Days in the Caucasus

by Banine

  I loved other things about him. Didn’t he once pay tremendous fines to the Berlin police because he felt the urge to spit all day long in the streets of the German capital, though this was explicitly forbidden? Another time he commandeered a hotel lift, obliging the lift attendant to go up and down non-stop a hundred times. He sang our songs in the foyer of the Paris Opera, urinated from his hotel balcony and emitted his thunderous belches at Maxim’s. When he came back from his frequent foreign trips, he brought not only presents, but also items pilfered from the most elegant hotels. He brought back cutlery, ashtrays and other small objects, stolen for fun, and would share them out among us. We loved them much more than the finest toys—the mystery of human nature… All this eccentric behaviour gave him a unique aura in my eyes and it’s easy to understand why he was my favourite uncle.

  Uncle Suleyman knew my weaknesses and used them to seduce me. Despite the wonderful picture he painted, I didn’t find this marriage project very attractive. Accustomed to loving princes, I thought a marriage between cousins rather dull, even if the cousin was the gallant Asad. Uncle Suleyman did not give up his idea, though. He shared it with all the family, receiving only limited support, but consoling himself with thoughts of how young I was. He was committed to recommencing the attack as soon as the time was right.

  12

  Next came one of those storms that spell delight for history professors and disaster for humanity.

  Russia’s dramatic story is well known: the tsar abdicated, then Kerensky too renounced his position of power; the October Revolution erupted and civil war set Reds against Whites. The empire broke up.

  These disturbances allowed the border regions, whose populations did not share the history, ancestry and religion of the Russians, to break away and form independent republics. In the Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan claimed their right to self-determination and set about exercising it.

  Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, grew restive too. Several political factions emerged with the inevitable consequences: rivalry, unrest, confrontation. Under the guise of saving the country from the communist threat, an organization of Armenians with socialist sympathies managed to install a military dictatorship; but it was whispered that the leaders were really Bolsheviks.

  Be that as it may, they inaugurated their rule with a massacre of Muslims, who were unable to defend themselves. As always, it was primarily the ordinary people who fell victim to the ‘stimulant of militant nationalism’, as one English writer put it. The so-called upper classes, or rather the wealthy classes, Armenian or Azerbaijani, often connected by mutual interests, would provide reciprocal protection during these massacres, which would be carried out by whichever party was the more powerful or the better organized at the time.

  It should be emphasized that while one-sided massacres of Armenians by Turks had occurred in Turkey, in Azerbaijan the Armenians had also massacred the Azerbaijanis (Christians against Muslims) before the indifferent gaze of the Russian authorities, who may have been thinking that the famous colonial formula ‘divide and rule’ made effective politics.

  At about two o’clock one dark night, Fräulein Anna came to fetch me from my bed: snatched from my dreams, I fell into a state of anxiety.

  With the electricity cut off, the house and entire city were plunged into darkness, pierced by whistling bullets that whizzed out of nowhere. Machine guns could be heard in the distance. We expected at any minute to see the Dashnaks (that was the name of the members of the Armenian nationalist party) storm the house and demolish everything, including the inhabitants. The telephone didn’t work and the house had become our desert island surrounded by an uncharted sea.

  Confined in the gloom of Amina’s Moorish bedroom, we had nothing to do but wait, so we waited. Around four o’clock in the morning violent blows at the front door sought to demolish the house and our last hope with it. We thought it was the Dashnaks come to massacre us. My father grabbed his revolver and left the room, followed by Amina, who, for a woman with such a frivolous air, was to display unexpected courage and devotion from then on. We were already preparing to die but it was premature: a few moments later Amina and my father returned, almost elated, bringing not armed Dashnaks but Armenian friends: our neighbours opposite, who had come to offer us their protection and their house. Need I say that both were accepted gratefully?

  We each quickly packed a small suitcase and went down the stairs. All we had to do was cross the width of the street, but since bullets were flying freely there, even this short distance could prove fatal. We were told to run to reduce our time crossing the shooting range. A battle was under way at the other end of the dark street: gunfire crackled intermittently, interrupted by long blasts on a whistle.

  Lily-livered as we were, we had to force ourselves to run to the house opposite, stumbling over the uneven cobblestones because of the darkness and our fear. Only my father, who was carrying my brother in his arms, walked slowly lest he fall over with him. But Allah was guiding him.

  Once we were inside the front door our neighbours greeted us with a very touching welcome for such a moment. Then we had to go to bed, which proved difficult: there were more people than beds. Some of us had to be content with a mattress on the carpet; I was given one in a small room where Fräulein Anna was to sleep on a narrow divan with my brother; between the intermittent cries of the latter and the gunfire there could be no question of sleep.

  In the morning, we were dismayed to witness the following scene: men with cartridge belts slung across their bodies were throwing a wide variety of objects from the windows of our house into lorries parked outside, gradually filling them up. Dressed in filthy uniforms of diverse provenance, the men had a martial air that did not bode well, and we were glad that we were only spectators. Had we been on the other side of the street, we would probably have been subjected to the same defenestration. The household flew past: forks rained down, then laced corsets took to the breeze followed by a Louis XIV chandelier and a flying cashmere shawl.

