Leaving on Sunday, the 21st, I spent the next day at P. There were about 2,000 exiles there, of whom about a third had permission from the Government to remain on account of being artizans or, in the cases of women and children, of being members of soldiers’ families. The remainder were more or less under the ban, and were dragging out a wretched existence dodging the police, but preferring such a life to the fate of being sent on into the mountains to starve. The artizans above-mentioned were receiving a loaf of bread a day from the Government and being forced to work for nothing; also the soldiers’ families were receiving rations, but in no case sufficient. I heard many stories of how the Armenians had been refused transportation by train, and had been forced to hire wagons at exorbitant rates, ten liras and more from P. to Tarsus, or else had been driven off on foot, leaving most of their belongings behind them. I saw great piles of baggage heaped up at the station, at least five or six hundred pieces, that had been abandoned, and was told that probably there had been three thousand in all. Most of this property had been confiscated as “metrouk” (abandoned) and had been partitioned among the officials or sold, while a good deal had been stolen by the Turks in the town. About a hundred children had been abandoned on account of sickness or of their being too young to walk. The Turks had taken all but about twenty of these and adopted them as Moslems, and I found the remainder of them in the care of a poor Armenian woman, who with the help of some of the Armenians in the town was trying to look after them. They were all in a dark, wretched room, about nine by twelve feet—miserable specimens of humanity they were. Seven of them in that room actually looked sick, and all of them pinched and pale and insufficiently clothed. The kind-hearted woman in charge was not only nursing a baby of her own but actually trying to make her small supply of milk suffice for two of the littlest refugees as well, who were sick and for whom there was no cow’s milk to be had. Being in such wretched condition they were not much in demand, but from time to time, she told me, the Turks would come round to see if there were any worth taking off, especially girls. The Government was doing absolutely nothing for these children.
Deportation in P. was still in progress, about a hundred wagon-loads of people having been driven off a few days before I arrived. One of the parties, consisting of husband, wife, two boys and one girl, had been set upon near BE. by robbers. Upon some resistance being offered by the man, the whole party was stabbed to death, the little girl of six years having first been foully outraged. This story is authentic, and the Government is now making investigation and promises to punish the “guilty” when they are found.
Near the station I found about two hundred people who had been driven out of the town, and were crowded into a couple of abandoned and tumble-down houses, in filth and misery indescribable. I started to look at the sick, but gave it up as a bad job, as almost all were sick and no medicine would make them well as long as they were obliged to live under such conditions. There were a few tents spread outside on the frozen ground, and the condition of the people in them was about the same as that of those in the houses. In the evening, when I took the train, some of the people were trying to buy tickets, when I saw an officer deliberately pulling them away from the window and beckoning to Turks to take their places and to their friends to crowd about the window, apparently with the intention of delaying the Armenians so that they should miss the train, which now takes passengers only once a week. I managed to crowd in and buy tickets for four of them, the officer meanwhile telling the rest of them that there were no tickets for them that night. Fortunately the train was so late that I think all must have eventually gotten tickets. This in itself is a small incident, but is a sample of the continual nagging and harassing that is going on when there is no opportunity to do something worse. The regular resident Armenians of P. have for the most part been allowed to remain, through the goodwill of the Kaimakam, but are, of course, subjected to constant nagging. They are frequently invited to become Moslems, and even J. Effendi, who is a Protestant, is nagged by one of the Turkish officials, who is trying to get his youngest daughter to marry him. All Armenians there are in great anxiety and fear, and I could see that they were nervous about being seen with me, so that I had some difficulty in seeing and hearing what I wanted. In Q. they seem to take a great deal of comfort in our presence in the city and in being able to apply to us in a way that does not excite suspicion. Also, some of the police are our friends and refrain from making trouble.
