The invariable and reasonable complaint made by the Christians is, that though they are heavily taxed they have no protection from the Kurds, or any advantage from the law as administered in Kurdistan, and that taxes are demanded from them which the Kurds have left them without the means of paying. They complain that they are brutally beaten when they fail to produce money for the payment of the Government imposts, and they allege with great unanimity that it is common for the zaptiehs to tie their hands behind them, to plaster their faces with fresh cow-dung, and throw pails of cold water at their eyes, tie them to the posts of their houses and flog them severely. In the village of ——, which has been swept bare by the Kurds, the people asserted that the zaptiehs had tied twenty defaulters together, and had driven them round and round barefooted over the thistles of the threshing-floor, flogging them with their heavy whips. My zaptiehs complain of the necessity they are under of beating the people. They say (and I think correctly) that they can never know whether a man has a hoard of buried money or not without beating him. They tell me also that they know that half the peasants have nothing to pay their taxes with, but that unless they beat them to "get what they can out of them" they would be punished themselves for neglect of duty.
On the plains to the west and north-west of the lake of Van, where the deep, almost subsoil, ploughing and carefully-constructed irrigation channels testify to the industry of a thrifty population, great depredations are even now being committed, and though later the intense cold and tremendous depths of snow of the Armenian highlands will proclaim the "Truce of God," the Kurds are still on the alert. Nor are their outrages confined to small localities, neither are they the result of "peculiar local circumstances," but from the Persian frontier near Urmi, along a more or less travelled road of several hundred miles, there is, generally speaking, no security for life, traffic, or property, and I hear on good authority that on the other side of Erzerum, even up to the Russian frontier, things are if possible worse.
I have myself seen enough to convince me that in the main the statements of the people represent accurately enough the present reign of terror in Armenia, and that a state of matters nearly approaching anarchy is now existing in the vilayet of Erzerum. There is no security at all for the lives and property of Christians, law is being violated daily, and almost with perfect impunity, and peaceable and industrious subjects of the Porte, taxed to an extent which should secure them complete protection, are plundered without redress. Their feeble complaints are ignored, or are treated as evidence of "insurrectionary tendencies," and even their lives are at the mercy of the increased audacity and aroused fanaticism of the Kurds, and this not in nearly inaccessible and far-off mountain valleys, but on the broad plains of Armenia, with telegraph wires above and passable roads below, and with a Governor-General and the Fourth Army Corps, numbering 20,000 seasoned troops, within easy distance!
I have every reason to believe that in the long winter evenings which I have spent in these sociable odahs, the peasants have talked to me freely and frankly. There are no reasons why it should be otherwise, for my zaptiehs are seldom present, Moussa is looking after his horses in distant recesses, quite out of hearing, and my servants are Christians. If the people speak frankly, I am compelled to believe that the Armenian peasant is as destitute of political aspirations as he is ignorant of political grievances; that if he were secured from the ravages of Moslem marauders he would be as contented as he is loyal and industrious; and that his one desire is "protection from the Kurds" and from the rapacity of minor officials, with security for his life and property. Not on a single occasion have I heard a wish expressed for political or administrative reform, or for autonomy. The Armenian peasants are "of the earth, earthy," and the unmolested enjoyment of material good is their idea of an earthly Paradise.
With regard to the Kurds, they have been remorseless robbers for ages, and as their creed scarcely hesitates to give the appropriation of the goods of a Kafir a place among the virtues, they prey upon the Syrian and Armenian peasants with clear consciences. To rob them by violence and "demand," month after month and year after year, till they have stripped them nearly bare, to cut their throats if they resist, to leave them for a while to retrieve their fortunes,—"to let the sheep's wool grow," as their phrase is,—and then to rob them again, is the simple story of the relations between Kurd and Christian. They are well armed with modern rifles and revolvers. I have rarely seen a Kurd with an old-fashioned weapon, and I have never seen a Christian with a rifle, and their nearly useless long guns have lately been seized by the Government. The Kurds hate and despise the Turks, their nominal rulers; but the Islamic bond of brotherhood is stronger than the repulsion either of hatred or contempt, and the latent or undisguised sympathy of their co-religionists in official positions ensures them, for the most part, immunity for their crimes, for the new Code, under which the evidence of a Christian has become nominally admissible in a court of law, being in direct opposition to the teaching of the Koran, to the practice of centuries, to Kurdish fanaticism, and to the strong religious feelings and prejudices of those who administer justice, is practically, so far as the Christians are concerned, a dead letter.[59]
I am writing in an odah in the village of Harta, after a wild mountain ride in wind, sleet, and snow. The very long marches on this journey have been too much for me, and I made a first and last attempt to travel in a maffir or covered wooden pannier, but the suffering was so great that I was glad to remount my faithful woolly Boy. We had a regular snowstorm, in which nothing could be seen but the baggage horses struggling and falling, and occasional glimpses of caverned limestone cliffs and precipitous slopes, with a foamy torrent at a tremendous depth below. On emerging from the pass, Moussa, Suleiman, and I came at a good pace through the slush to this odah, and I arrived so cold that I was glad to have to rub my horse dry, and attend to him. Murphy describes him thus: "That's a strange horse of yours, ma'am; if one were to lie down among his legs he'd take no notice to hurt one. When he comes in he just fills hisself, then he lies down in the wettest place he can find, and goes to sleep. Then he wakes and shakes hisself, and hollers, he does, till he gets his grub"—an inelegant but forcible description of the excellences of a travelling horse. Boy is truly a gentle pet; it afflicts me sorely to part with him. A few nights ago as I took some raisins to him in a dark recess of the stable, my light went out, and I slipped and fell among the legs of some animal. Not knowing whether it was a buffalo or a strange horse I did not dare to move, and said, "Is this you, my sweet Boy?" A low pleasant snuffle answered "yes," and I pulled myself up by the strong woolly legs, which have carried me so sturdily and bravely for several hundred miles.
The Christians appear not to have anything analogous to our "family worship," but are careful in their attendance at the daily prayers in church, to which they are summoned before dawn, either by loud rappings on their doors or the striking of a wooden gong or sounding-board. The churches differ very little. They usually have an attempt at an outer courtyard, the interior of the edifice is generally square, the roof is supported by two rows of poplar pillars, and the rough walls are concealed by coarse pictures and dirty torn strips of printed cotton. Dirty mats or bits of carpets cover the floor, racks are provided for the shoes of the worshippers, and if there is not a gallery a space is railed off for the women. The prayers are mumbled by priests in dirty vestments, while the women knit and chatter. Candle-grease, dust, and dirt abound. There is such an air of indifference about priests and people that one asks what motive it is which impels them to leave their warm stable dwellings on these winter mornings to shiver in a dark and chilly church. They say, "We will tread the paths our fathers trod; they are quite good enough for us." Two nights ago, in an odah full of men, the Kurdish khanji, at the canonical hour, fell down on his forehead at prayer in the midst of us, all daggers, pistols, and finery as he was. In which case is the worship most ignorant, I wonder?
I. L. B.
LETTER XXXIV