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| 1995, Volume 1, No.2, Pages24-33 |
ORIGINAL
ESSAYS:
In late autumn in St. Petersburg I happened to meet one Aissor I knew before.
I guess you know little swarthy people sitting with shoe brushes
in the hands on street corners everywhere in Russia. It is them again who you
see walking around the place with a tamed monkey held in leash. They look old
and gray like cobblestones in the street. These are Aissors, or highland
Assyrians.
As I once was walking in the street I decided to give my shoes a good
shine. I came up to a man who was sitting on the corner on a low chair with cut
down legs and placed my foot on his box without looking.
It was not very cold yet that day but I was having my warm Russian hare's
fur cap " on so I surely was sweat and hot
I
had one shoe polished. I Shklovsky the man calls me by my name as I took my cap
off. "
Shklovsky
he said again and put his brushes down on the ground.
I recognized him at once. It was an Aissor Lazar Zervandov by name. He
used to head an Assyrian horse-drawn battery in Northern Persia.
I
looked around. Everything around was quiet. Only four black horses erected on
the Anichkoff Bridge breaking loose in different directions.
Aissors or Assyrians as is known inhabit Mesopotamia and Van region in
Turkey, Dilman and Urmia in Persia, and Russian Trans Caucasia. They generally
fall into Maronites and Jacobites living now near the place where. Ancient
Nineveh was founded, and now the town of Mosul (this is - where Muslin comes
from), and also into Aissors from mountains whom Persians inadequately call
"Jelu" (in fact "Jelu" is just one of the Assyrian tribes)
and into Persian Aissors.
According to their religious conception highland Aissors belong to
Nestorians, for they never believe in Jesus like god while Maronites and
Jacobites adopted catholic faith. Different missionaries from Anglican, Baptist,
capture the region of Urmia and catholic Churches orthodox and Protestant
activists, all of them are hunting for old Christian albeit heretic souls of
Aissors.
High in the mountains Aissors have no missions. They live in villages
governed by the clergymen. Several villages constitute a tribe or clan headed by
Melik (prince). All Meliks respect the authority of Patriarch Mar-Shimun.
Patriarch's role belongs to one tribe only that descends directly from
Simone, brother of God.
In January 1918 Russian started for home.
Aissors’ homeland was in Persia. Those
who were
from Turkey decided to stay in Persia as well, for fear of being killed by
Kurds. Aissors formed an army unit.
Before the revolution Russians had two' Assyrian battalions in their army. Some
Aissors did not join those battalions but formed an independent partisan brigade
headed by one very matured and experienced man, Agha-Petros.
I remember how I saved this man pulling him from soldiers of a
border guard C', unit who wanted to kill him.
Poor
old Agha-Petros! Shall we meet some day again somewhere in the east! For east
stretches now from Pskov in Russia through India towards Borneo, Sumatra,
Java"" and Australia at the whole length.
The English colonists had just placed the famous duckbill in the jar of
spirit and turned Australia into a perfect shape of the western society. No,
never I will see Agha-Petros again. I just will have to die without it in Nevsky
Avenue across the cathedral of Kazan. Those words I wrote them in St. Petcrsburg.
Now the place of my funeral actually will not be the same as I surely die in
this flying coffin of the underground.
Agha-Petros was a robust man with a very big chest somehow bulging with a
fresh cleaned first order St. George medal.
He
once brushed shoes in New York. He most probably was the one to be seen walking
with his monkey in Buenos-Aires.
Anyway he did his time the Philadelphia jail.
Then in his homeland he was a highwayman, then a vice governor in Turkey
where he almost stripped the land, then some big shot in Persia. One day he got
angry with the governor of Urmia, he put him under arrest held him in a cold
cellar and set him free after he exchanged Shah for a star medal.
In the Russian service he headed a small partisan brigade. The Russian
soldiers moved out very fast leaving a lot of guns and ammunition behind.
Aissors began to arm themselves. Armenians began to form army squads, too. Both
soon began to strip Persians of their arms.
Every party wanted to settle old scores with everybody else. During the
first withdrawal of Russian troops from Persia in 1914 local Persians killed
many Aissors for their support and assistance on the Russian side. Aissors found
a shelter with Dr. Shedd inside the American mission, then Persians slipped
crushed glass and metal sawdust into the flour from which Americans were making
bread for refugees, all the people died like fish in a very little pond by bomb
blasting.
