XVI -- [April 10, 1903] 

A TERROR-STRUCK VILLAGE

WRONGS OF THE PEASANTS

In Godlevo there is no mosque no minaret from which the muezzin may call the faithful to prayers. For Godlevo, as already said, is Bulgarian. I am told there is not one Turkish house in it. Why, then, should the "hodja" annex the belfry and call forth therefrom? Because even at small military posts the "hodja" is present for spiritual edification. He is the analogue of the British soldier's chaplain. I fear much of the "hodja's" religious effort is wasted on the Turkish warrior. One evening at Nevrocop, while the town was preparing for the festival of the Kourban Bairam, and the shrill voice resounded from a minaret hard by, I asked a jolly Albanian of our escort if he knew what the muezzin was saying. He did not. Nor did anyone among his comrades who stood beside him. After puzzling his brains for some time, he made the original remark that the muezzin was doing what the bell did in the spire of a Christian church. "Now," said I, "I am a better Moslem than yourself, for I can tell you what the muezzin is saying, and couch you up in your own creed." Neither he nor his comrades were in the least shocked. Their religion sat lightly upon them. For one thing, they had in their secret possession bottles of raki (Bulgarian whiskey), though no devout Moslem ever touches wine or spirits. They had none of the religious intolerance of the savage youth who, a month earlier in St. Sophia, Constantinople, rushed up to a copy of the Koran at which I was looking, closed it with a bang, covered it with its silken cloth, and, facing round, stood between me and it. The Koran was not for Giaours to set their unblest eyes upon.

STORIES OF THEIR WRONGS

Godlevo village has perhaps more the appearance of a terror-struck place than any in Raslog. Yet a great many of its inhabitants came to see me, with the stories of their wrongs, in spite of the fact that the men of the escort were posted about the premises, and the certainty that the names of the most prominent among the visitors would be taken down by the police commissary--who was usually stalking about, his revolver stuck in his belt, his sabre clanking by his side, and his whip in hand. "The Zaptiehs," says one of my visitors, "often tell us in derision that they are sorry we were not all killed" during the search. "'We have made you a present of your lives,' they tell us." The little crowd makes way for them, and Mitro and his wife seat themselves Oriental fashion on the floor. Mitro speaks. A few days ago, on Monday, the 16th of this month, March, his wife had been criminally assaulted by two men of the local force. Mitro himself was at the time working in his field. The wife's face still bears the mark of the bruises which, as he says, were inflicted upon her. They complained to the Kaimakam, who at once ordered an inquiry. A medical officer of the local administration called and examined the victim. "He demanded," says Mitro, "twenty piastres for his services and I had only eight (about twenty pence). My wife can identify one of her assailants, and I am told to prosecute him. But I have no money, and no witnesses, and it might be all the worse for me if we won our case." A woman in the group here remarks that she, too, is now threatened by the culprit in a case which she and other witnesses won against him two and a half years ago. This was a celebrated case in the Raslog country. It was a case of the abduction of a Christian girl by a Turk of the Godlovo district. The girl was working in the fields, when the said Turk, with two accomplices, rode up and carried her off. He was prosecuted by the girl's mother and brother. The defence was that the girl left her home voluntarily, and that she had voluntarily turned Moslem. Before the Cadi, however, she tore off her Mahommedan dress, and denounced the Moslem faith in language more forcible than polite. While the trial was going on the girl took refuge in the pope's house in Mekhomia, the chief town of the Caza. The case was sent on to Salonica, the capital of the province, and thither the witness I have referred to, by name Maria Donova, her husband, and some others proceeded at their own expense to give evidence for the abducted girl. The Turkish Court at Salonica condemned the culprit to three years' imprisonment. Some of the witnesses against him, scared by his relatives' threats, emigrated to Bulgaria. Here, also, the abducted girl now lives. But her mother is in Godlevo, and both she and Maria Donova tell me they fear the consequences to themselves when the culprit is set free. "We are often threatened by his friends," Maria Donova tells me. Stories of this sort are common, always showing that justice, even when one gets it, may prove anything but a safe acquisition.

