southward toward the Euphrates River. Day by day the men
contingent of the caravan got smaller and smaller. Under pretext of
not killing them if they would hand over liras and gold coins, men
would be milked by the gendarmes of what little money they had.
Then they would be killed anyway.
Days wore on. We marched through mountain roads and valleys.
Those who could not keep up were put out of their misery. Always
bodies were found strewn by the wayside. The caravan was getting
smaller each day. At one place, my little grandmother,
like Jeremiah incarnate, loudly cursed the
Turkish government for their inhumanity, pointing
to us children she asked, “What is the fault of children to be
subjected to such suffering.” It was too much for a gendarme to
bear, he pulled out his dagger and plunged it into my grandmother’s
back. The more he plunged his dagger, the more my beloved Nana
asked for heaven’s curses on him and his kind. Unable to silence her
with repeated dagger thrusts, the gendarme mercifully pumped
some bullets into her and ended her life. First my uncle, now my
grandmother were left unmourned and unburied by the wayside.
We moved on.
b. 1908, Papert