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
Last Sunday Melanchthon, a kid of fourteen, nearly amputated his finger
in the bread-cutter. I fixed it up with adhesive tape stitches placed
all around the cut, until the doctor could get back from some distant
village to sew it. Thank Heaven, Melanchthon can still wiggle his
finger joint. When Socrates took him back to the dormitory after I had
dressed his finger that first day, the little fellow asked if he could
go to see the lady again. Socrates explained that the lady had said he
must return on the morrow for another dressing. Melanchthon was pleased.
He did want to see the pretty room again. He wondered if Sultan Abdul
Hamid had anything so fine in Yildiz Kiosk.
Eflaton (Armenian for Plato), a nearsighted chap in my Sub-Freshman
class, was working with a bunch of boys at the corner of the yard, where
a wee bit of wall is being built. Some day there may be money to put the
wall all around the college property. It grows almost imperceptibly as
gifts for that purpose come in. They are few, alas! Just a tiny corner
is finished. The boys were piling stone, and Eflaton had the ill-luck to
get two fingers of his right hand badly crushed. Again the doctor was
far away, and I did my best. To-day, when I had finished Eflaton's
dressing, he looked up at me with those dreamy eyes of his and
announced, "Mrs. Gibbons, you are a angel!" When I protested that I was
not "a angel," he agreed with me. Because, said he, "You are better than
that: you are a angel mother." Oh, these honey-tongued Orientals! They
beat the Irish.
The trip planned by Henri Imer and Herbert to Namroun has not yet come
off. They intended to leave towards the end of the last week of October,
returning the following Tuesday. Wives were to take their classes.
Before the bad weather set in, we were anxious to have Henri take for us
a lot of photographs of the acropolis and castle there. All plans were
made to go. But political news prevented their leaving. The action of
Bulgaria and Austria has raised a ferment throughout Turkey, especially
in these parts, where there are many Armenian Christians. A reactionary
movement is feared. The Armenians fear that the Mohammedans distrust
their loyalty.
The fasting month of Ramazan ended on October twenty-fifth, and the
following Monday the great Bairam (feast) began. Lower-class Mohammedans
generally get gloriously drunk in towns on this day. Occidental
Turkophiles write of and praise Moslems as being the original White
Ribboners. Perhaps many are, but not town Turks, who consume quantities
of _raki_, the strongest fire-water man ever invented. During this
Bairam the Armenians were fearing a massacre. The Constitution has
lifted the prohibition of owning firearms. We hear the Armenians have
been buying in large quantities. We did not ourselves anticipate
trouble. But one never knows in this country. It was best for Henri and
Herbert not to go.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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