By the end of June, all the men were in the prisons, barracks or cellars. The women, who went to visit their husbands and bring them clothes and food, were beaten and driven off by the gendarmes.
After several days’ imprisonment, those who had promised to embrace Islam were released, as well as those who had paid very large sums of money. Mr. AF., a colporteur, had been willing to embrace Islam, but his wife refused to recognise his apostasy and declared that she would go into exile with the rest of the people, so he went with his wife and was killed.
The remainder were sent in batches out of the town and killed on the road. The Turks told their Armenian friends what was happening, and promised them the same fate.
No sooner were all the men disposed of, than they began to deport the women and children and even the sick; the ox-carts kept passing day and night. A Turk, the landlord of our house, told us that he had watched this procession, covered with dust and tortured by the heat and lack of water, and that he had said to himself that they would all be dead before they reached their destination. A woman who got back to X. by accepting conversion, after being on the road about ten days, gave an account of their heart-rending condition. Even mothers abandoned their children or handed them over to the Kurds; the Kurds for that matter took them by force and violated the girls, some of whom were carried off for their harems. After several days’ journey, the carts turned back and the exiles had to proceed on foot.
Those connected with the American college gave the Turkish officers large sums to procure their exemption, but this brought them nothing but a postponement of their cruel fate. Meanwhile, the efforts of the American Embassy obtained for Professor DD. permission to go to Constantinople with his wife and eight-months-old baby, as well as his old mother, and my own family was permitted to leave for Smyrna. After several days travelling by carriage, we all arrived at S. There my father and mother were arrested, as well as Professor DD.
Everything we could do to get them released was in vain. It was impossible to learn anything about their fate. The Mudir said: “They have reached their destination safe and sound.”[[137]]
Several days later all Armenians, with the exception of a few Protestant ladies, were cleared out of S.
Later, some of the missionaries from X. passed through S. and found us there in the desperate state we were in. They told the American Embassy as soon as they reached Constantinople, and that is how we obtained permission to proceed to Constantinople.
Here it took us three months to obtain a passport for America.
At X. several families made up their minds to take poison. Mr. GG. was imprisoned. He apostatized and returned home, and his wife fainted at the sight of him. Professor B. accepted Islam, and became head of the printing works. F., E., and the photographer D. have all three apostatized to Islam. There was no revolutionary movement. Frightful atrocities occurred. There was a dark underground cellar into which the Armenians were crowded, one on the top of the other. One night one of them cried out in his sleep: “Escape,” and the other prisoners began to shout as well. Then the guards were given the order to fire into the living mass, but they showed some human feeling and fired against the wall.