Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/110

They were neither astonished, nor shocked. They understood him, as he understood them.

For, like himself, they were simple Turkish peasants, bearded, middle-aged, patient, slightly rheumy, who had been drafted into the army and thrown into the frothy, blood-stained cauldron of European history in the making, by the time honored process of a green-turbaned priest rising one Friday morning in the mosque pulpit and declaring with melodious unction that the Russian was clamoring at the outer door of the Osmanli house, and that Islam was in danger.

The Russian—by Allah and by Allah, but they knew him of old!

He would ride over their fields, over the sown and the fallow. He would cut down the peach trees. He would pollute their mosques, their harems, and their wells. He would stable his horses in their cypress-shaded graveyards. He would enslave the women, kill the little children, and send the red flame licking over byre and barn thatch.

Therefore:

Jehad!—Holy War! Kill for the Faith and the blessed Messenger Mohammed!

Thus, uncomplaining, ox-eyed, they had pressed their wives and their children to hairy, massive chests, had adjusted the rawhide straps of their sandals, had trooped to district military headquarters, had been fitted into nondescript, chafing, buckram-stiffened uniforms, had been given excellent German rifles, wretched food, brackish water; and had trudged along the tilting roads of stony, bleak Anatolia.

Moslems, peasants, pawns—they had