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The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse
by William Saroyan

One day, back in the good old days, when I was nine and the world
was full of every imaginable kind of magnificence and life was still a
delightful and mysterious dream, my cousin, Morad, who was considered
crazy by everyone who knew him, except me, came to my house at four in the
morning and woke me up by tapping on the window of my room.
“Aram,” he said.
I jumped out of bed and looked out of the window.
I couldn’t believe what I saw.
It wasn’t morning yet, but it was summer and with daybreak not many minutes around the
corner of the world, it was light enough for me to know I wasn’t dreaming.
My cousin Morad was sitting on a beautiful white horse.
I stuck my head out of the window and rubbed my eyes.
“Yes,” he said in Armenian. “ It’s a horse. You’re not dreaming. Make it quick if you
want to ride.”
I knew my cousin Morad enjoyed being alive more than anyone else who had ever fallen
into the world by mistake but this was more than even I could believe.
In the first place, my earliest memories had been memories of horses and my first longings
had been longings to ride.
This was the wonderful part.
In the second place, we were poor.
This was the part that wouldn’t permit me to believe what I saw.
We were poor. We had no money. Our whole tribe was poverty stricken. Every branch of the
Garoghianian family was living in the most amazing and comical poverty in the world.
Nobody could understand where we ever got money enough to keep us with food in our bellies,
not even the old men of the family. Most important of all, though, we were famous for our
honesty. We had been famous for our honesty for something like eleven centuries, even when we
had been the wealthiest family in what we liked to think was the world. We were proud, first,
honest, next, and after that we believed in right and wrong. None of us would take advantage of
anybody in the world, let alone steal.
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Consequently, even though I could smell the horse, so lovely, even though I could hear it
breathing, so exciting: I couldn’t believe the horse had anything to do with my cousin Morad or
with me or with any other members of my family, asleep or awake, because I knew my cousin
Morad couldn’t have bought the horse, and if he couldn’t have bought it, he must have stolen it,
and I refused to believe he had stolen it.
No member of the Garoghianian family could be a thief.
I stared first at my cousin and then at the horse. There was a pious stillness and humor in each of
them, which on the one hand delighted me and on the other frightened me.
“Morad,” I said, “where did you steal this horse?”
“Leap out of the window,” he said, “if you want to ride.”
It was true then. He had stolen the horse. There was no question about it. He had invited
me to ride or not, as I chose.
Well, it seemed to me stealing a horse for a ride was not the same thing as stealing
something else, such as money. For all I knew, maybe it wasn’t stealing at all. If you were crazy
about horses the way my cousin Morad and I were, it wasn’t stealing. It wouldn’t become stealing
until we offered to sell the horse, which of course, I knew we would never do.
“Let me put on some clothes,” I said.
“All right,” he said, “but hurry.”
I leaped into my clothes.
I jumped down to the yard from the window and leaped up onto the horse behind my
cousin Morad.
That year we lived at the edge of town, on Walnut Avenue. Behind our house was the country:
vineyards, orchards, irrigation ditches and country roads. In less than three minutes we were on
Olive Avenue, and then the horse began to trot. The air was new and lovely to breathe. The feel of
the horse running was wonderful. My cousin, Morad, who was considered to be one of the craziest
members of our family, began to sing. I mean, he began to roar.
Every family has a crazy streak in it somewhere, and my cousin Morad was considered the
natural descendant of the crazy streak in our tribe. Before him was our uncle Khosrove, an
enormous man with a powerful head of black hair and the largest moustache in the San Joaquin
valley, a man so furious in temper, so irritable, so impatient that he stopped anyone from talking
by roaring, “ It is no harm, pay no attention to it .
That was all he said, no matter what anyone was talking about. Once it was his own son
Arak running eight blocks to the barber-shop where his father was having his moustache trimmed
to tell him that their house was on fire. This man Khosrove sat up in the chair and roared, “It is no
harm, pay no attention to it.” The barber said, “But the boy says your house is on fire.” So
Khosrove roared, “Enough, it is no harm, I say.”
