Haro, the Rug Porter from Moush, and “Little Morgan,” the Moneylender Garbis

This is the sixth installment of Bedros A. Keljik’s Armenian-American Sketches, which were translated and annotated by Aris G. Sevag. “No Good Comes From Having Children in This Country,” along with a short biography of Keljik, can be found here, the second story here, the third here, the fourth here, and the fifth here.

I knew him by the name of Mshetsi Haro. His baptismal name could be Aharon.

Haro had been present when the terrifying Bank Ottoman incident[1] took place in Constantinople. Along with a group of porters, he too had been exiled from Constantinople; after a long and arduous journey, he had arrived in New York.

Without even hearing the provincial dialect spoken by him, one could tell that he was a native of Moush. His unique figure and round red face were the salient features of the natives of Moush, at least those Mshetsis, whom we had considered the embodiment of courage during our youthful days.

With broad shoulders, which were a little hunched from working as a porter, large black eyes, unruly curly hair, impressive Armenian nose and bushy eyebrows matching his mustache, he resembled one of the acrobatic wrestlers who used to perform on feast days at the Sourp Garabed monastery in Moush. Despite his robust stature, Haro was a mild-mannered and tranquil individual.

In those days, two wealthy Armenians had opened an employment office in New York at their own expense to help out unemployed Armenians. Haro was taken there every morning with military punctuality; he used to be there prior to the office doors opening and wait for the “doctor.”  (The office manager was known by the title of “doctor.”)  Before arriving there, Haro used to make the sign of the cross, uttering “Ya Sourp Garabed” (Sourp Garabed, help me).

There were many dishwasher jobs available in hotels but, with his countenance, temperament and appearance, Haro was not suited for that work, especially since he didn’t know a single word of English. Finally, one day, an Armenian rug dealer, the Jimjimian Company, informed that it was looking for a young Armenian willing to work.

The “doctor” in the employment office said, “Haro, come here, there’s a job that’s suitable for you; I’m going to send you to an Armenian rug dealer who’ll pay nine dollars a week.”  Haro’s eyes lit up as he figured it was equivalent to 225 piasters[2]. That was good money for Haro so he said, “I’ll go, doctor, right now.”  With the latter’s recommendation in hand, he went to the Jimjimian Company’s store whose owner was a Turkish-speaking Armenian.

Mr. Garbis, who was the reliable head porter of this store, took Haro inside to the back of the store and, behind a large rug hanging from the ceiling, had him put on a black jacket, which was the official porters’ uniform. Whether a hamal in Constantinople, or a porter in New York, the work was the same; only the word for it had changed.

“From your letter I see that your name is Haro. What’s your last name?” Garbis asked.

“They call me Mshetsi Mikoyents Haro,” he replied.

“Your job will be unfolding and folding rugs, and tying large bundles, from eight o’clock in the morning until six o’clock at night. Do you know anything about this kind of work?” asked Garbis.

“Agha,” Haro said. Garbis interrupted him, saying “there are no aghas here; all of you are porters; you should use the word effendi only when you are speaking about the store owner Hovhannes Effendi or talking with him.”

“Mister,” said Haro, “these jobs are a piece of cake for me; even the street kids in our village can do them; I have carried bundles of rugs as heavy as a buffalo from Mateo Khan to the customs house; everybody, Turk and Armenian alike, knows me as Hamal Haro. I have carried pianos from Pera to Shishli[3] and taken them to their destination.”

“That’s all well and good,” said Garbis. “But this is not the time for lengthy idle conversation; this is America; we mustn’t waste time; you’ll come at eight and leave at six. I forgot to ask you your religion.”

“Glory to God, how many religions are there? As Sourp Garabed is my witness, I am an Armenian Christian,” said Haro.

Haro became a good loyal worker. Besides him, there were other Armenian porters and one Irishman too, who was called Mack. Mack wasn’t as good a porter as the Armenians, but the effendi possessed a keen business acumen and knew what was what. Therefore, he paid Mack a few more dollars a week, figuring that the presence of an Irishman would make a favorable impression on the American customers; so, whenever the buyer was not an Armenian, Mack would be summoned. One of the Armenian porters was a native of Adapazar. Since Adapazar was close to Constantinople, he had taken on the airs of a resident of the Turkish capital and looked down upon the others. Another of the porters was from the villages of Sebastia, while the fourth one, of course, was a native of Kharpert.

