320
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
Garabed, whose parents were murdered by the Turks and who
had been brought up in the American Orphanage at Konya,
He was a mechanic before the war. Now he eked out a living
by peddling paraffin products, and working as water-carrier.
He had to support a family of three boys, three girls, a wife,
and an old aunt. He averaged fifty cents a day.
I wept at the plight of my refugee people. Refugees a hundred years ago, thirty years ago, and again today; buffeted by
wars not of their making, living in terror in lands not of their
choosing, victims of a score of bloody Jehads against the Christians—homeless wanderers over blighted lands of the feudal
Middle East.
Martyrdom for them, as for the Jews, was no new experience. A classic instance is recorded of the year A.D. 451, when
some 66,000 Armenians, under St. Vartan, faced an invading
army of 220,000 Persians rather than convert to Zoroastrianism.
They were crushed but their faith remained intact, and thirty
years later they were granted religious freedom. Before the
battle Armenian bishops spurned the Persian demands for
conversion in these words:
From this belief [Christianity] no one can move us, neither
angels nor men—neither fire nor sword, nor water, nor any
other horrid tortures, however they be called. All our goods
and possessions are before thee—dispose of them as thou wilt;
and if thou only leavest us to our belief, we will, here below,
choose no other lord in thy place, and in heaven have no other
God than Jesus Christ, for there is no other God save only
Him.
But, shouldst thou require something beyond this great testimony, behold our resolution: our bodies are in thy hands—
do with them according to thy pleasure; tortures are thine, and
patience ours; thou hast the sword, we the neck; we are nothing better than our forefathers, who, for the sake of their faith,
resigned their goods, possessions, and life. . . .