The Road to En-dor

by E. H. Jones

  I stared at him in astonishment, as if I did not understand.

  ‘I’m an Armenian,’ he said, ‘and I love the English.’

  ‘You what?’ I cried.

  ‘I love the English,’ he repeated.

  ‘Then, by God, I’ll kill you!’ I shouted, and rushed up to my friend Nabi Chaoush, the café-jee, bellowing for the loan of his knife.98

  My friendly doctor-patient bolted, and I never saw him again. To this day I do not know whether it was an official test or not.

  Particularly unwelcome was the sudden attention of the administrative officers of the hospital, who had never before taken any notice of us. The Insabit Zabut (an assistant superintendent) was particularly assiduous. He set a series of traps with ‘poisoned parcels’ and ‘money from the English’, etc., to see how I would behave. Three times he came into the ward and searched my bed. One day, when I was in the bath, I spotted his orderly watching me through a hole in the roof.

  The History of my Persecution by the English (I had written about thirty large notebooks full by this time) disappeared for twenty-four hours. I wished joy to whomsoever had taken it because it was all unutterable nonsense specially written for the eyes of the Turk. But the action showed renewed suspicion on somebody’s part.

  So far as I could make out – I could not consult Hill for reasons that will appear – the trouble was not with our own doctors of the mental ward. Except that one of the juniors cut down my diet for a few days, their attitude was much as usual. It was the attendants, the administrative authorities, the doctors belonging to other wards, and the other patients, who had altered their attitude. Noticing that whenever I entered our ward animated conversations amongst the other patients came to a sudden stop, I crept out one evening along a ledge which ran round the outside of the hospital, and listened under the open window. They were discussing plans for watching us and catching us out!

  I was in one way relieved to hear this, because I had begun to fear that I was imagining things and that perhaps I was going really mad. I wondered if Hill had noticed anything, but in the circumstances any attempt at communicating was too dangerous.

  It was not till long afterwards, on one of the rare occasions when we managed a brief conversation in the garden, that I learnt what Hill had suffered during this period. He, too, had noticed the conversations amongst the patients which ceased at my entry, but as he knew very little Turkish he could not understand what was said. One phrase, however, he did understand, and its constant repetition got on his nerves. He told me they were everlastingly talking about ‘a letter from Yozgad’. But though he correctly repeated the phrase to me in Turkish, I felt certain he must have misunderstood what was said, and that what he had heard was something else, similar in sound, which he had construed into Turkish words he knew. For I could not imagine who at Yozgad could write a letter which would get us into trouble. Kiazim Bey would not dare to do so for he himself was too seriously implicated. The Cook, who still believed in the Spook, was equally unlikely. The Pimple was not in Yozgad, but in Constantinople. And nobody else amongst the Turks knew anything. I said so to Hill, but he stuck to it that the phrase he had heard so often was ‘a letter from Yozgad’ and nothing else. And in the light of later knowledge I believe he was right.

  Before I proceed to what we now believe is the explanation of this exceptionally bad spell, let me quote Hill’s account of one of his experiences about this time. It occurred during the latter half of August, when he returned from Gumush Suyu, and I believe the persons responsible were the administrative authorities of Haidar Pasha, and not the doctors of the mental ward, who were absent at the time.

  After describing how he was taken to the depot he says:

  ‘A man came and told me to “come along”. He started off along the outside of the building at about three times the speed I could go, making for the entrance to the bath and taking no heed as to whether I followed or not. I wandered along behind until he was out of sight round the corner, and then turned at right angles, sat down behind a rose bush and read the Bible.

  ‘He found me a few minutes later and we proceeded to the bath together at my maximum speed. Having undressed, I was shown the door of the bathroom and told to go in. I went in and started pouring water over myself. A few minutes later the man and a still filthier Turk came in and had a look at me. They muttered something to each other and went out again. The filthier one came back with a worn-out, blunt and rusty razor, and a strop. He looked at me and proceeded to strop the razor. I began to feel uneasy.

  ‘He then made me soap my face and head, and proceeded to shave both, if it can be called a “shave”. It was more like tearing out by the roots. My head was sore for a week afterwards.

  ‘After shaving all the hair I possessed except my eyebrows, he left me. I sat for about half an hour, and then wandered out, with nothing on. I was met in the outer room by the first man, who sent me back into the bath. I stayed there reading the Bible for about a quarter of an hour, and then wandered out again with the same result. So I settled down and read the Bible until it was too dark to see, and then sat in my usual position with my head in my hands.

  ‘All this time there was a man in the bathroom who was apparently neglected like myself, but probably there to watch me. Many others came and went.

  ‘About 8.30 p.m.99 a man brought in some pyjamas for me and for some Turkish soldiers who had collected in the bathroom. We were all herded together and taken outside. At the door the man in charge took my bundle of toilet things from me and went through the contents. He threw the things into the corner, one by one, except a piece of very inferior soap, which he gave me. This was stolen from me by someone else during the night.

