The Red Rugs of Tarsus: A Woman's Record of the Armenian Massacre of 1909Gibbons, Helen Davenport
History
The Red Rugs of Tarsus: A Woman's Record of the Armenian Massacre of 1909
Gibbons, Helen Davenport
Adana (Turkey) -- History; Armenian massacres, 1909 -- Turkey -- Adana
Tarsus markets are cosmopolitan. You can find a dozen races rubbing
elbows there. The predominating four are Turks, Arab Fellahin, Armenians
and Greeks. There is a babel of these four tongues. One hears also
Russian, Persian, Hindustani and Italian. We manage with French in
Mersina, but it is little spoken in Tarsus. The Turkish language rules
in inter-racial transactions. Armenians must use this language. Educated
Armenians struggle valiantly to maintain the two surviving elements of
national identity: the church and the language. But oddly enough the
mother-tongue of the average Armenian is Turkish. Greek has a strong
hold upon the Greeks here. It is something like the tenacious hold of
the French language in Canada. The Fellahin speak a form of Arabic, but
are too ignorant to care whether they make themselves understood or not.
Some weeks ago Jeanne Imer and I were being carefully escorted through a
Fellahin village by one of the students. Suddenly a little boy ran into
the road. He took hold of my bridle, looked up at me with a winning
smile, and said: "From where you come? From America?" Imagine my
surprise. I was delighted to hear my own language away off here in the
outskirts of the town. I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out an
orange, and gave it to the little fellow. He said "Thank you" most
politely. I found afterwards that there is a mission school in the
quarter of Tarsus nearest where these people live. The child was
evidently a pupil. But wasn't it cute of him to spot me for an American!
To-day my rooms are getting an extra house-cleaning, and I have two boys
hard at work. One is washing three of my rugs. He has, as little Cousin
Myers used to say, "his bare feet on." He jumps up and down on the wet,
soapy rugs; then pounds them with a big flat stick that looks like a
cricket-bat. They are certainly getting clean--though I doubt whether
you and I should adopt that method if we had the job. The boys are
trying to talk Armenian to each other. They try hard. But they cannot
help falling into Turkish. For in this part of Turkey their
mother-tongue is the language of their oppressors--the badge of
servitude.
Armenians of breeding and education foster their language with all their
heart and soul. There is a desperate attempt to preserve the national
unity, always with the opposition of the terrible Turks! The Armenians
have natural ability along the line of enterprise and making money, but
this has been so curbed by the oppressor that even stout hearts have
given up and lapsed into a paralysis of the will that would be
contemptible if one did not understand it. Under favorable
circumstances, when the Armenian has been given a square deal, he is
successful. He is a born merchant. This is proved when he goes to
another country where his enterprise can have its own way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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