By Sempad Shahnazarian

Chapter Nine (Continued)

  “My name is Garo.” answered Sempad.

  “Your name is Garo?” he repeated, sarcastically, looking at the high-ranking officer at the desk, with a sly smile on his face.

  “What is your father’s name?”

  Maria kept on with her pleas...

  “My father’s name is Boghos.” he answered.

  “Oh! Your name is Garo...and your father’s name is Boghos?”

  “Where were you born?”

  “I was born in Constantinople.”

  “Your name is Garo, your father’s name is Boghos and you were born in Constantinople?”

  “Please! Please! He is just a little boy.” Maria went on pleading.

  “Shut up!” the secretary shouted. “Don’t bother us. Get out!”

  At this point, the high-ranking officer rose from his seat in silence, looked fixedly at Sempad and with a deceitful expression on his face, he said: “You say your name is Garo, your father’s name is Boghos, and you were born in Constantinople.” He waited a moment, in silence, then with a cunning smile he said: “Who, then, is Lieutenant Sempad Shahnazarian, from the 26th Artillery Division, a deserter for over ten months.”

  Sempad felt as if a bucket of cold water were tossed at him.

  “I don’t know who that man is.” he mumbled.

  “Take that man in!” he ordered the guard, with a scowl.

  He followed the guard in the corridor, silent and worried. They stopped in front of a room, the guard took a long key hanging from his belt and opened the door. He pushed him in and closed the door behind him. The room was obscure in spite of a window on one side. He noticed two soldiers there, one standing against the wall and the other one sitting on the floor, in a corner, deep in thought.

  He approached the first one and introduced himself. The soldier looked at him, and said: “Sentenced to death!! The same as the other one,” pointing to the one sitting on the floor. He was shocked!

  At this time he saw someone at the peephole, calling his name.

  “Sempad!”

  He did not answer nor did he budge from where he was standing. The voice changed his strategy by calling “Garo,” this time.

  “Yes sir!” He answered right away and walked to the door. The secretary said: “We know your name is not Garo. Why don’t you tell us the truth and get it over with.” 

  He tried the same trick several times to surprise him into a confession. The officer came to the peephole, and called: “Garo!”

  “Yes sir!” he said, and went to the door.

  “We know you are Second Lieutenant Sempad Shahnazarian away from your unit for ten months. We are going to do what the law requires of us to do in these cases. You will receive severe physical punishment in addition to the sentence. If you confess you will be exempt from the torture and ordeal.

  “Think about it. I’ll be back.”

  “No need to come back...My name is Sempad Shahnazarian,” he said.

  “Good for you!” he said, and returned to his office.

  A moment later a guard opened the door and asked him to follow him into a brightly illuminated office. A captain was sitting at his desk by the window, overlooking the boulevard. A table was at the center of the room. It had a huge registry book on it with a civilian detective shuffling some pages. Sempad walked down to the Captain’s desk and stood at attention. He learned afterwards that the Captain had lost his left eye in the battle of the Straits of Dardanelle. He looked at Sempad with a sardonic smile, showed him to a chair near his desk and taking a large questionnaire out of his drawer, handed it to him, saying: “I’ll be in the next room for a while. In the meantime, you read this over carefully and answer every question on it.” He, then, walked out of the room.

  He looked over the questionnaire. There were over twenty questions to be answered, ranging from, “What is your name?” Down to the last one: “As you have deserted your unit in time of national alert and you have stayed away from the service for over ten months according to our military law you are sentenced to die. Have you anything to say?”

  His answer to that question was: “No, I have nothing to say.”

  He looked outside the window and saw those three men still dangling on the scaffold. He saw people pass by, look at their faces and bow their heads and walk away.

  Moments later, the Captain returned, read the answers to the questions, looked calmly, and asked: “Are you Hunchag or Dashnag?  The Armenian revolutionary organizations.

  “I am Dashnag!” answered Sempad.

  Then the guard led him downstairs through the courtyard, where the stables had been converted into a prison. He opened the massive door and pushed him in. As he entered, what sounded like a thousand voices greeted him: “Here comes another one...Bir daha guelldi.”

  He stood, amazed. The floor was covered with hundreds of people.

 “Don’t let that worry you!” someone shouted, when he saw him so downhearted. “Come over here,” he said, pushing someone away from him. The man who was asleep, snorted, and scrambled up. He blinked and screamed with surprise: “Sempad! Is that you Sempad? It was Beto Vartanian who had been brought there while he was being questioned by the officers, upstairs.

  “Beto! I am so glad to see you,  I was worried about you.”

  “I was worried about you too!”

  “All of these people you see over here are not robbers or thieves or criminals. There are many writers, teachers and poets. There are Greeks, Jews, Turks and Armenians. Everyday, they take some of them out to nobody knows where for sure! Others say they send them to Merkez Commanddanlek to have them executed there. Others say they send them to the Arabian deserts to dig trenches. We really don’t know what is true.”

