IN THE HAREM OF HADJI GHAFOUR
After the massacre of the men all the exiles waiting in Malatia were
told to prepare for the road again. We were assembled outside the city
early one morning. Only women and some children, with here and there an
old man, were left. We were told we were to be taken to Diyarbekir, a
hundred miles across the country. Very few had hopes of surviving this
stage of the journey, as the country was thickly dotted with Turkish,
Circassian and Kurdish villages, and inhabited by most fanatical
Moslems. Civilians were more cruel to the deportees along the roads
between the larger cities, than the soldiers. Some of the treatment
suffered by our people from these fanatical residents of small towns
was such that I cannot even write of it.
When the column was formed, outside Malatia, it was made up of fifteen
thousand women, young and old. Very few had any personal belongings.
Few had food. Many had managed to hold onto money, however, and these
were ready to share what they had with those who had none. Money was
the only surety of enough food to sustain life on the long walk, and
the only hope of protection against a zaptieh’s lust for killing.
The company of apostates which I had been permitted to join was placed
at the head of the column, with a special guard of soldiers. Zaptiehs
guarded the other companies, but there were very few assigned. Most
of the zaptiehs in that district had been placed in the Mesopotamian
armies. My party of apostates, of which there were about two hundred,
was the best guarded. The others were wholly at the mercy of Kurds and
villagers.
It was now late in June, and very hot. Scores of aged women dropped to
the ground, prostrated by heat and famished for water, of which there
was only that which we could beg from farmers along the way. The mother
of two girls in my party, who, with her daughters, already had walked
a hundred miles into Malatia, was beaten because she fell behind. She
fell to the ground and could not get up. The soldiers would not let us
revive her. Her two daughters could only give her a farewell kiss and
leave her by the roadside.
One of these two girls was a bride--a widowed bride. She had seen her
husband and father killed in the town of Kangai, on the Sivas road, and
when the Kurds were about to kill her mother because she was old, she
begged a Turkish officer, who was near by, to save her. The officer
had asked her if she would renounce her religion to save her mother,
and she consented--she and her younger sister.
The sisters walked on with their arms about each other. They dared not
even look around to where their mother lay upon the ground. When we
could hear the woman’s moans no longer I walked over to them and asked
them to let me stay near them. I knew how they must feel. I wondered if
my own mother and my little brothers and sisters had lived. A soldier
in Malatia had told me exiles from Tchemesh-Gedzak had passed through
there weeks before and had gone, as we were going, toward Diyarbekir.
Perhaps, he said, they might still be there when we arrived--if we ever
did.
A few hours outside the city we were halted. We were much concerned by
this, as such incidents usually meant new troubles. This time was no
exception. As soon as we stopped villagers flocked down upon us and
began to rob us.
Just before sundown a loud cry went up. We looked to the east, where
there was a wide pass through the hills, and saw a band of horsemen
riding down upon us. They were Kurds, as we could tell from the way
they rode. The villagers shouted--“It is Kerim Bey, the friend of
Djebbar. It is well for us to scatter!” They then scrambled back into
the hills, afraid, it seemed, the Kurd chieftain would not welcome
their foraging among his prospective victims.
To say that Kerim Bey was “a friend of Djebbar” explained his coming
with his band. Djebbar Effendi was the military commandant of the
district, sent by the government at Constantinople to oppress Armenians
during the deportations. His word was law, and always it was a cruel
word. Kerim Bey was the most feared of the Kurd chiefs--he and Musa
Bey. Both were of the Aghja Daghi Kurds. Kerim Bey and his band ruled
the countryside, and frequently revolted against the Turks. To keep him
as an ally Djebbar Effendi had given into his keeping many companies of
exiled Armenians sent from Malatia to Diyarbekir and beyond.
There were hundreds of horsemen in Kerim’s band. They had ridden far
and were tired, too tired to take up the march in the moonlight,
but not too tired to begin at once the nightly revels which kept us
terrorized for so many days after. Scarcely had they hobbled their
horses in little groups that stretched along the side of the column
when they began to collect their toll. Screams and cries for mercy and
the groans of mothers and sisters filled the night.
I saw terrible things that night which I cannot tell. When I see them
in my dreams now I scream, so even though I am safe in America, my
nights are not peaceful. A group of these Kurds so cruelly tortured
one young woman that women who were near by became crazed and rushed
in a body at the men to save the girl from more misery. For a moment
the Kurds were trampled under the feet of the maddened women, and the
girl was hurried away.
When they recovered, the Kurds drew their long, sharp knives and set
upon the brave women and killed them all. I think there must have been
fifty of them. They piled their bodies together and set fire to their
clothes. While some fanned the blaze others searched for the girl who
had been rescued, but they could not find her. So, baffled in this,
they caught another girl and carried her to the flaming pile and threw
her upon it. When she tried to escape they threw her back until she was
burned to death.
