Eastern Nights - and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure. — John Shaqi
Eastern Nights - and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure.Bott, Alan
History
Eastern Nights - and Flights: A Record of Oriental Adventure.
Bott, Alan
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, Turkish
The next three days I remember as a semi-conscious nightmare. Yet a
dreadful nightmare is easier to bear than a dreadful reality, because
the horror of it is confined to subconsciousness, and does not touch
the surface brain. I sat through hours of inertia, without
comprehension, energy, or a sense of my surroundings; so that I cared
little for the dirt, the stench, and the general beastliness of the
cell, because I scarcely realized them.
Three times I tried to pass the door, so as to protest to the police
officer; but each time I was pushed back by the guard, who made
frequent use of the words that every prisoner in Turkey knew so
well--"_yok_" and "_yassak_" ("not," and "forbidden"). I gave up the
attempt, and relapsed into a state of moral lethargy.
The changes from night to day, from stuffy heat to damp cold, passed
unnoticed, and I cared not whether I lived or died. I felt no hunger
and very little thirst. This was fortunate, for hunger could not have
been satisfied.
Each morning the guards gave each of us a small loaf of bad bread in
which pieces of straw, string, and wood were plentiful. A carafe was
filled with bad water once a day. In the evening a basin of thin soup,
with mysterious chunks floating on the surface of it, was placed
between us. Without being influenced by its unsavouriness, I felt not
the least desire for the greasy liquid, the small loaf of bread being
quite enough food for the day in my then state of unreal detachment
from bodily needs and sensations.
As for the Arab, as soon as the basin was brought he squatted on his
haunches, dug his hands into the soup, and having grabbed some floating
morsel, stuffed it into his mouth. Afterward he lapped up the liquid
itself, after the manner of a dog.
On the morning of the third day we were led from the jail to be
interrogated at Turkish Headquarters. Although my ferocious headache
still remained, the change from the dimness and closeness of the cell
to the bright sunlight of the street revived me, and I sniffed the
fresh air in gulps.
I was passing through Nazareth, watched with evident sympathy by the
sad-faced crowd, when I saw an officer of the German Flying Corps. He
looked at my pilot's badge and stopped, whereupon I broke away from the
guards and approached him. In violent language I protested against the
outrageous treatment, and asked the German as a fellow-aviator and a
fellow-European, to see that the Turks moved me from the criminal jail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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