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- Herausgeber: Edit Print
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
This is a first book of the trilogy. An organization called “The Circumcised” has appeared and threatens to take vengeance for the Armenian Genocide and to annihilate the Turks with the help of a genetic computer weapon. An Armenian journalist of the radio-station “Liberty” leaves for Istanbul, and a Turkish journalist arrives in Yerevan. The first journalist together with a Turkish officer and the second one with an Armenian officer are looking for the traces of “The Circumcised”. The imaginary seeming threat gradually takes the form of a real danger. The task is to discover “The Circumcised” and to save the Turks from being massacred and the Armenians from perpetrating Genocide. And not only that...
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Hakob Soghomonyan
THE CIRCUMCISED
A book for two
Trilogy
The firs book
Warning
An organization called “The Circumcised” has appeared and threatens to take vengeance for the Armenian Genocide and to annihilate the Turks with the help of a genetic computer weapon. An Armenian journalist of the radio-station “Liberty” leaves for Istanbul, and a Turkish journalist arrives in Yerevan. The first journalist together with a Turkish officer and the second one with an Armenian officer are looking for the traces of “The Circumcised”. The imaginary seeming threat gradually takes the form of a real danger. The task is to discover “The Circumcised” and to save the Turks from being massacred and the Armenians from perpetrating Genocide. And not only that...
This is a first book of the trilogy.
...Just like in dramas of Shakespeare, for instance, Iago is just as human as Othello is, and as Othello doesn’t and can’t exist without Iago, likewise the Armenian is Armenian just because fate had decreed that the Armenians would confront the Turks, and one of them would be a martyr and the other an executioner, but yet both of them were mere playthings of destiny. Both of them are equally human, that suffer as they have been destined to. The world is like hell in the novel, a hell where people suffer. The Armenian is saved though dying, but the Turk can’t even die. The Armenian and the Turk are two poles of the human soul in the novel.
Vazgen the First
The Armenians in the novel
the Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by Franz Werfel
Bucharest, 1940
What you have got in your purse
Jesus Christ was passing through a village. An angry mob of villagers that were displeased with Him crowded round Him mocking and cursing Him. And Jesus was just standing and smiling. A man who had been watching all that was happening went up to Jesus and asked why he behaved in such a manner. And Jesus answered: “Each of them giveth the thing he hath in his purse.”
Press Release
“Recently a conference took place in Yerevan dedicated to the Armenian Genocide. World-known experts on genocide, scientists, public figures and statesmen from all over the world participated in the conference. Genocide survivors were present in the conference too. The conference was being broadcast on international and local television, as well as online, and it was being shot to be involved in the chronicle. The participants attested that in 1915 the first genocide in the human history took place in Turkey during which about one and a half million of Armenians were massacred; a whole nation was evicted from its birthplace and bereft of its homeland.
The conference unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide, and called upon all the people and states of the world to condemn the Armenian Genocide, and accede to the resolution of the conference.
The State of Turkey and the Turkish nation were not mentioned there.
The conference was organized at the highest level. Besides the scientists and specialists, also few people who had hardly escaped the Genocide spoke at the conference, and documented testimonies of the witnesses were voiced, and rare documents and photographs were shown.
P.S.
Also a strange incident occurred during the conference.
A weird person delivered a non-scientific and unbelievable speech in the conference, later it turned out that the stranger was registered neither in the list of the participants, nor in the guest list. The orator left the impression of a crazy on everybody. The participants of the conference paid no attention to that speech, and it was not entered in the minutes. But it aroused a great interest among the journalists. Though our correspondent tried to meet the strange speaker and take an interview but he did not succeed in doing so. Even the organizers of the conference could not give any information about that person. No one knew how the stranger had appeared in the conference. And it would be interesting to know what the security forces were busy with that they did not notice the strange person come in. Though, presumably, they were an accessory to the disappearance of the mysterious orator.
Notwithstanding the incident, the conference went off on the highest level, as it has already been said. And that indicates that mankind and the Armenian people are ready to withstand any challenges and trials.”
