small body. I melted, I dissolved into the stars and the night, while my feet, accompanied by the clinking of the anklets I had put on at play, led me as though in enchantment toward a white figure that danced near the pools.
It was the beautiful daughter of a household near our own. Only a few weeks ago she had been married to a young sculptor of amber. Her father, in honor of his only child, had spread for all comers a feast that surpassed all feasts in richness and plenty. In the midst of the garden, upon a raised platform, the young husband sat cross-legged like a sultan on his throne. Our peasants, between eating and drinking, danced to the music of horns blown by our mountaineers, while on the white balcony of the house women in many-colored veils sur-rounded the young wife who listened silently to the nup-tial chants. All this was too beautiful, too splendid, not to arouse envy. in the hearts of the wicked. By their curses and their enchantments the young wife had fallen into the power of the demons.
Hardly had she been married when she felt herself suffocating. Fever came into her garden and blew its hot breath upon her. Charms could not keep it away. Then she coughed; there was blood on her lips. My father declared to her people that she was consumptive and needed only rest, good food and much sunshine, but our village always doubted those who knew the meaning of written words, since those who could read and write on talismans often brought evil. Therefore no one lis-tened to my father, but a famous wise woman was brought to give her advice.
"It is the work of evil spirits," she said. "Only one thing may perhaps save her. She must dance without stopping for three days and nights. Made uneasy by her ceaseless movements and by the shrill sound of the flutes the evil spirits may perhaps abandon her."
So the sick girl was brought to the miraculous pools and bathed. Then, dressed in the bridal garments that had brought upon her the jealousy of the wicked, decked in her jewels, apart from the crowds, she danced, upheld by her mother and grandmother.
She danced, slim and ghostly before the dark rocks, beside the deserted pools. Sometimes her movements were slow; they expressed sorrow and her longing to stay by the side of her dear husband. Sometimes they were fast and furious. Her whirling arms and struggling body protested against Death, which would take her from all she loved. Then her gestures, slow and yielding like those of a tired child, offered to God her resignation to His mysterious wish.
Even while I watched, on the third night of her dancing, suddenly blood flowed black on her white veils, she shud-dered, her tired arms fell, and she hung motionless in the arms of her mother. Only the shrill flutes, played by the squatting musicians in the shadows, went on for a moment before they, too, ceased.
Always after that time, those who suffered from mys-terious ills drew me toward them while they sought relief or forgetfulness in the dance. Most mysterious of them all, to me, were the chamanns, dervishes of the Mongols, who came to us from some far-away steppe. Their dance, more violent, more fanatic and more exalted even than those of the possessed women, filled my heart with fascinated horror. Having whirled for a long time to the wild and savage cadences of the drums, they ceased to breathe. Then one by one they fell as though in a drunken lethargy. Piously they were covered with cloths and left lying hours upon hours, lost in that nirvana of absolute not-being for which they had longed as men in the desert long for water.
My uncle, the priest Ter-Barsegh, patriarch of the village of Zerguéran, loved to sit through the summer evenings on the balcony of his house with his people gathered around him.
At this hour the laborers had put the buffaloes into their dark stables, and the shepherds had fastened in the fold their goats and their lambs. The women, coming home from the fountain, had placed the brimming jar in its niche, had served the simple meal of cheese, fruits and wild honey, and had laid the children to sleep on rugs. Their day's work done, they prepared to visit my uncle, that they might hear his marvelous tales. Over their coarse blue blouses the men put on coats of thick black satin striped with gold, and they replaced their cotton turbans by heavy fur bonnets, that they might appear in dignified garb before their venerable priest and in favorable aspect before the eyes of the women. Meanwhile the women added to their ordinary dress of rainbow-colored skirt and wide-sleeved blouse their velvet jackets of many colors striped with gold, and clasped about their waists girdles of carved silver. Carefully swathed in many veils of red, they followed the men up the steep path that led to my uncle's balcony, and sat in decorous order upon the straw matting that covered its floor of earth.
While waiting for the stories to begin, the men lighted their pipes and smoked gravely, looking out upon the gorges and the cliffs that imprison the rebellious Aras. Against the sky stood Odzissar, the mysterious mountain that none dared approach. On its topmost peak, on an onyx throne surrounded by multitudes of venemous ser-pents, sat the Queen of all the reptiles in the world. In her mouth she held a diamond which, one night in every year, she spat into the air. At that moment, we were told, the darkness around the earth was lighted by its flashing. Only certain of the initiate and powerful--sorcerers and kings--could behold that light.
A torch of resinous pine, fastened to the stone wall of my uncle's house, kept the shadows at bay. They lurked among the twisted trunks of the aged trees that enclosed the balcony. From the branches of the trees came a low sound, as though the night were breathing all around us. But in the strong light of the torch, which could resist the most furious wind, the mountain people in their brilliant colors resembled a flower garden. There was nothing to fear while we were near my uncle, who sat in the midst of us upon an embroidered cushion, his eyes benevolent and his long beard like a drift of snow upon his breast.
