CHAPTER XI

THE TURBANED MOLLAH

Bare-headed and bare-footed, with elbows and knees protruding through the filthy rags that covered him, his face hidden beneath six weeks’ growth of beard, Takvor passed slowly by the outer guards of the prison and down the street. As usual in the early afternoon, lines of carriages were taking the Turkish officials to their offices in the Sublime Porte. Through fear that some former acquaintance might recognize him, he clung to the inner side of the walk. Occasionally he followed a less frequented street, but always came back to the tramway and the rows of carriages. To his old friend, Hadji Bekier, who was standing in the doorway of his lokoum shop, he seemed but a passing beggar, only more ragged and more filthy than others. When he reached the Galata bridge, he noticed the familiar white-gowned toll gatherers busily reaching out their hands for the ten para pieces, or making change with the passing pedestrians. He stopped, for he remembered that he had not even a penny required for toll. Often with other boys he had passed the collectors unnoticed, but to do so now seemed impossible. While he stood trying to think how he might succeed in crossing the bridge, the sound of coins in the little booth of a money changer caught his attention. He saw lying on the ground a narrow board which had apparently been split from a packing box. Remembering that a cripple was free to pass the bridge, he picked up the board, and using it as a crutch, hobbled along. The toll gatherer, merely glancing at him, allowed him to pass. Takvor limped along some distance before glancing back; then, convincing himself that none but the tall Kurd was watching him, he dropped the board and crossed the bridge.

He could reach home by the less frequented street along the Golden Horn, but he disliked to grieve his mother by appearing in such a miserable condition. He looked at his hands. They were black with dirt. He looked at his feet. They were still blacker. He stopped before a jeweler’s shop to catch his reflection in the window. The streets seemed unusually crowded that day. Albanians, Kurds, and Lazis in their peculiar costumes, were standing about; groups of soldiers were collected before the guard-house, as if awaiting orders; and the police were peering into the faces of the passing crowds. To avoid these, Takvor made his way through the dingy inn which the Europeans have nicknamed “The Bourse,” and climbed a narrow street near the lower entrance of the tunnel. At a little café half way up the hill to the tramway was seated a group of Albanians, strong muscular fellows like the gladiators of ancient Rome; their dark-brown embroidered costumes, and their wool fezzes, half concealing the long locks of braided hair springing from the crown of their cropped heads, were evidence that they had recently come from the far interior. Farther up the street, at another café, a group of Lazis, bloodthirsty savages who valued the life of a man at less than that of a sheep, seemed to have just arrived from the wild coast of the Black Sea. Still farther on, a line of garbage carts and their brute-like drivers stood as if waiting for orders before going about their work. At the head of the street stood a beardless Turkish mollah, whose long, blue, collarless coat and spotless white turban marked him as a student from the theological school of Saint Sophia. To Takvor it seemed that the young priest was nervously glancing down the street at the groups of Lazis and Albanians, and watching another white-turbaned priest at the corner below. They were evidently in communication. Along the main street filed a line of Armenian porters carrying bags of newly coined gold from the mint to the bank, while armed guards were marching beside them, to prevent their disappearing with their precious burdens in some dark passage way. The passing of the porters, though a daily occurrence, seemed to excite the young priest, for he stood staring at the bags of money as if his eyes would penetrate to their contents. Again he turned to the waiting groups, and to the other priest below, and raising his hand, pointed upward. The porters and their guards passed into the bank to deliver their burden. Takvor, dismissing the scene from his mind, continued up the street, closely followed by the Kurd who had released him from prison.

He had hardly reached the door of the English store when there came from the direction of the bank the report of an explosion. It was followed by a second and a third. People from the houses and shops crowded into the streets.

“The Armenians are blowing up the bank,” somebody shouted.

From the steps Takvor could see above the heads of the people. At the street corner beyond the bank, the white-turbaned mollah was still standing, with both hands in the air, waving frantically to the people below. Almost instantly, as if by magic, soldiers sprang up from everywhere. They climbed the steps on the opposite hills, and leveled their rifles at the bank windows, ready to fire if the head of an Armenian porter appeared. At the entrance to the bank, with his back to the street, stood the old Montenegran doorkeeper, with a revolver in each hand, preventing the porters from leaving the building; already he had laid out half a dozen of them on the stairs before him. Others who had tried to escape to the roofs of the neighboring houses were shot by the Turkish soldiers. The faithful bank coachman, an aged Armenian, glanced from the window to see if his horses had taken to flight, but he never knew, for a bullet passed through his head. An Armenian cobbler, with a last in his hand, was standing in the doorway of his shop; a soldier aimed at the gray head and fired, and the cobbler dropped dead. Scarcely ten minutes had passed since the porters entered the bank, when, from the street where the turbaned priest had stood, hundreds of Albanians, Lazis, and Kurds, all armed with rough wooden clubs, were rushing madly at the crowd. They seemed to spring from the ground, and like savage beasts, selected, as if by instinct, their victims for the slaughter. As they worked their way along, their clubs made no mistake by descending on the head of Greek, Jew, Levantine, or even catholic Armenian; a massacre of the protestant Armenians had begun. The white-turbaned priest at the corner below stood for a moment watching the bloody scene, and then with a brutal smile of triumph, as if his part of the work were over, disappeared down the side street.

A stampede for safety began, and although the crowd understood that the massacre was directed against the protestant Armenians, the people of all nationalities fled to the shops or the houses, or to the side streets. Wherever an Armenian appeared, an Albanian or a Kurd stood ready with a club to strike him. Too dazed to move, like dumb animals, the victims waited to die. Takvor now understood why he and others of his race had been released from the Buyuk Zaptieh; the great Kurd who was still following him, had brought him to the street only that he might the more readily perform the task to which he had been appointed.

When the knowledge of his awful situation flashed upon him, he dashed into the store, which was already filled with his terrified countrymen. The faithful Turkish porter, to barricade the property which he guarded, pulled down the iron shutters of the windows and doors, and the neighboring merchants immediately followed his example. Only those who heard the din of the hundreds of screeching iron shutters, hurriedly hauled down at the same moment, can realize the horror which seized the people. It seemed as if the Turks had put in motion some infernal machine to grind them to pieces. Men and women with strong nerves fainted at the terrifying sound; and even now, when some harmless merchant closes his shop for the night, men shudder and women faint at the recollection of that awful day.