“The oda bashi was brought back to his prison: when I asked him what he had said to the soldiers, he told me quite another story. Then I spoke to him in his own words, whereat he was astonished, but he kept silence. He is still in prison, and I am thinking what to do with him; but he has not been tortured in any way; and as you seem to take an interest in his case, I will set him free, and give him to you, to show my friendship for you.”
I replied, “I am glad to hear that the man has not been tortured, for in England we consider torture to be an act of unnecessary cruelty; but your story alters the case. The man is certainly guilty, and as I only asked for justice in this case, and I wish in all things to see justice done, I will not have the man; let him be punished according to the law, only do not torture him.
“The other day you hung a Koord opposite my windows; he was a murderer, and you did right: it is by acts like these that a country such as this can be kept in order, and that protection is assured to those who do well.”
“I am sorry,” said the Pasha, “that they hung the Koord before your windows. I told them not to hang him before the house of the Persian plenipotentiary, where there is a gibbet; but to take him to any place where the Koords resorted, and as there are many coffee-houses near you, that is the reason probably why they hung him there. His story is a curious one: I have been looking after him for the last three years; he has robbed and murdered many people, though he was so young a man, but he had always escaped my agents. At last, a few days ago, he stole a horse, in a valley near here, from a man who was traveling, and whom he beat about the head and left for dead. He brought the horse to Erzeroom and offered it for sale, when the owner, who had recovered, saw him selling the horse, and gave him up to the guard. He was brought up for judgment before me, when I said to him, Who are you? After a silence, the man said, ‘There is a fate in this, it can not be denied. I am * * * *, whom you have been searching for these three years. My fate brought me to Erzeroom, and now I am taken up for stealing one poor horse. I felt when I took that horse that I was fated to die for it. My time is come. It is fate.’ And he went to be hung without any complaint.”
I said he deserved it, and hoped others would take warning by his death.
“I hope they will,” the Pasha said, “but among the Koords of this country there are so few who do not deserve punishment, that if you see two persons you may be sure that one has stolen something. You can not see two people together here but that at least one has been a thief.”
“Well,” I answered, “the British commissioners are two people whom your excellency has often seen together, but I hope, in our case, when we leave the pashalik of Erzeroom, we may be convicted of having stolen nothing but your good opinion;” and so I took my leave.
In the evening, hearing that the wife of the oda bashi was in my house, I said to Paolo Cadelli, my servant, that my desire to liberate the Armenian was changed; that he had not been tortured, but he was a thief. “How!” said Paolo, in a great state of excitement; “a thief he may be, but tortured he certainly was, for in the morning did I not go forth into the bazaar to get wrappers (pestimal) of Persian silk? I went to the Bezestein, and there did I not see the chief of the criers of the Bit Bazaar? he is my friend. Did I not get from him the embroidery, the cloth of gold which you have, which is in your room? And we went, did we not go together, to the court of the palace of the Pasha? It is opposite, is it not opposite to the entrance of the Bezestein? Do not the soldiers present arms to you there when you go in? Yes. There I went, and I saw the Armenian, a poor devil—quite a poor devil—sitting down like a monkey, altogether quite stupid with fear and martyrdom. They had martyred him; they had drawn his teeth; his finger-ends and toes were black, by reason of the canes they had run into them; his thighs had been torn by pincers; he was half dead. He said to the people, ‘What can I do? I am innocent; kill me; but I can not restore goods which I have not got.’ Ah! he is a Christian. Is he not a Christian—an Armenian? That is what these Turks do. They have not tortured the soldiers who are guilty. Certainly they have not, but this man has been tortured because he is an Armenian. They are Turks, my master (padrone); are they not Turks? They are all Turks; that is what they do;” and with many ejaculations Paolo went away to cool down his indignation in the open air.
I was surprised at this account. Yesterday, August 5, * * * Pasha came to breakfast, and I begged him to find out the truth. In the afternoon I was at Enveri Effendi’s house; * * * Pasha was there, and he said the man had not been tortured; that the account given me by Kiamili Pasha was correct; that the man was out of prison, but that the Pasha would seek for him and send him to me.
I heard that, after I went to the Pasha, the Pasha sent for the Kiaya, and finding the oda bashi had been tortured, he found great fault with him, and ordered the man to be released the next day. He is sentenced, as he understands, to pay the half of the value of the goods stolen. While I was with the Pasha, the Tophenkyi Bashi was enraged with this poor victim for getting the assistance of the Franks, as he thought that we were come to the Pasha on his account, whereas our visit was on public business in no way connected with this affair. It appears that while we were sitting on the divan in the Pasha’s hall of audience, the Tophenkyi Bashi was employed during the same time in inflicting additional torments on the unfortunate oda bashi; he snapped his pistol at his head, and informed him that the Pasha had given orders that he was to be hanged in the course of the day. The oda bashi, after we had rescued him from his various tormentors, presented himself before me. He was a good-looking man, about thirty-five years of age, with a black beard, and respectably dressed in blue, in the style usually adopted by the Armenian Christians. He said he had been tortured by the order of the Kiaya Bey; the bones were put to his temples, some of his teeth drawn, his nails pierced, his left thigh torn with pincers; he was hung up by the arms by ropes, but the hot cup was not placed upon his head. He showed me the marks of the pincers and other scars about his body—evident proofs of the truth of his assertion. The two soldiers who were convicted of having stolen the goods (the oda bashi being entirely ignorant of the whole transaction) were to be brought before the Council on the following Monday. They are now in prison, and will be sentenced to pay the other half of the value of the stolen goods. This information the oda bashi received from the merchant Mehemed, the owner of the lost property. He has not heard any other particulars about the soldiers.