METHODS OF GHENGHIZ KHAN

"Nearly forty people fled from our village," they tell me, "when the Kaimakam came to search for arms. Twenty-five of us were beaten. They lie who say there were no beatings in Godlevo. Ali Effendi cudgelled Dado Arsew and Zveto Dimitroff until they fainted." (This is the same Ali Effendi, a somewhat cringing person, who tells me, this same day, how pleasantly the villagers and himself get on together, and how happy Macedonia would be if only "the brigands from Bulgaria" would not interfere). The more a Macedonian village is depopulated the more heavily do the taxes fall upon it; for the Government exacts its definite amount. New comers are promptly put on the official books, but old households must pay for their exiled absentees, and sometimes for the dead! One of the amiable Ali's victims, a man named Todor Giorgiev, stands up in the middle of the room, puts off his sheepskin jacket, and his shirt, to show me the damage Ali's men had done to him with the butt ends of their rifles. Why was he beaten? Because, when asked for pushka (rifles) he had no rifle to surrender. If he had had a rifle he might have got off easier. I may here remark that in the beating of women the butt end was the favourite medium. Baba Velika, a weak, toothless old woman, tells me, with trembling, scarcely audible voice, how the Zaptiehs struck her repeatedly with the butt end of their guns. The methods of Ghenghiz Khan are not obsolete in Turkey. They may be put in force again at any moment, and on a scale as long and as abroad as Macedonia.

When questioning the refugees at Dubnitza I was told by some of them that the Kaimakam of Mekhomia had personally maltreated men and women in these villages of Batchevo, Godlevo, Eleshnitza, etc. But their accusations were made on hearsay. In justice to Hassan Tahsin Bey, I must her state that among the hundreds of persons I have examined on my way through the country, not one has placed him in the same category with the Abeddins. But his influence might have been evil enough for all that. Some villagers at Eleshnitza com-pained bitterly of his negligence in bringing pressure to bear upon those of his sub-ordinates who had taken goods for which the owners in vain demanded payment. In Dobrinishta men have assured me that the Kaimakam quietly sat in one room while in the next they were crying out under the blows of his Zaptiehs. Christo Ivanoff, of Eleshniza, tells me that he was beaten by Abeddin in the Kaimakam's presence. And Karafil Nicoloff, of the same village, tells me that while he, Nicoloff, was hit "over the stomach," the Kaimakam laughed. Nicoloff had no pushka to give up. Nicoloff, in presence of those assembled, shows the position in which the Zaptiehs held him down, backwards, with knees bent on the floor, in order that he cudgel might strike with the most effect upon the tense muscles of his thighs. "After I was carried home," says Nicoloff, "my clothes had to be cut off from me." It mattered little whether Nicoloff had or had not a rifle hidden somewhere. What did matter was that his sufferings should impress the rest. Again, Athanas Dimitroff, of Eleshnitza, tells me that the Kaimakam hit him across the neck with a whip, "although I had no gun." "I was also cudgelled," in the same way as Nicoloff. Dimitroff describes himself as the brother of a young man who early in March was murdered on the hill nearest the village, it is believed by the Pomacks. The murdered youth's goat were stolen. A year ago Athanas himself had been threatened with death by the Pomacks. "I am afraid to complain," he says, and "still more afraid to go out into the forest, where I may meet them." The Batshevo villagers allege that the Kaimakam was present in the school room while the beatings were going on and that they were inflicted by his authority.

TAHSIN BEY'S DISCLAIMER

But his Excellency Hassan Tahsin Bey himself told me a very different story when I visited him in Mekhomia, starting for that ceremonial purpose from the village of Bansko, distant from Mekhomia little more than an hour's ride. We made our imposing show. Or, rather, we--that is to say, the Kaimakam--improved upon it. For he sent a special escort to meet us and lead us on the way. So that, between honorary escort and the fourteen warriors who had accompanied us from the other end of the province, our cavalcade counted twenty-one armed me. Boris Saraffof himself and his "rascals the Komitadjis" might have hesitated before trying conclusions with our little army. The Banskoites turned out to see us pass. The Mekhomites turned out to witness our progress through their streets. So did the soldiers in the Mekhomia barracks. We dismounted at the entrance to his Excellency Hassan Tahsin Bey's residence. A rambling wooden edifice it is, swarming outside with horses, cattle, armed men in all sorts of picturesque attire, and inside with more armed men and men servants going about in their padded stockings as noiselessly as cats. The Kaimakam, in his private room, welcomes us with all the courtesy for which the Turks are renowned. And the Cadi comes in, a tall man, with long, solemn, sallow face and jet black, flowing beard. His long gown and white turban proclaim his calling and rank. And the two majors of the garrison come in. And the new military Inspector-General comes in, a lively young man of about twenty-five, which is also the Kaimakam's age. After the customary salutations, we touch upon the Macedonian question. In his Excellency's opinion, and in that of his distinguished colleagues, there was no Macedonian question, except one which was vamped up in and by "the Principality," that nest of liars and brigands. Beatings of men and women in this district? Not one; no, not one. "Of course," says the Bey, "some acts of violence may have been done without my knowledge; but none has been brought to my notice." "Arms were given up, but they were given up voluntarily. No compulsion was needed." His Excellency added that no more need was there of the reforms about which the European newspapers were raising all that outcry.