Remembering Hamasdegh’s Story In Lockdown: "Yerneg Ayn Oreroun”

Vahe H. Apelian

This lockdown is reminding me of one of Hamasdegh’s moving stories titled, “Yerneg Ayn Oreroun” (Երնէկ Այն Օրերուն). I will come to the story after a brief introduction of Hamasdegh as he remains etched in my memory.

I regard Hamasdegh as the towering storyteller of the Armenian village life. He captured the Armenian village for posterity. No other Armenian author I know came close to him in depicting the Armenia village and those admirable villagers. What also fascinates me is his imagination. Hamasdegh left his native land and came to America in 1913 when he was 18 years old and after having left their village to study in a small town for a few years. He left America only once, during 1928-30, and toured the Armenian communities. When he undertook his overseas trip, he had already published his masterpieces immortalizing the Armenian village and had secured for himself a special place in the Armenian literature and in the public’s imagination. He and the villagers he described in his two books titled “Village” and “Rain” became endearing characters. The stories he narrated and the villagers he described are figments of his literary imagination but they resonated with the readers as if they actually lived and toiled in that proverbial Armenian village only Hamasdegh  knew. 

Each of his stories uniquely describe an aspect of the village’s life. Among them  I have my favorites, although each story and each character  are unique and unforgettable. That story is titled Chalo. It is about men’s most faithful  canine, a dog name Chalo. I cannot envision that there can be a better and in more depth depiction of our faithful four-legged companion. Chalo was the village’s dog but it was a stray dog. It was wise, attentive to command and liked to keep company with the village’s elderly and hear the stories they told. Henceforth many Armenian families named and continue to name the  canine member of their family Chalo.

The title of the story that comes to my mind these days may be translated as  “Longing Those Days” or "Blissful By Gone Days" or maybe “Wishing for  Those Days”. The title in fact has become an expression in the Armenian lexicon and is often uttered whenever someone longingly reminisces of bygone days. Hamasdegh dedicated that story to Roupen Tarpinian, the longstanding eminent editor of “Hayrenik” Daily.

The story is about two elderly neighbors. Mnoush was a longtime widow who made a living by helping the villagers in their chores and lived next to Mkhsi and his wife Anneg. Their houses were next to each other. I envision that their houses shared a common wall, much like our grandparents’ house in Keurkune shared a common wall with the house next door. But their houses shared a common extended rooftop as well. A wall separated their courtyards. Mkhsi and Anneg were a happy couple. In their old age they were spared from work and watched their grandchildren grow. Unfortunately, Anneg died after a short illness. “After a month, Mkhsi forgot his wife, as all dead persons are forgotten;  but he never forgot his loneliness”, wrote Hamasdegh. 

It is then Mkhsi took a fancy of Mnoush. He went out his way to help her. He sat in his front yard waiting for Mnoush to come out of her house and do her chores. During such a moment Mkhsi approached Mnoush and remarked as how rosy her chicks looked arousing suspicion in Mnoush, and another time Mkhsi offered to give her a bag of freshly harvested wheat, without his son knowing it. The offer raised alarm bells in Mnoush and gave way to an ongoing bickering between the two over their chickens crossing into the other’s yard, or his grandchildren playing on Mnoush's roof, or whether Mnoush had the water sprout deliberately moved towards Mkhsi’s yard. When the village’s priest gave communion to Msnoush, Mkshsi ceased going to church against the priest’s pleas. No one understood the root cause of their animosity, not even Mkshi’s son but the villagers accepted it as normal course in their lives but Mkhsi knew that in his old age, over fifty, he should not have said and suggested what he did.

There came upon them the dark days and the villagers were forced out caravan after caravan. And amidst the death marches they met each other. “Mkhsi and Mnoush fell into each other’s arms crying like two little children.” Hamasdegh wrote,  “Mkshi, barely held himself, took his red handkerchief, wiped the tears from his eyes and said: “e~h Mnoush, longing for those days”.

I lived almost the first two years of the Lebanese civil war. There, we also locked ourselves in the safest corner of our houses as war raged on, bullets flew and bombs fell. But I did not feel as confined as I do now. The enemy there was in the open. To fare the ordeal, the neighbors of our 30 units building, often came together confining ourselves in a lower level corridor or in a basement room. But this lockdown is different. The deadly enemy is not seen, nor heard. It is lurking somewhere or maybe everywhere. It might even be within us waiting to ambush persons next to us so we have to keep a distance between us. A paradoxical term has come about, “Social Distancing”. How can one be social but remain apart?  This onslaught is different.

Yes, I will have to admit, I also miss the mundane life I lived a short while ago. Whether it was going to church, attending a men’s club dinner, having a coffee with a friend in Panera Bread, or  taking a weekend off somewhere. Those mundane happenings have now assumed a significance that had alluded me all along and altogether.  Surely, like anything else, this will end somehow and sometime. But when I meet my favorite cousin, not that I do not favor the others,  we will not fall in each other’s arms and give each other a bear hug and utter what Mkhsi uttered to Mnoush, that we too, in turn, long the days of our lives a short while ago. Yes, we will not bring ourselves to do that, God only knows for how long, or maybe for the rest of our lives.