The evening began always with a solemn recitation of the Shasaka, the "Rosary of Jewels". This was a litany, invoking under names of magnificence and splendor, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, their archangels and their angels. To this my uncle added an invocation addressed to Satan, Prince of the Shadows and Master of the Abysses.
My uncle ended his incantation. He smoked his pipe for a long time in a profound silence. We were aware of the night, and of the deepening coolness of the moun-tain air. Djavahir, my uncle's bowed old wife, the one-eyed, bitter woman, stealthily brought from the house a glowing brazier. Its light upon her withered face was like that of a sorcerer's furnace. I could never realize that this hideous person had been the most beau-tiful of the village women fifty years before.
Then my uncle began his tale. What treasures he had stored in that venerable head, behind those eyes that had watched a hundred and one years pass over our moun-tains! Things seen and heard, old myths, legends and traditions, all gathered into a Christian faith that embraced all religions, a faith in which all roads led to Paradise.
The summer ended, the rose-petals fell, and in their place appeared the red rose-berries. We should have gone to our winter home in Shamakha, but the unexpected death of our little Katariné kept us in the country. A strange serenity filled our lives. One would have said that the moon was broken to fill us with its light.
The last moment came. All through the night we watched beside her, recalling her last words and all her last gestures, which seemed to us filled with mystic meanings. By what heedlessness of destiny had she come into the world?
At dawn all the village was in our garden and in the court, where the men were solemnly seated upon carpets. Through the open doors of the house poured the lamenta-tions of the hired mourners who knelt around the couch of the dead. Impassive and white, in the midst of their hypocritical blue mourning garments, she seemed carved of marble.
Soon, all together, we accompanied her to the church. Two of our brothers carried the litter on which she lay, covered with a white cloth. Behind it walked my uncle, the priest Ter-Barsegh. In order to shorten the tedium of the long mass he had begun it, as was his custom, while putting on his funeral robes, he continued it while on the way and he finished it on entering the church.
It was ended. We should never see her any more. And the thought that this very night the jackals and the blood-suckers of Terjan-Bagh would come to disturb the light earth above her and to appease their bloody thirst upon this poor little body, stopped the flow of life in our veins. My mother in her violet mourning veils fell sobbing upon the body. Unconscious, she was drawn away.
Outside, in the sunshine, all around us life had already assumed its heedless way. The preparations for the funeral fête, more lavish than these for a wedding, engrossed a hundred old women. The young were laughing and chattering, the half-naked children tumbled around the braziers, attracted by the curious odors of the funeral meats perfumed with herbs gathered from the cemetery.
Only our anguished hearts cried out for Katariné.
We had returned to our winter residence at Shamakha, formerly an Armenian city, later a principality of Tartar khans, inde-pendent and sumptuous until its capture by the Cossacks of Russia.
Caverns black as the eyes of a monster set deep in the rocks told us the terrible stories of the prisons of the Middle Ages, which were carved in their depths. Here and there were traces of old castles that had disappeared; turrets with their teeth decayed. All this was drowned in gardens where the song of the poplars reigned over the sadness of days that were gone. Only their murmuring and the ceaseless liquid voice of the clear streams in empty streets between high white walls recalled the glories of King Dandouk and the Queen of Shamakha, and the beauty of houris incarnated in the sweet bodies of dancers, who had descended from Para-dise itself for love of the khans.
Glorious in all Asia Minor, these little dancers wandered from city to city, kindling all hearts with the fiery music of their silver ornaments. Little goddesses with dreamy eyes in which were relighted at times the fires of all human passions, little bodies trembling, passionate, tender and fierce! They troubled my childhood. In the drowsy silence of our garden noons, when all but I slept in the shadows, I imitated furtively the undulations of their ethereal bodies, the waving of their delicate veils. I was far from imagining that one day I, too, should go wandering in the world like one of those dancers of Shamakha!
Our large white house, built on a little hill, looked over treetops and surrounding walls to Kez-Galassi, Mountain of the Virgin. Upon this hill once lived a beau-tiful Armenian virgin, whose sacrilegious love for a Mussulman had been discovered by her parents. The flame which she had not conquered in her heart had forever destroyed her honor. Yet rather than deliver her to be stoned to death, her parents had chosen to punish her themselves, thus washing from their name the shame she had brought upon it. They had isolated her upon the mountain to die of hunger and cold.
That rock, that isolated girl, her despairing love, her unrealized desires, her bitter-cold nights when the winds tore her hair and her veils--those were the single book of love of my childhood.
