The Doorkeeper

  … have been was in winter, because I remember ha trekking through snow and being lost and spending a night with other lost children in [a] room and being being given white Russian bread and pieces of hard cold meal, [by soldiers].  In the morning I wandered out crying in the snow crying for my mother.  I remember when I found her, how she sat in the snow and wept over me.  We returned in summer to find my only maternal uncle had died and my grandfather dying in the Turkish village near our village.  After my grandfather died we went back to our own home to find everything gone & roof completely removed.  These are the only out-standing events which have stuck in my mind. We spent only one year in [Khasie ] (my mother’s village) and then moved to [Sutloovi ] my father’s homeland village where

  When After the grapes are harvested the vineyards are opened to gleaners and children of the poorer people [...] about them seeking for left overs.  They do collect quite a good amount. As everywhere the [ missing word? Summer? ] months (months) are the best.  It is hot and all village schools are closed.  Children help their parents in the gardens and vineyards & tend cattle on the common. I did not see my father till (sic) I was six or seven.  When I was born he was on his way to America.  But one afternoon in summer I was playing with other children on [the] banks of the shallow river close by the village when we saw a phaeton drawn by two horses splash across the river and stop.  Two wl well dressed men got down and one of  them approached me.  He was my father.  This must have been the year we returned from our flight to Russia which must

  …found under roots of low dry scrub bushes.  We never ventured to the other side of these hills in fear of wolves.  On the village side of the canal the land sloped very gently to the village and beyond it to the river bed .  On the slopes nearest the canal spread the vineyards, mile up[on] mile.  In my old country the vines grew in zig-zag earth mounts close to the ground and the grapes are most delicious.  I remember when in hot summer months when the grapes were ripening we used to search for & pluck the ripest bunches [core] them in the tiny streamlet that bubbled by every vineyard, and glut ourselves. I remember the busy happy harvest time when the grapes are gathered.  Some are spread out to dry into raisins & sultanas, others are crushed in huge troughs by bare-footed children, and the gigantic earthen vats into which the juice is poured and [sealed] to make wine.

Diffident as I have always been, I cannot resolve where to begin, this, the story of humble, [halfhazard] life.  In fact, where does one’s life as an individual person really start; where does one discover himself, his ego, his loves and hates, his …… & his  weaknesses and his abilities.  When does he begin to think and be alive [?] School children do not have to think.  When they do think it is more or less of the next meal or how to keep out of trouble .  Real thinking comes later, when they discover themselves. Thinking back now, at the age of 57 , I seem to be looking through a window covered with dust & cobwebs over a shadowy land round about a village that comprised my world.  Now & then a gust of wind blows aside the cobwebs and I can see clearly the land where I was born and which I left 50 years ago .  The furthest I can see on one side are the [.....] hills by the foot of which flowed a lazy canal.  Sometimes we used to cross...

My children, you will hardly understand this autobiography because you have not struggled & suffered at a tender age. You have not gone hungry & thirsty & did not know where the next meal would come from. You have not sipped water from a puddle through a bit of cloth. You have not been under fire & seen people fall dead on all sides while you [kept] running for your life.