The Confused Officer
The Captain of the security forces Hovhannes Mahtesyan looked round angrily trying to catch sight of the careless officer, through whose fault the strange person had managed not only to get into the conference hall, but also reach the microphone and speak freely. The officers were in their places. Hovhannes Mahtesyan thought that nothing could have escaped their attention. However, it had. There were also secret agents in the hall; one was walking among the crowd gathered in the hotel lobby as a journalist, the second would sometimes appear on stage as a sound-operator, the other two had taken their seats in the conference hall as participants, and another with the janitor’s clothes on was watching from the corresponding place.
But Mahtesyan did not waste his time on gathering information about them; he would turn to it later. First of all, he should catch the stranger that was quickly going to the exit. Mahtesyan quickened his steps. The stranger seemed to sense the danger and looked back over her shoulder. The stranger’s look was as strange as her speech and appearance. There was some gloomy sadness and hopeless determination and lifeless coldness in the stranger’s look that made Mahtesyan shiver and he even froze for a while. A thought flashed across his mind, a thought that was as much absurd as the announcement of the strange orator; he suspected that the stranger might really be the one under whose name she had introduced herself at the beginning of her speech; only those people have such an expression on their faces who are destined to fight against the doom of fate, to predict the future, to announce it publicly but always to be rejected.
The stranger not only sensed the danger but also saw and easily passed by the secret agent substituting the janitor whom Mahtesyan had ordered by the radio transmitter not to let anybody out only a few seconds before, and going out through the entrance the stranger turned right and disappeared from sight. Throwing a killing glance on the puzzled agent Mahtesyan came out only a few seconds after the stranger and he turned right, too. But the stranger had disappeared. She seemed to have vanished into thin air. The captain immediately examined the place very carefully. The traffic on the street had been stopped. A policeman was standing there so she could have escaped by car in no way. She could not have entered through the nearby doors or entrances and hidden behind them for there were not any in the place. The hotel in one of the most spacious and luxurious halls of which the conference was being held, had neither doors, nor entrances in this part, and the glasses of the beautiful arch-fringed windows were dark, impenetrable and shatterproof. A little far from the hotel there was a green lawn with no single tree or bush.
There wasn’t any place or possibility to hide or escape. However, the stranger had disappeared. Having uselessly examined the place Mahtesyan went back into the hotel.
The Damaged Video-Cameras
Coming back Mahtesyan interrogated the policeman who was watching the street, as well as the secret agents and officers watching the course of events during the conference ex officio. Everybody had noticed the stranger, but amazingly enough none of them had taken steps to stop her, to prevent her from getting in and going out. It was a gross violation of the order. But all of them would unanimously say that at the very moment when they saw the stranger they heard Mahtesyan’s voice on the radio transmitter ordering them not to hinder her. Obeying Mahtesyan’s order they had not even checked the stranger’s documents, nor had they demanded to show them a certificate of a conference participant or a guest, which was a gross violation of the standing orders.
It was also very astonishing that when describing the stranger they would present different images that were quite contradictory to one another. Some would describe him as an old man that had passed by them grumbling through his nose and murmuring some incomprehensible words in a foreign language. According to another man the stranger was a middle-aged Negroid, he was displeased with something and was angrily swearing. There were also such people who had seen a composed and determined young man who looked like an Anglo-Saxon and who was mysteriously and conspiratorially smiling all the time.
All this did not coincide with what Mahtesyan had seen. He had seen an incredibly thin woman with an antique set of features, with a white and ancient mantle or rather a tunic on, with her grey hair waving like a flag boding a disaster; she seemed to be the embodiment of begging and entreaty.
Mahtesyan did not tell his collaborators in what appearance he had seen the stranger though he was dead sure that either all of them were mistaken or for some unknown reason they were playing a low-down trick being in collusion. Mahtesyan had seen her making a speech from the booth of secret filming, standing near the cameras that were filming the conference all the time and was sure that those cameras had filmed the speech and would show the real image of the stranger. For the proper and correct description of the stranger he just needed to go into the camera booth and record all that had been filmed by the cameras. And Mahtesyan, accordingly, did so. But what he saw was astonishing. The cameras had not recorded either the stranger’s image or voice. During the speech the cameras had only shot a dark and deep emptiness that only spiritualists usually display during cheap TV-shows, and instead of voice, dead silence was recorded on the tape.