I resolved that I, too, would love a Mussulman. Yes, to avenge her I would love even a pirate. But I would not love a coward. My lover would be brave; he would do a thousand deeds of prowess to bring me bracelets and ear-drops of gold. And when our love was discovered, he would never leave me alone upon a moun-tain to die; he would tear down the very mountain to save me!
One night a terrible hurricane shook the doors of our house. My first thought was for the virgin of Kez-Galassi. "O unhappy heart, what did you do alone upon the mountain in such a night as this? In the cold, in the wind, alone, you wept while your mother and sisters slept on cushions of the feathers of dead birds. Why was I not near you? I would have been your sister. I would have clung to you, dried your tears with my hair, and if any one had tried to separate us, we would have thrown ourselves, together, from the same precipice!"
The days, the evenings and the nights passed monotonously. In the mornings, stretched upon a carpet in the garden, motionless, my eyes closed, my ears lulled by the chant of the frogs in the lakes of Hadji-Layalagh, I wandered through imagined gardens of love. From time to time I opened my eyes to see that no tarantula had crawled upon me, that no adder was balancing above my head.
The muezzin chanted the noon-hour; I arose.
The afternoons were long. I wandered through the house, purposelessly. One day I found my brother Alikh reposing upon cushions; the sunshine touched his white forehead and his heavy black locks. His eyes were large and filled with dreams. I stopped. How handsome he was! He called me and gently made me recline beside him. Hesitating, I stretched myself out timidly.
"How beautiful you are in your white veils," he said. "1 would marry you, if I were not your brother."
I blushed. "I regret also that you are my brother. I do indeed desire to have a husband as beautiful as you are, Alikh."
"Perhaps he will be even more beauti-ful," he said jealously. "And you will learn to love an unknown blockhead more than your brother."
I tried vainly to protest.
To comfort me, he promised that he would never marry until I was given to another man, although he was twenty years old, and I scarcely fourteen.
I entered my father's library. Four rows of bound books repulsed me by their cold gravity. I went up to the great embossed silver chests like little sarcoph-agi, which ornamented the corners. I opened one. There were ancient manu-scripts, written in all the languages of the Orient. Were there not there the con-fessions of poet-dervishes, of forgotten minstrels, the sublime pages of prophets?
I opened another chest filled with Armenian books. These were stories by the great Raffi. I looked at one, at another. The heroines of those stories resembled me so nearly that I felt that I was reading about myself. Lost in the contents of that chest, I read until evening blotted the pages, now smiling, now weep-ing with emotion. Closing the book, I pitied those ignorant of the happiness given by the poets.
Our life, apparently so happy, had its shadows. One of my five brothers, a veritable Prodigal Son, saddened our hearts. He was constantly absent, but the whole province spoke of his tumultu-ous life at Dgiguit. At home, we avoided speaking his name, so much were we pained by his extravagant adventures, which surpassed all imagining. However, we all loved him for his beautiful high-bred nature and for his proud manners and carriage.
It was he, alone of all the children, to whom my father had given a European education, following the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whom my father had believed equal to Buddha. Weary of his great learning, unable any longer to love the little joys of life, my father completely shared the disgust which Rousseau felt for civilization, the corrupter of nature. He had agreed with Rousseau that we should return to the primitive state and allow our instincts to develop freely. And, according to Rousseau, if any one possessed an evil instinct, punishment was unnecessary, for he would be punished directly by the inevitable consequences of his actions. Therefore, since the most natural state for the ideal man would be the society of the animals, my brother had been surrounded by them. In order not to influence him with our Asiatic customs, my father kept him apart from us in a solitary lodge.
Result: after seventeen years, this ardent nature, true Caucasian in emotion and violence, became a veritable bashi-bazouk. He was never without his weapons; at the slightest rousing of his anger he pursued us with his dagger; he flogged the servants for the smallest mis-takes, and if he were hungry and obliged to wait while meats were brought, he tore the cloth, smashed the porcelain and sil-ver, and, leaping upon his horse, he rode off to the near-by villages.
My father, of a very sweet nature and perfectly disciplined as are all Orientals, never punished him, knowing that such was the result of educating him according to Rousseau. We saw our father, miserable, walking to and fro in my mother's room, declaring to her in agony that all Europeans were bandits and that this Rousseau, whose writings led them to liberty, was their chief. My poor mother, ignorant of the death of poor Rousseau, replied through her tears, "May the sun turn cold to this Rousseau, may the wash-ers of corpses carry him away, may no grass grow upon his gravel"
It was Sunday, the day of enforced idleness. An illimitable boredom weighed upon our souls. We faced obligatory visits to our elderly aunts, whom my father called, "Our Saints", and we, "The Pyramids". That penitential visit would follow the mass, two hours long, which we must endure standing, our hands crossed on our breasts with an air of piety which concealed the agony of our super-human efforts not to yawn.