  ‘My blue velvet dress,’ groaned Amina, while Fräulein Anna sadly watched the descent of a cushion that it had taken her more than a year to embroider.

  ‘My beautiful, brand-new dressing gown,’ Zuleykha sighed in turn. And still incorrigibly animistic, I whispered to my favourite coat, trimmed with fox fur, which was tumbling into one of the lorries, ‘Poor coat, look how they’re treating you. Adieu.’

  That same afternoon my father and Amina left us. Our residence wasn’t secure enough for a man wanted by Armenian terrorists, so an Armenian friend took my father to a secret location where he would be out of danger. Moreover, the situation promised to get even worse: as often happens, the leaders were losing control of their men, who were pillaging, rampaging and slaughtering.

  The night after my father’s departure, we were woken around three in the morning by a band of armed men, who began to search for him everywhere. They climbed onto the roof, opened all the cupboards and wardrobes, poked under the beds with their bayonets and anywhere else that might possibly contain a man. When they didn’t find him, they drank all the wine in the house, swore repeatedly and left in a fury.

  In the morning, soldiers of unknown allegiance came to install a machine gun on the roof of the house where we were staying and began to pepper the one opposite (ours) with avenging but useless bullets—a gratuitous act but one that must have given the soldiers a sense of power.

  We lived like this for two weeks: mentally restless but physically immobilized. We led a cloistered existence and even the shutters of the house were kept closed most of the time to shield us from prying eyes and the bullets of the ragtag army.

  When night came, we trembled in concert with the candles, which we had to use sparingly; it was impossible to buy more, so we were burning our capital. It was the same with our food: we had to munch lentils for two weeks; we munched them for lunch, we munched them for dinner; we began again the next day and did the same the next. It was a flood of lentils,
an avalanche. ‘Help yourselves, have some more,’ our hosts would say kindly. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got sacks full of them…’ they would assure us graciously. Strange to say but I wasn’t put off them for life; I still enjoy them today, remembering those faraway Armenian lentils.

  Our meals were poor in provender but rich in sighs and tears. The three old ladies in our saviours’ family would weep and sigh one after the other, or even all together.

  Death was such a sad prospect! The oldest especially, who was a very sensitive soul, could not look at us without thinking of our misfortune and bursting into tears of compassion. She had white, silky hair and touchingly soft black eyes in a face smooth and pink despite her age. Her benevolence was directed at everything and everyone, and in turn everyone was well disposed towards her. When the good soul saw me rigid and trembling with fear, she would take me in her arms and try to make me feel better. But it wasn’t easy to make me feel better: I was too afraid. I was also lonely, due in part to my character and in part to circumstance. I no longer saw any children of my own age. The few years that separated me from Zuleykha were a gulf at that age; my relationship with her was that of an inferior to a superior with all that that implies in resentment and impatience for the bullied. My cousins, my unspeakable, brave cousins, lived a long way away and the older I became, the more I was to be kept apart from them. The virtuous will say, ‘So much the better,’ while others may think it a shame.

  There was always Fräulein Anna with her loving heart. But I rejected her affection through misplaced pride; moreover, as she had replaced my brother’s nurse, she was busy with him all the time and had no choice but to neglect me somewhat. I still longed constantly for Amina’s affection, but I was beginning to realize the futility of my feelings. So I withdrew into myself.

  Sometimes, during slight lulls in the confusing battle taking place in Baku, our hosts would receive visits from some of their relatives. One of them, a handsome young man with blonde hair (yes, Armenian but blonde) and blue eyes, aroused the boldly declared interest of Zuleykha-the-artist and the not so boldly declared interest of Zuleykha-the-woman. When he visited, the two conjoined Zuleykhas would throw themselves upon him and install him in a glassed-in balcony, and, notwithstanding the ongoing crisis, one would set about painting him, the other flirting with him. As for me, I knew what an object of painterly zeal should look like, and I would study this young man carefully to see if he was worthy of our love. I was already preparing to acquiesce to it.

  I met this handsome young man later in Paris, where I still see him often. The years have perhaps made him a little less handsome, but he has the same eyes and the same blonde hair. When he is cross with my sisters and me, he never misses an opportunity to say, ‘To think I was stupid enough to save these women from the massacre.’

  I didn’t have the leisure to love him, nor did Zuleykha to complete his portrait; the two weeks of lentils, fear and intermittent lulls soon came to an end. Someone came to tell us to get ready to leave the same evening to join my father. Our preparations didn’t take long, but what did take long were our touching farewells to our saviours: the hugs were mixed with tears and the tears with sighs; then we had to part all the same. A car driven by an employee of the family firm came to collect us and we jumped in, blessed and sprinkled with the tears of our elderly hostesses. I talk about this now in a light-hearted way, but at the time my attitude was quite different: I didn’t know then what I know now, that it would all end well, and I was paralysed with fear.

  For two days the gunfire had almost stopped entirely: it was possible to move about the city again until seven in the evening, the time of the curfew.