The camera maintenance personnel were as much surprised as Mahtesyan. One thing was evident, although that was practically impossible; the cameras had neither filmed the speech of the stranger nor had they recorded his/her voice. And what’s more, the secret cameras that were placed in the lobby and on the exit hadn’t filmed the stranger, either. This was more than just extraordinary for everything else had been recorded by the cameras.
Watching the tapes Mahtesyan saw himself going somewhere quickly and vigorously his eyes fixed somewhere; on emptiness. But this was not a look of a man looking for something unknown and unreal, then turning his vacuous eyes inside himself looking for the thing he was mistakenly trying to find outside. No, Mahtesyan’s look was quite realistic; he was looking at someone that really existed – at the stranger. While, only a disappeared reality was recorded on the tapes.
But that was not a problem, either. It was not difficult at all for Mahtesyan to recall the reality in every detail. His trained memory was like a perfect mechanism that could reproduce everything completely or any period of time or space of the event as exactly as the most modern device would. Mahtesyan closed his eyes and let his marbles work. It took only a few seconds. The real period of time disappeared into somewhere like the stranger that had vanished into thin air. The present reality was replaced by the reality of the past; Mahtesyan seemed to go back in time and appear in a reality that was as real as the present one. It seemed that time divisions into the past, the present and the future were just relative concepts and that all of them existed jointly somewhere, at the same time, and all that we call the past, the present or the future were really the same, and they went by together in unity like a carriage jointly carried by three horses.
The following image came to Mahtesyan’s mind.
Cassandra
The thin and tall woman with a pallid face seemed to appear from obscurity, and she went up to the microphone waving the hems of the old tunic reaching up to her heels. The participants of the conference had grown so rigid that it did not even occur to the organizers to stop her. Though, it was already too late to take any steps, the danger of a possible scandal was even more undesirable than any unexpected speech. Going up to the microphone the unbidden orator said the following:
“Honourable participants of the conference, ladies and gentlemen, I’m the one whose fate, may be in a different way though, is as much or even more horrible and tragic than that of those you have come to remember and to condemn the terrible villainous crime committed against them.
I’m Cassandra, I’m destined to see into the future and tell people all that is awaiting them, to warn them about the forthcoming terrible disaster. I’m Cassandra. I can see the depth of time. I see how the present creates the future; a disastrous future.
Certainly, you all have heard about me, and all of you think that I died a long time ago after the fall of my homeland Troy because neither my father listened to me, my father who had begotten me, nor did my cognate brother. They didn’t believe me. It’s my punishment, my destiny; I’m destined to tell the truth to which nobody ever believes; they only believe me after having seen my predictions come true, when it’s already too late.
Now you all know that I was right then.
A few years will pass by and those of you that will be still living then will be convinced that what I’m going to tell now is as unobjectionably true as was the destruction of Troy.
I know, now you are puzzled and looking at me and hearing my words you probably think that I’m crazy. Each of you sees me in a different appearance. So, you can think that I’m a spirit that has come from the future trying to avert the future disaster with your help. Otherwise you’ll have a terrible future ahead of you. But the future is built up in the present time. A man can build up his future as he imagines and wants it to be. The man’s future is always in his hands, and Gods are only the man’s agents in this matter. And I’m not a spirit, at all, but I’m condemned to live until anybody believes me. If anybody believes me then I’ll become mortal and will repose in peace at last.
I emphasize this to make you understand that what I’m going to say now is not just my obligation or mission or just a demonstration of my gift granted by fate, as I’ll benefit from it, too. Nowadays, people have become more distrustful than ever; they don’t believe a word or deed if their author doesn’t seek profit. So this is my profit, if you believe me, then I’ll become free.
And now I’m telling you; though today you have gathered here for a sacred purpose, but that’s not your main problem now; now, since this very moment and henceforth your main problem and object must not be the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide but you must work on preventing the Armenians from perpetrating Genocide themselves.
