World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, Turkish
At the beginning of November we moved into our house, up in the town,
against the city wall. But a few days before that happened three more
officers arrived from Constantinople. They were not newly captured. One
had been taken on the same day as Bill, at Suvla Bay, and the other two
were the oldest British prisoners of war in Turkey. I specify British,
because we learned later on that there were Russian naval officers taken
before war was officially declared, and prisoners of war because there
were civil prisoners of earlier date. These two were members of the
Egyptian police who had been given commissions in the army and sent out
to test the disposition of the Arabs in that territory shown upon Old
Testament maps as inhabited by the Philistines. The Arabs had turned
upon them and handed them over to the Turks, and the ten or eleven
months which elapsed before they joined us had been most eventful. I
will not anticipate their story, for I do not know whether they will
ever write it, further than to say that whereas we had seen the Armenian
women and children setting forth on their fatal pilgrimage, these had
seen it near its end. Their tale was truly ghastly. But there is one
thing about one of them that I must write. He was an Egyptian, and by
upbringing a Mohammedan, his name was Selim Zaki Kénâwi (he will forgive
me if it is spelt wrongly). From the very start the Turks had tried
their utmost to seduce him from his loyalty, and from the first to the
last he had openly defied them. He was the most ardently loyal British
person I have ever known. His plan was simply for Great Britain to own
the whole earth and run it justly. I forget how many times he had been
court-martialled on the charge of being a rebel, but it was several.
They had tried the religious business too, and a venerable personage
whom Zaki irreverently termed “a holy bloody religious man” had taken
off his turban and solemnly asked, “Will you fight against this, Zaki
Effendi?” But Zaki stood fast, and became more British than ever. It
took some doing in his position, but he had the guts of a man. After he
had been a couple of months with us he was sent for to Constantinople
and again tested, both by intimidation and bribery. Enver Pasha, the
Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish Army, the adventurer, the murderer,
both privately and wholesale, the biggest scoundrel unhanged--I regret
he is still unhanged--even himself sent for Zaki and offered him a
choice between death and a commission in the Turkish Army. But Zaki
never even thought which to choose. He chose death. But he did not die,
although they sent him in the winter on the awful march to Sivas in its
frozen mountains to be imprisoned among the Russians. There was typhus
raging there, and there was more than a chance that his throat would be
cut by the way. But he came safely through, and eventually rejoined us
at Afion. An Egyptian tested as was Zaki should have a fine future in
his own land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account