  That afternoon two officials came in, one in a military uniform, the other in civilian clothes. The names of fifty men were called off a list and were taken away, surrounded by a dozen infantrymen with rifles and bayonets.

  A couple of hours later rumors began to circulate that every one of them had been shot. The rumor gripped them all. A commotion shook the entire stable. Some fainted from fear and friends were trying hard to revive them.

  “Beto! I have my real name now!” said Sempad. “No more Garo for me!” They both laughed together. They were conversing when they heard a voice from the window calling his name. Sempad rushed to the window and, to his great surprise, saw Dikranouhie’s mother standing on the sidewalk far away. She could not get any closer to the prison. A package was handed to him after it was inspected by the guard. After a short conversation with her she left, tearfully, and he withdrew from the window and joined Beto and his other friends who were waiting for him anxiously.

  “Let’s see what’s in there.” Said Sempad, opening the package. “Wow! he exclaimed with delight. It’s fried chicken and French fried potatoes.” After putting it on his lap and spreading the package wide open he said:  “Let’s eat. Don’t be bashful!” They devoured everything, in no time. 

  “Do you think they will call our names today?” Sempad asked. “I am so anxious to get going, good or bad.”

  “Who knows? Maybe!” said Beto.

  While they were chatting, someone whispered: “Here they are. May God be with us!”

  The door opened, and the same man in uniform and the other in civilian clothes entered. The commotion subsided and then, in absolute silence, fifty names were called including Sempad’s and Beto’s. They felt relaxed despite the ominous rumors. Sempad took his little bag that contained Spinoza’s Ethique and some short stories he had written recently and joined the caravan outside, in the courtyard, surrounded by a dozen soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders.

  The order came to move on and they began to walk down the main street. It began to rain. They were on their way to Galata Bridge. If they crossed it they would be doomed for sure they thought, as that would take them to Merkez Commandanlek, the human slaughter house. So, they began craning their necks to see in which direction they were moving. Before they reached the bridge, they went down an ill-famed street where half-naked women were standing at their doors, blurting out coarse jokes, exposing their bodies and, sarcastically, inviting them in for a good time! Some of them, recognizing their friends among the prisoners, called: “Hello, Apostopolous! How are you? Where are you going? Come in!!  Hey, you! Armand! Have you forgotten me? I am your Josephine! Can’t you spare an hour with me? If you can’t come in just look at this...and enjoy”...and she began to contort her mid-section and laugh...

  Shouts, exclamations and filthy jokes filled the air. The caravan finally arrived at the bridge. It was the critical moment! Necks began to crane again, and murmurs followed. Fortunately, the column did not cross the bridge. It changed its direction to a ferry boat that was to be taken to Haidar Pasha, on the Asiatic side. What a comfort! Eyes began to shine brightly...Tensions disappeared despite the unfathomable darkness of their future.

  At the railroad station they were lined up in front of a dozen freight cars and were pushed inside. There was manure all over the floor. This, combined with the filth of the prisoners made the stench absolutely unbearable.  The authorities did not even bother to give them the privilege of visiting the toilet before cramming them into the already filthy cars, let alone giving them their daily ration of soup.

  Beto, standing in the filth, called Sempad’s attention to it and said: “We must overlook everything we see around us. Yes! We’re standing on fresh manure now and we will be sitting on it later. It is a dirty fact. We can’t help it. We can try hard to overlook it. We must try very hard or else we might lose our minds. Listen carefully, Sempad! Let’s sit down close to one another and listen to my story. The story of what I have been through. I haven’t, yet, had a chance to tell you. Listen!”

  Someone shouted. “Hey, guard! Can’t you open that slit a little more.” With his rifle in hand the guard had opened the revolving door wide enough to sit at the opening without paying any attention to the man’s yells. When the man shouted again, asking the guard to open the door a little more, he cried brutally: “Shut up! You have plenty of air in there!”

At this time, the whistle blew, a column of smoke rose and the cars began to roll. The guard was sitting in the aperture. The monotonous hum of the rolling wheels was an undertone of the distressing commotion inside the car composed of an agonizing melody. A man, who could not control his bowels, pushed his neighbor away, pulled his pants down...filled his hat with feces!!...and flipped it over the head of the guard to the outside....  Everybody shrieked with laughter.

  “You goddamned son of a bitch!” the guard screamed with anger. He fumbled with his rifle to kill him but was calmed down by those who sat by him, saying: “It was just an accident...You know what diarrhea is...Poor fellow...he just could not control it...” The guard kept on cursing and at the same time struggled to wipe the filth off his clothes.

  In spite of all this commotion, Beto, sitting on the floor by Sempad, began to relate parts of his experiences.