I didn’t know where Garbis hailed from. To tell the truth, he didn’t look much like an Armenian, with his bald head, thin nose, which he stuck into everybody’s business, and tiny eyes which never smiled. Few showed interest in Garbis; he lived alone and wasn’t generally friendly. Before coming to America, he had made a living by changing and lending money. “Money has value there. When you pile up gold and silver coins on a glass countertop and look at their stacks, you get a special feeling. Here, a hundred dollars is just a piece of paper,” he would say.

Besides his monthly earnings as head porter, Garbis still engaged in the money-lending business, like his father. He would lend five, ten, up to twenty-five dollars not only to his fellow porters but also to those who worked for quite a few other rug dealers. For every dollar lent, he charged one cent interest per week. It wasn’t profitable for him to do business with those porters who practiced moderation and lived economically; he liked big spenders because he could make money off them. Having lost money playing pinochle, they would come see Garbis at six o’clock Monday evening; he would have each of them sign a piece of paper (an IOU) before giving them the money and without forgetting to initially deduct the percentage from the sum lent. He had a refrain for each of them. He would say to one, “I like you a lot, you’re a real sport and a decent chap.”  To another, he would say, “I’ve heard good things about you.”

Haro never resorted to borrowing money; he was a thrifty person who used to save his pennies to accumulate enough money in order to return to his homeland one day. He couldn’t adapt to America.

After a while, Garbis began to lend money even to average merchants, such that everybody forgot his baptismal name and called him “Little Morgan.”  Garbis took great delight in this nickname; each time he heard himself called this, he smiled one of his rare imperceptible smiles.

Garbis was extremely stingy and frugal; he knew the value of money and genuinely loved it. His room was kitchen and bedroom both; the most important piece of furniture in this room was the small money box that contained a leather case he had brought from Turkey and in which he put all the IOU’s. Using a heavy lead pencil, he had written capital letters on various days on his wall calendar; these signified the names and dates of the various IOU’s and debtors. Years passed and, one day, Garbis was found dead in his room. The leather case containing the IOU’s had fallen by the bed.

Garbis left behind in banks a fortune worth more than forty thousand dollars. Heirs came forth, from Egypt to China, to claim that fortune of his.

* * *

As I said, Haro was a dutiful and hardworking laborer; what he lacked was familiarity with the fine points of the rug business. He was told that, in order to receive a raise, he had to learn the secrets of the job: how to hold a rug under the light to show it to the best advantage; upon finding a hole in the rug, putting one’s foot on it until the customer left. The most important thing was learning how to measure the rugs with a measuring tape so as to make them seem longer than they actually were: holding the measuring tape and pulling it back and forth, as necessary, something which the other porters knew well.

This store was known by the name Short Major, since they used to sell rugs by the square foot. The addition of one or two non-existent inches brought considerable extra profit to the store. It often happened that once the purchases of the customers were delivered, they would complain about the size. The store had a form letter ready, which it would send in the event of customer complaints, as follows:

“On account of the humidity during the week your purchase was dispatched, naturally it was bound to shrink one or two inches before reaching its destination. We regret that we cannot make any adjustment.”

Haro did not learn how to cheat on the measurements. One day, we found out that Mshetsi Haro had lost his job. “Haro, what happened?  Why did you lose your job?” we asked.

“What can I say, agha, I couldn’t learn how to cheat on the measurements. They told me that, when measuring a rug, you should press the end of the tape under your fingernail. I just wasn’t cut out for that and, for that very reason, they fired me.”

* * *

There wasn’t a large crowd at Garbis’s funeral. The priest officiating at the funeral heaped unusual praise on the deceased, saying he was “compassionate, patriotic and pious.”  When the coffin was being lowered into the grave, the priest, holding a handful of soil, intoned “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and sprinkled it on the coffin. Meanwhile, one of the porters, who had worked for many years under Garbis, approached and threw a handful of copper pennies on his coffin, saying “the deceased loved money very much, I want him to be happy and lighthearted as he lies in his coffin.”

Haro, who had lost his job for not knowing how to fake measurements, was there and he smiled imperceptibly during the ceremony.

Out of the $40,000 Garbis earned as a moneylender, he took only a handful of pennies with him to his grave.

ENDNOTES

[1] On August 26, 1896, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation executed the seizure of Bank Ottoman in Constantinople, to exact revenge for the massacre of 300,000 Armenians by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1894-1896, to make the European Powers more aware of the Armenians’ plight and to exert pressure on the Sublime Porte to effect reforms to better the lot of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire.

[2] Piaster – 1/100^th of a Turkish pound.

[3]Pera and Shishli are neighborhoods in Constantinople (now Istanbul).