was on the steps a few feet above, leaning over and talking to him. Just
for fun, I took his fez off--a black velvet fez. My giggle and smile
died away as I idly twirled that fez around my finger. Sometimes in the
sunshine one sees the shadow of Islam. After all, wouldn't he be safer
in a hat? I put this into words. Herbert scoffed at the idea, but he
humored me and went to find his gray felt hat.
Must go to marking examination papers of my rhetoric class. Can you
imagine me an English Reader like Miss Marsh? You were afraid three
lectures a week and two rhetoric lessons would be a lot for me to
manage, but Mother dear, these boys are hungry for an education. I long
for a copy of one of the rhetorics we used at college. Have improvised a
text book. Coaxed it out of my memory. I averaged two hours a day,
typewriting the material on our Hammond. The boys drink in my stupid
lectures the way the Cilician Plain drinks in the first autumn rains. I
gave a stiff quiz just after the Easter vacation. I am continuing the
daily themes and the critical papers. I have learned a lot from the boys
about the fable in Turkish literature. Also about habits of camels, and
the real Abraham Lincoln. Can't you see me rehashing Bryn Mawr English
and adapting it to the Tarsians?
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The Kaïmakam is at the head of the civil administration of the
municipality, the Feriq of the military administration, and the Mufti of
the religious administration. Civil and military government and religion
are all closely connected--essential factors in Turkish society.
Constantinople has its hold directly on every community in Turkey.
THE STORM APPROACHES
_Wednesday, April fourteenth._
Mother:
This afternoon I sent Socrates to the station with the buggy (the word
is not misused--we have a real American one). Herbert was to return by
the afternoon train. An hour later, Socrates came back alone and told me
that "bad things" were happening in Adana. There was a massacre
starting. Yesterday four Armenian women were killed. This morning there
was killing begun in vineyards just outside of the town. While he was
telling me this news, a telegram mercifully arrived from Herbert. It
read: "_Reviendrai demain. Aujourd'hui tout bien._" Herbert's French is
far from what it might be. But telegrams in English are not accurately
transmitted in Turkey.
When I went over to Mrs. Christie's sitting-room for afternoon tea, I
found several Armenian women there, among them the mothers of two of our
teachers. One mother was begging for permission for her son to sleep at
the college. He came later, bringing his precious violin, which he asked
me to hide for him. I put it back of our bathtub. The other mother was
in tears. Her son is in Adana for the holidays with his bride. This poor
woman has a right to fear. She lost two children in the 1895-96
massacres. One little girl was trampled to death by a squad of Turkish
soldiers. The son, our Armenian professor,--the one in Adana--was saved
with the greatest difficulty, having been hidden for several days in the
dark corner of a mill.
Excitement grew this afternoon. Patrols are going through the streets.
We are told that this is done to calm people. The unrest is showing
itself. I asked Socrates not to repeat what he had seen and heard. Panic
is contagious. He was unmoved by my caution. He shook his head, saying,
"It is going to be very terrible, very terrible."
I wish it were not Easter vacation. So many of our boys have gone to
their villages. They would be safer here. Dr. Christie and Herbert and
Miner would not be in Adana. If this had to occur, why not when college
was going, and we were all together? The regular routine would do much
to keep minds occupied. When you are busy, you are normal, no matter
what may be going on around you.
* * * * *
_Thursday, April fifteenth._
Mother dear:
I wasn't afraid last night. I slept the whole night through. This
morning there was quite a crowd of Armenians in the school dining-room.
They look to us for protection and food and shelter. They are
terror-stricken, and have reason to be. How would you like to live in a
country where you knew your Government not only would not protect you,
but would periodically incite your neighbors to rob and kill you _with
the help of the army_?
Socrates asked to be allowed to go to the station again to see if
Herbert came by the morning train. Off he trotted, leaving me to my
sewing. He came back in the greatest excitement. At the station all was
confusion. People jumped off the train, and shouted madly that the whole
of Adana was burning. Immediately a mob formed, and some of these men
seized the buggy and made off with it, leaving Socrates to get home as
best he could. Henri Imer had gone over on horseback, and he had a bad
time too. His horse was struck by a Turk, but he succeeded in getting
away. He went right to the barracks and found the buggy there. Henri
secured permission for Socrates to bring it home.
