THE TURBANED MOLLAH
Bare-headed and bare-footed, with elbows and knees protruding through
the filthy rags that covered him, his face hidden beneath six weeks’
growth of beard, Takvor passed slowly by the outer guards of the
prison and down the street. As usual in the early afternoon, lines
of carriages were taking the Turkish officials to their offices in
the Sublime Porte. Through fear that some former acquaintance might
recognize him, he clung to the inner side of the walk. Occasionally
he followed a less frequented street, but always came back to the
tramway and the rows of carriages. To his old friend, Hadji Bekier,
who was standing in the doorway of his lokoum shop, he seemed but a
passing beggar, only more ragged and more filthy than others. When he
reached the Galata bridge, he noticed the familiar white-gowned toll
gatherers busily reaching out their hands for the ten para pieces,
or making change with the passing pedestrians. He stopped, for he
remembered that he had not even a penny required for toll. Often with
other boys he had passed the collectors unnoticed, but to do so now
seemed impossible. While he stood trying to think how he might succeed
in crossing the bridge, the sound of coins in the little booth of a
money changer caught his attention. He saw lying on the ground a narrow
board which had apparently been split from a packing box. Remembering
that a cripple was free to pass the bridge, he picked up the board, and
using it as a crutch, hobbled along. The toll gatherer, merely glancing
at him, allowed him to pass. Takvor limped along some distance before
glancing back; then, convincing himself that none but the tall Kurd was
watching him, he dropped the board and crossed the bridge.
He could reach home by the less frequented street along the Golden
Horn, but he disliked to grieve his mother by appearing in such a
miserable condition. He looked at his hands. They were black with
dirt. He looked at his feet. They were still blacker. He stopped
before a jeweler’s shop to catch his reflection in the window. The
streets seemed unusually crowded that day. Albanians, Kurds, and Lazis
in their peculiar costumes, were standing about; groups of soldiers
were collected before the guard-house, as if awaiting orders; and the
police were peering into the faces of the passing crowds. To avoid
these, Takvor made his way through the dingy inn which the Europeans
have nicknamed “The Bourse,” and climbed a narrow street near the lower
entrance of the tunnel. At a little café half way up the hill to the
tramway was seated a group of Albanians, strong muscular fellows like
the gladiators of ancient Rome; their dark-brown embroidered costumes,
and their wool fezzes, half concealing the long locks of braided hair
springing from the crown of their cropped heads, were evidence that
they had recently come from the far interior. Farther up the street,
at another café, a group of Lazis, bloodthirsty savages who valued
the life of a man at less than that of a sheep, seemed to have just
arrived from the wild coast of the Black Sea. Still farther on, a line
of garbage carts and their brute-like drivers stood as if waiting for
orders before going about their work. At the head of the street stood
a beardless Turkish mollah, whose long, blue, collarless coat and
spotless white turban marked him as a student from the theological
school of Saint Sophia. To Takvor it seemed that the young priest
was nervously glancing down the street at the groups of Lazis and
Albanians, and watching another white-turbaned priest at the corner
below. They were evidently in communication. Along the main street
filed a line of Armenian porters carrying bags of newly coined gold
from the mint to the bank, while armed guards were marching beside
them, to prevent their disappearing with their precious burdens in
some dark passage way. The passing of the porters, though a daily
occurrence, seemed to excite the young priest, for he stood staring at
the bags of money as if his eyes would penetrate to their contents.
Again he turned to the waiting groups, and to the other priest below,
and raising his hand, pointed upward. The porters and their guards
passed into the bank to deliver their burden. Takvor, dismissing the
scene from his mind, continued up the street, closely followed by the
Kurd who had released him from prison.
He had hardly reached the door of the English store when there came
from the direction of the bank the report of an explosion. It was
followed by a second and a third. People from the houses and shops
crowded into the streets.
“The Armenians are blowing up the bank,” somebody shouted.
From the steps Takvor could see above the heads of the people. At the
street corner beyond the bank, the white-turbaned mollah was still
standing, with both hands in the air, waving frantically to the people
below. Almost instantly, as if by magic, soldiers sprang up from
everywhere. They climbed the steps on the opposite hills, and leveled
their rifles at the bank windows, ready to fire if the head of an
Armenian porter appeared. At the entrance to the bank, with his back to
the street, stood the old Montenegran doorkeeper, with a revolver in
each hand, preventing the porters from leaving the building; already he
had laid out half a dozen of them on the stairs before him. Others who
had tried to escape to the roofs of the neighboring houses were shot
by the Turkish soldiers. The faithful bank coachman, an aged Armenian,
glanced from the window to see if his horses had taken to flight,
but he never knew, for a bullet passed through his head. An Armenian
cobbler, with a last in his hand, was standing in the doorway of his
shop; a soldier aimed at the gray head and fired, and the cobbler
dropped dead. Scarcely ten minutes had passed since the porters entered
the bank, when, from the street where the turbaned priest had stood,
hundreds of Albanians, Lazis, and Kurds, all armed with rough wooden
clubs, were rushing madly at the crowd. They seemed to spring from the
ground, and like savage beasts, selected, as if by instinct, their
victims for the slaughter. As they worked their way along, their clubs
made no mistake by descending on the head of Greek, Jew, Levantine,
or even catholic Armenian; a massacre of the protestant Armenians had
begun. The white-turbaned priest at the corner below stood for a moment
watching the bloody scene, and then with a brutal smile of triumph, as
if his part of the work were over, disappeared down the side street.
A stampede for safety began, and although the crowd understood that
the massacre was directed against the protestant Armenians, the people
of all nationalities fled to the shops or the houses, or to the side
streets. Wherever an Armenian appeared, an Albanian or a Kurd stood
ready with a club to strike him. Too dazed to move, like dumb animals,
the victims waited to die. Takvor now understood why he and others of
his race had been released from the Buyuk Zaptieh; the great Kurd who
was still following him, had brought him to the street only that he
might the more readily perform the task to which he had been appointed.
When the knowledge of his awful situation flashed upon him, he dashed
into the store, which was already filled with his terrified countrymen.
The faithful Turkish porter, to barricade the property which he
guarded, pulled down the iron shutters of the windows and doors, and
the neighboring merchants immediately followed his example. Only
those who heard the din of the hundreds of screeching iron shutters,
hurriedly hauled down at the same moment, can realize the horror
which seized the people. It seemed as if the Turks had put in motion
some infernal machine to grind them to pieces. Men and women with
strong nerves fainted at the terrifying sound; and even now, when some
harmless merchant closes his shop for the night, men shudder and women
faint at the recollection of that awful day.