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
A fortnight of fairly mild behaviour gained me permission to attend
divine service. With guards keeping a yard or so behind us we walked
through the Grande Rue de Péra, with its crowd of evident sympathizers,
and so to the church at the bottom of a winding side street. Then, for
an hour, I was in England. Even to such a constant absentee from church
services as myself all England was suggested by the pretty little
building, with its floor smoothly flagged in squares, its simply
compact altar, its well-ordered pews, its consciously reverent
congregation, its rippling organ, and--yes, by the great truths and
dogmatic commonplaces that were platitudinized from its pulpit. The
very sermon--dull, undistinguished, and full of the obvious levelness
that one hears in any of a thousand small churches on any
Sunday--brought joy unspeakable because of its associations.
The guards, who had been standing at the back of the church with hat on
head, refused to let us remain near the door when the congregation
dispersed. It was inadvisable to bribe them in public; so with a
friendly wave from Miss Whittaker, and sympathetic looks from unknown
British civilians, we left at once. We crossed the Golden Horn to
Stamboul, and lunched at our usual restaurant, where I met Pappas
Effendi again.
Presently, in strolled another old acquaintance--Colonel Prince
Constantine Avaloff, the Georgian. He had just arrived at Psamatia from
Afion-kara-Hissar, and brought with him the latest news from that
camp--the arrival of a new commandant who seemed quite pleasant, the
success of the latest concert, the delivery of a batch of parcels, the
increase in price of _árak_, and other of the small happenings that
filled the deadly life of a prisoner of war in Turkey. For me the most
interesting item of news was that Captain Tom White was to be sent to a
Constantinople hospital. Although he had said nothing about escaping, I
rather thought he intended to try it. If he came to Gumuch Souyou he
would be a useful companion, for I knew him to be both ingenious and
unafraid. Meanwhile, I revealed my own hopes to the prince, who
promised to help in any way possible. He was likely to be of use, for
as a result of Georgia's submission to Germany, he was now free to move
about the city without a guard. I walked back to Pera light-heartedly,
with an instinctive knowledge that opportunity was in the offing.
A tousled scarecrow of a man was sitting up in a hitherto empty bed as
we reëntered the prisoners' ward of the hospital. His long, untrimmed
hair hung over an unwashed neck, his cheeks were sunken, his hands were
clasped over the bedclothes that covered his shins. He never looked at
us, but with an expression of the most unswerving austerity continued
to read a book that lay open on his knees. As I passed I saw, from the
ruling and paragraphing of the pages, that it must be a copy of the
Bible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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