Those two hours were my first revela-tion of eternity. In vain we counted to one thousand; in vain we repeated to ourselves the stories we knew by heart.
But today was the fête of the Resurrec-tion, and when we reached the church, there were no empty places. While we stood at the doors, listening from afar to the choir singing the Gloria, suddenly we heard the roar of thunder. What happi-ness! Rain would release us, we would return to the house, we would not visit the aunts! We lifted our eyes toward the clouds--there were no clouds! As-tonished, we had piously bowed our heads again, when a strange thunder resounded beneath our feet, long and menacing like the bellowing of ferocious beasts in underground cages.
"Hurry away from the walls!" said my father's voice, troubled and stern. Scarce-ly had we reached the middle of the square when a terrible shock flung us to the ground along with the uprooted trees, which moaned like the dying.
My eyes turned toward the church, and a horrible picture made my brain reel. The beamed basilica was slowly, softly sinking, like folds of cloth, upon the kneel-ing people. The exalted priest was lead-ing them in prayer for a miracle. And an immense sigh, smothered and horrible, came toward us through the open doors. Of the great church and all that crowd of worshipers, there remained only a few ruined columns.
"Pray!" my mother was saying, as she took our hands. "Pray; the Day of Judg-ment has come!” And she prostrated herself, repeating prayers. My lips, paralyzed, capable of no words, remained motionless; my eyes followed the naked bodies of women fleeing from the baths. Two of them were coming toward us with clasped hands, tottering, when the earth quietly opened beneath their feet and swallowed them. I lost consciousness.
A few hours of nightmare, of delirium. The air cleared itself of dust and resumed its azure color. A gentle wind caressed the leaves of trees with broken boughs.
No more Shamakha, no more delicious gardens, no more houses among the golden
vines, no more palaces of the khans. All was destroyed.
Upon the road that came from the desert, a few camels looked at us kindly through astonished eyes. We caressed these poor beasts, friends in our misery. In a few hours they would take us from this horrible place toward another life by the white and sterile borders of the Caspian Sea.
II. Baku
At the end of the summer we were living on the cape of Apsheron, in a large house amid Tartar gardens, sterile squares of sand surrounded by high walls. Here a few fig-trees struggled to hold up dusty leaves; half covered with the hot sand, a few vine-leaves lay parched and crisp. The vines themselves were buried deep in the protecting earth; to reach a bunch of grapes, one must dig away a foot of sand. The bare stone walls burned the fingers, the glistening sand burned the feet, and the shadows of the fig-trees were not cool. There was refuge only in the spacious house, behind the balconies protected from the sun by mats of straw. At night ladders placed against the wall led us to the roof, where we slept beneath the stars.
The Caspian Sea, smooth and shining, reflected a yel-low sky. Yellow were the houses, yellow the trees. The shores of the sea, covered with salt, lost themselves in the flat distance like clouds. Their vague white contours, uncertain in the shadows of the night, quivering in the heat of noon, expressed an indefinable melancholy.
My mother was sad, and my father, troubled. For sev-eral days we had known that they were talking together long and confidentially. So we were not at all surprised when our mother called us all together for a serious family council. In a few words my father told us that it was the will of God that we should completely alter our way of life. In a little while we would go to our European house in Baku. Forced to live in that Tartar city, which had become Russian, we should have to abandon our Asiatic customs, and in the future we must be pupils in Russian schools. Soon we gave up our Tartar gardens, our long, loose, gay-colored dresses, and set out for Baku.
Our hearts fell when we first saw that city. It seemed to us that we had entered Hell. The ground, damp with oil, the black pools, the monstrous buildings, soaked in resin, the half-naked men, blackened with smoke, who toiled like fiends in the glow of immense furnaces, the horrible noise of hammers and the shrill screaming of sirens made that city a kingdom of convicts.
The wheels rattled over round cobblestones. We were in a street of markets. Under little shelters of rugs supported by poles the merchants sat cross-legged on low wooden divans. We saw again the green waters of the Caspian Sea and, on the other hand, the gray walls of the ancient Tartar citadel, where for ten centuries only Tartars have lived. The hill above it was covered with low houses--a honeycomb of thick white walls. Here and there in the little courts, a tree or a rose-bush struggled to live.
At last, a large house, heavy and imposing--ours. Here, in the Armenian quarter, the richest part of the city, all the houses were tall and grave. And here, as in a nightmare, our life was transformed into a burden. The rooms, large and solemn, were filled with hideous chairs, tables and beds. The mornings no longer filled us with joy. Hardly had we risen, dressed and eaten, when we must take our books and go to school.
Dressed in gray uniform, with our hair in braids that hung down our backs, we felt like strangers among the fair-haired Russian children. Our heavy braids, black and glistening, drew upon us their jeers. They pulled our thick braids and called them "tails of Arabian horses". Struck by the slender curves of our oval faces and by the melancholy expression of our large dark eyes, the kindest among them called us "Egyptian mummies".
