Kaza Siverek / Սեվերեկ – Severek / Siverak / Siwarak ܣܝܒܪܟ

He is a huge, magnificent Gampr, invigorated both by the climate of the plains and the mountains where he grew up. He moves gracefully and majestically, always remaining calm when pursued by the pack of dwarfed, mangy and dirty city dogs. To both flanks hang luxuriant curls that testify to his noble ancestry, while the loss of hair on his back betrays his old age and the infertility it has caused. The broad and strong chest with protruding curls of hair gives the animal an extraordinary beauty, in stark contrast to the pitiful pack born and raised in the dirt and dung of the streets, which chase and yap at him. But why are they yapping at him? This is the passion of the street, which oozes through the pavement as mud. That is the unworthiness of the inferior and pathetic instinct, which feels challenged by the disproportionate opposition and revolts against it, running and howling. They and their good-for-nothing descendants still flock from all directions, who have been idly sleeping in front of the butcher shops and bakeries. And they still call to their aid those heroes who have positioned themselves around the slaughterhouse. The older ones show off, threatening with a rough voice, the younger ones threaten conceitedly, as ridiculous as this seems, and the little ones, encouraged by the boldness of the older ones, spout curses with their childishly immature voices as always aimlessly and without thinking.

Thus, they run panting after the Gampr, who goes on his way unperturbed and self-confident. It sounds many-voiced and many-tongued, there is a loud shouting, but all this does not diminish his calm and majesty, which is the real cause of the anger and excitement. He just keeps walking, rarely turning his head, effectively keeping the overly forward and brash at bay with a warning. Those who nevertheless dare to come a little closer, and whose breath he feels on his sinuous tail, he throws back into the vile, filthy stream of his pursuers with a faint snarl pressed through his teeth and a monotonously threatening growl. The pack of haughty rulers of the rubble heaps and streets is pathetic and disgraceful in their common incompetent pursuits.

What noble haughtiness of an animal, an aged Gampr, who unfortunately already limps on one front paw, which impairs his proud gait. Nevertheless, the injury does not harm his physical dignity, but still highlights his undoubted strength and highhearted nature.

But how did this aberration come about? What drove him from the mountains to the plains and then to the city? What fate has brought him to the strange environment where he experiences the company of his disease-infected, hungry brothers, and where he and the offspring he has begotten vegetate in the rain, sleep in the mud, unaccustomed to the wretched way of life on the road? Where, without willingness to submit, he is unable to obtain even a crumb and would have to die of hunger. So, what was the cause of this animal’s sad adaptation, so similar to human fate and life’s demands? If he himself cannot relate his situation, his lame paw tells us the whole truth.

*

It is known that he belonged to a nomadic community. Born of the blood of powerful parents, as a Gampr and descendant of a Gampr, he spent his childhood in the perilous mountains. Already in the first days of his life, deep in his soul awoke the hatred for the wolf and the willingness to sacrifice for the herd. He experienced his mother’s eternal fierce vengefulness when she chased wolves. Her heroic anger, vigor, and bloody battles taught him the necessity of always putting everything on the line to protect the flock entrusted to him, taught him loyalty to his master and sacrifice to the last, and, if necessary, to die covered in blood and with his body torn apart in front of the eyes of the shepherd and the sheep in the pen.

The dawn of his childhood began in this way. After that, miracle after miracle! How happy his Amazonian mother felt when she returned to her puppy with a bloody snout as a victress. Or after that magnificent struggle, when the boy displayed the splendor of his irresistible strength, the first lacerating terrors of his teeth, and the indomitable resistance of his muscles. His mother, resting her head contentedly and carelessly on her paws, slept soundly at night, for the raucous barking of her boy reached into the valleys and ravines and kept away the wolves that frightened in their dens.

The years passed, full of excitement and full of life, without weakness, without rest, without fear. But the cruel master of time, the Satan of aging, came crawling over the rocks, up into those mountains, and found the Gampr as well.

The fur began to fall out of him, the curls lost their luxuriance, the back fur thinned tragically, and in the last struggle one of his paws had been crushed. He suspected that a devastating destruction had begun inside him. The lame leg was a hindrance to his invincible chest, affecting his instinct, his sense of life, and his ever-awake passion, for instead of admiration he now detected pity in the gaze of the shepherd and in his surroundings. Thus, circumstances took a hopeless and unpleasant course, no longer compatible with the rebellious grandeur of his soul. He decided to despise the contempt in order not to submit to an abandonment to which he was never worthy.

Then, limping, with effort and torment, he descended from the mountains to the plains and arrived in the city, in the streets, where the pack of doggies of all shades and shapes yapped at him and tried to pursue him, full of derision for his boldness and strength. Is then the world of these pusillanimous dogs so limited that they raise such a clamor for the sake of a bone? Is a morsel really so valuable in these narrow and smelly alleys that one must even compete with cats for its sake, from which, by the way, the loud-mouthed dog brigade, to which he shows his fangs under his bared lips, hardly differs?

Ignorant pack, be at least once critical of your close environment and show the willingness to dream of something higher than your groveling ordinariness! Try to understand the horizon of a Gampr, so that the light of his magnanimity and honesty may open your eyes and you may realize the depth of your baseness, the wretchedness of your pity? Whom do you persecute and what is the cause of your angry barking? Is it so difficult to behold the splendid figure of a Gampr in all its sublime perfection?

*

He always walks serenely, without haste, without fear, confidently, with contempt for the pack of dogs, leaving behind their deafening clamor, outrageous boasts and threats. The tribunal of the gutter, that is the street philosophy of hungry dogs, neglected young dogs and blind puppies. This is consequently the entire town that is yet to be mobilized.

Run exalted, run with your head held high, you, a Gampr! Remove yourself from this mediocre impudence that is not ashamed to bark at nobility and that howls against dignity. They want to drive you away from these places, shamelessly wagging in front of passers-by and ready to humiliate themselves like that because of a bone.

Run, so that your way may find its end! Because you have come to a wrong place and are in wrong surroundings. Return to the solitude of the plains, to the boundless expanses of the mountains. Do not fear the troubles and storms that rage in the heights. It is better to starve than to beg for a piece of bread from a greedy city dweller, to immerse up to the chest in the mud! It is much better to die of numerous wounds in the unequal fight with a young wolf, than to end your life’s term on a street corner, humiliated in the hour of death.