Agha-Petros partisans contributed a lot to the feud between Aissors and
Persians for Russians never supplied them any bread so they had to take food by
force. As they largely were people from very strange places, partisans liked to
show up in the market place in a combat outfit wearing patchwork pants wish a
bomb tucked behind a leather belt. So young mothers told their children in fear,
“Look! Here’s the death walking.”
As for me, if I were there I would surely have butted in to fight for
Aissors, and I do not know why? Maybe, because I very often check to see Turkish
cannons in the monument of glory in Izmailovsky? Turks would certainly have
destroyed me for a purpose. When Russians were retreating, there was a big
fight. It is as when the last Russian squads were on a march, Persians came on
attacking them, but were intercepted by Aissors instead. Aghas-Petros (now I
remember his name -Elov) positioned his batteries on the side of the Jews hills
outside the town of Urmia and destroyed it. As a matter of fact Aissors know how
to use commanding heights.
On the Persian side did Russian instructors train Persian Cossacks and
who were the most essential instrument in the Persian counter-revolution. In the
fights mentioned above they did not act like supporters 01 the Shah party but
like the representatives of the nation. It was colonel Solider who headed
Persians in the battle.
He had a great influence in the Shah court. Colonel Kondratjev led
Armenians and Aissors with a group of Russian army officers who decided to serve
in the new Assyrian army. Many of
them are still in Mesopotamia. They all are scattered allover the world like,
blood drops sipping through the ground. Persians were defeated. Solider and his
daughter were seized and murdered.
Aissors took over the Persian guns. Heavy guns were used. Some 40-50
shells were fired to destroy the village. Persian villages were made from clay.
30.000 guns or so were confiscated. Then Kurd Simko said, "Mar-Shimun come
over and get me, I just want to surrender."
Kurd Simko was holding the Kushin mountain pass between Urmia and Oilman.
Kurds were always stateless and lived in kinship and tribal communities, headed
by Khans. Kurd Simko was not a Khan by birth. He took his Khan's authority by
art. He was so smart that he even- left behind the former great prince Nikolaj
Nikolaevich who wanted to win support from some Kurds. Simko were supplied with
guns and shells, and so won even a higher position.
Simko
fooled us all along. Because of him we lost our hay in Oise Gewer. He promised
us camels but he never did. He was not afraid of us already. He boasted that
only 40 Kurds would make a Russian troop vanish in haste. Agha-Petros very often
suggested we attack this Kurd in winter because his tribe would die of cold if
we got them out of their homes and chased them in the mountains. Simko wrote to
Mar-Shimun. "Come over and take my guns."
Mar-Shimun took with him a best couple of squadrons and his brother and
started out to see the Kurd. When the convoy was inside the court of Simko, Mar-Shimun
and his brother went into the house. Kurds were seen climbing up the rooftops
with guns in their hands.
Aissors, wonder what Kurds were doing. They said they were afraid of
Aissor. Why with guns? They never said anything; Then Mar-Shimun's brother came
out of the house. He was very angry as he said, "We should not have come
here to see this wretched man. We see no good here for us. We'd better go home
if we want to stay alive. " But Patriarch was here, they could not leave
him alone.
So Aissors elected to stay. Actually these words are not mine, but
Lazar's, the shoe polisher on the Caravan Street, the horse-drawn battery
commander and the soldiers committee member, the Bolshevik in the mind. Later he
called around to enjoy some tea with me in my place.
He was collected as he came. We were in session then. Zervandov took off
his heavy overcoat and sat to the table. He was having his tea. He refused to
taste butter because he was feasting at the time. Then he addressed to my
friend, "Shklovsky does belong here, doesn't he?" I think I was
looking too exotic for him in St. Petersburg.
Just
as instructor officer Vasiljev ordered Aissors to mount, Kurds began to fire
from the rooftops everywhere using even a submachine gun. Some horses broke
away, the gunmen began to shout, and everything was a big mess. Some men rushed
to gallop away, the rest froze to stay.
Lazar was left behind, as his horse got frightened. So he was the last to
gallop. Here came Patriarch running for his life across the street filled up
with slime and I mud. So he went on running in the mud without a gun. He
actually was bleeding from a shoulder as he was wounded in the upper chest. It
was not a heavy wound. He might have been cured in the end.
