The Platzkommandant glared at me, and after examining my papers, spoke with somebody on the telephone. Then, although not a word had been spoken to me, we were both led outside and through some narrow streets to a stone building. Not until we were inside it did I hear, from a police officer who spoke a little French, why I was there.
Having noticed that rather more consideration was given to me than to him, and thinking he might obtain better treatment by hanging on to my coat-tails, the Arab had elaborated his story by saying that I brought him from the British Army in my aeroplane. Evidently the Platzkommandant, without giving me the chance to deny this fantastic tale, had telephoned to Turkish General Headquarters which had ordered that the spy and I, as accomplices in crime, should be kept together. And here we were, inside what I learned was the civil criminal jail.
I protested with vehemence and ridicule against belief in the Arab's absurd statement. I pointed out that as my machine was a single-seater, his story must be impossible. The police officer promised to forward these protests to military headquarters; but as for him, his orders were that the Arab and I were to remain together. In any case, he added, I was probably being punished for having tried to escape.
Remain together we did, in a superlatively filthy cell. I would rather live in an American jail than in most of the poorer dwellings of the Turkish provinces, where donkeys and dogs and hens and men and women and children herd together in mud huts. As for most Turkish jails, I would rather live in an American pigsty.
Even after my experience on the train from Tul-Keran I was surprised by the first sight of that cell. The walls were neither stone nor wooden, but of hard earth, with holes and cracks all over the surface. The various kinds of dirt that crusted the stone floor, which must have been left uncleaned for years, had mingled and intermingled until they became a thin layer of slime, which gave forth a dank odour. The room was partly underground, although the small, iron-barred window, on a level with the floor of the yard and two feet below the stone ceiling, let in a certain amount of light. Through it crawled all sorts of insects. Hundreds of vermin were to be seen moving in and out of the fissures in the walls.
Unadulterated bravery, without any trace of suppressed or subconscious fear, does not exist; wherefore, if a man who fought in the war tells you that he never felt the least bit afraid, call him a liar of the goriest. But my experience has convinced me that ordinary bravery—the sort of bravery which is self-control in the face of danger—is one of the most ordinary of qualities, possessed by most people of every race, sex, and age. But endurance is another matter. To all but the lion-hearted there comes the point at which the will to endure breaks down under abnormal strain.
Being far from lion-hearted, this now happened to me. When the gendarme banged and bolted the door I became morally dead, and past caring about surroundings or events. Physical weakness, mental agony, a terrible dizziness that resulted from having been bareheaded in the Palestine sun, the succession of privations and revolting surroundings—all these combined to break my spirit.
I grabbed the shrinking Arab, who evidently had not reckoned on being left alone with me, and flung him across the cell. I then sat down in the nearest corner, and, physically and mentally sick, remained inert for many hours.
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.