The Mother Who Saved Hazro

Hazro is a small village some 50 miles from the city of Diyarbekir in Turkey. My dad was born in that village. He had three older brothers who were also born there. My Uncle Arshag, the second born who was around 8 years old during the deportations of 1915 has written extensively about Hazro and life in and around Hazro in his later years. He had no children and somehow all his handwritten notes ended up with me. Stacks of notebooks bundled in a plastic shopping bag have been sitting in my "things to read" pile and for the past ten years I have read most of it. Some narratives handed down from previous generations, some personally witnessed and some guess work went into it. His handwriting is not hard to read and yet he has rewritten them clearly in another notebook without much editing. The following incident is described in detail with names and conversations and fills up pages. I will attempt to write it as briefly as I can.


The year is 1895. The Sultan has given secret orders to kill the Armenians here and there. One order reaches Hazro who had one head of gendarmes and two gendarmes who didn't have much to do in a village of 10,000 half of which were Armenians and the other half, Kurds who lived in their separate neighborhoods. There were some 4-5 Turkish beys with their families "representing" the Sultan. The beys and the head of the gendarmes gather for a secret meeting to decide the day and the way to organize the massacres. They realize they don't have enough man power to do this and decide to invite a couple of the neighboring Kurdish leaders ("ashirats") to attend a second meeting. The killings will begin early the next day. Everyone goes home to prepare including the two brothers who, upon entering their home, go directly to the room where their arms are kept instead of to their bedroom.


Their mother, a Cherkez woman and now the head of the household, is awake and finds this odd. She questions one of his sons, Katim Bey, who has sworn to secrecy, and very astutely makes him confess. She is apalled by what she hears and makes his son swear that they will do everything to stop this from happening. She tells him that the Armenians have our trust and have done nothing wrong to deserve a killing. She tells him that if they do that the Sultan will later hold them and all the beys responsible for the killings. In a nutshell she tells him to take the high road if he and his brother consider themselves the sons of the late Najib Bey.


The brother, in turn, persuades his brother and later that night, all the other beys of Hazro, not to carry out the order of the Sultan. When asked about the reason of this change of heart, Katim Bey admits that it is his mother's wish. The beys have great respect for this very noble woman and quickly realize that she is right. They all agree that the order of the Sultan should not be carried out and immediately send word to the Armenian men in the village to come for a meeting at the early hours of the morning. The Armenian men arrive half asleep not only to find out that they were to be killed but that they have to protect themselves in case the neighboring Kurds decide to follow the Sultan's order.


By the set hour of the morning all the beys' men and the Armenian men are in position to defend Hazro and the Armenians from being killed. Except for a few incidents wherein the attackers were overpowered, the Armenians of Hazro are saved together with other Armenians who had escaped from other towns and villages and taken refuge in Hazro.

The Cherkez woman's name is not known.

Sadly though, in 1915 there was nobody standing up for the Armenians of Hazro...