A Bulgarian's Revenge. HOW THE PLAGUE CAME TO BAGDAD.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 669, 2 September 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Bulgarian's Revenge. HOW THE PLAGUE CAME TO BAGDAD.

Here T am in this corridor, in this ward, in this eell — but they cannot keep mo. I am fe'o' r! ? to escape— forerer. Hist, in your eir," doctor 1 I bare bad tho fever three days— the true calor mordax. I know the meaning of this ammomcal odor of my Bkin, of these inflamed glands under the throat, in the groin, in the arm pits— of these carbuncles already about to burst. Tou cannot keep me, doctor, it n the piagtto ! Why do you start ! lam ready to go. Whither this white beard, these wrinkles ! My hair has grown out again orer the shaven crown . 1 nare learned the Creed over again W P'we ot the accursed fLa ilia A.Uah ;' send for *v? Greek priest at the Russian Embassy, and while he is coming I will tell you of what one man did to avenge a wrong. • Sit ! Listen ! You are not the doctor P No odds 1 You can take my confession. There is no time to lose. The fever mounts — mounts — the shivering fit darts painfully from my head to my loins— the delirium is not far off Sit aad hear me — the history of Yorvaki, the Bulgarian. I am sixty years old. My name is Norvaki, lam a peasant of Bulgaria by birth, and in 1810 I was a shepherd in the mountains of Nissa. wi'h my wife, Feodra, and my little boy, Bebeb, just four years old. The ppople were discontented about taxes and Armenians, bnt I did not know anything about, it nor cared. I was happy for I had my wife and tnild, my hut and garden, my sheepskins, and piastres enough. The priests of Sophia ran secretly through the counlry preaching, but I heeded them not, for I wai bapry. The Pasha of Nissa had a niphew. a mere lad, but dissoluto and dangerous. He came my way, hunting ir tho mountains. He saw Pe«dra, and when she declined his insolent advances, ho cam« with his guard of Albanians and carried her off. Doctor, I never saw my wife again. From his harem she went to the mosque, where she strangled herself. The peasantry were ripe for revolt, and I lei them. With our clubs and crooks we made a famous massacre of it, and then fled to the mountain defiles, butnotboforo I had beaten out the ravisker's brains. They sent a troup of Bashi-Bazouks againstus ; we destroyed, them and captured the strong fortress of Ac-Palauka. This was in 1811. But the Turks could fight them. Hussein Pasha marched upon us from Widdin with artillery and some of his garrison troops. Mustapha Pasha summoned 7,000 of his fiercest Albanians, and came himself with the Aranouts from Yanina. Wo had begun the war with massacre, and in quenching it the Turks spared none at all. Those of our people who could esoape fled into Servia, into Moldavia and Wallaohia. I was cut off from this retreat, and journeyed eastward with my little boy. I found rest at laat and employment in the pashaliik of Diai Ibekir, in a silk factory there. Kest for two years. Then, one day, when I came home from work, I found I was betrayed. The soldiers seized me, the dervishea bore off my little Balm before my eye* to the mosque. I was thrown into prison, but at the end of a month an Armenian woman brought mo a file and a knife, and I escaped. Baba, was dead. Tl\cy bent him ; they circumcised him ; they made a Turk of him and killed him. It was as well. I had a knifo. I cut the throat of the Ulemah ; I burned the mosque and then fled to Erivan. What did I do then P I was an ignorant Bulgarian peasant, not twenty-eight years old. I went to tho commandant in Tiflis and told him my story with ashes on ray head. He gave me a place near him as a spy, and when I was not on duty, had me taught. I was an apt and easy scholar, for my studies were Arabic, Persian, Turkish — all branches of the sublime art of revonge. In 149 I was with Scharayl, and played my part so well that all his stores from Bntoutn for that year were captured. After that my general got me a lieutenant's commission and sent me to Moscow to continue my studies. I joined a sect of the Skoptskis hero and learned how to preach. Came 1853 [ was in the front, and with the expedition apain^t Kars, which failed by the pits-b" > J .. it of one Englishman. I ponetratod lalo Erze- ' roum, and had intercourse with the ' Greeks of Karamania, who were all ripe I for a revolt when the great Gosudar died i and peace was made. At this I went mad for a spell, and lost my commission. But my old general ! sought me out and reclaimed me. ' The war is not orer yet, Yorvaki!' he said, 1 nor will it be, until the last crescent has . been trampled under foot by the shaggy horses of the Don V He sent me on a secret expedition in Persia, and from thence I went into Candahar, into