ANCIENT TURK IN U.S.A.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 August 1930, Page 2

ANCIENT TURK IN U.S.A.

FOUGHT AGAINST NAPOLEON

SAN FRANCISCO', July 21

All America has been greatly interested in the visit of Zaro Agha, who says he is 156. years old and that the first 100 years were the easiest. He landed in Providence, Rhode Island, from Turkey to obtain for himself a so.t of false teeth, and, for a consideration, to let American scientists have a. look at him. Tlie date of his birth, as given on his passport, was February 16, 1774, and this was based, said his great-great-grandson, Ahmet Alussa, who accompanied him, on an actual record in the possession of the Turkish Government. Zaro Agha sat in the sunshine on the deck of the steamer Sinaia and talked of wars and women, and the third set of teeth that he grew at the age o f 105. “They weren’t very good teeth’’ he said in Turkish. “Not very i T,, od teeth.—more like baby teeth—and they lasted only fifteen years.” Zaro Agha lias been married twelve times and had 36 children, all of whom are now dead save one. daughter who was born when lie was 96. He lias lost all Hack of the number of his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. / “My first wife I married when I was 29,” he said. “I always got along with nil my wives very nicely, Of tlie descendants through my. later wives whom I married since 1 moved ,to Constantinople, 120 years ago, 1 have some record. I know that before the World War I bad 22 great-grand-children living in Constantinople. LAST JOB MOVING PIANOS. For 112 years until lie was 13". Agha says he worked as a porter. His last job was in a piano factory, moving pianos, and in between times he was- always/going to war. There was first a war against Napoleon, in Syria and Egypt, he said, and he fought in the Turkish army. Then there was the war with the Greeks—“more than a hundred yeiivs ago, I can’t remember dates’’—and feiur wars with Russia, in the last of which he said he served as a volunteer at the age of 103. “I was in the artillery,” he explained. “and carried cannons on niv shoulders.” Agha indignantly denied a report that he had divorced his eleventh wife to marry the present Airs Agha—“she’s young, only 55”—who waits for him in Istanbul. “I never divorced any of my wives,” he grunted. “I got along with them all, very nice, and they all died. Now women |; always am interested in them—l like them brunette and plump. He sighed and went on; “In mv youth [ had ft very good time. How long did my youth last, you want to know? Oh, until I was 103.” Agha said he had never tasted alcohol nor had smoked tobacco. He lives, he said, mostly on vegetables and sweets “GOING TO LIVE ON.” A few days late r Agha was welcomed on arrival in New York, and the newspaper reporters swarmed around him. He was an endurance champion of another sort, for he had endured 156 years, and was entirely different from the vast army of cranks seeking to beat all records for sitting on top of poles, roosting in trees, dancing day and night for weeks without cessation in the everlasting attempt to lick creation. The ancient Turk had arrived in America’s most populous city to offer Ins antique body for examination scientists and dictate a century and a half of autobiography—for a consideration. But Zaro Agha is not resting on his laurels, he admitted, declaring: “I am going to live as long as the world lasts.