A GIFT FROM ALLAH.

Otago Witness, Issue 1911, 6 July 1888, Page 30

A GIFT FROM ALLAH.

Wnen I was acting as special correspondent during the Eusso-Turkish war, I made my headquarters for a week or two at Philippopolis. The town was full of rumouie of atrocities, declared, more or less truthfully, to have been committed in the neighbouring villages; and the Greek hospital, with its crowds of wounded women and children, afforded dreadful proof of the reality of at least a fair proportion of the stories that- were told. I cannot at this date remember precisely why, but when I resolved to go up-country and see things for myself, I was especially warned against the village of Gwemlyk. It was said that at Gwemlyk horrors had been accumulated on the head of horrors ; and the khan-keepers, who were not unnaturally anxious to retain custom, swore to my secretary and to the members of my escort that the whole of the outlying country was swarming with banditti, aflame with the lust of blood, and ready to cut any throat, Christian or pagan, for a, piastre. According to all good Turks, these marauding ruffians were exclusively of the Christian race ; and according to all good Christians, they were exclusively Mahommedan. Part of our business was to explore the country, for the operations of the Turkish Benevolent Fund started by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and this was made the ostensible purport of our visit There a little stone fonntain bubbled, sending down the hollow of the main street a stream as clear as crystal, and there with a corn cob fire, which they had lit for the parpose of making their eternal coffee, sat a dozen Turks, or thereabouts, all solemn, dignified, and bearded. One of them, who wore a green turban, the sign of a pious pilgrimage to Mecca, and who was older than tha rest, rose to receive us and ask our business. We were received with perfect courtesy, and my travelling companion and myself took a place in the grave circle. Seated by the side of the venerable old Khodja was the stoniest baby I have ever seen — a child of three or four years of age, with fair hair, closp cropped, blue eyes, and a face almost as pale as marble. I tried to attract the little creature's attention, but without avail. I offered him a stick of chocolate, but be took no more note of it than if he had been a graven image. I tempted him with sugar and dried figs rummaged from our kit, but with no more effect. The Khodja, watching these proceedings on my part, stroked the child's head and pinched his cheek without eliciting from him any sign whatever. Then ihe old man began gravely to talk to me, and I summoned my interpreter. This, in effect, was The Strange and Ghastly Story the Khodja Told.

A week or two earlier the Christians resident in the village had begun to grow insolent and tyrannous. The forces of General Gourko were on the other side of the Balkan range, at no great distance, and the Bulgarians were already making preparations to assume the reins of government. In some way they had become possessed of arms, probably distributed among them by Muscovite agents. The Cossacks, under Gourko, began to appear in little flying bands in the neighbourhood, and were numerous and bold enough in one or two cases to ravage and burn the smaller villages. Until the war broke out, the old man told me, the Turks and Christians had lived side by side in perfect tranquility and friendship. I did not interrupt him to say so, but I knew perfectly well what a profound hate on one side and what a profound contempt upon the other that seeming tranquilly covered. News came of the danger of some small town in the neighbourhood. All the men in Gwemlyk who were able to carry arms sallied out for the defence of their fellow countrymen. The whole country-side blazed with patriotic spirit, and from the grey-beard of 80 to the lad of 12, everybody who could wield a knife or shoulder a rifle marched to the rescue of the threatened town. 'I hey gave the Russian intruder so unexpectedly warm a welcome that he retreated in disorder, and the citizen warriors went home again.

In Gwemlyk, as in all towns and villages peopled by the two opposing races, there was a Christian quarter and a Turkish quarter. The people lived side by side, cultivating neighbouring fields, and* making a living by the same avocation ; but they held so little intercourse with each other;;that they rarefy spoke or understood, beyond the simplest words, each other's language.

When the Gwemlyk men got home again they found their quarter of the village a smoking heap of desolation. The Buigars,

counting on the certainty of a Russian Tictory, had risen, and had put every living Turkish creature to the sword.

I must pause in my narrative here for just a moment to ask such sympathisers with the Christian party in Turkey as may read this story not to set it down too lightly as an invention of the enemy. In respect to the original Bulgarian atrocities I know no more than my neighbours. In respect to the later atrocities in Roumelia, nobody can teach me much; and there, between Turk and Christian, there were six on the one side and half a dozen on the other. The Christians were as cruel when they got the chance as the Tchircasse or the Bashi-Bazouks themselves. To drop this digression, and to get back to the old man's story.

The Khodja told me that he and his party were so madly incensed at the horrors wrought in their absence that they fell upon the Christians and slew every male adult among them. He, with his own hand, had killed the Vakeel, or head man, of the Bulgarian quarter, and with- his own hand had fired the house he lived in. They surrounded the village, and fought from house to house. The dozen or so who sat about me were all that. were left of that avenging party. The women and children were spared, but naturally fled the scene in terror. One or two of the Christian men, either by force of. arms or stratagem, broke through the attack and ran for their lives. They were pursued, caught up, and ended. When the old man returned from this awful work he looked in at the door of his arch-enemy's house. The flames were mounting fast, and the man lay dead on his own hearthstone in the room which opened on the street. The little child who sat so stonily beside me whilst the tale was told was crawling* about the dead body, and crying out to the deaf ears. The work of vengeance was over, and no creature with a human heart could bear to include so helpless a thing as a child in the scope of howsoever wide a hatred. The Khodja did not himself say so, but his comrades told me afterwards that it was at the imminent risk of his own life that he entered the house and saved the child. He came out with him, and the roof fell an instant later. When he had finished his tale, the bronzed, venerablelooking old fellow laid a wrinkled hand on the child's close-cropped head, and said gravely, "Heis a gift from Allah. I shall rear him and make a good Turk of him "—" — D. Christie Murray, in the Leeds Mercury.