My cousin Morad was considered the natural descendant of this man, although Morad’s
father was Zorab, who was practical and nothing else. That’s how it is in our tribe. A man could
be the father of his son’s flesh, but that did not mean he was the father of his spirit. The
distribution of the various kinds of spirit of our tribe had been from the beginning capricious and
vagrant.
We rode and my cousin Morad sang. For all anybody knew we were still in the old
country, where at least, according to some of our neighbours, we belonged. We let the horse run
as long as it felt like running.
At last my cousin Morad said, “Get down. I want to ride alone.”
“Will you let me ride alone?” I said.
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“That is up to the horse,” my cousin said. “Get down.”

“The horse will let me ride,” I said.
“We shall see,” he said. “Don’t forget that I have a way with a horse.”
“Well,” I said, “any way you have with a horse, I have also.”
“For the sake of your safety,” he said, “let us hope so. Get down.”
“All right,” I said, “but remember you’ve got to let me try to ride alone.”
I got down and my cousin Morad kicked his heels into the horse and shouted, “Vazire, run.” The
horse stood on its hind legs, snorted and burst into a fury of speed that was the loveliest thing I had
ever seen. My cousin Morad raced the horse across a field of dry grass to an irrigation ditch,
crossed the ditch on the horse, and five minutes later returned, dripping wet.
The sun was coming up.
“Now it’s my turn to ride,” I said.
My cousin Morad got off the horse.
“Ride,” he said.
I leaped to the back of the horse and for a moment knew the awfulest fear imaginable. The
horse did not move.
“Kick into his muscles,” my cousin Morad said. “What are you waiting for? We’ve got to
take him back before everybody in the world is up and about.”
I kicked into the muscles of the horse. Once again it reared and snorted. Then it began to run. I
didn’t know what to do. Instead of running across the field to the irrigation ditch the horse ran
down the road to the vineyard of Dikran Halaban where it began to leap over vines. The horse
leaped over seven vines before I fell. Then it continued running. My cousin Morad came
running down the road.
“I’m not worried about that,” he shouted. “I’ve got to get that horse. You go this way and
I’ll go this way. If you come upon him be kindly. I’ll be near.”
I continued down the road and my cousin Morad went across the field toward the irrigation
ditch.
It took him half an hour to find the horse and bring him back.
“All right,” he said, “jump on. The whole world is awake now.”
“What will we do?” I said.
“Well,” he said. “We’ll either take him back or ride him until tomorrow morning.”
He didn’t sound worried and I knew he’d hide him and not take him back. Not for a while, at
any rate.
“Where will we hide him?”
“I know a place,” he said.
“How long ago did you steal this horse?” I said.
It suddenly dawned on me that he had been taking these early morning rides for some time and had
come for me this morning only because he knew how much I longed to ride.
“Who said anything about stealing a horse?” he said.
“Anyhow,” I said, “how long ago did you begin riding every morning?”
“Not until this morning.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Of course not,” he said, “but if we are found out, that’s what you’re to say. I don’t want
both of us to be liars. All you know is that we started riding this morning.”
“All right,” I said.
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He walked the horse quietly to the barn of a deserted vineyard which at one time had been
the pride of a farmer named Fetvajian. There were some oats and alfalfa in the barn.
We began walking home.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said, “to get the horse to behave so nicely. At first it wanted to run
wild, but, as I‘ve told you, I have a way with a horse. I can get it to want to do anything I want it
to do. Horses understand me.”
“How do you do it?” I said.
“I have an understanding with a horse,” he said.
“Yes, but what sort of understanding?” I said.
“A simple and honest one,” he replied.
“Well,” I said, “I wish I knew how to reach an understanding like that with a horse.”
“You’re still a small boy,” he remarked. “When you get to be thirteen you’ll know how to
do it.” I went home and ate a hearty breakfast.