Another telegram has come from Herbert saying, "_Tout bien. Retournerai
Tarsous aussitôt que possible, peut-être pas avant demain._"
The afternoon train failed to appear.
Just before dark, the boys of the Sub-Freshman class who were spending
the Easter vacation at the college came and told me they wanted to be my
bodyguard. They are to sleep to-night on my balcony--the balcony on the
inside of the building just outside my bedroom. Their beds, mattresses
and blankets have been given to refugee women for the little children.
It is April--but still cold at night. I have taken from the walls and
floors all our Turkish rugs--every single one of our treasures--and
spread them on the boards for the boys to sleep on--or under. They mean
absolutely nothing to me. I do not care if they are lost in the
confusion.
Johnny tells me there is not much oil in my lamp. I cannot be without
light. It may be needed badly in the night. It may be vital for me to
have light. To get candles and petroleum from the large school-building
was impossible for the boys. The precious things might be taken from
them in the crowd. For our compound is filling: and many of the refugees
we do not know at all. I must go with the boys. I shall take Kevork and
Samsun as well as Socrates. To be without Herbert at a time like this!
These blessed boys of mine are splendid. They are thoughtful, devoted,
courageous, and most delicate in their attention. I could not be in
better hands. The best in people comes out at a crisis. If I live
through these days, I shall never cease to cry out against the
supercilious, superficial travelers, who, enjoying a sheltered life for
themselves and their loved ones, say mean things about Armenians--even
that they deserve to be massacred--that massacres are their own fault.
All I can say is this: May God Almighty forgive them their judgments,
for they know not what they say. My Armenian boys and my Greek Socrates
are every bit as fine, every bit as thoroughbred, as Anglo-Saxon boys of
the best blood and training.
I am back safely--with oil and candles, too. Now I am ready for what may
come in the night.
In the assembly-room of the big school-building, some of the refugees
had gathered around the pastor of the Protestant Church. It was an
impromptu prayer-meeting. They were singing hymns. I do not understand
Turkish, but, as they use our tunes, I knew the hymns. It was a comfort
to steal in, and sit down for a while among my fellow-sufferers. Only
eight months ago, when we first came to Cilicia, and went to church up
in the Taurus Mountains summer place, I remember how queer these people
looked to me. They belonged to another world. I was an outsider. I had
difficulty in understanding some traits of their character. I was hasty
in my judgment of them--hasty through ignorance. I was impatient with
their constant fear of what "might happen any time" to Christians living
under Moslem rule. I had no conception of what "might happen any
time"--that was why. During the singing, I looked up to the ceiling. The
trap-door brought back vividly the day when Daddy Christie had showed it
to me, saying, "We have that for use in time of massacre." I had
laughed. The constitutional era was here. Those were things of the past.
Probably it is a mercy that youth and inexperience make one refuse to
believe that bad things--horrible things--which have happened to others
may come in one's own life.
We sang softly (for the sound must not get outside) "Lead, Kindly
Light." The hymn had never meant so much to me. For, until now, there
never had been "encircling gloom." I understand now. Because I need the
Light, I ask for it.
THE STORM BREAKS
_Tarsus,
Friday, April sixteenth,
Nineteen-Nine._
Mother dear:
Men came here to tell Mrs. Christie trouble was coming. Offered to send
a guard for our gate. They knew that Dr. Christie and Miner Rogers and
Herbert--three of the four men of the mission family--had gone away to
Adana. The fellows were Kurds. They looked like brigands. Mrs. Christie
put them off, saying we were not afraid. This with a calm little air as
if she didn't quite realize. When I asked her about it, she replied:
"Didn't you see? They wanted to get hold of the college gate." What a
woman she is! To-day with Armenians coming to us in greater numbers
every hour, I say to myself: What if the Kurds had possession of our
broad gate?
From our study window I can see the Cilician Plain stretching on and on
to the Taurus. The Plain to-day looks like a monstrous Turkish rug. It
is a riot of color, quantities of poppies and irises and other spring
flowers. _Did you ever think of this: red predominates in Turkish rugs?_
* * * * *
Last night we learned that the train going through towards Adana had
turned back at Yenidje. By this time one hundred refugees had come to
us. Massacre seemed imminent. Socrates barricaded all my shutters, and
watched outside my door.
