Bokelskere.no

When Turkey joined in the war, almost six months before,
a great fear spread throughout Armenia.
Without the protecting influence of France and England,

my people were anxious lest the Turks take advantage of
their opportunity and begin again the old oppression
of their Christian subjects.

The young Armenian men would have preferred to fight
with the Sultan's enemies, but they hurried to enlist in
the Ottoman armies, to prove they were not disloyal. ..

I was only fourteen years old, and my sister Lusanne was
not yet seventeen, but even little girls were always afraid
in Armenia. ..

even the early visit that morning of Old Vartabed, our
shepherd, who came just after daybreak, with a prophecy of
trouble, did not dampen our spirits. ..

"Mother, what is it ?" I cried. She did not answer,
but silently pointed to the window. Lusanne and I ran at once
to look down into the street.
There at the gate to our yard stood three Turkish gendarmes,
each with a rifle, rigidly on guard.
On their arms was the band that marked them as personal
attendants of Husein Pasha, the military commandant in our
district.
I turned to my mother for an explanation. She had fallen in
a heap on the floor and was weeping.
She did not speak, but pointed downward and I knew that
Husein Pasha had come to our house, and was downstairs.

Then my happiness was gone, and I, too, fell to the floor
and cried. Somehow I felt that the end had come.

For a long time the powerful Husein Pasha, who was very rich
and a friend of the Sultan himself, had wanted me for his harem.

His big house sat in the midst of beautiful gardens, just
outside the city. There he had gathered more than a dozen of
the prettiest Christian girls from the surrounding towns.

In Armenia the Mutassarif, or Turkish commandant, is an
official of great power. He accepts no orders, except those
that come direct from the Sultan's ministers, and as a rule,
he is cruel and autocratic.

It is dangerous for an Armenian father to displease the
Mutassarif.
When this representative of the Sultan sees a pretty Armenian
girl he would like to add to his harem, there are many ways
he may go about getting her.

The way of Husein Pasha was to bluntly ask her father to sell or
give her to him, with a veiled threat that if the father refused
he would be persecuted.

To make the sale of the girl legal and give the Mutassarif the
right to make her his concubine it was necessary only for him
to persuade or compel her to forswear Christ and become
Mohammedan.

Three times Husein Pasha had asked my father to give me to him.
Three times my father had defied his anger and refused.

The Pasha was afraid to punish us, as my father was wealthy,
and through his friendship with the British Consul at Harpout,
Mr. Stevens, had obtained protection of the Vali, or Governor,
of the Mamuret-ul-Aziz province. But now the British Consul
was gone. The Vali was afraid of no one.
And Husein Pasha could, I knew, do as he pleased.

( forts. hos archive.org )