Many young girls gave in to the Turks and agreed to swear faith in Allah for the sake of their mothers, sisters and brothers. Toward evening the khateeb, or keeper of the mosque, was brought to receive their “conversions.”
More than fifty girls took the oath. Just as soon as the oaths were all taken the officers signaled to the zaptiehs and they took all these girls away from their families and gathered them at one side of the square.
Then the richer beys began to examine the apostasized girls. The soldiers would give a girl to the one who paid them the most money, unless an officer also wanted her. The higher military officers were given first choice.
One by one the soldiers dragged the girls who had sacrificed their religion in vain to save their mothers and relatives out of the square and toward the homes of the Turks. Lusanne and I had gone close to watch our chance to speak once more to mother. We saw everything. And while they were taking the girls away we saw a zaptieh carrying Miss Graham in his arms. She struggled hard, but the zaptieh was too strong. We learned afterward the soldiers had gone to her school to get the little Armenian girls, and when Miss Graham tried to fight them they said her country couldn’t help her now, and since she was a Christian they would take her, too.
It was to Rehim Bey’s house, where Mariam already had been carried, they took Miss Graham. They did not even try to make her become a Mohammedan. Rehim Bey was very powerful, and was a cousin of Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior at Constantinople.
CHAPTER III
VAHBY BEY TAKES HIS CHOICE
For a time Lusanne and I debated whether we should return to the square and join mother, since Miss Graham had been stolen and could not help us, or whether we should make an effort to escape since we had so far escaped notice in our disguises. We decided that, perhaps, if we could reach the house of a friendly Turk, outside the city, and we knew of many of these, we might find a way to help mother. We did not know how this could ever be done, but we clung to a hope that surely some one would aid us.
When it was quite dark we crept through side streets to our deserted house and succeeded in getting into the garden without attracting attention. We dared not make a light, or remain on the lower floors, soldiers might enter the house at any moment. The safest place to hide, we thought, would be the attic.