Page:Martyred Armenia - El-Ghusein.djvu/17

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Martyred Armenia
15

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 un-