Going on to Bozanti, I found only about 250 refugees. These were scattered along the long valley that leads towards Tarsus, and were altogether the most wretched of the exiles that I have yet seen. They are the remnants of the vast encampment that has been there during the past months, and are all too poor to hire any conveyance to Tarsus, eighteen hours away, while their women and children are too feeble to attempt the journey on foot. About two-thirds of the people had wretched tents of some description, and the rest had no shelter at all. They had sold what had not been stolen from them, and many were half-naked. All were famished and wretched, with despair written on their pinched and haggard faces; a large number were sick, and I counted five corpses in half-an-hour. Of the latter, two were still stretched out in the tents, one was being buried, and two had been thrown out by the roadside. There is no available shelter for these people in Bozanti, even if they had permission to use it. The Government sends some bread to them from time to time, but with no regularity. Most of them were villagers, but some from good families. I found a pretty young girl with her mother in one of the tents, whom I recognised as having seen in Q. The girl had been in danger of being abducted by the police while here, so her mother had hurried her on to Bozanti; but there the money gave out, and they had nothing left but some scanty bedding, a few dishes, a little clothing and three medjidias. Beside their tent were two others, whose occupants, like them, were people of some breeding and refinement, but in similar destitution, and with only women and children in all the three tents. In another tent I found a young girl who had been carried off by the gendarmes but rescued by the station employees at Bozanti. I was told that she had been a bright and attractive girl, but when I saw her she was thin and emaciated and had become idiotic. The valley was strewn with graves, and many of them had been torn open by dogs and the bodies eaten. I was told that considerably over a thousand people had died at Bozanti, and about the same number at P.—how many thousands all along the way from Constantinople to Mesopotamia, no one can tell. People coming from that region say that not one person in ten ever reached Zor, and that those people who have gotten there have nothing but starvation before them. From the statements of railway officials and others I should think that not less than 500,000 people must have passed through Bozanti.
At P., in addition to distributing some money, I left 30 liras to be spent for the people by J. Effendi and the Armenian Beledié physician there (a first-rate and very capable fellow), paying especial attention to the waifs above mentioned. At Bozanti I bought a donkey-load of bread and distributed it to the refugees, gave out a considerable amount of cash in small sums, hired several camels and horses that were then available to take some of the people on to Tarsus as soon as possible, and left 20 liras with my host to hire wagons next day and send on more of the people (wagons there can now be hired quite cheaply). If we get word that they reached Tarsus safely, I think we can arrange to send on the rest. Tarsus is at least warmer and better in every way than the bleak mountains among which they are staying now, and we can only hope that things may take a turn for the better before they are driven into the desert. The Vali here is now very friendly, and assures us that at least all Protestants will be allowed to remain here and will not be molested, but that others will be sent off soon to the towns (kazas), though not to the villages. We all breathe easier with the chief of police and his cronies now no longer in Q.
113. KONIA: RESUMÉ OF A LETTER[[153]] DATED KONIA, 2nd/15th OCTOBER, 1915; APPENDED TO THE MEMORANDUM (DOC. 11), DATED 15th/28th OCTOBER, 1915, FROM A WELL-INFORMED SOURCE AT BUKAREST.
Immediately after the recall of the Vali, Djelal Bey, who had left the exiles’ tents with tears in his eyes, more than 80,000 Armenians—men, women and children—were driven away from their tents and directed towards the south, beaten along with whips and clubs. It was a heart-rending sight. The poor people, who were already in rags, had to abandon what blankets or clothes they possessed and start on foot. Parents had lost their children, women were looking for their husbands, but the wild gendarmerie flogged without mercy all those who cried or entreated. The tents were full of corpses, which dogs were devouring. More than thirty people died daily from hunger and cold. All along the railway line from Konia to Karaman, Eregli and Bozanti (the rail-head), hundreds of thousands of Armenians were herded along by the gendarmes. Tired and hungry, they begged bread from the passengers and the railway officials. The few families that had managed to remain in Konia at the cost of great sacrifices, have also received the order to leave the town. The Government has published a report on alleged crimes committed by the Christians, and especially by the Armenians, against the Moslems. By such means it deliberately exasperates the Turks more and more. On the journey the number of deaths goes on increasing.
[153]. Name of writer withheld.