“I’m an Armenian,” he said, “and I love the English.”
“You what?” I cried.
“I love the English,” he repeated.
“Then, by God, I’ll kill you!” I shouted, and rushed up to my friend Nabi Chaoush, the café-jee, bellowing for the loan of his knife.[[77]]
My friendly doctor-patient bolted, and I never saw him again. To this day I do not know whether it was an official test or not.
Particularly unwelcome was the sudden attention of the administrative officers of the hospital, who had never before taken any notice of us. The Insabit Zabut (an assistant superintendent) was particularly assiduous. He set a series of traps with “poisoned parcels” and “money from the English,” etc., to see how I would behave. Three times he came into the ward and searched my bed. One day, when I was in the bath, I spotted his orderly watching me through a hole in the roof.
The History of my Persecution by the English (I had written about thirty large note-books full by this time) disappeared for twenty-four hours. I wished joy to whomsoever had taken it because it was all unutterable nonsense specially written for the eyes of the Turk. But the action showed renewed suspicion on somebody’s part.
So far as I could make out—I could not consult Hill for reasons that will appear—the trouble was not with our own doctors of the mental ward. Except that one of the juniors cut down my diet for a few days, their attitude was much as usual. It was the attendants, the administrative authorities, the doctors belonging to other wards, and the other patients, who had altered their attitude. Noticing that whenever I entered our ward animated conversations amongst the other patients came to a sudden stop, I crept out one evening along a ledge which ran round the outside of the hospital, and listened under the open window. They were discussing plans for watching us and catching us out!
I was in one way relieved to hear this, because I had begun to fear that I was imagining things and that perhaps I was going really mad. I wondered if Hill had noticed anything, but in the circumstances any attempt at communicating was too dangerous.
It was not till long afterwards, on one of the rare occasions when we managed a brief conversation in the garden, that I learnt what Hill had suffered during this period. He, too, had noticed the conversations amongst the patients which ceased at my entry, but as he knew very little Turkish he could not understand what was said. One phrase, however, he did understand, and its constant repetition got on his nerves. He told me they were everlastingly talking about “a letter from Yozgad.” But though he correctly repeated the phrase to me in Turkish, I felt certain he must have misunderstood what was said, and that what he had heard was something else, similar in sound, which he had construed into Turkish words he knew. For I could not imagine who at Yozgad could write a letter which would get us into trouble. Kiazim Bey would not dare to do so for he himself was too seriously implicated. The Cook, who still believed in the Spook, was equally unlikely. The Pimple was not in Yozgad, but in Constantinople. And nobody else amongst the Turks knew anything. I said so to Hill, but he stuck to it that the phrase he had heard so often was “a letter from Yozgad” and nothing else. And in the light of later knowledge I believe he was right.