190
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
way while Kemal—with French and British arms—massacred
those Armenians who had survived six years of massacre. Who
came from the West to count the Greeks, Armenians, and
other Christians massacred by Kemal? Where was their gratitude? Except for help from America, where were the sweet
words of the other Powers? Ah, they call to you only when
they can make use of you."
We arrived at a cluster of buildings in the parched dustbowl.
"This is my home," the Armenian said. "Come, meet my
family."
He had one daughter and four sons, one of whom had married an Arab girl. All five, together with the mother and father, had "Armenian eyes." One can recognize them easily. It
isn't that they're large, or oval, or sad. It isn't a physical
quality that differentiates them. Look in the eyes of a man
who has suffered yet never lost faith in his Creator, in man,
or in himself; one who has lived among the dying, laughed
among the weeping, sung among the songless, a refugee for a
thousand years—and who today looks on life's adventure hungrily and excitedly, and you will have found "Armenian eyes."
We found the Demirjians living like Arabs, except that
their home was far cleaner. The entire family—save the son
who had married a Bedouin—slept in one large room, at one
end of which was a bed for the elder Demirjians. The "children," all of them now grown to full manhood and womanhood, slept on rush mats next to their parents' bed. They
brought us coffee, and cool water from the well. They urged us
to stay for supper and spend the night with them, as was the
custom of the desert. Moustafa gave a peroration on the heroic
qualities of the Armenian male, but he was too much of an
Arab to include the Armenian woman, whose role has often
been equally heroic in the preservation of the race. A truck
loaded with flour was going toward Cairo, so Moustafa, Faris,
and I decided to get on it.
"Yallah!"