come face to face with the likelihood of execution and he
got a bit of confirmation from the man at the top - Mahmud
Şevket Paşa, who ruled with an iron fist after Sultan
Abdülhamid was dethroned in 1909.//
Life in the Dungeon
I was allocated a bed with old grass falling out of the mattress. For a
pillow, I put one of my shoes under the mattress to raise my head up
while sleeping and that worked well. But the rats made a nest in my
mattress and even had babies there. I heard their delicate voices all
through the night. So one day I shook out the babies from the mattress,
making an enemy of their mother, who took revenge by gnawing at the
bread I'd tucked away each night.
Strange bedfellows.
The prisoner lying next to me was Greek with his feet in chains. He
didn't speak any Turkish but although he was filthy and had no one in
Istanbul, he was more concerned about my situation than his own. We
were able to interact one way or the other. In the third bed was a Russian
who also didn't speak Turkish so I wasn't able to communicate with him.
I began to talk with those who knew Turkish. In any event, I stayed
alive with the bread and cheese I got for 15 days.
One day, a dervish named Vasil invited me to share a hot meal. Not
having had a hot meal in 15 days, I ate it all up with pleasure. After
that, I preferred the Vasil's meals to the regular prison fare. Gradually,
I settled in to life in the dungeon and set my mind on finding some
newspapers. I appealed to the guards and even offered them money,
but to no avail. I learned, though, that on the top floor of the Bekir Ağa
Prison building, where the lawyers worked, they would throw the
newspapers they had read out the window into the garden.
The fish is a newspaper.
So I collected the pins from the clothing packages my family sent to
me and made a hook, tied it to a string, along with a rock, to create a
perfect newspaper fishing pole. In this way, I was able to catch some
of the newspaper the wind blew in front of our window. We would
secretly read the newspapers, only to learn from these publications
that members of the 'secret society' would be punished with the most
severe penalties.
I thought about this and determined, of course, that the worst penalty
was death. Now my remaining doubts about this had given way to
acceptance of the reality of execution. I asked the newcomers their
opinions and what they had heard in the coffeeshops. They all said
that the consensus was death penalties for us. In my heart I didn't
want to believe it.
Mahmud Şevket Paşa, seated center. He was assassinated
in Istanbul in June 1913. İsmet İnönü is in the back,
standing second from the left.
One day, four arrested law students came and I quickly asked their
views on the matter, wondering, in particular, about the article of
law that prescribed execution. Then one evening we learned that
Mahmud Şevket Paşa, who was later assassinated, would be coming
to Bekir Ağa so we cleaned up the prison.
All of a sudden, a guard appeared with a bright lamp and there was
Mahmud Şevket Paşa at the head of a group of high-ranking officers.
I happened to be in the first bed so he began by asking me about the
founding of the 'secret society'. He knew something about me from
the information they had already extracted from but I merely said that
I had been absorbed into the society. Mahmud Şevket Paşa looked me
over and said "son, I'll have you and your father-in-law swing from the
gallows in Beyazit Square."
//END of PART IX//
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