“If there be no virgin among you, then by Allah’s will this woman’s eyes come out!”
There was a cry of horror, then a shriek. A girl who must have been of my own age, and whom I had often noticed because her hair was so much lighter than that of nearly all Armenian girls, threw herself, screaming, upon the ground at the soldiers’ feet. Winding her hands about the legs of the soldier whose thumbs were pressing against the woman’s eyes, she cried:
“My mother! my mother! Spare her—here I am—I am still a maid!”
The soldiers seized the girl, guffawing loudly at the success of their plan. As they lifted her between them she flung out her hands toward the woman, who had fallen in a heap when the soldiers released her. “Mother,” the girl screamed, “kiss me—kiss me!”
The poor woman struggled to her feet and reached out her arms, but her eyes were hurt and she could not see. The girl begged the soldiers to carry her to her mother. “I will go—I will go, and be willing—but let me kiss my mother!” she cried. But the soldiers hurried her away.
The mother stood, leaning on those who crowded close to comfort her. Then, suddenly, she drooped and sank to the ground. When we bent over her she was dead. We sat by the body until the daughter came back—after the moon had crossed the sky, and it must have been midnight. The girl hid her face when she came near, until she could bury it in her mother’s shawl. She sat by the body until morning, when we took up our march again.
Every night such things happened.
Other parties along that road had fared the same. Sometimes I counted the bodies of exiles who had preceded us until I could count no longer. They lay at the roadside, where their guards had left them, for miles.
On the eleventh day we came to Shiro, the Turkish city where caravans for Damascus spend the night in a large khan and then turn southward. There are even more caravans now than there used to be, for now they travel only to the Damascus railway and then return. Shiro is the home of many Turks, who profit from traders, or who have retired from posts of power and profit at Constantinople. It is not a large town, but more a settlement of wealthy aghas.
We camped outside this little city. Early the next morning military officers came out. Kerim Bey met them, and there was a short conference. Then the Kurds began to gather the prettiest girls. They tore them from their relatives and half dragged, half carried them to where guards were placed to take charge of them.