This morning another telegram came from Herbert saying that he was
detained, and would get back when he could. There were no trains in
either direction, so we knew the whole country was upset. Rumors began
to leak through about the terrible times in Adana and I knew why Herbert
had not returned. This morning there were more than five hundred
refugees with us.
In the course of the morning we heard that Armenians had been killed at
the Tarsus station and that the station master and other employees had
fled. Then there was the whistle of a train from Adana. It brought a
wild mob of Bashi-bazouks. For concentrated hatred, a Bashi-bazouk is a
small-pox germ. I saw the train vomiting forth its filthy burden. The
men wore no uniforms. They were dressed in dirty white bloomer-things,
with bits of carpet fastened up their legs with crisscross ropes, in
place of shoes. They looked like worn out rag dolls. I saw them gather
in a mud colored fan-shaped crowd at the flimsy entrance to the Konak,
where the authorities could not be quick enough in passing out guns and
ammunition and other instruments of the Devil to every one. Then Hell
broke loose. The townspeople joined themselves to this mob. Along the
road that crosses the space between us and the railway they went in
groups of fifty, going at an easy run and brandishing their arms,
uttering low weird howls that grew in a crescendo of rage. They made for
the Armenian quarter, the last houses of which are only one hundred and
fifty yards from us.
Shooting started and continued all day. Along with the sound of the
shots we could hear the screams of the dying.
All day there has been a procession of refugees. They seem to have
gathered in little groups first, for they came in a few hundred at a
time in pulsation. In the afternoon they came steadily. Mother! the
sound of the feet of the multitude. Some poor things were wounded, some
were looking for husbands or children that could not be found. They
brought nothing with them. Sick women were carried on the backs of their
husbands. Little children struggled to keep up with panic-stricken
elders. Children, feeble old people, chronic invalids, the desperately
ill, were possessed with supernatural strength. When they reached the
goal, our gate, they were like the Durando we described in the Marathon
race last summer. A big fellow in the meager guard at our gate was a
host in himself. He had a hearty voice, and kept waving his arms and
shouting, "Come in, everybody. Inside this gate is safety for you all!
Courage, little children." Occasionally he would pick up a crying baby
or a sick woman, and help them inside. It was the one cheerful kindly
sight of the day--to see that soldier.
About noon from Jeanne and Henri's study I saw an attack on a house very
near us. There was a low hum in the distance: then a roar, and on the
second-story balcony twenty-five Bashi-bazouks climbed, bursting in the
door to the house of the richest man in Tarsus. There was shooting and
screaming: then flying bits of burning paper came out of the windows,
followed by blue and red flames. By opening our shutters cautiously we
could hear the cruel hiss of the flames and smell kerosene in the
smoke. Then the rending and crashing of the floors made a deafening
noise, and the sparks began to alight on our property.
This is the regular order of things,--kill, loot, burn. The Armenian
quarter is the most substantial part of the city. Most of the people
store cotton on the ground floor, and this, together with liberal
applications of kerosene, served to make a holocaust. Now at
evening-time we realize our own imminent danger.
I have made tea about twenty times during the day. What a blessing you
sent those provisions. Good thing we chose from among our wedding gifts
the chafing-dish and the tea-basket to bring along on our journey. I
have given away everything I could spare. Things to drink out of are a
vital necessity. I gave away my tooth-mug to a thirsty old woman, and
reserved as my drinking cup the little china affair one keeps
tooth-brushes in on a washstand. It stands unabashed beside the smart
little silver tea-kettle and spirit lamp. How I miss my oranges. Mother
Christie found a stray one this morning and sent it in to me. The boys
brought some charcoal and made a fire in a _mangal_ in my fireplace. I
have tried my hand at a _pilaf_. Kevork brought some sheep-tail grease
in a bit of paper and I held my nose while I melted it and poured it
into the _pilaf_. I do not see why these people do not cook with wagon
grease and be done with it.
Your tins of condensed milk I have given to Mary Rogers for her baby. A
mother brought her two-year-old boy to me. The poor little thing had had
nothing to eat since yesterday. The whole Armenian question sums itself
up for me in those big brown eyes and their kindling with sudden light
as I held a bowl of warm milk to that baby's trembling mouth. I couldn't
make him smile, though, for all my coaxing.