I’m telling you the truth; soon, very soon, an organization will appear that will be called “The Circumcised” and wanting to take vengeance upon the Turks they will make a genetic weapon, which they’ll put into use by the Internet and they will annihilate everybody that has got even very slight genes of a Turk. One by one, group by group, house by house, settlement by settlement, country by country. The history will repeat itself. But this time the victim will become the executioner while the one-time executioner will be the victim. Now, one of your main arguments for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide is that as far as the Armenian Genocide has not been recognized, as far as it has not been condemned and recompensed, there’ll be other genocides as well; genocide will become a common practice. You’re right. I agree with you. But that very danger is threatening you, first of all.
Think over that. And working on the recognition of Genocide, seek justice not only for yourselves but also for the whole mankind.
Believe me. And take actions to prevent the impending new genocide. Raise the question of the recognition and condemnation of the Genocide and make your claims on these grounds. Today not the deceased matter but the living. You don’t want your people to perpetrate genocide; you don’t want them to commit a crime even if it is in reimbursement for your sufferings, do you?
You must think of new ways and means. Discover and reveal things that were known long ago, and protect your people from the danger of becoming criminals by committing a crime against the crime.
You have seen the past. Now, look into the future. It is the same as the past. Only the actors have changed places.”
Hypothesis
As it has been said, this crazy speech full of incoherent, repeated and disjointed judgments received the attitude it deserved; the participants of the conference just ignored it. It was clear as noonday the speaker was crazy, and, indeed, it was the organizers’ and the security officers’ unforgivable fault that she had been able to sneak into the hall and make a speech.
We also know that though the participants of the conference preferred not to pay attention to what happened during the conference, some media agencies looking for sensation, on the contrary, described the event in every detail and they went too far in their assumptions claiming that the sound-recording and video-recording equipment did not film or record the speech because the security forces of the host country had joined in a conspiracy, and in the end, they came to the conclusion that it was the security forces who had organized the madwoman’s speech. True, their aim was still rather incomprehensible and inexplicable, but that uncertainty was more advantageous to the journalists than the clarity; it enabled them to give way to their imagination and make any suppositions they liked to.
Nevertheless the version of a madwoman satisfied everybody. State authorities of Armenia made an official announcement informing that the orator was crazy and was under treatment in one of the lunatic asylums, they said she suffered from a type of schizophrenia that roused double identity, and made her imagine that she was Cassandra. Just like some madmen believe they are Napoleon, Jesus Christ, Mozart or some other famous person. It was also mentioned in the officially confirmed hypothesis that on the very day of the conference the crazy woman had managed to get out of the lunatic asylum secretly, and taking advantage of the security’s carelessness she had sneaked into the hall and made her speech. It was also told in the announcement that all the culpable people were penalized.
Another Cassandra
The “penalization” mentioned in the official announcement was actually a severe punishment. Mahtesyan was stripped of his badge and position, and was fired. His subordinates were treated likewise.
Mahtesyan took the punishment close to his heart. Of course, he could find a similar, a far better and a higher-paying job in any private agency if he wanted to; job offers came pat from many agencies soon after his relinquishment. But he had a few strange principles, one of which obliged him to serve only to his State. In addition, he was not in a state of mind to accept or reject offers. For he knew better than anyone else that the story of the madwoman presented in the official announcement was made up, and such a woman had never really existed. He had personally checked all the lunatic asylums before he was fired. Though there was no need of it, he wanted to clear up the matter once and for all. There was no such sick woman. The madwoman had never existed, but there really existed a woman who had introduced herself as Cassandra. Who was she; a non-registered lunatic, “a self-taught madwoman” or somebody else? But wasn’t the existence of somebody else more than just absurd? And what did her words mean?
Sometimes Mahtesyan would look at the matter from a different standpoint and would get horrified: “Well, let’s suppose the unknown person was really the one who she had introduced herself; then we must admit that all she said was true −”
Thus a year passed. Time spreads its veil on everything, and it seemed this was the case. But, in fact, it was just self-deception. Often, very often Mahtesyan would suddenly find himself thinking about something that had no answer. And very often he had the feeling that he could go crazy if he kept on thinking about it so much. At those moments Mahtesyan often remembered the participants of the conference constantly getting astonished at the fact that none of them ever referred to that matter, nor they responded to it somehow, at least, denying or speaking ironically about it. The silence seemed strange and even mysterious to him.