With difficulty we restrained our rage. In turn we mocked their heavy and dull aspect and their pink, soft flesh, which disgusted us as much as our golden color displeased them. But our retorts were weapons that turned against us; for each Armenian word that escaped our lips we were severely punished, for we were forbidden to speak our language in a Russian school.
Deprived of luncheon for our crime, we returned to our house in the evening, fainting with hunger. Consoled a little by the tenderness of our mother and by our brothers' threats against our tormentors, we listened to our father.
"In such circumstances," he told us, "do as the ancient Greeks did when ill-treated by the Romans; do not deign to reply."
We adopted this counsel, but our brothers, hardier and more violent in anger than we, beat their Russian schoolmates whenever they cried "Salty!" in mockery of our ancient custom of dipping the new-born into salt. And if the teachers protected the banterers, my brothers protested violently. This brought upon one of them--the pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau--the Wolf's Card, a dis-honorable certificate that the Russian colleges give rebels, in order to make it impossible for them to receive any further official instruction.
With such daily provocation, we soon became interested in the political talk of our elders. We knew that we suf-fered when we spoke our own melodious language, because Baku was a conquered city. And very soon we learned the meaning of a new word that held for us all the terror that the demons had once inspired; it was the word "pogrom".
Our Caucasus was then under the rule of Prince Galit-zine, the viceroy, who had promised us so much that we all called him "the Archangel". He deluged us with manifestoes richly studded with the words, "God" and "Czar", in which he urged us to be perfect citizens. But these manifestoes transformed themselves into pog-roms, large or small, according to the mood of "the Archangel".
It was not surprising that the ardent servants of the Czar, in wielding their power over the peoples of con-quered countries and even over their own unfortunate moujiks, were not aware that they were bringing about the fall of their monarchy. Finland, Poland and the Caucasus, on fire with a hate too long held in check, only waited for a signal to revolt. The Russo-Japanese War came unexpectedly to agitate racial passions. The conduct of hostilities, unfavorable to the Russians, delighted the rebels; and the news of their defeats was read in the papers with ill-concealed pleasure.
No one doubted that the end of the war would be a catastrophe for Russia. The government could scarcely maintain its balance. The Cossacks, mounted on powerful horses, appeared in the streets. Their fierce, small eyes gleamed under tall fur bonnets; whips hung at their wrists. Students were forbidden to meet in groups of twos or threes, for fear of plots. On our way to school one morning we heard screams, the clatter of horses' hoofs and the whistling of whips. At night, huddled together in our beds by the light of candles, we were filled with terror and mirth by the tales of the servants.
From them we heard that two bombs had been found at the home of a rich and dissipated spendthrift. He was arrested and led through the streets, escorted by guards with unsheathed swords, and left in a dungeon of the fort-ress, to be shot next morning. Powerful friends reached the ear of "the Archangel" in time to save his life. The surprise of the Cossack commander was great when he learned that the two bombs, which no one dared touch, were the balls used by an English masseur engaged to ply his peaceful trade upon the too-round belly of the rich man, who was anxious about his figure. Happily, the Cossacks learned the difference between medicine and munitions in time to save his life.
My sisters and I dampened our pillows with tears of laughter when we heard of ludicrous invasions of Arme-nian weddings, betrothals, funerals and even baptisms by heavily armed officers who expected to find revolutions, even in cradles. But the magic of vodka soothed their suspicions, and fêtes were resumed under supervisors that often became the most hilarious of the guests.
"Ah, you may laugh, my young ladies!" said the ser-vants, shaking their heads ominously. There was no laughter in our dreams, filled with vague apprehensions and terrors, and waking seemed a part of nightmare when at midnight we sat up in our beds, aroused by shouts and the pounding of saber-hilts on our gates. Then, half stupefied with sleep and fear, we ran to our mother in our nightgowns, while the most hidden corners of our house were searched, even to unclean laundry, kitchen utensils, beds. Amid the wails of the servants and the harsh orders of officers, our rooms were reduced to a chaos of overturned tables, emptied chests, heaps of rugs and blankets. Grumbling, the searchers went away at last, leaving us trembling, weeping, divided by fear and anger.
Needless to say, we took all precautions against being suspected of revolutionary sympathies. We suppressed so completely all use of the words "liberty", "revolt" or "the people" that not even among ourselves, hardly in our own minds, did we utter them. Those words, found by chance in the most innocent correspondence, cost months in prison both for those who wrote them and for those who received them.
Yet even among these shadows there remained in my heart one ray of the sun, and in it bloomed a little flower, the flower of my first love. Rahim, son of a baker, a Mussulman, poor, ragged, but beautiful, with his golden skin, in the golden sunlight beneath our walls--it was his eyes that kindled in my heart its first romance.
