//Ed. note: After their arrest at the American
College in Antep, Eyüb Sabri Bey and his
companions were taken to Aleppo, where
they endured grim days and nights in
confinement.//
Incarceration in Aleppo
Arrival at Aleppo
23 January 1919
We departed Antep in the afternoon and arrived at
Aleppo at five-thirty
that evening. We
were incarcerated in a place on the bottom floor of a
rather large house that
the English were using as a police station in the
Cemiliye quarter. It was quite a humid place, with a dirt floor
and
without any straw mats or other furnishings. Quite a crowd of English
soldiers gathered
around us and they began to ridicule us.
They
unwrapped Abdullah Efendi’s turban and wound it around his
neck,
beating the poor fellow’s head
with their fists, and they didn’t neglect
other sorts of insults either. A perfect example of the imagined
‘civilization’ and clear evidence of the
Egnlish enmity toward Islam.
From that day
forward, Abdullah Efendi was reluctant to wear his
turban in the presence of
the English and all throughout his captivity
because the insults, curses and
transgressions never stopped. We
will
not believe the false-fronts of the perfidious English, who will
never be a
friend of Islam. We saw with our own
eyes and heard this
with our own ears issuing from the mouths of officers who
came from
the ‘enlightened’ classes.
For them, oppressing and insulting Moslems
seemed to be sort of an act
of conscience and a sacred duty. If
there are
any who still don’t know this, we have plenty of evidence to convince
them.
It is sufficient to look at the state in which our
soldiers returned from
English captivity in the Great War and make a thorough
investigation
of this. More than 20,000*
Moslem POWs had their eyes poked out
and their arms and legs removed under the
pretext of ‘operations’ at
Egypt’s Abbasiye Hospital. There were many Greeks and Armenians
among
the Ottoman soldier POWs who returned to their families in
Istanbul and
Anatolia from Egypt, but most of them came back with
their eyesight and with
all their limbs. Those who returned
blind and
without arms or legs were the Moslems. Could it be that none of the
non-Moslem
Ottoman soldiers had an eye complaints that required an
‘operation’? Only the Moslems had eye problems that needed
‘operations’?
*NOTE:
When describing these ‘operations’ later
in his
book Eyüb Sabri Bey put the number at 2,000.
God willing, in the future more information about
this will come to light.
More than a
thousand of these victims were released and loaded onto a
ferry, disembarking
at Izmir. These poor fellows were lined
up on the
esplanade and reviewed by laughing and insulting English officials,
the
shameful faces of ‘civilization’.
Even in light of the vicious crimes they
committed against the civilized
world, they didn’t even blush. We will
never again fall for the fake fronts of the English.
How our first night in the police station passed:
The English bound the five of us together with a
rope and tied the end of
the rope tightly to an iron peg in the wall. It was
one thing to tie us up,
but I was amazed that they felt the need to tie the
rope to the peg, as well.
The ground
below us was wet, the air cold and no bread or other food
available to us. We remained in this condition until
ten-thirty that night.
In fact, all five
of us, bound together, went to the toilet and back.
All the while, both the Indians and the
English sergeants and policemen
insulted and tortured us quite badly.
At ten-thirty, an officer with a flashlight came
with some bayonet-wielding
soldiers and took us to the old Sultani school in
the Cemiliye quarter. We
were each given
a felt mat and an old quilt, and told that we could now lie
down. While we were tied up in the police station,
we were searched again
but, of course, they found nothing because everything
had been taken from
us at the American College in Antep. Nevertheless, an English
policeman didn’t
miss the chance to take my silver cane, which I
was still holding.
It should not be forgotten that the English
officials were quite insolant,
bribe-ready and looters. They were very fond of taking anything they
found on their Turkish and Moslem prisoners.
More details about this
will be presented later on, when I discuss the
calamity of our captivity
in Egypt.
Although we were not tied up in the Sultani school,
the night passed with
plenty of
excitement and fright. And we
were right to be scared because
we recalled that while we were at the American
College, the General had
called us “murderers!”
In addition, at the police station we were told that
we would be
executed after two-thirty at night.
Three of us fell asleep after midnight, but Besim
Bey and I remained
awake. With a sudden
clamour, an English officer and a 10-man
detachment of Indian soldiers came
into the room where we were. They
stood
at attention in a row at our heads and the officer commanded them
to “load your
weapons!”. The Indians loaded and waited
for the order to
fire. The officer made
a number of hand gestures toward us but
the
Indians did not fire their guns. He
also said quite a lot of excited and
angry words to the soldiers, while we cowered
in fright under our quilts.
We said nothing,
of course.
This exhibition lasted for about half an hour, after
which the officer told
the soldiers to “shoulder your weapons!” and they all left. They had been
frightening and intimidating us
since the evening and even though we
realized that this ‘firing squad’ show was
a bluff, in those moments one
cannot
help but think the worst.
The English were quite concerned about us, posting
two bayonet-
wielding soldiers inside with us and another outside the door. During
the first few days we were given
neither food nor cigarettes, nor even a
cup of water. We were forbidden to talk among ourselves, as
well. Three
days later, an English
captain came in the morning. He was the
police
chief of the quarter where we were.
He asked us what we needed and
said that we should write down what we
wanted from the market. Using
our own
money, he would have our lists translated, the items bought and
brought to
us. Once he left us, we began to get
water, bread and cigarettes.
We were
relieved by this new and sudden change and that day we were
also given a lentil
meal and the items we requested and paid for with our
own money were brought to
us.
Halil Ağa was brought to us in terrible condition
one night. In his hands
he had small
bags of rice and tea. With
bayonet-wielding soldiers in back
of him, he entered our room. His eyes were puffed up like fists and he was
out of breath. According to what he told
us, two vehicles came to Antep
and he was given up to the English by a tip from
the Armenians. Halil
Ağa was kept and
tortured for a night in the American College/English
HQS, before being transported to Aleppo and then
brought that same
night to where we were.
Halil Ağa was quite tense and frightened because of
the bags he was
holding. He thought that
he had been given the bags of rice and tea as a
‘last meal’ before his
execution. Having been brought alongside
us,
Halil Ağa calmed down a bit, but he was still shaken by his unexpected
arrest
in Antep, facilitated by the Armenians.
A bit later, the teacher Sedat Bey, who had been
brought to Aleppo before
we were, was ushered into our room. He told us that the day he was
brought to
Aleppo, he had been isolated by himself in a cold, heatless,
windowless room in
the Hamidiye Barracks. A few days later,
he was
told by the English that he would be released but, instead, he was
brought
to where we were. We were used
to the English officials’ lies so we
weren’t surprised by Sedat Bey’s story.
We remained under arrest in the Sultani school for
15 days, during which
time we screamed, complained and wrote petitions for our
freedom. In a
petition to General
McAndrew, we reminded him that Antep was still a part
of the Ottoman State so
he had no right to have us arrested, taken from
there and incarcerated in a
foreign country. Soon thereafter, a
major came
to us with an Armenian translator and explained that he had been
sent by
General McAndrew, who dismissed our complaints out of hand and said
we
would be taken to Egypt and held there until a peace agreement was
reached. In addition, General McAndrew
stated that we would be
investigated and that we would not be released until
our superiors were
arrested.
We took this to mean that we were being held hostage
but found this
laughable, coming from the lips of an English major. In any case, shortly
after he left, our
names, personal details, family ties and descriptions
were recorded.
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