Caught by the Turks Part 18

_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. . . ._ The gates had clanged behind me, and I was in a long, low room below ground level, airless, ill-lit, filthy with tomato skins and bits of bread. Well-fed rats were scurrying amongst the garbage, and badly-fed prisoners were pacing the room forlornly, or twiddling their thumbs, or scratching themselves, or gnawing crusts of bread.

They gathered round me, clamouring for news and cigarettes. In less than no time they had picked my pockets. They had no more morals than monkeys. Poor devils! who could blame them, living as they did down there, where no rumours are heard of the outside world, except the cries of beaten men and the dull sound of wood on flesh?

"What are you in for?" they asked me.

"Forgery," said I, not to be outdone by any desperado present.

One man, however, confessed to murder, having cut a small boy's throat a few months before. With him I could not compete. But the most of us were fraudulent contractors, spies, petty swindlers and the like. Our morals, as I have said, were practically _nil_. Yet I noticed that a Jew lived quite apart, and was shunned by everybody. By trade he was a brigand, but this was no slur on his character as a criminal: the failing that had led to ostracism was that he pilfered the other prisoners' tomatoes.

That was really beyond a joke. . . .

One of my newly found friends took me to a bed, consisting of two planks on an iron frame, which he said I could have for my very, very own. He also gave me a piece of bread and some water. On beginning to eat I at once realised how hungry I was, and inquired how I should obtain further nourishment.

"Luxuries are very difficult to obtain," he said; "how much money have you got?"

"Twenty-five piastres,[9]" I answered.

He pulled a long face.

"That won't go far. But every evening at eight a boy comes round with the sc.r.a.ps left over from the Officers' Restaurant. Otherwise you will live on bread and tomatoes."

"What about bedding?" I asked, to change the subject.

"Bedding!" he said, looking at me as if I was a perfect idiot. "Do you mean to say you have come here without any bedding?"

I admitted I had, but felt too exhausted to explain.

One was utterly lost in that dungeon. Even when the war ended, would one be found? I doubted it. Yet as I would naturally never reveal the forger's name, it seemed unlikely that I would get out. . . . Then I thought of my companions. I imagined them happily together, in some place where one could see the sky. . . . As for me, I might languish down here for ever. Obviously something should be done.

But what? I rose (rather hastily, for on looking between the planks of my bed, I noticed that the crack was entirely filled with battalions of board beasts in line, waiting for a night attack), and began to pace our narrow and nasty apartment. A group of prisoners were cooking some pitiful mess by the window. Four others played poker with a very greasy pack. One was twiddling his thumbs very fast, and I suddenly recollected that he had been twiddling his thumbs very fast half an hour ago, when I had first seen him. The lonely Jew was removing lice from the seams of his coat, and throwing his quarry airily about the room.

Then I noticed that besides ourselves, there were other prisoners even more unfortunate. There had been so much to see in my new surroundings that I had not noticed the people in chains. . . . One side of our room opened out on to some half-dozen cubicles, each of which contained a prisoner in chains. These cells had no light or ventilation. They measured six feet in length by four in breadth. In solitude and obscurity, fettered by wrist and ankle to shackles that weighed a hundredweight, human beings lived there--and are still living for aught I know--for months and even years, until death released them. These men were ravenous and verminous, but they had by no means lost their hope and faith. I shall never hear the hymn--

"Thy rule, O Christ, begin, Break with Thine iron rod The tyrannies of sin . . ."

without remembering that an Armenian lad said those words to me, lying in chains in one of these cells. With another prisoner, a Greek, who had endured eleven months of this torture, I also had some speech.

"Yes, the war will be over soon," he said. "My G.o.d, how good this cigarette of yours tastes! I haven't touched tobacco for a month. But be careful. The sentries must not see you speaking to me."

"Yes, the chains were bad at first," he continued when the sentry's back was turned, "but one gets used to anything in time. And I have had time enough. It takes a lot to kill a healthy man. Before I came in here I used to be strong and well. I used to ride two hours every day, on my own horses. Now my horses have gone to feed the Turkish Army and I can hardly drag my chains as far as the water-tap. But G.o.d is great. . . ."

G.o.d is great! _Allahu akbar!_

I determined to get away from that dungeon at all costs, if for no other reason than because I had to survive to write about it.

I went to the big gate, and tried to bluff the sentry to let me go to see the Commandant. But a clean face and a full stomach are practically necessary to a _debonnaire_ appearance. When one is scrubby and starved it is almost impossible to succeed in "w.a.n.gling." I stared at the sentry through my eyegla.s.s, and I offered him my twenty-five piastres as if I had plenty more _baksheesh_ to give to a good boy, but I utterly and dismally failed to impress him.

