E-text prepared by sp1nd, Martin Pettit,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/redrugsoftarsusw00gibb |
THE RED RUGS OF TARSUS
THE RED RUGS
OF TARSUS
A WOMAN'S RECORD OF THE
ARMENIAN MASSACRE OF 1909
BY HELEN DAVENPORT GIBBONS
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
The Century Co.
————
Published, April, 1917
TO
The Memory of
C. H. M. DOUGHTY-WYLIE, V.C.
"THE MAJOR" OF THIS BOOK
Who was killed in action leading a
charge on Gallipoli Peninsula,
April 29, 1915
PREFACE
When I was a Freshman at Bryn Mawr I decided I should "write something."My girlhood was uneventful and joyous—the girlhood of the luckyAmerican who has a wholesome good time. I knew I must wait forexperience. I was too sensitive about my youth to expose what I wasthinking, for fear "they" would know I was not grown up.
The experiences I was looking for came. They were so painful that sevenyears passed before I put pen to paper. To-day, after the lapse ofyears, I am not sure that my perspective is good. In looking back uponthose six weeks in Adana Province between April thirteenth and the endof May, nineteen-nine, they seem longer than all the rest of my life.
The thought of publishing I rejected and rejected again. I avoideddwelling on that time[Pg viii] the way one puts off going back to a house onehas not entered since a loved one died. To this day we have lived up toan agreement made back in those days, and my husband and I have nevertold each other the worst we know about the atrocities committed by theTurks.
But recent events in Armenia brought it all back again. My indignation,and a sense of duty and of pity, transcended all personal feelings. Ilived again that night in Tarsus, when we—seven defenseless women, ourone foreign man a brave young Swiss teacher of French, and 4,800Armenians waited our turn at the hands of the Kurds.
Massacres had begun again, a thousand times worse than before. OtherAmerican women were in the same untold peril that I had been. The wholeArmenian people were marked for extermination. Now, as then, help had tocome. But from where? What could I do? I could not go out there. I hadmy