I was fourteen, perceiving for the first time the beauty of neck and arms and shadows of unbound hair reflected in the mirror. I dreamed of love, of a gallant lover, handsome and rich, who would give me the world to hold in my hands and be too richly rewarded by my smile. I dreamed of a prince, and I found him in a baker's son.
We passed his father's little shop whenever we left our gates. It stood against our wall. On the low counter that separated it from the street, between the piles of bread, sat Rahim. He was slender and strong. Be-neath his bonnet of astrakhan, his eyes, a trifle slanted, were like dark topaz.
It was his smile that first made me hate, with violent hatred, the ugly gray garments I must wear to school. I wished that he might see me in my beautiful Armenian robes; I wished to conceal my face from him beneath the fluttering red veils that reveal only a sparkle of eyes and a hint of curving eyebrows. I hurried past, pretending not to have seen him.
At night, dreaming with open eyes, I said to myself, "He is beautiful. He is only the son of a Tartar baker," and in delicious pain I felt myself doomed, so young, to the tragedy of an unhappy love.
In the morning, with the bread which his father delivered to us each day, came a small Tartar cake that I loved. In the center of the cake was set a forest flower. It was Rahim's little gift to me, Hanum Gueusal, the Beautiful Lady. I looked timidly at my mother, but this delicate attention, far from making her angry, amused her very much.
In the evenings, when his father, after the last ablu-tions, wrapped himself in his burnoose and went to sleep beside his breads, Rahim crouched beside a brazier, his eyes closed, his face against the disk of a tambourine, and sang softly for entire hours the lamentations of loves without memory or hope. Those melodies, voluptuous and plaintive, rose to me through the twilight, completing the beauty of the deep sky and the melancholy of the Caspian Sea furrowed by the beams of the moon.
Leaning against the railing on the balcony, I listened, and my heart became a place of dreams.
Meanwhile the policies of Prince Galitzine went their way. He issued an order to confiscate the wealth of our churches. The Cossacks executed it immediately. Mounted on their horses, they rode even into the sanctu-aries to tear from the priests the sacred relics.
The whole population, even Mussulman and heathen, revolted against this desecration: the clergy, no matter of what religion, are revered by all the races of Asia. Popu-lar resentment infuriated the Cossacks, who increased their ruthlessness. But that did not prevent the miners from striking, nor the students from making demonstra-tions. A social earthquake rumbled beneath our feet. Every one plunged into politics. Even my little brother, eight years old, was "playing Cossack" from morning to night. Riding on my father's cane, he charged upon the throng of Socialists (a dozen straw-bottomed chairs), lashing them with his whip and singing to the tune of the Marseillaise a song of his own composition, "God save the Czar! Liberty, liberty, liberty and the Czar!"
My father, catching him at this play, which too painfully reminded us of the reality, placed him in a corner with his nose to the wall, a punishment which the little rebel endured bravely--it did not at all hinder him from resuming the game. And my father, his head bowed, walked gravely up and down, saying, "We are on the eve of grave trouble, grave trouble."
One day our servants, returning from market, brought strange news. The Russians were buying great quantities of grain and rice in order to feed their households during the massacres of Armenians by the Tartars. Massacres? We were incredulous, imagining that such things hap-pened only in Turkey. My father refused to listen to such rumors, knowing the friendliness existing between the Tartars and the Armenians of the Caucasus.
Alas, we were soon undeceived!
My mother, my sisters and I were in the bath. In the little room with wooden walls dripping with moisture, we lounged on wooden benches against the wall. Servants, barefoot and wrapped in white cloths, fed with large blocks of wood the huge Russian stove that filled three-quarters of the room, while others emptied over red-hot stones jars of cold water, which instantly became steam. We lay gasping, wiping the streams of perspiration from our bodies with wet hands and longing for the moment when, refreshed and cool in clean linens, we should lounge on the balcony, eating fruits and sherbets.
Suddenly we heard a sharp, cracking sound. We sat up, startled. "What have you done?" my mother said sharply to the servants. But they were standing motionless, as surprised as we. The sounds came again and again. Then, a pattering of them, like a hail-storm.
"The massacre!" cried my mother, with white lips. The servants ran, their screams trailing behind them.
A profound indignation drowned in me all other feeling. "Yes, yes," I thought, "like miserable beasts we shall be butchered by the daggers of these villains, armed against a peaceful family that has never harmed them. And my five brothers, beautiful as young gods, will die like sheep, unable to defend themselves."
The house was filled with lamentations and the clatter of running feet. The high iron gates of the court had been barricaded. My brothers, with a few man-servants, were waiting behind them. The crackling we heard was the rattle of bullets against the iron. Now and then, near or far away, we heard hideous screams.