"Lazar", -he said trying to catch the horse's stirrup,
-"they are fools, they chucked me there." Lazar just wanted to take
him on but he saw Patriarch fall on his back with a shot in his head. 'Kurds
kept on firing from the rooftops. The guns volleyed on one side only. Lazar
spurred his horse to go faster as the rest of the convoy made its way back
cutting through Kurds. On the outskirts Lazar's horse fell under him as he was
wounded. The one who is sitting now on the Nevsky corner across from the
so-called house of arts selling boot cream also stayed alive but badly wounded
though.
They all arrived at an Aissor village to say that Patriarch was slain.
The people did not believe them at first but as they saw the wounds they came to
believe. They rushed to the town of Urmia where they gathered 15.000 to fight
Simko. They arrived far after midnight as the road stretched high in the
mountains and was winding with pitfalls around. Just as they reached the place,
they started to look for the body. They searched till they found it. He was
stripped naked but not disfigured as if Kurds had failed to identify him. Kurds
kept on shooting in the meantime. By the morning Aissors devastated the village
killing everyone on sight. But Simko had vanished. He obviously used the very
old trick. When he was finding his way in a secret passage, his gunmen were busy
picking up the gold pieces he had scattered for them outside. Mar-Shimun was
rather short than tall. He wore a turban and a frock and on his finger a very
old Arabian cross that was dated as he put it, to the 4th. A.D. He had ruddy
cheeks and the eyes of a child, flashing teeth and white hair and yet he was
only 22.
He used to fight in the line on the battlefield. He only complained,
about the French rifle which aissors had for it was not very useful in close
combat. He had a heart of gold! When we started our retreat, he asked for our
light and heavy guns (in all we gave him some 40 heavy guns) and the rank of a
junior officer for all his Meliks or the right to give it. For himself he wanted
a car. I wish we had given him a car. I think the shoulder straps would have
looked very strange amidst the crowd of people dressed in very loose trousers
made from patchy calico and tied up with a simple rope above the knee. What a
sight it would have been after all.
It is not Lazar's words, it is mine, and So, Mar-Shimun was lost for
Aissors anyway. Snow in the passes sometimes is so thick and heavy that the
camel strides with difficulty. But snow had melted already. Turks sipped through
the passes in the mountains and approached the town of Urmia. Colonel Kondratyev
with mounted Aissors and Armenians used a roundabout way to get in to Turkish
rear and seized two battalions. The situation was getting better as it seemed.
Lazar was complaining to me about Agha-Petros, "Hardly I had reached for
the Persians I found the gunmen of Agha-Petros already there, I guess he scooped
out much gold there indeed." As
he went on his complaint: “Agha-Petros was too hot on gold as he declared he
had 3.000 gunmen ten times more than he could dispose. His front line was long
enough for Turks to break through."
There was a horse-drawn battery in the mountains. The soldiers went to
the river to wash in the morning. They saw mules and packs across the river.
And they saw people coming to the river to wash as well. It was Turks.
The people feared each other there down the river.
If Aissors could see how Turks had passed through the gorge under them by
night, they would have beaten the Turks with stones.
Anyway Turks went through. Aissors had no shells for their heavy guns. We
tried to send all our artillery parks to Russia, but we had to dump them
somewhere on the road, as we saw no use in them. The fire supplies that were
left we used lavishly against the Persians who occupied the villages somewhere.
We could not find a direct way back to Russia as Turks who were advancing on
Tiflis interrupted it. They decided to go to English headquarters in Baghdad.
All Aissors as well as Armenians set out on a journey. Stepanyants, a Russian
Armenian who was a student from St. Petersburg, headed Armenians then he became
an army officer and served for some time the chairman of the army committee.
While in Persia he quickly learned to be a perfect leader of the mass.
His wife, a Russian medical student was with him all the time. Some 250.000
people with children and women left the town of Urmia. The Russian squad was
going in front of the column; Aissors checked the rear while highland Aissors
were on the watch on the flanks. As a matter of fact there was no road, but a
path stretching along the Turkish front line, or more exactly along the mountain
ridges across the Turkish and Kurdish territories.
