Such is the official declaration of the Ottoman Government in regard to the Armenians. But the secret resolution was that companies of militia should be formed to assist the gendarmes in the slaughter of the Armenians, that these should be killed to the last man, and that the work of murder and destruction should take place under the supervision of trusty agents of the Unionists, who were known for their brutality. Reshîd Bey was appointed to the Vilayet of Diarbekir and invested with extensive powers, having at his disposal a gang of notorious murderers, such as Ahmed Bey El-Serzi, Rushdi Bey, Khalîl Bey, and others of this description.
The reason for this decision, as it was alleged, was that the Armenians residing in Europe and in Egypt had sent twenty of their devoted partisans to kill Talaat, Enver, and others of the Unionist leaders; the attempt had failed, as a certain Armenian, a traitor to his nation and a friend of Bedri Bey, the Chief of the Public Security at Constantinople (or according to others, Azmi Bey), divulged the matter and indicated the Armenian agents, who had arrived at Constantinople. The latter were arrested and executed, but secretly, in order that it might not be said that there were men attempting to kill the heads of the Unionist Society.
Another alleged reason also was that certain Armenians, whom the Government had collected from the Vilayets of Aleppo and Adrianople and had sent off to complete their military service, fled, with their arms, to Zeitoun, where they assembled, to the number of sixty young men, and commenced to resist the Government and to attack wayfarers. The Government despatched a military force under Fakhry Pasha, who proceeded to the spot, destroyed a part of Zeitoun, and killed men, women and children, without encountering opposition on the part of the Armenians. He collected the men and women and sent them off with parties of troops, who killed many of the men, whilst as for the women, do not ask what was their fate. They were delivered over to the Ottoman soldiery; the children died of hunger and thirst; not a man or woman reached Syria except the halt and blind, who were unable to keep themselves alive; the young men were all slaughtered; and the good-looking women fell into the hands of the Turkish youths.
Emigrants from Roumelia were conveyed to Zeitoun and established there, the name of that place being changed to "Reshadîya," so that nothing should remain to remind the Turks of the Armenian name. During our journey from Hamah we saw many Armenian men and women, sitting under small tents which they had constructed from sheets, rugs, etc. Their condition was most pitiable, and how could it be otherwise? Many of these had been used to sit only on easy chairs [lit., rocking-chairs], amid luxurious furniture, in houses built in the best style, well arranged and splendidly furnished. I saw, as others saw also, many Armenian men and women in goods-wagons on the railway between Aleppo and Hamah, herded together in a way which moved compassion.
After my arrival at Aleppo, and two days' stay there, we took the train to a place called Ser-Arab-Pounâri. I was accompanied by five Armenians, closely guarded, and despatched to Diarbekir. We walked on our feet thence to Serûj, where we stopped at a khân [rest-house] filled with Armenian women and children, with a few sick men. These women were in a deplorable state, as they had done the journey from Erzeroum on foot, taking a long while to arrive at Serûj. I talked with them in Turkish, and they told me that the gendarmes with them had brought them to places where there was no water, refusing to tell them where water was to be found until they had received money as the price. Some of them, who were pregnant, had given birth on the way, and had abandoned their infants in the uninhabited wastes. Most of these women had left their children behind, either in despair, or owing to illness or weakness which made them unable to carry them, so they threw them on the ground; some from natural affection could not do this and so perished in the desert, not parted from their infants. They told me that there were some among them who had not been used to walk for a single hour, having been brought up in luxury, with men to wait on them and women to attend them. These had fallen into the hands of the Kurds, who recognize no divine law, and who live on lofty mountains and in dense forests like beasts of prey; their honour was outraged and they died by brutal violence, many of them killing themselves rather than sacrifice their virtue to these ravening wolves.
We then proceeded in carts from Serûj to El-Raha (Urfa). On the way I saw crowds going on foot, whom from a distance I took for troops marching to the field of battle. On approaching, I found they were Armenian women, walking barefoot and weary, placed in ranks like the gendarmes who preceded and followed them. Whenever one of them lagged behind, a gendarme would beat her with the butt of his rifle, throwing her on her face, till she rose terrified and rejoined her companions. But if one lagged from sickness, she was either abandoned, alone in the wilderness, without help or comfort, to be a prey to wild beasts, or a gendarme ended her life by a bullet.
On arrival at Urfa, we learned that the Government had sent a force of gendarmes and police to the Armenian quarters of the town to collect their arms, subsequently dealing with these people as with others. As they were aware of what had happened to their kinsmen—the khâns at Urfa being full of women and children—they did not give up their arms, but showed armed resistance, killing one man of the police and three gendarmes. The authorities of Urfa applied for a force from Aleppo, and by order of Jemâl Pasha—the executioner of Syria—Fakhry Pasha came with cannon. He turned the Armenian quarters into a waste place, killing the men and the children, and great numbers of the women, except such as yielded themselves to share the fate of their sisters—expulsion on foot to Deir-el-Zûr, after the Pasha and his officers had selected the prettiest amongst them. Disease was raging among them; they were outraged by the Turks and Kurds; and hunger and thirst completed their extermination.
After leaving Urfa, we again saw throngs of women, exhausted by fatigue and misery, dying of hunger and thirst, and we saw the bodies of the dead lying by the roadside.
On our arrival at a place near a village called Kara Jevren, about six hours distant from Urfa, we stopped at a spring to breakfast and drink. I went a little apart, towards the source, and came upon a most appalling spectacle. A woman, partly unclothed, was lying prone, her chemise disordered and red with blood, with four bullet-wounds in her breast. I could not restrain myself, but wept bitterly. As I drew out a handkerchief to wipe away my tears, and looked round to see whether any of my companions had observed me, I saw a child not more than eight years old, lying on his face, his head cloven by an axe. This made my grief the more vehement, but my companions cut short my lamentations, for I heard the officer, Aarif Effendi, calling to the priest Isaac, and saying, "Come here at once," and I knew that he had seen something which had startled him. I went towards him, and what did I behold? Three children lying in the water, in terror of their lives from the Kurds, who had stripped them of their clothes and tortured them in various ways, their mother near by, moaning with pain and hunger. She told us her story, saying that she was from Erzeroum, and had been brought by the troops to this place with many other women after a journey of many days. After they had been plundered of money and clothing, and the prettiest women had been picked out and handed over to the Kurds, they reached this place, where Kurdish men and women collected and robbed them of all the clothes that remained on them. She herself had stayed here, as she was sick and her children would not leave her. The Kurds came upon them again and left them naked. The children had lain in the water in their terror, and she was at the point of death. The priest collected some articles of clothing and gave them to the woman and the children; the officer sent a man to the post of gendarmes which was near by, and ordered the gendarme whom the man brought with him to send on the woman and children to Urfa, and to bury the bodies which were near the guardhouse. The sick woman told me that the dead woman refused to yield herself to outrage, so they killed her and she died nobly, chaste and pure from defilement; to induce her to yield they killed her son beside her, but she was firm in her resolve and died heart-broken.
In the afternoon we went on towards Kara Jevren, and one of the drivers pointed out to us some high mounds, surrounded by stones and rocks, saying that here Zohrâb and Vartakis had been killed, they having been leading Notables among the Armenians, and their Deputies.