The Christian resignation of my father, who was on his knees, praying, roused my indignation to fury. "Pray, father. As for me, in the name of God and His Son, one of these villains will know the sweetness of my teeth in his throat."
From time to time a fusillade of shots struck our gates, our walls. Tinkling falls of glass were heard; the win-dows of the upper floors were being shattered by bullets. We heard shouting in the streets, the crash of breaking things and sudden stampedes of many feet. In this way the day passed, while we felt the slow approach of the moment when, the first fury of killing abated, hundreds of Tartars, encouraged by the Russians, would make a concerted attack upon us and our wealth.
Night came. To die in the darkness seemed infinitely terrible to me, who so loved the sun. A kind of stupor at last came over me. I spent the night neither awake nor asleep, huddled beside my mother, my poor mother who tried to hold in her arms all her daughters at once, not knowing which of us she would, at the last, defend with her own body.
Morning. My little brother, miserable in the midst of this terror that he did not understand, began to cry that he was hungry. Then we realized that there was not food in the house for all. Betrayed by my father's too little knowledge of humanity, we had not provided for a siege, as the Russians had done. We women did not eat. We gave all that we had to my brothers.. Dur-ing that day we began to learn what hunger is.
All around us the killing was still going on. Late that afternoon the house next ours was raided and all the household was killed. I saw one of the Armenian maid-servants pursued across the flat roof by a drunken Tartar with a bloody knife. When I looked again, he was throwing her body from the roof to the courtyard, where smoke and laughter told me that they were burning the furniture of the house.
Since our house had not yet been attacked, we thought that the Tartars intended to starve us. My brothers threatened to rush into the street, to die after killing as many Tartars as they could. My baby brother cried all day long.
"O God, what sin have I committed, that I must suffer so?" my mother said, trying to hush him.
At nightfall I heard a tambourine beneath our walls. It seemed to me like a memory of days so long past that I could only faintly remember them. It was Rahim, sing-ing again the lamentations of love. I looked down from my balcony and saw him dimly in the shadows. I could not see his face; I saw nothing but the shadows and the moonlit half of the deserted street, where the body of some one killed two days before still lay. But I felt that his eyes were fixed on my balcony, and as a sign to him I stretched one hand into the moonlight.
Then I saw him move into the light. He looked this way and that and stealthily opened his burnoose to show me, hidden beneath it, a loaf of bread. I understood. At the risk of his life, he was sending us food. He, a Tartar, whose people were killing mine! I wept.
The servants let down a rope and drew up baskets of bread and meat. I promised myself never to love any one but Rahim. Yes, if at that moment I, an Armenian and a Christian, could have married that son of a Tartar baker, I would have done it. I would have served him humbly all my life, in return for that one beautiful act.
It was the second night. My mother, my sisters and I were awake at midnight, huddled together around a brazier in a little room at the head of the stairs. My little brother, enjoying the delight of not being put to bed, was playing with a box of paper soldiers, which he marched and countermarched across his rug. Suddenly we heard running feet on the stairs, and one of our servants screamed, "The Tartars! The Tartars!” In our over-whelming terror a thought, a word, was impossible. Like a madness, a desire to run, only to run, no matter where, since death was everywhere, seized us all. My mother, grasping Héguiné and Zelah by the hands, fled blindly toward the stairway. Passing my little brother, I clutched him. But he, understanding nothing and enraged by being interrupted at his play, took hold of a heavy table with both hands, kicking and screaming.
"Come, come!" I said, tugging at him. He hung on with the strength of rage, crying, "I won't leave my soldiers!” To satisfy him, I gathered up a handful of the soldiers, but he still clung to the table. "Put them all in their box, all!" he insisted. "I will not go without all my soldiers."
I went down on my knees and began to throw his soldiers into the box. The door opened, and the room seemed filled with Tartars, Tartars with shaved heads and unsheathed knives. My brother screamed. Then I heard a voice saying, in Armenian, "Do not be afraid, sister. We have come to save you."
My brothers had opened the gates to a handful of brave Armenians disguised as Tartars, who had come to rescue us. In a stupor I followed them, and I remember only that we went stealthily through dark ways, hiding sometimes in deeper shadows on the crooked streets. We reached a great empty house in the Russian quarter of the city. It belonged to a rich Russian, who had offered it as a shelter for the refugees. The floors of the large, bare rooms were a mass of huddled Armenians, who had lost everything and who sat silently, with blank, staring eyes.
From the brave men who had rescued us we learned that Prince Galitzine had had the happy thought of organizing a little series of massacres between the Mussulmans and the Christians, in order to divide them and prevent a general rising of all the Caucasian peoples against his government. The entire absence of police or Cossacks in the streets could only prove the truth of this genial program.
We had brought nothing with us; we had thought only of saving our lives. This house inhabited by misery gave us shelter, but no food nor drink. The little food and water that foraging bands of armed men could bring back to us were divided among the children and the sick. The house was often under Tartar fire, but none of the murder-ing bands dared attack us, in numbers as we were, and armed.