It’s hard to say how long this could go on. But a month later something happened that troubled him even more. There was a press release about the conference that had taken place in Istanbul. It nearly repeated the information word by word about the conference that had been held in Yerevan:
“Press Release
The other day a conference took place in Istanbul; the conference was dedicated to the so called question of “The Armenian Genocide”. World-known scientists, public figures and statesmen from all over the world participated in the conference. The conference was being broadcast on international and local television, as well as online, and it was being filmed to be involved in the chronicle. The participants argued that the events which took place in Turkey in 1915 should not be regarded as genocide for such a statement did not correspond to the facts and was totally groundless. The Turkish people and Turkish State could not take such a terrible sin upon themselves for they had not committed it.
The conference passed a resolution which condemned the vain efforts of qualifying those events as Genocide and it called upon all the people and states of the world to join the announcement of the conference.
Armenia and the Armenian people were not mentioned there.
The conference was organized extraordinarily well. Besides the scientists and specialists, there were also some witnesses denying the genocide that spoke at the conference, rare documents were proclaimed; photographs and other documentary data were shown.
But also a strange incident occurred.
A weird person delivered a non-scientific and unbelievable speech in the conference, later it turned out the stranger was neither registered in the list of the participants, nor in the guest list. That orator left the impression of a crazy person on everybody. Appearing before the microphone unexpectedly she introduced herself as Cassandra, and insisted that the question of denying the Armenian Genocide should be considered not from the standpoint of the past but of the future, as a terrorist organization called “The Circumcised” would crop up very soon and it would make a genetic weapon that would function through the Internet. And that weapon was supposed to annihilate everybody that had the genes of a Turk. She called upon the participants of the conference to save the Turkish people from the danger of being massacred and to view the question of the Armenian Genocide from that aspect.
The participants of the conference paid no attention to that speech and it was not entered in the minutes. But it aroused a great interest among the journalists. Though our correspondent tried to meet the strange speaker, and take an interview, he did not succeed in doing so. Even the organizers of the conference could not give any information about her. No one knew how the stranger had appeared in the conference and where she had disappeared. And it would be interesting to know what the security forces were busy with at that time. Though, presumably, they were an accessory to the disappearance of the mysterious orator.
Notwithstanding the incident, the conference went off at the highest level, as it has already been said. And that indicates that the mankind and the Turkish people are ready to withstand any challenges and trials.”
Reading the announcement Mahtesyan shivered. Though there was nothing about the appearance of the unbidden orator, however he immediately and vividly recalled the mysterious person who had disappeared from the conference of Yerevan only a few months before.
It was stated that the participants of the conference had again taken the speech of the mysterious person for ravings of a madwoman. It was also said that the participants ridiculed her speech and demanded to punish severely both her, and the security officers responsible for the safety of the conference, through whose fault such a senseless speech, shadowing the scientific character of the meeting, was delivered in such an important conference of a great epoch-making significance to mankind.
There wasn’t a single word in the announcement about the further actions of the strange person, there was no reference to the audio and video-recording equipment, either, but the official communication proposed the same hypothesis as in the case of Yerevan; a madwoman that had run away from a lunatic asylum. So, Mahtesyan had no doubt that the course of the events was the same as during his duty in Yerevan.
Mahtesyan broke out in cold sweat; the same thing had happened in Istanbul as in Yerevan, the same warning had been voiced.
A Phone Call
Mahtesyan had not yet fully recovered from the impression he had gained while reading the announcement when his phone rang. Astonishingly enough, it sounded pretty dull while the phone was in his pocket and the ring seemed to be coming from far away and was rather unnatural. Mahtesyan froze on spot. Something prevented him from answering the call. The phone rang monotonously and was stubbornly consistent. The caller seemed to know the addressee was there and waited until he’d run out of patience.
