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
It was a weird mile with only the lantern to light us. One soldier went
in front, finding the path, and the other was beside me. From occasional
zigzags I suspected what we were avoiding. Mercifully I could not see.
Finally we reached the station. Herbert and his officer and the
telegraph operator were in the little ticket office. Herbert was at the
end of his patience--he just couldn't get up a locomotive. When he heard
my news, he was very happy. The Albanian officer was not. He was for the
adventure. Doubted if the news was true. Why hadn't the Mersina operator
mentioned it? Just then a message went through for Adana about a special
train for the British Government. The operator told us. We knew then
that it was true.
Back we went, all of us. I did not ask Herbert any more about his
interrupted story of the days in Adana. I did not want to hear. He did
not want to tell. We found a funny story that had been sent to us for
Christmas, and of which we had read only a few chapters. We reread
those--and the rest of the book, laughing ourselves to sleep to save our
sanity.
WHY?
_Tarsus, April twenty-second._
Dearest Mother:
I have been sewing and helping care for the wounded.
Mrs. Christie gave me the first Relief money that came, a Turkish
gold-piece, worth four dollars and forty cents. With it I bought a roll
of flannel. On Jeanne's balcony I fixed a hand-run sewing machine. There
I basked in the sunshine as I worked on baby night-gowns all day Sunday.
When I tell you that I made twelve nighties in a day you know the
machine did speed-work. Our caldrons are all in use heating water so
that mothers can wash their children and their children's clothes, and
take advantage of the sunshine to dry things. Every time I finish a
nightie, it means another baby can have a bath. We have contrived
sanitary arrangements, and small trenches have been dug for drainage.
Queer the Turks never thought of turning off our water. It could have
been done easily through the surface pipes.
Dr. Peeples of the Covenanter Mission was the first doctor to come
through. He got here before his supplies. I shall never forget his face
when I showed him my table with the Red Cross kit. He appropriated the
medicine-case and some bandages and marched off with them. Dr. Peeples
and I dressed wounds. But Mother Christie stopped that on account of "my
condition." Afterwards we compromised. I installed a table inside my
door and worked away preparing medicines and dressings. I handed these
out to the doctor on a tray, curving my wrist around the door-jamb and
so was spared the pain of seeing the patients. I do not take stock in
the popular notion that I might "mark the child." Only the pleasant
things that happen to me can touch that child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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