says nothing of five young Armenian women, too old to be classed as children and too young to be described as servants. These we will take, lest the Pasha be imposed upon.”
They would not believe that I also was mother’s daughter. They took me and the four girls mother had brought from the house of Ibrahim Agha, and at the same time forced mother to leave the shelter of the church and camp in a nearby yard. They took us out of the village, to where their main camp was.
With halter ropes they tied our hands behind our backs and then tied us to each other by looping a rope through our arms. Soon Sheikh Zilan himself came to look at us. He seemed greatly pleased when he had looked into our faces. He gave some orders we could not understand, but which, evidently, had to do with our safety, and walked away. We spent the night sitting on the ground, for we were bound in such a way we could not lie down. The Kurds looked at us curiously as they walked around us, and often one of them would kick us to make us turn our faces toward him. But otherwise they did not molest us.
