cold sweat and rags and filthy undernourished bodies huddled somewhere in the sheds about the station.
Ever since sunset weâve been in Armenia, having crossed the neutral zone where the Georgians and Armenians burnt each otherâs villages till the British stopped them, back in 1918. At the last Georgian stations before we started to climb this long valley up into the Little Caucasus everybody on the train invested largely in watermelons, which could be bought for a couple of thousand roubles apiece. Up here in the mountains and in the famine area, they sell for ten thousand or more.
At about dusk we had great excitement. Shots were fired and whistles blown all down the train. Samsoun effendi drew an enormous revolver and began to whirl it about with great heroism, and sent off the smallest boy to find out what was the matter. First the news came that a woman had fallen off the top of a freightcar and been killed, but it eventually transpired that it was only a bag of flour that had fallen out of the American relief car. So the flour was picked up and everybody got back to his place, in the cars or on the roof or on the rods, and the train started wheezing its way up the grade again. Samsoun effendi was put in high spirits by the accident and started telling us of past deeds of valor, pointing the revolver absentmindedly at each person in turn as he did so. To get the revolver back into its holster the Sayyid and I had to crack a bottle of our best wine of Kakhetia. The effect was magical. The smallest youngster, a curious boy with a face as careworn as a monkeyâs, began to sing songs of the Volga in an unexpectedly deep voice. The Georgian tightened his belt and slapped his thighs and began to dance, and a broad grin divided the rugged features, partly like those of a camel and partly like those of the Terrible Turk of the cartoons, of Samsoun effendi himself.
3. Alexandropol
Dusty soldiers and freightyards jammed with freightcars of which the paint has peeled under the hot sun. The little Armenian girl has picked up her basket and gone. She appeared somewhere in the night in tow of a white-whiskered station master. Caused quite a stir. The Sayyid sat up on his valise, and noticing that she had on her chin the mole so admired of Orientals, put on an air of the most splendid doggishness and cried out Quel théâtre! in a loud voice. Samsoun effendi lit a candle and started smoothing his hair, looking at himself with great satisfaction in a small pocket mirror the while. But the Armenian girl was quite unmoved by all these manifestations and went calmly to sleep with her head on her basket.
As it grew light we crossed the watershed of the Little Caucasus. On the north side the villages, scattered collections of square houses of volcanic stone, roofed with turf and often topped by tall hayricks, were intact, and wellfed peasants were already in the fields getting in the crops, but from the moment the train started winding down the southerly slope, everything was sheer desert. The last Turkish attack, in 1920, had wiped the country clean; not a house intact in the villages, no crops, even the station buildings systematically destroyed, and everything movable carted away. Ghengiz Khan and his Tatars couldnât have laid waste more thoroughly. Alexandropol itself, though war-seedy to the last degree, had evidently been spared. It straggles among railway yards on a yellow scorched plain, where the wind blows the dust in swirling clouds from one side to the other; the most outstanding buildings are the great rows of grey barracks where orphans are housed by the Near East Relief. On the station platform the usual crowd, ragged peasants and soldiers, Russian and Armenian.
Ararat, when I first saw it, was as faintly etched against a grey sky as is Fuji in some of Hokusaiâs Hundred Views, a tall cone streaked white against pearly mist. The train was winding round a shoulder of the hills through reddish
Ever since sunset weâve been in Armenia, having crossed the neutral zone where the Georgians and Armenians burnt each otherâs villages till the British stopped them, back in 1918. At the last Georgian stations before we started to climb this long valley up into the Little Caucasus everybody on the train invested largely in watermelons, which could be bought for a couple of thousand roubles apiece. Up here in the mountains and in the famine area, they sell for ten thousand or more.
At about dusk we had great excitement. Shots were fired and whistles blown all down the train. Samsoun effendi drew an enormous revolver and began to whirl it about with great heroism, and sent off the smallest boy to find out what was the matter. First the news came that a woman had fallen off the top of a freightcar and been killed, but it eventually transpired that it was only a bag of flour that had fallen out of the American relief car. So the flour was picked up and everybody got back to his place, in the cars or on the roof or on the rods, and the train started wheezing its way up the grade again. Samsoun effendi was put in high spirits by the accident and started telling us of past deeds of valor, pointing the revolver absentmindedly at each person in turn as he did so. To get the revolver back into its holster the Sayyid and I had to crack a bottle of our best wine of Kakhetia. The effect was magical. The smallest youngster, a curious boy with a face as careworn as a monkeyâs, began to sing songs of the Volga in an unexpectedly deep voice. The Georgian tightened his belt and slapped his thighs and began to dance, and a broad grin divided the rugged features, partly like those of a camel and partly like those of the Terrible Turk of the cartoons, of Samsoun effendi himself.
3. Alexandropol
Dusty soldiers and freightyards jammed with freightcars of which the paint has peeled under the hot sun. The little Armenian girl has picked up her basket and gone. She appeared somewhere in the night in tow of a white-whiskered station master. Caused quite a stir. The Sayyid sat up on his valise, and noticing that she had on her chin the mole so admired of Orientals, put on an air of the most splendid doggishness and cried out Quel théâtre! in a loud voice. Samsoun effendi lit a candle and started smoothing his hair, looking at himself with great satisfaction in a small pocket mirror the while. But the Armenian girl was quite unmoved by all these manifestations and went calmly to sleep with her head on her basket.
As it grew light we crossed the watershed of the Little Caucasus. On the north side the villages, scattered collections of square houses of volcanic stone, roofed with turf and often topped by tall hayricks, were intact, and wellfed peasants were already in the fields getting in the crops, but from the moment the train started winding down the southerly slope, everything was sheer desert. The last Turkish attack, in 1920, had wiped the country clean; not a house intact in the villages, no crops, even the station buildings systematically destroyed, and everything movable carted away. Ghengiz Khan and his Tatars couldnât have laid waste more thoroughly. Alexandropol itself, though war-seedy to the last degree, had evidently been spared. It straggles among railway yards on a yellow scorched plain, where the wind blows the dust in swirling clouds from one side to the other; the most outstanding buildings are the great rows of grey barracks where orphans are housed by the Near East Relief. On the station platform the usual crowd, ragged peasants and soldiers, Russian and Armenian.
Ararat, when I first saw it, was as faintly etched against a grey sky as is Fuji in some of Hokusaiâs Hundred Views, a tall cone streaked white against pearly mist. The train was winding round a shoulder of the hills through reddish
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