The meals of our immediate family are served in my bedroom. Mrs.
Christie's house, the big dining-room, the school buildings are
overflowing with refugees. It is only the most strenuous efforts of the
college boys that prevent them from over-running us too. I have just my
bedroom, Mary the other bedroom for herself and the baby, and Miss
Talbot is in our study. Jeanne's extra bedroom eighteen women have
managed to get into. Henri's study is crowded too. I am working on baby
clothes to keep my mind occupied. I am making flannel nighties: there
are hundreds of babies out under our trees and on the hard asphalt of
the tennis court without one change of clothing.
Dear, dear, here is a woman who has been in terrible suffering all day
long. Her husband and brother were with her and several times tried to
flee with her. They picked her up a bit ago and started with her through
the red and black streets. Overpowered, she stopped in ----'s garden and
had her baby. Wrapping the baby in something and putting it in the
mother's arms, the men picked her up and made the final dash for safety.
We have pulled the buggy out of the carriage-house and made a place for
her in the corner. She is resting nicely now.
* * * * *
Socrates came to me and said that friends of his, Greeks like himself,
have invited him to join them in an attempt to escape to Mersina. They
have a dead Greek's passport for him. He asked my advice. I told him I
could not take the responsibility. Danger? There is little
choice--staying here or trying to get away. I told him to go off by
himself to think it over. He came back to tell me this: "You are alone.
If you have to run away, you have nobody to go with you. Professor
Gibbons--no one knows where he is. I will stay with you."[4]
* * * * *
Have been sitting on the steps leading up to the rooms of the Imers,
looking out over the pathetic throng in the garden. Kevork in his snug
little coat and long gingham student-apron has been sitting beside me.
"You are hungry," said he. "Your future may be five minutes long. Your
husband is missing. Maybe he is dead. Those telegrams were dated
yesterday, you know. Your baby is not born. You cannot defend yourself
or run away. _You are just like an Armenian woman._ Tell me what you
think about revenge?"
* * * * *
Dostumian hunted wildly and fruitlessly for his mother and little
sister among the crowd. Harutun urged that he, on account of his red
hair, would not be taken for an Armenian. He could find them. When he
got to the house, he put the mother on his back and ran to us before the
Bashi-bazouks knew what he was up to. When he took the mother, he hid
the little girl in a corner by piling sticks of wood on her. Told her to
keep quiet, and wait for him to come back.
By the time he returned to excavate the youngster, and had put her on
his back, and climbed to the roof of the house, the Bashi-bazouks were
after him. Oh, the flat Oriental roofs! Harutun skipped from one to the
other, taking amazing distances, with the child on his back. Danger is a
prod. He got to a place on some roof beside which a foreign construction
company had set up a pole in anticipation of the electric lighting
system. Down that pole slipped Harutun. He ran like mad, and restored
the youngster to her mother and her brother.
But electric lighting companies do not sandpaper their poles. Harutun's
hands were cruelly torn. His first thought when he began to think of
himself again was to come to me to get his hands dressed. He sat down on
Herbert's steamer trunk and I picked out the splinters. I washed the
wounds and bound them up with gauze and camphenol, also the palms of the
hands and the wrists. He begged me to leave the fingers out so he could
work. The boy was as happy as a bird: for it flooded into his brain what
he had done. While his hands were still trembling from the pain and
excitement, he said, "Meeses Geebons, I am not afraid to die. Dying is
as natural as borning. But before I die I want to kill a Turk--just one
Turk!" If his hands had not been so wrapped up in bandages, I could have
shaken his right one.
After I fixed up Harutun's hands I was kept quite busy for a space with
that sort of thing. A woman came and asked for some clothes for her baby
and showed us the only dress she had for him. It was covered with
blood--the blood of his murdered father. One dear little fellow, a
favorite of Herbert's, came to me with a gash in his head. His father
has been burned to death in their house and his little sister is wounded
also. I prepared the bandages for a man with a gun shot wound in his
neck. He was lying just outside my door. Herbert used to joke me about
my emergency outfit, saying that there were enough bandages in it to do
for an army, and asking how I ever expected to use sterilized catgut.