  ‘We were taken along the passage, past the ward Jones and I were in before, and to the other side of the hospital. Here most of the patients were put into a ward. I and the man who had been with me all the time in the bathroom were kept waiting while the orderly who brought us had a confab with another at the ward. After which we were taken back to the bath!

  ‘After a short time we were taken back to the ward again. I stayed there all night. I was not given any food…’

  Even though the bathroom was fairly warm100 (65° to 75° Fahrenheit I should guess), over five hours naked on the marble floor was a pretty severe ordeal for a man who was just getting over a bad bout of dysentery and was too weak to walk without difficulty. At this period Hill was so emaciated that he could not bear to cross one leg over the other in bed for any length of time because his shinbones felt so sharp.

  The object of the Turks seems to have been to see if they could force a complaint out of Hill or get him to show any interest in his own treatment or his surroundings. He was led three times past the ward I was in, probably as a test to see if he would recognize it and come to me for help in his misery. But such was the iron resolution of the man that, though ready to drop from weakness, he managed to appear quite heedless of everything except his Bible.

  Of this period Hill has told me since that worse than all the physical sufferings which he had to undergo – and they were many – was the mental agony of knowing that, with the exchange in sight, after all our months of hard work, we were under a darker cloud of suspicion than ever; and for no apparent reason except this mysterious “letter from Yozgad”. What that letter was we never knew and do not know to this day. But that such a letter came we have now no doubt. The author was probably Kiazim Bey’s superior officer, and the contents may be guessed from the following story of what happened at Yozgad, which we learned after our release.

  The “Big Escape” from Yozgad took place on 7th August 1918. Kiazim Bey at once retaliated on those who were left behind in the camp by cancelling all privileges of every description. He locked up the prisoners in their respective houses and gardens. A Turkish official, superior in rank to Kiazim Bey, was sent from Angora to investigate the circumstances of the escape. To him the camp complained of their treatment and endeavoured to secure
Kiazim’s dismissal by means of a series of charges of peculation, embezzlement of money and parcels, and so on. But Kiazim was a wily Oriental and had covered his tracks well. These charges were hard to prove, and he looked like getting off. As a makeweight there was added proof of Kiazim’s complicity with Hill and myself. One of the three negatives of the treasure hunt, to procure which Hill and I had taken so much trouble and so many risks, was handed over to Kiazim’s superior.101 The negative showed me standing with my arms raised over the fire in the ‘incantation’, and round me the carefully posed and clearly recognizable figures of the Pimple, the Cook and Kiazim Bey. Together with this damning photograph the Turkish authorities were given some sort of a summary of our séances. To make assurances doubly sure the investigating official got the negative enlarged. Kiazim was recognized beyond doubt, placed under arrest, and ordered to be tried by court-martial. Thus the camp revenged themselves on Kiazim Bey and won back some of their lost comfort.

  This explains the ‘letter from Yozgad’ and our nerve-racking experience towards the end of our stay in Haidar Pasha. It looks to us as if Kiazim’s superior officer reported to the War Office, and the War Office asked the administrative authorities of Haidar Pasha about us. That we still managed to deceive everybody I can explain only on the assumption that the specialists were by this time firmly convinced of our insanity. The opinion of experts like Mazhar Osman, Chouaïe, and Helmi Beys, supported as it was by that of many junior specialists like Ihsan, Talha, Riza, and Shezo-Nafiz, and by the whole Exchange Board of doctors, had already been given in our favour and was not lightly to be set aside. So the administrative authorities appear to have contented themselves with a few experiments ‘on the quiet’ at our expense. At any rate, Hill and I got off with some quite undeserved discomfort and a very bad scare.

  The surrender of our ‘evidence’ to the Turks was due to a misunderstanding of our wishes. Colonel Maule explained the matter to me after our release, when I grumbled that the camp had come very near to blowing us up in the mine we had so laboriously laid for Kiazim Bey. The facts were these: when Hill and I left Yozgad we had given instructions to Matthews as to the circumstances under which our ‘proof’ was to be used. Once we had got clear of Turkey, we told him, the camp might make use of it in any way it chose, and we pointed out that it might then prove a useful weapon for all sorts of purposes. But so long as we remained in the grip of the Turks it was not to be used on behalf of the camp except to prevent suffering from our actions, a circumstance which was not likely to occur except in the improbable event of Kiazim seeing through our plan and realizing we had been duping him all along, when we would be ‘in the soup’ even more than the others. The threat of exposure which Matthews would be in a position to make might then save both ourselves and the camp from ill-treatment, and ensure Kiazim’s silence and good behaviour. Never for a moment did we contemplate sacrificing ourselves or our scheme to save our comrades from discomfort caused by the actions of others.