Therefore on the way the refugees were endangered to face the angry
Muslim army squads trying to take the poor people at their disadvantage to
attack them every moment of their dangerous journey using to the best the local
terrains and heights they knew better. Then the refugees went on further to the
east as far as the duckbill land. In the meantime the Checks were approaching
the Volga River from the east. From the west the Russians were coming to fight
the checks while highlanders came down to attack the Cossacks in the valley.
In the Mediterranean Sea a ship packed with Senegalese soldiers who had
been fighting in Germany was bound to reach the African shores. Probably they
were singing. As they went on singing they probably were thinking. I do not know
what they were thinking of, because I am not a black man you know. Let them
speak for themselves anyway. There was great bloodshed in the whole east from
the Irtysh River to Euphrates. But
Aissors kept on moving, as they were great people. They overcame the gorges and
climbed .up the mountains. They had run out of water. So they had to eat snow
for 12 days. The horses were being lost.
Then
the remaining horses were given to the young men. They should have tried to save
the common people instead.
And
then they dumped the old women. Then they abandoned the children. In a month
they reached the English- controlled Baghdad region. In total there were 203.000
people who had arrived on the set. British officials said, "Encamp yourself
here outside our territory for three days." Aissors came to stay in a
Persian village. It was a quiet day. The Turks fell on them the following night,
and Persians began to fire from rooftops.
The English squads sent out to meet and guard the people for the first
time saw how women and children cried as Turks were shooting on sight. When
there was a big turmoil in the camp, the English soldiers jumped on their
un-harnessed horse and galloped away. Colonel Kondratyev ordered to use
submachine guns against them as if they were enemies. The runaway soldiers had
to stop.
They were told, "if you came to help us so do it or else
we'll kill you for we've been walking the least passable road in the
Region.
Everybody in the east knows there's no pathway between Urmia and Hammadan. And
we walked this way with women and children. In case you leave us alone, we'll
shoot you all down here. For we only have been eating snow." The English
soldiers dismounted from their horses and stood up to fight. There was a big
fight. Persians were ousted from the village while Turks were encircled and
chased into the gorge where they were all destroyed. The Turkish general was
seized after all.
They said to him, "Why you told them to take our children and throw
them to the ground. Why we lost our homes? Now we're going to shoot you."
The English troopers said, "You can't shoot the prisoner." Aissors
said, "We took him captive, he's ours."
The
general did not say anything. He was murdered after all, but Aissors did not cut
his ears or hew off his head, because among Aissors where the people from Russia
and they also had Lazar, the Bolshevik. Then Aissors went into the British
territory.
There
they learnt that another Aissors troop was coming up from America, where they
are plenty in number and have two newspapers.
When American Aissors learned about continuous fights everywhere from
Oramar to Urmia they gave up their shoe brushes and closed down their stalls and
shops and bought them guns and shells for the gold and left out to fight for the
independence of their motherland. If
these people lived somewhere on the Volga river and were starving, they would go
to reach India.
That's because aissors were the great nation indeed. The American Aissors squads
were being much waited for.
The people decided to go and stay with English colonists in Nineveh where
ancient Assyria was flourishing before, more exactly in the region of Mosul. It
is said in those places there are such types of snakes, which bite so hard
killing a man by even piercing him at all.
Apes in the forests and some yeti people in the wild places, and the heat
is so hard to bear that even sweat never dries.
In the basement of the houses with stone brick walls and doors, in the cellars
filled with earth there are trunks full of precious stones.
Therefore the English searchers came to seize them. Lazar could not
attend the excavations. He had been arrested for he was an active Bolshevik.
Some more Russian soldiers and officers were taken captive. In the prison
they were thinking why they had suffered so much before they came into the
British-controlled territory. Everything seemed in vain.
Lazar
actually had on him a very nice _army jacket with an officer's shoulder straps.
Unusually oversized. He was taken for a general at the beginning. He was
accommodated in a single room to his own. He asked for spoons and plates for
everyone in the custody in his special note. They supplied everything he wanted.
Besides, he got some money from the captors. The prisoners said nothing but
laughed a lot. On the fifth day a Russian officer from the British service came
by and after some inspection he pointed out, "You're not a general, you're
just an officer." But Lazar said, "Why shouldn't I stay a general in
custody as they want it?" At first he was sent to the punishment room, but
then he was sent to exile, and set free after all.
