down in the shade of an olive tree when his wife came running down the lawn. A Turkish messenger had arrived, summoning him to a tribunal with Jamal Basha in Aley, a city twelve miles uphill from Beirut.
In the spring of that year, the Turks had begun to deport the Armenians. First they rounded up the intellectuals in Constantinople—Krikor Zohrab, Daniel Varoujan the poet, Rupen Zartarian, Ardashes Harutiunian, Atom Yarjanian “Siamanto,” Yervant Srmakeshkhanlian the novelist—more than two thousand in total taken to imperial holding centres, many tortured, most killed. Then the Turks forced every remaining Armenian civilian to march into the desert without supplies. The Empire was dying and in its last throes killing with paranoiac ferocity all dissidents. Now even race could be a mark of treachery. The women were raped before they were throttled, and the Euphrates was strewn with corpses. Under the pressure of the Great War, the Empire that so recently had been reforming towards democracy now attacked without mercy whoever was not, and did not want to be, a Turk.
The messenger told Haj Hassan that his friend and colleague Fuad Murad had also been summoned to the trial, and had already left Nablus for Aley. Hassan assured the messenger that he would set out at once, and sent him on his way. Hassan shut the door and found his wife Nazeeha, who had been listening, in tears. It occurred to Hassan that his uncle Haj Tawfiq Hammad, who represented Nablus in the Ottoman parliament, might intercede for him with the authorities. He composed a message to Tawfiq and sent it with his servant to the telegraph station in Nablus. He would wait one more night on his farm for Tawfiq’s reply, and catch up the hours lost the following day.
That evening, after their meal of lentils and lamb, every member of the family disappeared to sleep or pray, except for Hassan, who took the opportunity to sit in his garden. Nazeeha wanted to join him, but he sent her away. He looked down from the ledge at the swimming pool glittering with starlight, and listened to the irrigation system watering the pomelo trees below.
In his study he packed a small bag for the journey—two fresh shirts and a pair of his best French trousers; the Quran; a bar of soap—and as he was buckling the straps the maid entered with a visitor. It was his friend, the merchant Haj Taher Kamal.
“Jamal Basha has become an anxious and bloodthirsty man,” said Haj Taher at once. “You must not go, it will be certain death. Al-Lamarkaziya, Al-Ahd—every group that wants independence is a threat. It will not be a fair trial.”
“We never asked for independence,” said Hassan. “We are the Decentralisation Party. We ask only for reform.”
But Haj Taher was convinced of his danger, and urged Hassan not to go to Aley. Hassan did not entirely disagree with him, but he had made up his mind, and of course he was counting on Tawfiq. Haj Taher meant well, but he was not a politician.
A telegram from Tawfiq arrived before midnight: yes, he would intercede. Hassan could be sure of a pardon.
He woke at sunrise, kissed his sleeping wife, mounted his horse, and rode north through the hills. By the time the sun had started to heat the air he reached Jenin, where he stopped at his cousin’s house to exchange his horse for a carriage and driver. He napped in the carriage seat as his man drove them on. Through the wooden wall he listened to the uneven contours of the road, and woke to the quiet roar of wheels on rocks as the temperature dropped by Lake Tiberias. He ate one of the pieces of bread he had brought and offered the other to the driver. As they approached the Litani River he began once again to feel hungry, but all they had left was a bag of seed for the horses, so he requested a stop at the travellers’ inn that was coming into view on the hilltop ahead.
While the driver fed the horses, Hassan approached the building. The exterior had recently been refurbished and plaster clung to the leaves of the carob tree outside in a sticky crust. The innkeeper appeared in the doorway, a short, black-eyed man in a dirty apron. No food, he said. Haj Hassan scowled, and the man remembered they might have a couple of eggs left over after all—if effendi could wait just a moment. Handing Hassan a newspaper