Koondooz, aad beyoad, into the farthest limits of Turkestan I was imprisoned in Khiva, and my beard grew white in tha dungeons of Kesh. At last, in 1867, 1 was released on the approach of the Russians to the Oxus. My goneral was dead, but his successor know me. He g»v© me money and an outfit, aad told me to follow my own counsels. For, during toy long imprisonment, the pathway of vengeance had become perfectly plain to me, a broad airtight road, and I only asked leave to pursue it. I shared my head *nd walked barefoot into Persia by fche wty of Khtf and Baghistan. I was a saint and a madman ; I 1I 1 begged, prophesied, preached, aud my fame ran before me for hundreds of mile*. I came to Isdahan, to Shiraz, to Bussorah to Bushire. I made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and theuce I journeyed to Nejd, to El Dertria, a Wahabee of the strictest ■cut. I itttyed here and studied, and preached and macerated myself until the sanctity of Hiji-Oglou was known through half the Moslem world. In 1872, after the Bamadan, I oame to Constantinople I had letters to the Sheik-uMslam and other high dignitaries. I was offered the pott of each, of mufti, of rector of a mosque school; but my humility forbade me to accept any such a place. I choose to be simply custodian of a large medroze or school boarding house, attached to tho great mosque of Eyoob, au eudownment where I could be in intercourse with over 300 of tho most fanatical young Moslems. I taught these young men the Koran, I exalted in their eyes the broken authority of the Ulemas, I inculcat d the doctrino of resistance to all innovation, to all incursions upon the law, and I preached especially hatred and defiance to the Christians aud to Russia I made open

war upon tho Galata Lyceum, upon all t reforms of Ali Pasha nnd Rnsjcuid Pnsh T sorct my yountr men inlo Itoumclia, mt T^ypt, into Morocco, into all the east t sound the tocsin of alarm and resistance. In the spring of 1875, at the instanc of the English and French arabasadors, was dismissed from the charge of my me drezo and commanded to Jeave Stamboul. 1 bad a private interview with a high pornonßge at the Hussion embassy, to whom I revealed myself, and besought him to interpose for my retention. He told me ho could not help me, but gave me & purse of gold and aent me on my way. I went +o Antiooh, and my more EresencH there was the signal for an outreak. I departed for Damascus, and | remained thera until fti<i summer. Then | 1 crossed tne Diarbekm and began to i pleach war against the Giaour. I had great power, and the e * ci^ d P eo f' c followed me in cro*> only the Wahabees, but the people o. all c «^es gave way to my exhortations. *. c y, were simple enough -• the old faith 01 Mahomet, and death to the Giaour. I descended the Tigris, preaching as 1 went, and exciting the populace to violence, and preparing them for murder. 1 wished to drive them to such deeds as would make their extermination a political necessity and a Christian duty. There ,wer« mobs whenever I came, and the excitement grew continually more intense. In the middle of the summer I came to j Bagdad, followed by a great throng of disciples, derviihes, Arads, fanatics, pilgrims and adventurers of all descrip- 1 tions. The governor of the province, Fuat Pasha, had orders from the home government to prevent me from preaching, but did not dare attempt to enforce them. 1 had at least 5,000 men with me, md simultaneously with my arrival there came into the city an armed band of Koords and Arabs from the delta of the Shatel.Arab, all attracted by the coming of the Prophet. I made my home in a khan on the left bank of the river, and near the bridge of the boats, a place where the houses are thickest. This khan was the place where the camel-drivers from Aleppo and Damascus most frequently stop. The leather bazaar is hard by, and the slave mart and the donkey drivers' square not far off. The weather was very hot when I began to preach. The September rains had not set in, and the Samiel, with its lime-kiln breath, was blowing with extraordinary fervor. The town was full of people — two carvans having just arrived, together with a gteat train of pilgrims. I began to preach in the custom-house plaza, under the guns of Euat Effendi's fortress, in the place where the Ulemas of Haroun Alraschild's college once taught the laws. Great crowds thronged to hear me, increasing every day, and they listened to me with erer increasing excitement. I and my followers organized processions and fasts, and we fanned the flame of fervor in every possible way. One day there ■at in front of me a group of women of the place ; veiled, and behind them a throng of wild sailors of the Montefilc Aarbs, who had come from Bassorah. I preached in the fervid sun. with