"_Yok, yok, yok_," he said, looking at me as one might look at an orang-outang that has

+-------------------------------+ DO NOT IRRITATE THIS ANIMAL +-------------------------------+

written over its cage.

I gibbered in impotent rage, and then went and put my head under a tap.

A little later, while I was drying my head with my handkerchief, I saw some barbers come to the big gate. They stood there, clapping and clacking their strops. Instantly, my fellow-prisoners rushed to the gate as if they had heard the beating of the wings of some angel of deliverance. This was apparently the occasion of their weekly shave, when egress to the corridor was permitted, the barbers naturally not wis.h.i.+ng to go inside our loathsome room.

Taking this tide in the affairs of men at the flood, I found it led on to fortune. I was in the corridor with six other prisoners, and a barber confronted me with a razor in his hand. He whetted his steel expectantly, but I would have none of him, and seized a pa.s.sing official by the arm.

He was a dog-collar gentleman.

A dog-collar gentleman, I must explain, is Authority Incarnate. On his swelling chest he wears a crescent tablet of bra.s.s, with the one word _Quanun_ inscribed thereon. _Quanun_ means "law," and the wearer of this badge is responsible for public decorum of every kind. If a Turkish officer be seen drinking alcohol in uniform, or playing cards, or flirting, or talking disrespectfully of the Germans, or indulging in any other prohibited amus.e.m.e.nt, he is instantly arrested by the dog-collar gentleman, and brought to prison. In his official capacity, the dog-collar gentleman is one of the most important personages in Turkey: policeman, pussfoot and prude in one.

"There is some mistake," I said excitedly. "I am a British officer, and have been put in a room with criminals."

"You a British officer?" said the dog-collar man incredulously.

"A captain of cavalry," said I, slipping him the twenty-five piastre note.

"_Pekke, Effendim_," he answered. "Very good, sir, I will see what can be done."

I had burnt my boats now.

About ten minutes later, just as I was flatly refusing to either be shaved or to return through the gate, a sergeant-major and a squad of soldiers arrived and bore me off to the Prison Commandant.

Here I caught sight of my two companions, and was able to fling them a few words through the "Yok, yok" of the sentries. They also had been separated, and put amongst criminals. Their lot had been no different to mine.

"A slight mistake has occurred," said the Prison Commandant to me, "but now you shall have one of the best rooms in the prison. Only I am afraid you will be alone there, until after your trial."

Of course I did not believe him, but I was glad that I was to be alone.

I was taken to a room on the upper floor, furnished with a bed and blanket, and with a window opening on to a corridor, where people were always pa.s.sing. The Commandant had spoken the truth. It was quite a good room, as prison apartments go, and the traffic of the corridor amused me.

At nine o'clock that night I was able to get a dish of haricot beans, my first meal of the day.

Then I settled down to a month of solitary confinement.

I think I may claim to write of this torture, which exists not only in Turkey but through the prisons of the civilised world, with some expert knowledge. I use the word "torture" because it is nothing less. Solitary confinement is a punishment as barbarous and as senseless as the thumbscrew or the rack: more so indeed, for it is better to kill the body than to maim the mind. The spirit of man is more than his poor flesh; the war has reminded us of that. And if it has also reminded us that our prison systems are archaic, so much the better for the world.

At times, in gaol, a tide of pity rose in me for all life created that is caged by man.

Take a felon at one end of the scale, and a canary at the other. The felon is imprisoned for twenty years. For twenty years, less some small remission for good conduct, an abnormal brain lives in abnormal surroundings, where hope dies, and ideals fail. He has sinned against society, and therefore society murders his mind. Corporal and capital punishment, I have come to believe, are saner than the cruelties, immeasurable by "the world's coa.r.s.e thumb and finger," suffered by the mind of man in solitary confinement or the common gaol. The sentimentalist who shudders at the cat and gallows forgets the worse, slow, hidden horrors that pa.s.s unseen in the felon's brain. Perhaps the sentimentalist does not realise them. Perhaps also the old lady who keeps a canary does not realise the feelings of her pet. She may think she is protecting it from the birds and beasts outside. But I feel now that I know what the canary feels. . . . However, it is difficult to argue about questions involving imagination.

I lived on hope, chiefly, during the days that followed. With nothing to read, no cutting instrument of any sort, no was.h.i.+ng arrangements, and no one to speak to, the time pa.s.sed hideously. I used to gaze at my watch sometimes, appalled at the slow pa.s.sage of time. The second-hand had a horrible fascination for me. It simply crawled round its dial and each instant, between the jerks of the little hand, the precious moments of my youth were pa.s.sing, beyond recall. Madness lay that way. If I had been a real criminal, I wondered, would I have repented? Unquestionably the answer was, "No!" Solitary confinement would have made me a permanent enemy of society.