When the Kurds approached my party of apostates, the soldiers with us
turned them away. “You may do as you wish with the others--these are
protected,” said the Turkish officer in charge. But this same officer
was not content to be only a spectator while the Kurds were reveling.
Five soldiers came from his tent and sought a young woman they thought
would please their chief. They tore aside the veils of women whose
forms suggested they might be young, until they came upon a girl from
the town of Derenda, toward Sivas. She was very pretty, but one of the
soldiers, when they were dragging her off, recognized her.
“Kah!” he grunted to his comrades. “This one will not do. She is no
longer a maid!” They pushed her aside and sought further. But each girl
they laid their hands on after that cried to them, “I, too, am not a
virgin!” Each one was given a blow and thrust aside when she claimed to
have been already shamed.
Soon the soldiers saw they were being cheated of the choicest prey.
They turned upon some older women and seized three. One of them they
forced to her knees and two of the soldiers held her head back between
their hands until her face was turned to the stars. Another soldier
pressed his thumbs upon her eyeballs, and said:
“If there be no virgin among you, then by Allah’s will this woman’s
eyes come out!”
There was a cry of horror, then a shriek. A girl who must have been
of my own age, and whom I had often noticed because her hair was so
much lighter than that of nearly all Armenian girls, threw herself,
screaming, upon the ground at the soldiers’ feet. Winding her hands
about the legs of the soldier whose thumbs were pressing against the
woman’s eyes, she cried:
“My mother! my mother! Spare her--here I am--I am still a maid!”
The soldiers seized the girl, guffawing loudly at the success of their
plan. As they lifted her between them she flung out her hands toward
the woman, who had fallen in a heap when the soldiers released her.
“Mother,” the girl screamed, “kiss me--kiss me!”
The poor woman struggled to her feet and reached out her arms, but her
eyes were hurt and she could not see. The girl begged the soldiers to
carry her to her mother. “I will go--I will go, and be willing--but let
me kiss my mother!” she cried. But the soldiers hurried her away.
The mother stood, leaning on those who crowded close to comfort her.
Then, suddenly, she drooped and sank to the ground. When we bent
over her she was dead. We sat by the body until the daughter came
back--after the moon had crossed the sky, and it must have been
midnight. The girl hid her face when she came near, until she could
bury it in her mother’s shawl. She sat by the body until morning, when
we took up our march again.
Every night such things happened.
Other parties along that road had fared the same. Sometimes I counted
the bodies of exiles who had preceded us until I could count no longer.
They lay at the roadside, where their guards had left them, for miles.
On the eleventh day we came to Shiro, the Turkish city where caravans
for Damascus spend the night in a large khan and then turn southward.
There are even more caravans now than there used to be, for now they
travel only to the Damascus railway and then return. Shiro is the home
of many Turks, who profit from traders, or who have retired from posts
of power and profit at Constantinople. It is not a large town, but more
a settlement of wealthy aghas.
We camped outside this little city. Early the next morning military
officers came out. Kerim Bey met them, and there was a short
conference. Then the Kurds began to gather the prettiest girls. They
tore them from their relatives and half dragged, half carried them to
where guards were placed to take charge of them.
All morning the Kurds carried young women away until more than a
hundred had been accepted by the officer from the city. Then the
apostates were ordered to join these weeping girls, and we were marched
into the town.
The narrow streets were crowded with Turks and Arabs. They hooted at
us, and made cruel jests as we passed. Among the apostates were many
old women, whose daughters had sworn to be Mohammedans to save them.
When the crowds saw these they laughed with ridicule. Once the citizens
swooped down upon the party and, unhindered by our guards, seized four
of the older women, stripped off their clothing and carried them away
on their shoulders, shouting in great glee. We never heard what became
of these. I think they were just tossed about by the crowd until they
died.
We were taken to a house which we soon learned was the residence of
Hadji Ghafour, one of the largest houses in the city. Only devout
Moslems who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca may be called “Hadji.”
Hadji Ghafour was looked up to as one of the most religious of men.
In the house of Hadji Ghafour we were crowded into a large room, with
bare stone walls, where camels and dromedaries were often quartered
over night.
Hadji Ghafour came into the room, accompanied by soldiers. We of the
apostate party had been put into one corner with Kurds to watch us.
Hadji Ghafour gave an order to his servants and they separated the most
pleasing girls and younger women from the others. Of these, with me
among them, there were only thirty. We were taken out of the room and
into another, not so large, on another floor of the house. The fate
of those who were not satisfactory to Hadji Ghafour I never learned.
A soldier told one of us they were allowed to rejoin the deportation
parties.