That afternoon my uncle Khosrove came to our house for coffee and cigarettes. He sat in
the parlor, sipping and smoking and remembering the old country. Then another visitor arrived,
another farmer named John Byro, an Assyrian who, out of loneliness, had learned to speak
Armenian. My mother brought the lonely visitor coffee and tobacco and he rolled a cigarette and
sipped and smoked, and then at last, sighing sadly he said, “My white horse which was stolen last
month is still gone. I cannot understand it.”
My uncle Khosrove became very irritated and shouted, “It’s no harm. What is the loss of a
horse? Haven’t we all lost a homeland? What is this crying over a
horse?”
“That may be all right for you, a city dweller, to say,” John Byro
said, “but what of my surrey? What good is a surrey without a horse?”
“Pay no attention to it,” my uncle Khosrove roared.
“I walked ten miles to get here,” John Byro said.
“You have legs,” my uncle Khosrove roared.
“My left leg pains me,” the farmer replied.
“Pay no attention to it,” my uncle Khosrove roared.
“Pay no attention to it,” my uncle Khosrove said. “I spit on money,” my uncle Khosrove said.
He got up and walked out of the house, slamming the door.
My mother explained. “He has a gentle heart,” she said. “It is simply that he is homesick and such a
large man.”
The farmer went away, and I ran over to my cousin Morad’s house.
He was sitting under a peach tree, trying to repair the hurt wing of a young robin which could not
fly. He was talking to the bird
“What is it?” he said.
“The farmer, John Byro,” I said. “He visited our house. He wants his horse. You’ve had it a month. I
want you to promise not to take it back until I learn to ride.”
“It will take you a year to learn to ride,” my cousin Morad answered. “We could
keep the horse a year,” I said.
My cousin Morad leaped to his feet.
“What?” he roared, “are you inviting a member of the Garoghlanian family to steal? The horse
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must go back to its true owner.”

“When?” I said.
“In six months at the latest,” he said. He threw the bird into the air. The bird tried hard, almost fell twice but
at last flew away high and straight.
Early every morning for two weeks my cousin Morad and I took the horse out of the barn of the
deserted vineyard where we were hiding it, and every morning the horse, when it was my turn to
ride alone, leaped over grapevines and small trees and threw me and ran away. Nevertheless, I
hoped in time to learn to ride the way my cousin Morad rode.
One morning on the way to Fetvajian’s deserted vineyard we ran into the farmer John Byro who was on his
way to town.
“Let me do the talking,” my cousin Morad said. “I have a way with farmers.” “Good morning, John Byro,”
my cousin Morad greeted the farmer.
The farmer studied the horse eagerly.
“Good morning, sons of my friend,” he said. “What is the name of your horse?” “My
Heart,” my cousin said in Armenian.
“A lovely name,” John Byro said, “for a lovely horse. I could swear it is the horse that was stolen
from me many weeks ago. May I look into its mouth?”
“Of course,” Morad agreed.
The farmer looked into the mouth of the horse.
“Tooth for tooth,” he said. “I would swear it is my horse if I didn’t know your parents. The fame of
your family for honesty is well known to me. Yet the horse is the twin of my horse. A suspicious
man would believe his eyes instead of his heart. Good day, my young friends.”
“Good day, John Byro,” my cousin Morad said.
Early the following morning we took the horse to John Byro’s vineyard and put it in the barn.
The dogs followed us around without making a sound.
“The dogs,” I whispered to my cousin Morad. “I thought they would bark.” “They
would at somebody else,” he said. “I have a way with dogs.”
My cousin Morad put his arms around the horse, pressed his nose into the horse’s nose, patted it
and then we went away.
That afternoon John Byro came to our house in his surrey and showed my mother the horse that had
been stolen and returned.
“I do not know what to think,” he said. “The horse is stronger than ever. Better tempered, too. I
thank God.”
My uncle, Khosrove, who was in the parlor, became irritated and shouted, “Quiet, man, quiet.
Your horse has been returned. Pay no attention to it.”
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