Atatürk, Kemal, 1881-1938; Turkey -- Description and travel; Turkey -- Politics and government -- 1918-1960
Some kind of most primitive carriage had been produced from somewhere,
and we were driven through more “ruins” to the “temporary” town hall for
the inevitable coffee and cigarettes. In the best English, the governor
told us of Greek atrocities and the victory of M. Kemal Pasha,
introducing us also to his whole staff.
I asked whether it would be possible for me to obtain precise figures of
the devastations, and he promised they should be prepared for my use at
once. When I reminded him of the “waiting” train, he merely waived such
difficulties aside as a “secondary consideration,” begging me “not to
mention it.”
Naturally, I found one ruined town very like another. There was, in a
sense, little to see beyond “parts of” the mosques, badly scorched or
half-burnt minarets, and, at Manissa, no more than one thousand houses
standing out of fourteen! Also, the statistics reveal a heartrending
loss of life!
The women and children, I learnt, had been driven into the mosques,
which were surrounded by machine-guns to ensure against any possibility
of escape, and _then_ set on fire. As the full realisation of such
hideous barbarity took hold of my imagination, it was as if all my
senses were paralysed. That cold perspiration which so often precedes a
faint, seized my limbs. I was powerless either to speak or move. How
would our twentieth century appear to the old cave-dwellers it has
pleased us to call savage? Mrs. de C—— was right, indeed, to say that
the Turks were “moderate.” Such scenes must compel revenge and let loose
the worst passions of men.
On our return the cheik tactfully endeavoured to distract our thoughts
by hospitable preparations for lunch. However little one felt disposed
to eat, he could have devised no kinder or more wise expression of
sympathy and understanding. Unfortunately, we had not yet escaped the
company of swarming flies, which afterwards vanished, however, with
startling completeness, when the train climbed into colder altitudes.
Our next halt was at Kassaba, where the “notables” again paid us a
visit, offering _both_ coffee and tea, one after the other. When the
cheik mentioned the loss of our food, _and_ my partiality for fruit, a
messenger was at once sent into the town for bread and the most luscious
melons, which reach to the highest possible perfection in Anatolia. I
have always been grateful for Turkish fruit!
The Governor told me “he had simply _nowhere_ to house the poor people.”
He “dare not think” of how they could pass the winter! I _saw_ them,
sitting in holes among the ruins, cooking whatever they had been able to
scrape together for a meal; the women huddled together in the “beds” of
fountains which were covered with straw and carpets, after the water had
been drained out. This arrangement permitted the slight protection of an
awning, only too badly needed for their threadbare clothes!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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