  Matthews knew this quite well, and had he remained in Yozgad the photograph and the summary of our papers would never have been given up to the Turks. But unfortunately for us, Matthews was one of the twenty-six who attempted escape, and before he had been recaptured or could interfere on our behalf the damage had been done. Some time before his escape Matthews (with our full permission, of course) had told our story and shown our papers to the new Senior Officer of the camp, who had taken Colonel Maule’s place on the arrival of the Kastamouni party in April. In telling it he had emphasized the fact that the camp had now a grip on Kiazim. Unfortunately for us the new S.O. misunderstood. He got it into his head that it was our wish the evidence should be used in any serious emergency. Himself one of the ‘Kastamouni Incorrigibles’, with strong anti-parole views, he fostered and aided every reasonable plan of escape, and nothing could have been further from his mind than to put obstacles in our way. He may have thought, as a good many people in Yozgad thought, that we were already safe in England. Be that as it may, it is only just to an officer for whom every prisoner in Turkey had a profound respect to say that in using our evidence he fully believed that he was carrying out our wishes. Indeed, now that it is all over, Hill and I take it as a high compliment that he should have thought us capable of such disinterested action, and much regret the necessity of having to confess that he was quite wrong.

  We saw the Pimple only once more. He came to the hospital late in September to enquire of the Spook how much longer his unpleasant military training was likely to continue, when we would proceed with the treasure hunt, and when he might expect to begin his career as Ruler of the World. He also wanted to know if the Spook really intended us to be sent to England as exchanged prisoners, and, if so, why.

  The Spook explained that the strain of being under control for so long had been very severe on the mediums, and he had therefore ‘controlled’ the Haidar Pasha doctors to give us a thorough holiday by sending us to England. The treasure hunt was temporarily shelved on account of the disobedience and greed of the ‘double-faced Superior’ (Kiazim). But it would not be for long. Very soon we would be back in Constantinople, possibly in the guise of Red Cross officers, with our health re-established, and ready to begin a new series of experiments and discoveries. Until we came Moïse was to continue to be honest, to live austerely, and to do his duty; for this was his training for the glorious future that awaited him.

  The Pimple shook hands with me many times over. He walked off at last, his head high, and his eye bright with the vision of his coming omnipotence. As I watched his cocksure little figure striding out of the hospital gates for the last time – the Spook had told him not to come back – I felt inclined to call after him that he had far to go, and that his training would be long – very long – before he could become Ruler of the World. But I did not. I went back to the ward and Hill, and that was the last I saw of the Pimple.

  Hill left Haidar Pasha on 10th October to join the sick who were collecting for repatriation at Smyrna. I remained behind – the hospital authorities explained to the Dutch Embassy that I ‘would commit suicide if placed among the English’ – and finally reached Smyrna just too late to catch the first exchange ship, by which Hill travelled, but I got the second exchange ship a few days later, and we met again in a hotel in Alexandria.

  The armistice with Turkey had just been signed. We had reached British soil perhaps a fortnight ahead of the ‘healthy’ prisoners.

  We shook hands.

  ‘We’ve been through a good deal, old chap, and for very little,’ I said, with a smile.

  ‘Never mind,’ Hill answered, ‘we did our best. It wasn’t our fault we had to wait so long for the boat, and nobody could tell the armistice would come like this. Come out on the beach.’

  We went for a stroll together. It was good to be free again.

  Amongst the repatriated sick on the transport which carried us from Port Said to Taranto was Colonel Maule. With him I discussed many things, including the surrender of our ‘evidence’ to the Turks. He put the matter in a nutshell.

  ‘You ought to have put your instructions to Matthews in writing,’ he said. ‘Indeed, for anyone with a scheme half so complicated as yours, even writing is hardly good enough. My successor did what he thought you wanted, and what practically the whole camp, including myself, thought you wanted.’

  At which, when I told him, Hill growled. ‘They should have known us two better than to think we wanted that.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  He played the Scot and answered my question with three more.

  ‘Weren’t we prisoners of war?’ said he, a trifle bitterly. ‘Aren’t we all selfish? Can you name a single prisoner who is an altruist?’

  I knew what was the matter. Our sufferings at Haidar Pasha were still fresh. Hill was thinking, perhaps, of the failure of our kidnapping scheme and of the various unintentional indiscretions by our comrades which had made our path so hard to travel. I left him alone, and walked forward to wher
e I could see the fast approaching shores of Italy

  In a little while he was beside me again.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he said, in his quiet tones. ‘I had no right to say that. There were Matthews, and Doc., and that generous soul whom we shall never see again –’ He paused and for a space stood looking over the sea in silence. I knew the name he had not the heart to utter. Twelve prisoners had died at Yozgad since we left there in April. Amongst the dead were men we loved, and one to whose unselfish friendship we owe more than we can tell. For while we lay in hospital at Constantinople, Lieutenant E.J. Price, had solved the eternal problem.

  Hill’s back was half turned to me, so that I could not see his face. ‘Yes, I was quite wrong,’ he repeated. ‘There were those three, and many more – many who wanted to help if they had known how.’

  Something in his voice moved me strangely. I thought of those he had named, and of the many more who had wanted to help. I thought of all this man beside me had endured in our struggle for freedom, of his uncomplaining patience in the face of trials and disappointments, of his resolute courage that neither starvation, nor sickness, nor ill-treatment could break, and of his unending loyalty to myself through it all; and then my mind turned to a lonely grave in the bare Anatolian hills, and what the man who lay there had done for both of us.