//Ed. note: Finally escaping their grim
conditions in Aleppo, Eyüb Sabri Bey and
his companions were boarded onto a train
to Damascus for what turned out to be
a similarly grim journey to Egypt and an
English prison camp.//
From
Aleppo to Cairo via Damascus, Haifa and El Qantara
2 March 1919
In any case, the time came for us to depart. We gave our belongings
to the porters.
Hüseyin Cemil Bey and Hoca Abdullah Efendi gave
Antebli Nuri Efendi, who stayed
in the stable, their wills and rest of us
gave him notes. We were taken by vehicle to Aleppo’s Şam
train
station and at six o’clock in the evening, the seven of us were loaded
into a train car, along with five Indian prisoners, who were our guards.
That night when we reached Riyak, the train
coming from Damascus
had not yet passed so we had to wait for a while in the
cold, as the rain
poured down. We were
given no shelter so we had to stay out in the
rain for three hours. It is impossible to describe the distress we
suffered
here, drenched by the rain and shivering.
In this condition, we finally re-boarded the train
and reached Damascus
in the morning. As
we got off the train, escorted by our ‘Mecusi’
(Zoroastrian Indian) guards, we
were still soaking wet but there was no
place for us to dry off. Under guard, we sat on the side of the square
near the station. Our guards knew no Turkish, French or any
other
languge we knew, and we were not allowed to talk to anyone or have
items
purchased for us, either.
We noticed the word “Kantara”on a paper the major
was holding so
this indicated we were, in fact, headed for Egypt. But we had no idea
what to expect nor how we
would get there and no one would tell us.
When the sun rose again we were still outside at the station. At around
noon, a young interpreter came and,
amid bayonet-wielding guards, we
were taken to a barracks. A captain who knew Turkish arrived and had
a
tent set up in the courtyard for us. We remained here for three days.
From Damascus to Cairo
6 March 1919
Again, accompanied
by the five Indian prisoner-guards, we were
boarded onto the train. The station was quite crowded and people were
looking at us but, because of our bayonet-wielding guards, we could not
speak
with anyone. As the train pulled out, we
took advantage of a last
look at the beauty of Damascus.
We proceeded in the same condition of
deprivation. Two of the big
bridges
along the way were damaged so we had to walk for an hour and
a half, with our
belongings, weighing 30-40 kilograms.
Added to this
distress was the oppressive prodding by our ‘Mecusi’
guards. My old
and loyal friend Hüseyin
Cemil Bey, who was slight and frail anyway,
was sick, too, so carrying the
weight of his possessions on his back was
especially burdensome and exacerbated
by the harassment from the
‘Mecusi’ guards.
I helped him as best I could, adding to my own
exhaustion.
Finally, our trek came to an end and we boarded
another train on the
other side of the damaged bridge, reaching Haifa at
seven-thirty that
evening. The train taking
us to Egypt was not ready so we roamed
around until we settled into a prisoner
camp along the shore for the night.
The
camp’s commandant was a Scottish captain, who discerned that we
were educated
fellows and bemoaned our fate, offering some advice and
consolation through a
translator. He dismissed our guards and
left us to
spend the night by ourselves.
This Scottish captain behaved very nicely
toward us, for which we were grateful. The next morning our belongings
were taken to
the station by porters and we boarded the train to Egypt.
Departure from Haifa
7 March 1919
The train left around noon. We would have liked to take pleasure in the
beautiful views offered by Haifa but we were so downhearted we could
not. Our guards had acted quite rudely toward the crowd at the
station
and were in no mood to let us look out the train window either. So we
left the magnificent buildings and orange
orchards of Haifa behind us as
the train gained speed and the city disappeared.
Passing through the desert, the train at times
grunted through the sand but
that was the only sound we heard. No birds chirping and not a tree in
sight. The horizon merged the sand and the sky.
Thinking we’d seen a
house or a tree, we were disappointed to realize
they were merely mirages.
Eventually, in
the evening we reached Kantara (El Qantara), where we
were met at the station
by English policemen, who took us to the
headquarters there.
This headquarters in the desert was comprised only
of tents surrounded
by a wire fence.
There were a number of Arab prisoners already there.
We were put into a tent and immediately fell
asleep after our long and
arduous journey from Damascus. For a meal the next morning we were
given
cotton oil and a small amount of dry beans and onions. By chance,
Besim Bey knew how to prepare a
nice bean meal and we happily ate it
all up. After the assaults against us by
the Armenians in Aleppo and the
subsequent tiring and aggravating travel, we
hadn’t eaten any cooked
food, so Besim Bey’s treat was most welcome. However, Hüseyin Cemil
Bey ate too much of
it, despite a stomach ache, and his discomfort
worsened.
Within the wire fenced area there was plenty of
water available. The
English supplied
all their post and rail stations along the rail line with
water brought from
the Nile River in iron pipes. We
remained in Kantara
for three days, during which time we washed our clothes and
took baths
for the first time in two months.
On the morning of the fourth day we were ordered to
prepare to move out.
The rail station
was far away, though, and our requests for an automobile
and porters were
denied so we lugged our belongings for an hour and a
half to the station. Our Egyptian co-religionists working at the
station
were aggrieved to see our condition and the treatment we were subjected
to. Yet another example of the famed
but ephemeral English ‘civilization’.
At ten-forty-five that morning, together with five Moslem Indian guards,
we boarded a train.
Departure from Kantara (El Qantara)
10 March 1919
This time our guards were much more well-behaved and
compassionate
toward us, because all five of them were Moslems. At every station, they
got whatever we wanted
for us and let us speak with whomever we
liked. As the train moved along at high speed, we
could see prisoner
tents on either side of the tracks and we knew that they
were ours (Turks),
making us very sad indeed.
After four hours, we reached Cairo.
Our guards had never seen Egypt before and they
didn’t even speak
English well. They
didn’t know where they were taking us, nor to whom
they would deliver us. Their
written orders had “Cairo” written on them
so they had to make contact with the
English authorities there. Unable
to
figure this out because of the language problem, our Sedat Bey was
pressed into
service and went with one of the leader of the guards, a
corporal, to find the
English headquarters, while the rest of us stayed at
the train station police
outpost.
By nine o’clock they still hadn’t returned and we
began to worry about
Sedat’s fate. We
could very easily have escaped, given the laxity of our
guards, but couldn’t
bear to leave our elderly companions behind, nor
get the friendly Indian guards
into trouble. A policeman told us where
the English headquarters was located so we sent one of the guards there.
He returned five minutes later with an
English policeman, who then
brought us to the English Headquarters. After a telephone call cleared
up our identities,
we were put on a train and brought to Zeitoun station
about half an hour away
from Cairo. It was now midnight.
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