  The city was pitiful: the ransacked shops, upended paving stones, broken windows and bullet-riddled facades gave it an air of desolation that would have depressed braver men than us. Even the aggressive Zuleykha became gloomy and fell silent.

  Our car slowly descended towards the harbour avoiding the main streets; it soon stopped outside a small house near the docks. We got out of the car and the driver took us inside the house where we saw Amina sitting at the table with a worker in overalls—it was my father! Amid more hugs and tears, we learnt that we would be leaving for Persia, where my father hoped to escape the perils facing us in our native city, which was as troubled by the revolution as elsewhere in Russia. At least we would be foreigners there and could hope to go unnoticed.

  The house belonged to one of our tanker captains, who was keeping his ship ready to sail. We boarded that evening without difficulty, but the departure checks made by the Dashnaks could end in disaster if my father were recognized. It was decided that he would work as a stoker in the engine room, while we would be presented as the captain’s children; Amina and Fräulein Anna, both veiled as circumstance dictated, would pass for good Muslim wives.

  Everything went swimmingly: the Dashnaks who came aboard were very lax, due in large part to the glasses of vodka proffered by the captain. They didn’t even go down to the engine room, where my father, shovel in hand and cap rammed over his eyes, was struggling to identify with the world that he had hitherto exploited. Peering through a light veil of alcohol fumes into the dining room, full of the captain’s alleged wives and children, and probably seeing double, they expressed mild surprise at their number but left without taking their investigations further. A few moments later, the dark mass of Baku, still without electricity, began to recede.

  It was then that we became familiar with the state that I will call, for want of a better term, ‘post-fear’. It’s a well-defined state that deserves a special designation. When fear paralyses you, forces you to curl up on yourself physically and psychologically, when internal spasms shake your bowels and your jaw starts to ache because of your spasmodically clenched teeth, when you keep waking up in terror, and then suddenly you enter a world where your fears stop abruptly and are no longer relevant, that’s when this state begins for which I would like to find a special word. It is total deliverance: your body becomes supple again; you can breathe deeply, released from constant anxiety; your spirit becomes lighter. You are free at last! The sensitive weep for joy, believers thank their God, atheists are jubilant; but for everyone the immediate, material result is an enormous appetite.

  As soon as the ship reached the open sea, we threw ourselves on the table that was sagging under the weight of magical dishes, or at least that’s how they seemed to us after two weeks of lentils. There was fresh caviar and sturgeon pilaff and chicken pilaff and almond cakes… We ate the caviar with spoons and the chicken with our hands, as this was quicker. We ate in silence, forgetting everything. A chicken leg roasted to perfection took the place of the revolution and a golden slice of sturgeon replaced the massacres. But instead of the profound well-being that I was expecting, a malaise took root inside me, at first imperceptible but then violent. I turned from pink to green, from joyous to nauseous… And it all ended in the lavatory bowl.

  My violent seasickness lasted throughout the voyage. The fear had disappeared, but horrible nausea raged in its place. Since everyone else was fine and I was suffering alone, solitude in misfortune made my misery even worse. When the boat arrived in Enzeli, I was a wreck ready to surrender my soul.

  We stayed in Persia for six months—or was it longer? My recollections of that disastrous period are very hazy; maybe my subconscious consigned them to oblivion, as this time seemed to me a morass of boredom, heat, mosquitoes and malaria.

  In Enzeli we lived in an awful house by the side of a canal—or was it a branch of the Caspian? Later my father decided we would move to Rasht, which was then an ugly little town where a single house of stone stood on a deserted square; all the other buildings were constructed of some indeterminate material, but certainly not stone.

  Hardly had we settled in before war broke out between the patriots—called, I think, Kichik Khan—and the British, who were in Persia as conquerors. The patriots sported great beards, which they swore not to trim until the invaders had le
ft the country.

  Aeroplanes bombed the town, the rattle of gunfire could be heard in the streets, and here we were again, caught up as victims in historic events that we could well have done without. We stayed shut up in the ugly house, which was built of some porous material that wouldn’t have withstood a well-aimed bullet.

  When the liberation war was suspended, we stayed shut up at home; I mean to say we, the female gender. To be honest, we didn’t have anything to do outside, and we could only go out swathed head to toe in a chadra, the cursed veil that we had never worn before, thanks to progress. It took a degree of practice to wear one without getting tangled up in it or losing it altogether; with one hand one held the chadra in front of one’s face with only one’s eyes emerging from the prison, and with the other hand one held it against the body. An inconvenient covering that certainly wasn’t Islam’s best invention. In Baku at least the chadras could be any colour of the rainbow, but in Persia they were all black, so the country seemed to be swarming with crows.

  Another inconvenience in Persia: I’ve forgotten to mention that Azerbaijan, as a former province of Persia, was Shiite. Now, Amina came from the ‘Sunni heresy’. In Persia this deviance had to be hidden like a shameful illness and Amina took umbrage, although she took no more interest in Islam than in the snows of yesteryear. She suddenly discovered principles and felt she had become a renegade. She longed to go back more than the rest of us did.