  “Listen, Sempad! I want you to listen closely. I don’t want you to think that our people, at home, were massacred just like cattle. They proved they had guts in spite of all the odds against them. Some, innocently, believed in the official announcement and were burned in their houses which were soaked in gasoline and surrounded by Turkish and Kurdish mobs with rifles and hatchets in their hands. Others knew how sly the announcement was and ran off to the mountains to defend themselves with whatever tchakmakli, old rifle, knives and hatchets they could get. I was on the mountain with them. When we saw smoke coming out of those houses and barns we were convinced that our brothers and sisters had made a tragic mistake by believing the authorities. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ They began muttering, tearfully. Tato Bedros, standing like a statue with his back against the cliff shouted: ‘Cut out that crying! That’s not going to help us. Let’s become organized and see what we can do. Those criminals will soon be after us when they get through with the holocaust down below. We are not going to run away. This is our soil. We are going to stay here and fight to protect and save it. We are here to fight and defend ourselves.

  In the morning, the Turks and Kurds began to storm the mountainside slowly. They advanced toward us, in great numbers, with rifles and other weapons. We did not fire the few tchakmakli we had until they got very close to us.  This is when a very unbelievable sight was revealed. As they swarmed on us, our men, women and even children coming out from behind bushes and rocks, were miraculously transformed into packs of wolves, attacking the enemy with whatever they had in their hands. I saw with my own eyes, how Kuspo-Mulko attacked a Turk with his bare hands, took his rifle and cartridges and then stabbed him in the chest.

  There were over three-hundred of us with no food and no ammunition, except for what some of our men had taken away from the enemy. Children cried from hunger and terror. Women shed tears, in silence, but encouraged their husbands and boys to keep fighting with whatever they could find. Some men rallied and cheered us on for some of our courageous acts.  Fierceness and heroism stimulated the fighters.

  Every time that I recall what I saw on these mountains, I feel so proud of being an Armenian. We moved slowly, from Shumlaga-Sar near our village up to Dzovassar heights where a great battle had been raging.  From all parts of Moush hundreds of well-armed fighters had been gathered there, under the leadership of Fedayi Ruben. Sassoun had been converted into a battleground. Many dead and wounded were all around with no medical care or supplies. Our means of defense came only from what we could wrest from the enemy. I saw a man wounded in the stomach with his entrails hanging out and millions of flies feasting on them. While his wife and children were crying, the wounded man constantly murmured: ‘For God’s sake, let somebody fire a bullet in my head and end it!’ 
We fought for over seven months waiting in vain for help from the Armenian guerrillas working in conjunction with the Russian army.

  Unexpectedly, the guard hollered: “We are getting close to Konia Station.”

  “Oh! At last! exclamations of relief came from everybody.

  “Beto, you will never know how glad I am to be with you.” exclaimed Sempad.

  The train stopped, suddenly.

  “This is Konia.” the guard yelled. They all came out of the freight car for a half-hour rest and a bowl of soup. Thousands of Armenian families had crowded onto a field at the outskirts of the town. They had come from many parts of the Armenian vilayets and from the area around Adapazar and were heading for the Arabian desert. The Turkish government had decided to solve the Armenian question by exterminating the Armenian people. Genocide! Deportation!  Wholesale massacre! Criminal assaults! Hundreds of thousands of families, dislodged from their homes, walking all the way from Keghi, Erzeroum, Kharpouth, Sepastia, Adapazar, Shabin-Karahissar and elsewhere were losing some of their dear ones every day by the constant assaults of Chetehs. They continued to walk under the lashes of gendarmes to a diabolical holocaust...

  Sempad met an old man who looked at him for a long moment with imponderable suffering in his eyes, He began to mutter to himself: “You see these ragged looking people who are resting here for a while before they reach their tragic end...They are Armenians in Turkish and Kurdish clothes. After the caravan was attacked and robbed of everything they had, they let them cover their nude bodies with their rags. These unfortunates had everything before they were driven out of their villages. They had children, land, cattle, clothes and churches. Now they have nothing. They are wearing the dirty clothes of their attackers. When we were thrown out of our villages and on our way to sure death there were four times as many as there are now. We have been attacked several times. Many of us were killed. Many women were abducted. New victims every day! Over there, they are trying to dig a hole to bury a man. Out of my family of ten I am the only survivor...a useless old man...” And, as he started to tell his own tragic story the train whistle blew for the prisoners to return to their wagons. He managed to conclude: “Ever since then I have been cursing all the preachers and ministers who have been drumming our heads with the Theology of a Benevolent Father in Heaven. From here to Bozanti and beyond things are going to get worse. My days are numbered, anyway...Life doesn’t mean anything to me anymore...Good-bye and good luck.” The old man moved away.

  “Hurry, Sempad!” hollered Beto, and they both ran and clambered up into the freight wagon. The last whistle blew and the train jerked a few times then began to roll on smoothly.

 After several hours of riding, at midnight the train stopped at Bozanti, a mountain ridge, the end of the line. It was a high plateau, overlooking the Taurus mountains and valleys. The moon was shining. A lantern, hanging in front of the station building was trying hard to illuminate the place. A young man furtively approached Sempad. He was an Armenian working with a German engineer, taking care of the line. He was from Adapazar. He wasn’t much of a talker but what little he said showed the enormity of the crime committed by the government.
 

The sight of the bread invigorated him. He gave half of it to Beto and they both reclined on the ground, at the back of the station, and fell asleep.