In the ancient Armenian city of Van, boys become men and neighbors turn into enemies overnight. Never Hide from the Devil begins on the eve of the defense of Van in April and May 1915, led in part by the legendary Aram Manoukian, a revered leader who guides the teenagers who are the story’s main protagonists, including the narrator Suren Simonian, his siblings, and his friends Mihran and Razmik, as well as his sister and extended family. The first few chapters also crucially establish the friendship between Suren and Hamza, young Armenian and Turkish “blood brothers,” teenage boys whose friendship will somehow survive the beginning of the Young Turk plan to exterminate the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire.
One of the novel’s great qualities is that it is divided into twelve parts and 66 short chapters that play out chronologically over the course of only one month. Each chapter recounts a conversation or encounter that adds to the overall dénouement. This gives the action a play-by-play quality that throws the reader into the midst of the conflict and almost makes them feel as if they were part of Suren’s family — they immediately identify with the narrator from the very beginning.
The chapters themselves serve not only as clever chronological devices but as tonal schemes as well. Take the novel’s opening chapter, “Fight on Holy Ground”: the reader who knows a bit of history, or has researched the novel before reading it, expects a description of an immediate battle between Armenians and Turks, but instead is given a playground fight between Razmik and Mihran, which Mihran ultimately wins:
The voices grow louder as the two keep circling without a swing. One of the boys with wide-set eyes, from Hisoushian School, yells “Fight!” in Armenian. Soon, the word catches fire. Each boy punches the air as he chants. Even Hamza, who only knows a few phrases in our language, joins in. “Mihran! That’s his name,” Nshan shouts, pointing his fingerin the air like a politician….
“You won, Raz. You joined his nose and his mouth. Everyone knows it. Just relax,” Hamza says in Turkish.
“Don’t touch me, Turk. This has nothing to do with you.”
In this early description, McQueen manages to set much of the action and the aura of violence that already engulfs the city. For some reason, as I read this text, I could not help but be thrown back to Golding’s Lord of the Flies, though the settings and themes differ greatly. Through this fight, we get a hint of the greater battle that will soon ensue between Armenian and Turk — the great line that divides even best friends and turns Armenians and Turks into each other’s reflections and “Others,” as evidenced slightly later in the text:
Mihran looks at us, and I see something in his face that I haven’t seen before, even in Razmik. Something I can’t quite understand. Why do you allow him here? Shouldn’t he be with his kind beyond the cemetery?” Mihran asks in our language, keeping his eyes on us and nodding his head toward Hamza. We share the same look with the same empty mouths. The rumors I heard at home from Baba and Uncle Tarzi flood back to me.
To recall Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s wonderful turn of phrase in Three Apples Fell from Heaven, “rumor is a mendacious tatterdemalion”: a liar, a ragged, shabby thing. And yet… The rest of Part I of the novel, “Whispers and Rumors,” plunges the reader into the fear and uncertainty that the Armenians of Van and Suren’s family experience. Before the internet and modern communications, Armenians must rely on hearsay, including asking Hamza—because he is Turkish — if he has heard anything about what is befalling them. The rumors soon become more precise, as evidenced in a scene between Baba and Tarzi:
“There is no proof, Tarzi. We can’t panic over rumors.” He polishes the face of his wristwatch with a soft towel—the same watch Pap gave him before he left to fight in the Hamidian massacre and never returned.
“Bah! He’s a butcher. They don’t call him the ‘Horseshoer of Bashkale’ because he races horses.”
“Again, more rumors.”
“Rumors?…the tanner (Avakian) who moved to Aykesdan? Just last week, two gendarmes arrived and demanded a tax for the war. They took everything but the pork. Everything, Vartan! What will the pasha take from you when they come to the Old City?”
Then, referring to the fact that the Ottomans drafted young Armenian men into the army (where they were abused and even murdered at will), comes the chilling sentence: “They already took our sons.” Soon, the market closes for good, and it becomes obvious that war is about to break out. Armenians have been clever and have armed themselves this time and are able to resist, though both Suren’s family and others experience great losses, both physical and material. Women also play an important role in the defense of Van, including Suren’s mother and grandmother, and his sisters Araxie and Siroun, who undertake perilous assignments during the siege.
April 22 to April 24 represent the so-called “Great Resistance,” followed by the events at Tabriz Gate and the heroic final battle. In one chapter, Aram Manoukian sends Raz and Nshan, mere boys, to defuse bombs with their bare hands. The title “Never Hide from the Devil” refers metaphorically to the idea that it is better to look at the enemy straight on and fight him than to live in fear. More specifically, in Chapter 56, which bears this title, amidst a long disquisition about Suren’s mother and Aunt Yeva, Uncle Tarzi muses: “We are all Ottomans, but one wants to destroy the other. Same hair. Two arms. Two legs. They have two eyes but see different things. One heart, but feel different emotions.” Then he grabs Suren and tells him poignantly:
Never forget who you are,” he says, holding up one finger. “And never, never, hide from the devil.” He leans forward, pointing his finger at me. A tear slips from his eye and disappears into his beard. The famous fighter Tarzi? Crying?” Promise me!” he barks, making me flinch. “Yes, sir,” I reply.
Much of the novel’s subtext, in fact, revolves around an idea that is difficult for the young Suren to grasp at first, and which has been one of the tragedies of Armenian-Turkish history: that two peoples could be so intertwined — and in a sense so similar — and yet end up, after so many centuries, as bitter enemies.
Perhaps the most touching — and telling — scene occurs when both Suren and Hamza find themselves confronted by a Turkish gendarme. If the latter gets his hands on Suren, then he will most definitely be killed. Hamza intervenes one last time for his blood brother and screams for him to run away, although in warning an Armenian he too has likely signed his own death warrant. It is the last time the two will ever see each other, as far as the reader knows.
The novel ends on a positive note, as the Armenians have prevailed — at least for now. As students of history are aware, Van would soon be evacuated, and the Armenians forced to retreat northward toward the Russian Empire, in the direction of what would later become the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. As the author notes in the afterword, this tale is based on historical facts but does not recount an actual family or specific events. The novel is not literary in tone, but it is well written and carefully cadenced throughout, with an epic quality that would lend itself well to the screen. There are many splendid scenes that cannot be summarized in a short review. N.T. McQueen has a strong sense of plot, and the characters are well developed. And given that the novel is written from the side of an Armenian family it cannot help but at times dip into stereotyping both sides. Despite these minor criticisms, Never Hide from the Devil remains a gripping page-turner that vividly brings to life a period at the outset of the Armenian Genocide that might otherwise fade from public memory, especially for general readers. That McQueen does so with such brio and vigor is to his credit.