Assyrians as a matter of fact is a nation of wanderers. Mar-Shimun has to enjoy
a title of "Patriarch of the East and India." It is true indeed
because historical chronicles say that it is the 7th century when Aissors began
to wander allover the world. They traveled in Japan, India, Malabar and
Turkistan on the border with China. The print they used became the organizing
instrument for every known language systems in Mongolia and Korea.
Aissors funeral tombs could well be found near the, town of Tobolsk.
Aissors obviously as it feels now had a special message in the world. Today they
go on wandering in the world as shoeblacks.
Lazar had nothing left lo do but gather his family and move to Armavir
where he met a nice company of Aissors to travel to Moscow and then to St.
Petersburg. Indeed,
there is quite a large community of Aissors including Lazar, the interpreter to
Mar-Shimun or Hosha- Alexander locally. Besides, there is even one Assyrian from
Mar-Shimun clan in St. Petersburg. He never brushes shoes but sits on the bed to
read a newspaper. Lazar stations on the comer of Nevsky and Caravan streets. It
is cold in St. Petersburg. The wind blows down there in Nevsky Street. It also
blows cold into Caravan Street. So it does from the east as much as from the
west, and there is nothing in the world but the wind. It is time to wind it up.
I am going to write now about Dr. Shedd. He was the American counselor in Urmia.
Dr. Shedd traveled across the region of Urmia in a carriage. It had four
similar wheels and tent above. It was very simple by design, square like a box.
Maybe it was the principle transportation means in America some twenty years
ago. Dr. Shedd himself steered this
carriage sitting on the front bench on the right hand side of the vehicle. In
the back seat he had his gray haired wife or his daughter with a mess of her red
hair. Nothing special was about his wife' or his daughter.
As a matter of fact Dr. Shedd had gray hair as well. He usually was
dressed in a black frock-coat."
He was no special again as seemed. In
fact he never installed either a flag or even a submachine gun.
Dr. Shedd lived outside the town of Urmia where a long clay wall of the
American mission stretched a few miles ahead. Inside the walls of the American
mission there was American law and order. Nothing was easy outside though. This
carriage was seen rolling across in all of north Persia and Kurdistan.
I first saw Dr. Shedd at a session when we were asking Persians for wheat
supplies. It was in December 1917. Mullahs in green turbans were sitting calmly
stroking their long beards with their fingers of painted nails gently voicing
their refusal. The stoutly built logistics controller of the Russian army
general Karpov bulging out of his shabby army coat was gentle alike but firm on
getting some wheat supplies for Aissors, anyway. And he had his nails bitten
off. The Russian counselor Nikitin (he was slain later during the retreat)
looked very worried. Dr. Shedd in his black frock coat showed up among us very
suddenly. Like a black column there he stood in the middle of the scene with his
clean and fluffy hair. I was having a seat in the corner of the room in my very
shabby service jacket. I was wearing my old raincoat with dirty sleeves that
day. Therefore I had to hide it with my hands after all. My fur coat in fact was
lost in the time of pogrom. At the meeting I stuck out like a false mast. This
mast usually is installed in the ship after the storm in a firm tie-up to the
remnants of the original one. I was a commissar of the army at the time. All my
life was a good patchwork of my habits. Dr. Shedd said," Gentlemen!
Yesterday I saw a dead boy, 6 years old, he was lying still by the wall on the
market place." Not only Robinson Crusoe would look strange if he was
brought into a London street from his desert island in his rough like he was. So
much odd was Dr. Shedd in his garments counting corpses in the east where it
never was a rule.
I once remember watching a caravan on the path to the Kuschin gorge. The
camels were walking in long steps. They looked like greyhounds wearing heavy
packs on their backs. The little bells were ringing under their muzzles.
Trotting horses on the side harmoniously overlapped the steady stride of the
camels. I said,"what's the load?" They answered, "Silverware for
doctor Shedd.” No convoy or escort was seen. Silverware's were coming to Dr.
Shedd continuously, and nobody ever dared to put a finger in the pie for he was
the giver and there were too many of them to give. Yes, it is a misery indeed to
eat the charity bread and climb the stairs for a low bow. This is how miserable
were the people in lines for charity at the house of scientists as well. The
checks sugar was bitter sweet. So much bitter smelled a smoke coming from my
home furnace, the smoke of disappointment. But anyway the wooden stairs of
Berlin are steeper and harder to climb indeed. I am here writing this down on
the playing table.
