William Saroyan is the author of "The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse." He lived from 1908-1981, and his stories were often autobiographical. Like Mourad and Aram in this story, he was the son of an Armenian immigrant.
"The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse" is set in the San Joaquin Valley in California. The narrator of the story is nine-year-old Aram. Aram's cousin Mourad surprises him one morning by tapping on his window from the back of a magnificent white horse. Mourad is generally accepted to be crazy by everyone except Aram. Even given this, Aram cannot believe what he is seeing. Their family lives in extreme poverty, so Aram knows Mourad could not afford to buy a horse.
What makes the appearance of the horse more unusual is that the Garoghlanian family has prided itself on its honesty, and moral compass. They are a family that for eleven centuries has been famous for its honesty.
"I knew my cousin Mourad enjoyed being alive more than anybody 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 Garoghlanian 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."
Mourad encourages Aram to come with him on a ride before dawn so that no one else will know about the secret horse. As they are riding, Mourad begins to sing. Aram explains that every family has a crazy streak, and Mourad was considered to have been the recipient of the crazy streak in the family. Aram's Uncle Khosgrove is another crazy member of the family, a large, loud man who says "It is no harm! Pay no attention to it!" to nearly everything that happens, including the fire in his own house. Though Mourad is not a biological descendant of Uncle Khosgrove, he's considered the son of his spirit because they are so similar.
Mourad rides the white horse like an expert, because as he says, he "has a way with horses." Aram wants to do the same thing but is thrown from the horse. Mourad and Aram have to find the horse, and when they do, they hide him in an abandoned barn on a deserted vineyard. Aram talks Mourad into keeping the horse for at least six months until he learns to ride.
Meanwhile, the owner, John Byro appears. He is an Assyrian who has learned the Armenian language because he is living in a large Armenian community. He complains about the loss of his horse. Uncle Khosgrove tells him to pay no attention to it, but John Byro says he can't walk due to pains in his leg. He paid sixty dollars for the horse, and he has no way to pull his surrey without the horse.
One day, John Byro sees Mourad and Aram on the horse. He is amazed because the horse is a twin of his own. He even looks in the horse's mouth and sees it is exactly like his horse. He says that a suspicious man would believe his eyes and not his heart, but he knows the Garoglanian family is honest.
The boys return the horse, and John Byro shows up the next day in his surrey to show Uncle Khosgrove that the horse has been returned. "Pay no attention to it," Uncle Khosgrove exclaims.
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