The caller was right. Mahtesyan finally ran out of patience. He held the phone to his ear and said in a low voice:
“Hello!”
He spoke and shivered at the same time. His voice seemed to be both his and not his. It was familiar and strange, remote and sepulchral at the same time.
But there was silence at the other end of the phone; mysterious and weird silence and from the depth of that silence a sound of a psalm, reminiscent of an ancient hymn, was hardly heard. Mahtesyan unwittingly tried to make out what language the hymn was in, but he vaguely guessed that his efforts were to meet with failure. It was not like any language he knew, and he could surely say it was the first time he heard that language.
All that lasted only a moment. The monotonous, rhythmic music got louder, filled the whole room and penetrated into Mahtesyan’s temples and got into his brain and spread over its convolutions thus enervating and making him drowsy.
A Vision from the Future
Mahtesyan found himself in another reality. Both the space and time were different. The settlement, in one of the streets of which he was standing, was probably a city, a modern city though it seemed rather strange and unusual to Mahtesyan. There were tall, thoroughly glassed skyscrapers and there were also huts among them which seemed rather inconsistent with reality, and in the far away there was a mosque that stirred up dim memories. Everything around him was unfamiliar, weird and amazing. But the most strange and amazing thing was the silence, the intolerable, unbelievable and dead silence that was more unbearable than even the loudest and deafening noise. Mahtesyan was perplexed and when he carefully examined the place he suddenly noticed a thing that was even worse than the silence; there was no movement at all. There was no life. The city was dead. It was buried in lifelessness. It seemed a calamity or a threat of some natural disaster or the scourge of heaven had made the inhabitants leave their city in panic. Or, though it was rather incredible, they might have gathered in one place for some ritual or a cultural event. Or, another inexplicable and incomprehensible thing had happened. No matter what had happened, the city was deserted and Mahtesyan was standing alone in that emptiness.
He involuntarily directed his eyes to the mosque standing in the far end of the street. If something, some preternatural power or phenomenon had chased the inhabitants of the city, if they had suffered a calamity or a disaster and if someone had survived, probably, he would have placed his trust in the merciful Heaven looking for protection in the House of the Lord. Mahtesyan had mentally witnessed and had heard many stories about such cases. Mosques were like the churches which the Armenians set their hopes upon during the Genocide. Yes, they hoped but they never found protection and salvation in them. Could the same thing be happening in the mosque, under its arches? But there was no time to think. There was nothing more he could do to find someone and conquer his strong fear of loneliness and emptiness than to make his way to the mosque. But when Mahtesyan made for the mosque he at once noticed that the air of emptiness was just delusive. And what he saw instead of emptiness was even more horrible than the emptiness; there were corpses all over the street.
The first corpse he saw was a man lying breathlessly on the ground. He was lying face downwards and his face was not seen. But the whole pose of the body caught in the jaws of death, the incredibly bent and zigzag curved spine, the petrified fingers that had stuck into the asphalt and had left deep holes in it with such an incredibly great strength coming out of the pangs of death, and all this indicated that he had given up his soul to the invisible and inexplicable ghost of death in inhuman tortures.
There were another two corpses lying a little far away from him, an old man and an old woman; they were probably spouses that had lived their lives together sharing both its sorrows and joys and had been struck dead together, too. They had fallen on their backs. The woman had covered her face and eyes with her hands, as if trying to prevent her eyes from seeing something very terrible. The man’s eyes, on the contrary, were open and fixed on the sky, the horrible answer of the inexplicable question; the reflection of what he had seen was hidden in the depth of his open eyes. The man’s head rested on the woman’s breast, while his hand was incredibly curved and put on the woman’s hands that had covered her face. It seemed he, drawing his last breath, had tried to help his wife, to prevent her from witnessing some terrible scene.
Had they looked in the eyes of death?
Mahtesyan was horrified and rushed aside but he stumbled over an obstacle. He fell down and knocked his head against the obstacle. Mahtesyan fainted and the last thing he felt was the rigidity and softness of the obstacle it seemed he had hit his head against something hairy and hard. When he regained his consciousness he felt himself squeezing something cold in his hand. He had a terrible feeling; he was holding a corpse’s hand, fainting he had struck his head against the corpse’s head.