I remember a scene where charity bread was given out somewhere in the town of
Urmia. A big crowd of Kurds almost naked in rugs was in line for the bread.
Beside the distributor of the food there was someone with a heavy whip in his
hand to hold the crowd around. When Russians left Persia, Aissors and Armenians
were unprotected. It was their destiny. If someone is starving and he cannot get
food anywhere, he is fated to die after all. But Russians did leave out. Aissors
were fighting like a fierce beast biting at the headlights of a car.
When Turks had them encircled, they broke through the
ring and rushed towards the British controlled territory near Baghdad. They
marched on through the mountains in haste so that their horses were dumped and
children and packs abandoned. As collectively known the abandoning of children
is a common thing in the East." Who knows it? Actually I do not know who
picks up the news and spreads it. If the ill fate works, the abandoned children
will die anyway.
Then Dr. Shedd prepared his vehicle and raced after the marching people.
But what could one man do after all? Aissors were breaking through mountains
anyway. As a matter of fact there are no pathways or passages, and the ground is
covered with rocks and stones as if it had been raining stones. The horse would
run down its shoes on these rocks over a hundred miles. When in 1918 winter
there was a terrible famine, people were dying in rooms with frozen walls,
corpses were too hard to bury. Mourning began afterwards in spring. Spring came
like always with lilac and nights in white satin. Mourning ever started with
spring again because it was bitter cold in winter. Aissors started to cry for
their children when they came into Nineveh and the soil under their feet became
softer and flat. There was a general mourning cry in St. Petersburg, too. Russia
would begin to cry some day after the ice had melted. There was a dispute
between highland, and Urmian aissors. Actually they had never fought before. But
in 1918 winter again people never hated each other as they even cuddled up
together to keep out cold. They did it till springtime. The Aissors from Urmia
wanted to go back and take revenge on the Kurd Simko, the killer of Aissors.
As they abandoned their children on the go, they knew Simko was coming
after. The Aissors of highlands had become casual about it. They were exhausted.
They were just unable to repeat the journey. Moreover they felt like being at
home in the world near Nineveh. Turks had gone away. Aissors were only fighting
with Kurds. For them Persians is never a serious threat. The Urmian Aissors were
marching very quickly. Simko vanished back to Tavriz.
Aissors closed every way out for him. Tavriz is a big city, so there are many
doors in clay walls of the streets. The population is counted in Persia by the
amount of the doors found in the streets. These are low profile doors with
wooden latches, but nobody knows what is there behind. Aissors would ever know
it anyway. This is when Dr. Shedd started to prepare his vehicle. It was a black
colored vehicle of yellow wheels. He had to come through the armed Aissors to
reach the town of Tavriz. He was in a cladding of his black frock coat again.
Dr. Shedd brought back before the Aissors three thousand and five hundred
exhausted children he had picked up as he was after the runaway people. Their
clothes were torn and their hearts burnt for it is not only the privilege of the
horses to run down their shoes. Dr. Shedd handed the children over to their
fathers and took Simko right by his side on his transport and rode him to
Baghdad for a British trial. Nobody
stood in his way. No, I should not have written those words. But I warmed up my
heart though it still hurts me. I feel sympathy for Russia. Who will show
Russians how to place striped packs on camel’s backs and to tie up lengthy
caravans with a woolen rope to watch them over across
deserted open spaces of the Volga river basin?
Dr. Shedd! Listen I am a man from the East for the East begins at Pskov
and further on as far as the three oceans.
Dr. Shedd! You know how bitter it is to be in exile. Dr. Shedd
Listen I minced like a mouse through spaces with a company of soldiers to reach
St. Petersburg. I was amidst the crowd of weary soldiers coming back home after
their captivity in Germany. In the carriage of the train we were riding in there
alongside empty coffins with captions like this "coffins to return". And
now I live amidst immigrants and I myself would soon become like a shadow with
them.
The Berlin Schnitzel smells sour to me. I lived in St. Petersburg in 1918 to
1922. In your name, Dr. Shedd, and in the name of doctor Gorbenko who did not
allow the violent crowd in Herson to slay the wounded Greeks, as well as in the
name of the unknown driver who once asked me to go and save machines, I would
rather finish this book.