ARMENIAN GIRLS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16335, 26 January 1921, Page 9

ARMENIAN GIRLS.

REFUSE TO LEAVE HAREMS. SAAISOUN (Asia Alin or), December 4. Entente and American officials and relief workers entrusted with the task of restoring Armenian girls and women to their families have found that many of the girls who in the war were forcibly taken into harems and became the involuntary wives of the Turks and Arabs, preferred to

continue as Turkish wives, and were unwilling to leave their husbands. They feared the hardships of life among fellow-countrymen who knew of their servitude. Some of the girls became attached to their foreign husbands and said they liked tin* life into which they had fallen. Where the girls had children the problem was doubly hard.

American nomen relief workers found one cape in Central Turkey especially perplexing. A girl who was gra-inated from one of the American mission colleges was taken captive in the early part of the war. A prominent Turkish official whose only wife had recently died took the Armenian girl into his home. His mother and children became much attached to the girl, whose superior education made her on important member of the community. He proposed to the girl and she finally married him. When the relief workers went to the Turkish home to find whether the young bride desired to be freed from her husband, there was consternation in the house. The relief workers talked to the Armenian wife privately and told her they would not insist upon her leaving if she wanted to stay. Sfae told them she* could not leave her child ; that tho Turk had been kind to her and she felt that bv remaining in the village as the wife of its most prominent official she could bo of greater assistance to Armenians than in any other way.