To the prisoners of Freedom
by MIKAEL HAIRAPETYAN
President of Conservative Party of Armenia, now he is in underground
Together with my journalist friends Garnik[2] and Vahan[3], many years ago, we often reminded the following phrase in one American movie. Two men, one old and one young, escape from the prison and forced to pass through the sewerage dirty waters and shit. When the young guy, being up to the waist in the shit, complaints to his disgust, what a f…g smell is this, the old man says. “This is the smell of freedom, boy!”.
The freedom also has a taste. And there’s no movie about it.
One friend of mine, who’s name with singular coincidence is Azat[4], who more than 10 years spent in the Soviet jail, told me such a story. This is even not the story but the pattern.
Imagine the taiga in the Far East, where there are no habitants per hundreds miles, but only the wild nature and beasts, and a such winter’s cold, that even the people of the blockaded Leningrad and the soldiers of field-marshal Paulus in Stalingrad
would deem it as the hell. And imagine located at this space the Soviet concentration camp with the prisoners. To imagine this easier, read our Mahari or Russian Solzhenitsyn books, and it makes your blood run cold. Everybody of those prisoners sleeps and sees the dream, sees the warmth, the cities and villages, the streets and the human life. Among those dreamers there are sometimes the men, who try to flee to the dream, the life.
Every time it happens so that two men agree to escape from the prison. They are always two. But they escape three. As always too. But this third doesn’t know that he is the third. He thinks is one of three, the part of triumvirate, the third way, the third force. This third is selected with care by the first two, and he will never guess that he is the selected one.
Month by month they save up the meal and prepare the clothes. But they need to take a little, because in the first days they have to escape very fast, even if the snow is up to their neck, and the degree is lower from zero till the infinity. The time comes and they escape. The Soviet jailers chase them with the dogs. Not finding or being not able to catch up with them, they don’t worry much, because they know it is impossible to pass through such a space and here every fugitive has the ultimate date with the death. That’s why the non-escaped thousands of the prisoners in the camp even don’t try to escape because they don’t want to have this date. The fugitives merely follow their dreams, they are less realists.
As sometimes happens the fugitives return to the camp. Sometimes their corps are found in the summer, when the weak spring comes to this place. The corps are tore to the pieces by the wild animals.
As seldom happens the escape succeeds. How comes? If their saved meal is enough for several days? Well, one or two weeks. But they can pass only several miles per day. It means, this journey demands at least one month. Somerset Moem writes that in the 15th century bishop Martiros of Yerznka went through the habited cities to Spain for the pilgrimage to the grave of Аpostle James, so he passed the same road in 5-6 years. Let’s suppose, that those fugitives go for the pilgrimage to Freedom, and because of it their forces and endurance are strengthened, and 5-6 years become 1-2 months. But they have to survive during these months, if they wouldn’t be tore to pieces by the wild animals.
When in the end of the first week or in the second one the poor reserve of the meal is expired, they can move hungry several hours or even days. If they eat, they eat the dry leaves, branches, peels or roots of the trees found under the thick blanket of the snow. But it is poisoned meal, and they loathe soon.
And when it seems they are exhausted and their freedom raid was in vain, by the signal, understood only for them, the first two assault on the third one and kill him. Every cell of the killed body is valuable. First, it is used the blood, then the dismembered corps is put in the rucksacks of the two. There is no threat of “spoiling of food”, it is too cold. The only inconvenience is that the “food” will not continue his raid by himself. They with care feed themselves by their fellow’s corps as long time as they reach a safe place.
My friend told me other details, like those two men pull out from their teeth the sinews of human meat, like they make chewable an iron-like frozen human meat.
“This is the taste of freedom, boy”, the runaway prisoner would tell, if ever there will be a movie about it. The taste and smell of Freedom are heavy. It is also hard when anyone becomes the third. The remembering mass of the third soul is only the roar of the tiger and the howl of the jackal in the taiga.
[1] In Armenian this word composed by two parts, which mean “taste” and “smell”.
[2] In Armenian Garnik means “lamb”, and the Armenians from the ancient times till now used
to sacrifice the lamb for God, in difference with the sheep, which was granted to Abraham instead of Isahak .
[3] In Armenian Vahan name means “shield”.
[4] In Armenian Azat means “free”. This name is very spread among the Armenians. This is also the name of Azat Arshakyan, one of the most formidable Soviet political prisoners .