Those of us who had been chosen were taken to the hamman, or bath
chamber, and garments were brought for those whose clothes were frayed
or, as it was with some, who had almost none at all. Turkish women and
negro slave girls watched us in the bath and locked us up again.
At the end of an hour we heard steps. The door was opened and a huge
black slave, with other negroes behind him, summoned us. Frightened and
too cowed to ask questions or hold back, we followed the slave through
halls and up stairways, until we came to a huge rug-strewn chamber,
brilliantly lighted with lamps and candles. On divans heavy with
cushions, at one side of the room, sat Hadji Ghafour and a group of
other Turks who were of his class, all middle aged or older, none with
a kindly face.
Those of us who had been taken from the apostasized party stood to one
side, while a servant said, to the others:
“It is the will of Hadji Ghafour, whose house has given you refuge,
that you repay his kindness in saving you from the dangers that
confront your people by repenting of your unbelief and accept the grace
of Islam.”
The Turks made sounds of approval, and a turbanned Khateeb, or priest
of the mosque, entered the chamber, with an attendant who carried the
prayer rug. Behind him was a negro servant carrying a whip of bull’s
hide. The prayer rug was spread, and the Khateeb waited.
The Turks pointed to a shrinking girl and the servants pulled her out
“What say you?” the officer asked. “I belong to Christ--in His keeping
I must remain,” the girl replied. The negro’s whip fell across her
shoulders. When she screamed for mercy the Khateeb bared his feet,
stepped upon the prayer rug and turned to Mecca. “Allah is most great;
there is no God but Allah!” his voice droned. The negro flung the girl
onto the carpet. He held his cruel whip ready to strike again if she
did not quickly kneel. Her face also turned to Mecca as she stumbled to
her knees. Her flesh already was torn and bleeding. Terror of the whip
was in her heart. To escape it she could only say the rek’ah--“There is
no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.”
When the last one had recited the sacrilegious creed the Khateeb folded
the prayer rug and left the room. Hadji Ghafour, smiling now, ordered
us all to stand before his guests again. All were apostates now except
me, whom the Turks thought had previously taken the oath, else I would
not have been in the party which I had joined. The law as well as Hadji
Ghafour’s piousness allowed them to do with us now as they chose.
One by one they selected us, according to their fancies--Hadji Ghafour
first, and then his guests. How they had arranged the order of choice
I do not know, but they had agreed among themselves. There were five
or six girls for each of the Turks. I was among those ordered aside
for Hadji Ghafour, who had also chosen the two daughters who had been
compelled to leave their mother dying on the Sivas road.
The two sisters had been very quiet all that day. They had spoken but
little to any of the rest of us since we were taken into the house of
Hadji Ghafour. Nor had they cried--afterwards I remembered how their
faces that day seemed to be bright with a great courage.
The girls chosen by the guests of Hadji Ghafour were taken away in
separate groups to the houses of those who claimed their bodies. When
these guests and their captives had gone Hadji Ghafour again summoned
us. It was one of the sisters, the elder, to whom he spoke first. His
words were terrible. He asked her, oh, so cruelly low and soft, if she
were willing to belong to him, body and soul, to live contented in his
house, to be obedient and--affectionate in her submission.
The girl waited not an instant. “I had renounced my God to save my
mother, but it availed me nothing. Her life was taken. I have given
myself to God--and I will not betray Him again!”
Hadji Ghafour motioned to his negro slave, who caught the girl in his
arms and carried her out of the room. Her sister had been standing near
her. Hadji Ghafour’s eyes fell upon her next.
“And you, my little one,” he said, just as low and soft. And he
repeated the questions to her he had spoken to her sister. She spoke
softly, too--softer than had her sister, yet just as firmly. “She was
my sister. With her I saw my mother die, and now you have taken her.
You may kill me also, but I will never submit to you.”
Those of us who watched looked with terror at Hadji Ghafour. This time
his eyes narrowed and glittered. “You have spoken well, my little one,”
he said, still so gently he might have been speaking to a beloved
daughter. “Perhaps I had better kill you as a warning to my other
little ones.”
The negro with the whip stood near. Hadji Ghafour did not even speak to
him--just motioned with his hands. Two other servants sprang forward.
Quickly they stripped the girl of her clothes. And then the whip fell
upon her naked body.
I shut my eyes so I could not see, but I could not shut out the sound
of the whip cutting into the flesh, again and again, until I lost
count. Even when the girl screamed no more and her moans died away the
whip did not stop for a long time. Then suddenly I realized the blows
had ceased. I opened my eyes and saw one of the servants lifting the
girl’s body from the floor. He held her by the waist, and her arms and
bleeding legs hung limp. She was dead.
None of us had courage after that. We gave Hadji Ghafour our promises.
We were taken out another door, this time to the women’s apartments,
where women of the household were waiting to receive us.