On the fifth day the Cossacks again appeared in the city. Riding down the streets on their horses, their revolvers held ready to fire, they at once, without a shot, imposed peace and order.
We returned to our house, expecting to find it in ruins. As if by a miracle, it had not even been entered. All was as we had left it. Even my little brother's paper soldiers lay waiting for him. Our servants, gathering the gossip of the bazars, explained this miracle. Some one among the Tartars had spread the tale that our house was filled with bombs from cellar to roof, and no one had dared approach it.
A few weeks passed. Rumors of new massacres began to circulate through the city. This time no one was incredulous; each household prepared for defense. Again the police and the Cossacks disappeared; again the barbarian Tartars, insane with vodka and fully armed, fell upon the Armenian quarter.
At the end of the fourth day the Cossacks reappeared, bringing "peace", with revolvers in their hands. Thousands of dead lay in the streets and covered the Christian and Mussulman cemeteries. The odor of the corpses stifled us. Everywhere women with mad eyes were seek-ing their children, and husbands were moving the heaps of rotting flesh.
It was announced that a mass for the dead would be celebrated in the great square and that the Governor of Baku, Prince Nakachidzé, would honor our dead with his glorious presence.
The great square was packed with human bodies. The black and violet veils of the women, the colored turbans and tall fur caps of the men, were a mosaic laid before the open doors of the church. Because we had arrived a little late, we stood on the threshold of a little shop at one side of the square.
Preceded by an escort of Cossacks, haughty in their high astrakhan bonnets, their colored sashes and wide blue trousers and glistening boots, the Prince arrived with his suite. Hardly had he entered, hardly had the choir begun the mass when a horrible explosion, followed in-stantly by many more, buried the first notes of the Miserere. A groan burst from the great throat of the crowd.
A dozen bombs had fallen upon the Prince and his suite; they were dead. And hardly did we know what was happening before the Cossacks were let loose. All those blond, robust horsemen, with purple faces, hurled themselves upon us, emitting their traditional piercing whistle. Like demons from Hell their great horses, with quivering nostrils, charged upon the packed masses of human flesh. Pressed against the grating of the shopfront, unable to move, I saw a huge horse strike down the man beside me, tearing at his flesh with its teeth. In a few minutes the square was emptied, save for multitudes of corpses, heaps of rags slowly exuding blood.
That night the whole city rose in a fury no Cossack could stamp out. The leaders among Tartars and Armenians met and swore upon the Bible and the Koran to fight together loyally against the infamous Prince Galitzine. Beneath the unconquerable turmoil of re-bellion there was a feast of love; in the streets Christians and Mussulmans embraced each other beneath the very eyes of the Cossacks. The government was helpless before that uprising of two hundred thousand people against its little band of professional killers.
A new governor arrived to replace "the Archangel". And at once a general strike, supported by the entire population, took the place of the riots. For two months the oil-wells were idle, no trains ran, there was no water, no light. We lived like people in a besieged city; we divided carefully each day our little store of food, rigor-ously rationed by my father, who, as a leader of the Armenians, was supporting the strike that beggared us.
Yet not all our hours were tragic, nor even sad. The human spirit is a fountain; no weight can wholly suppress it. We had our happy hours in the gardens, and friends came and went as always.
Though Rahim could no longer send me the small cake I loved, his little offering of a flower appeared each morn-ing on the small loaf of bread his father could supply to us. In the evenings his tambourine still sang of hopeless loves, and I--I will confess it--dreamed that some day I might speak to him.
One Sunday, dressed in our prettiest gowns, we were expecting some guests whom my mother had invited to drink coffee with us. Suddenly, we heard in the street a sound of singing. It was the Russian hymn, "God Save Our Holy Czar".
Hastily veiling ourselves, we went out on the balcony and saw a great proces-sion corning down the street. A beauti-ful portrait of the Czar, painted on silk and upheld on golden poles, led the way, followed by many silken banners, all carried by Russians, their heads bared. Behind them came a great crowd of Russians and Tartars, intermingled.
What was our surprise to see the banners and the portrait of the Czar stop before our house. The men who carried them raised still louder their hymn to God. Then the hymn ended in a sudden howl. "Down with the Armenians! Death to the dogs! Death to the unbelievers!” Already the gates had given way, and the mob poured into our court.
In the hallway we were met by a manservant. "The Czar has given them a constitution!" he said. His stiff lips fascinated me. "Every one is free to do as he likes. That is why--that is why--the Cossacks are burning the quarter. Every Armenian is to be killed."
My mother, shaking as if with cold, tried to cover my little brother with her skirts. My father, standing before us, repeated in a firm voice a prayer to God. My heart seemed a lump of ice; my