Every bit of that outfit is useful now. It has saved lives!
_Friday night._
Sky red with fire. Half the horizon is in flames, the whole Armenian
quarter is burning. Our native teachers and boys under the direction of
Henri Imer are fighting the flames valiantly. The sparks are flying
toward us, driven by a heavy wind, and eternal vigilance is required to
note every spark the moment it falls, to quench it in time. The blaze is
so brilliant that we can read by it. A telegram came from Herbert about
eleven o'clock. I signed the receipt by the light of the flames. I
cannot read it. It is a mixture of Turkish and French. What I can make
out is the hour of sending--this means that twenty-one hours ago he was
still alive.
Our condition is becoming desperate. The fire threatens us. The fury of
the mob may lead them to attack us. We are sheltering more than four
thousand refugees, a wailing, terror-stricken mass, all trying to get
out of bullet range.
We have not been able to get any word to the outside world: we realize
now that Adana is cut off and we feel sure that our husbands are in as
desperate a plight as are we. Word must go to Mersina. We have a Turkish
hand-writing teacher, a Moslem, who is faithful to us. We have sent him
to-night by horse with Harutun, the senior whose courage was thoroughly
tested this afternoon. They rode into the jaws of death perhaps, but
there is nothing else to do. Not only our lives but those of the
refugees are at stake.
_Nearly midnight._
We have prepared a few things in case we have to leave the place
suddenly. Run? Where? Somebody or other remarked grimly enough: "Fix
only what you can carry by yourself."
I came into the bedroom, and here I sit on Herbert's steamer chair. The
wood fire has gone out. The room is chilly and looks so very large. One
candle gives such a little light. The big blue rugs have been carried
off for bedding. How bare the place seems. Oh, how lonely! The
chafing-dish stands there unwashed and tilted crooked in its stand. I
have torn the bed to pieces to get a blanket for my bundle. The baby
basket all dainty and waiting is on the steamer trunk beside our bed.
Will it cradle my little one? If it is born out in the open, at least it
won't be cold, for I have taken from the basket the knitted blanket you
sent me and the package of fragrant clothing inside the tiny sheet. For
some time I have had clothes ready there for after the first bath. I
tied up the bundle with our double blanket, but it was too heavy for me.
I have rearranged it with a small blanket, tied corner-wise. In it are
diapers, a piece of tape sterilized and a pair of surgical scissors
wrapped in gauze, a length of uncut flannel, and that is all. This will
be heavy enough: for I must save Herbert's thesis, and that in its
filing case is a pretty solid weight. Precious thesis--it won him his
fellowship, and if there is any future, that thesis must go to Paris.
Poor little Mariam out there in the carriage house--how I pitied her
this evening. Was it only a few hours ago they brought her in? I envy
her now. Her baby is born.
My reason tells me that this bundle beside me is necessary: but it seems
futile. Everything has gone. One support after another has been removed.
Humanly speaking, the fact of safety is gone. Am I cold-blooded, that
the sense of it remains? Sufficiency of food? Gone. Human ties? Gone. No
sister, no brothers, no mother, no husband. Railway communications?
Gone. There is no Consul at Mersina. No protection from my own
Government. Did you ever wonder which end of your life you are living?
Kevork was right a bit ago about the future looking five minutes long.
My religion has suddenly become like a solid rock, and I have planted my
back right against it. Religion is simple, and it works.
Tell Herbert I have not cried once, that I am not afraid. Tell him
possessions mean nothing. What good can things do? There are hundreds of
gold liras in the safe. What good are they? I see where life stretches
beyond the place money can signify.
All this time I have boosted myself up by saying, "Don't break down yet,
wait for something worse." If you wait for real trouble--then you are so
busy, you have no time to worry. My religion has in one night become
vitally subjective. I know--because when I reason about it, I marvel at
my own calm. Shall it be with me as it was with Elsie Hodge, the Bryn
Mawr girl who was killed in the Boxer uprising? All day I have been
thinking about her. I am writing this and shall leave it here--in case.
I cannot write the words needed to describe the fate of women in my
condition at the hands of these fiends. Maybe some day I can tell you.
* * * * *