It was a dead young woman. The woman was lying curled up with a five or six-year-old boy in her arms, one could guess from her position and state that, drawing her last breath in agony, she had tried to protect her child with herself, with her own body but she hadn’t managed to do so for she’d been helpless before the terrible, inexplicable death, and now, though breathless and lifeless, she was showing her boundless love with a rebellious look in her eyes protesting against the silence of death. Her face expressed limitless suffering, and that was not the suffering of a man struggling for life, but of a mother who hadn’t been able to protect and save her child.
The boy had lent his head against his mother’s soft breast like a peacefully sleeping child, and only the imprint of bewilderment on his face showed that only for a moment, a very short second he had, nevertheless, felt that something was wrong; that something terrible was happening to him.
Letting go of her hand Mahtesyan jumped up to his feet and tried to run away. But to his horror the crooked fingers of the corpse gripped his foot like pliers and rooted him on the ground. Vainly trying to free his foot Mahtesyan unwillingly caught sight of the whole place and was even more horrified; the scene gave the impression of a family death photograph, here there were Grandfather and Grandmother, and then there was Father who, probably, had been wounded the first, and then there was Mother with her black-haired son’s lifeless head pressed on her breast, as if giving out a petrified and silent cry.
Still that was not all; looking more attentively Mahtesyan saw that the woman was pregnant. And the child had died in her womb.
Had it died or had it been killed?
The scene left the impression of a massacre.
Mahtesyan felt a feverish and an intolerable alarm. He somehow pulled his foot out of the clutches of the corpse leaving his shoe in her hand and thus barefooted he rushed to the mosque. There were corpses all around. And the only place where a man could find protection was the place where people placed their trust in God.
The escape to the mosque through the corpses spread all over the street seemed like an eternity. But going into the mosque through its open door Mahtesyan found out with fear that not a rescue was awaiting him there, but a new trial.
There was a terrible scene in the mosque. It looked like a field hospital of the army that had been defeated, where alongside with the corpses also the leprous, invalids, blind and dumb people had taken refuge in. Even a man with wildest imagination could not fancy what was happening there. The ones that were still alive were even more horrifying than the corpses spread all over the place. An invisible hand seemed to have infected them. Not a single physical fault was missing in them. There was inarticulate speech, moans and entreaties, indignation and protest, profanity and helpless obedience hovering in the air. Here, one of them had crawled to the niche and having delved deeply into the Koran with his bloody eyes fixed on its sayings he was vainly trying to find the answer and reason of the incurable pain that was torturing his body and soul. Another man was examining his dried up, paralyzed hands in horror and was silently groaning. The third one was feverishly rubbing the left side of his face with his right hand as if trying to get rid of the suppurative wounds on his face with the only healthy organ of his body. The other’s spine was infected, and he, having collapsed on the floor and suffering in cramps, was rolling on the floor trying to go out of the mosque. A woman’s mind was infected and she was sitting with her hands raised to the sky and her devilish laugh was ringing out up in the unshakeable arches of the mosque. Another one was rubbing and picking her ears with all her might trying to get rid of the obstacles that had suddenly blocked up her hearing. There were also people who had black hollows in place of eyes, and were shedding bloody tears on the floor of the mosque. There were also people who had lost their tongues and their silence was more eloquent than the most booming noise. There were also some who had lost the ability of seeing and hearing, speaking and moving all at once, and one could not imagine what voices they could hear in the mosque and how they could get information and tell it to the others. There were also some that would scratch their eyes with fingernails to tear away the blinding darkness that had come over their eyes and vainly trying to get over the black wall that had risen between them and the world they would finally pull out the eyeballs and stretch them out in an uncertain direction. Where? Where were they directing their blind eyes to?
Thus rolling, groaning, making noise and revolting the crowd spread over the floor of the mosque, would go up and down like a fragile boat that had got into the jaws of the stormy sea, and it was not known what had brought them to such a state and what could save them.