corresponding fervor, of tie power, the aggressiveness, the destiny of the Giaour, and the duty oi resistance. • If we do not rise against the inQJel, he will leave u« nothing — not evea our lands, our houses, our wives, our children. He will take from us our homes, our faith, our Mahomet, our Allah, and leave us only the pale-faced Christ, and wine to drink, and swine to eat and Eblis for us hereafter 1* I went on in this strain for some time, while the crowd grew denser, and more axoited, and my dervishes on its j extremities more frantic in their exercises | Suddenly one of the sailors from Bassorah j sprang into the air, the blood gushed from his nostrils, and he fell backwards in a fit. The crowd, panic stricken, shrank { away from him, shrieking : ' The plague ! The plague ! But I lifting up my arms,' with a great cry and truly inspired, cried ' aloud : ' Avoid him not ! Avoid him not ! It is the judgment of Allah come upon ye for your hardness of heart and your unbelief !' ' I continued to preach, and presently one of the women fell screaming, and she and the sailor were borne away. Thus be^an the great plague in Bagdad. The fierybreathed Samiel raged over the town like a rampine lion, and before nightfall there ' were twenty cases of the pestilence. I preached again the next day and the next, and the malady spread like a fire amongst inflammables. Fuat Effendi determined to prevent mo from gathering such great crowded arrested me and cast me into prison, but I ! was a man distracted. I preached in the i prison yard ; I preached in the solitary , dungeon ; I raved and howled like a rabid j dog chained up. After a fortnight I was j released still mad, and went abroad dazed i into the streets of the stricken city — stricken, oh God, by me ! Oh the wretch«duess and misery — tho dead and dying, neglected and abandoned — tho apathy of the living, the stench of the unburied tainting the air, the terror, the brutality and cruelty of man ! A whole city perishing, falling away from itself, struck down and stunned as if by a thunderbolt ! Over &U> the hot Sumiol burned, and the sttnoh raged, and corpses lay in the streoti, but the bazaar* were deserted, and the camels no longer thronged orer the bridge, nor even did the muezzins call from the minarets of the hundred mosques. I strayed into the abandoned khan — my followers and dervishes had fled all save two, favorite pupils of mine, who lay in. the death agony upon their carpets, with none to attend them. They died in seeing me, and in saluting ma " Prophet !' Prophet ! I rent my clothes and fled from the place full of a great horror. I ran along the deserted streets until I came to the governor's palace. A negro, just recovering from the disease, sat at the divan. He made .me a feebla salaam, and called me great prophet, and solicited my blessing. * Where is Fuat Pasha ?' I cried, and he pointed within. I entered the Pasha's audience hall, but it was completely empty save for a cockatoo that shrieked upon a peroh, and a street dog that lay asleep ia tho plash of tho fountain. I sounded an alarum upon the gonsr against the wall, an alarum loud enough to have summoned a regiment of guards, but none came, until presently, from the interior of tho house, with feeble, glow step*, a bent man came forth, t was the Pasha, but I bad difficulty! n recognizing him. ' Prophet,' he cri d, ' flee from the house of woe —from tho c ty of wrath !' Thon in impassioned accents

T denounced myself to Fuat as a Bulgarian, a spy, a Russian, a traitor, an imposter, a murderer ! He listened to me for a few minutes, then he toot" mo by the hand. • Como with me.' he said, »nd led me into the interior of the house, ij?to the apar tments of the women. As we ijppToached, there were wild cries and shrie >?• • ibe Pasha led roe to a little cushion, whew> "P on lay a small boy, the image of my Bai? a » just dead with the plague. ' Prophet, God wills it. There lies the hope of my housp. the joy of my life I H s mother I bnried yesterday — to morrow i will follow him myself. There is no God, but God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God !' I fell down in a fit, and when arose again I denounced myself still more loudly for what I was. But Fuat said : ' Distress hath made thee mad, oh prophet, and I must befriend thee.' And as continued to rave and to bruise myself against the stones, he sent for an officer and some men still left in the fortress, and they bound me and put me upon a swift ,, 3 "omedary, and fetched me to Damascus, 81' U r""™ 11^ •^■ n< * ere *^ e y wou^d not admit «q w> tbe ci /yatesy * ates on . ac f JOUDt of the jfotgue, so $ oae h f™« m % m . f™* 0 bought provisions iv. d *^ n . fe * c b f a circuit to AY, PP o, wher« *«»<* Moslems were ready to murse me and Ch." 6 ior mo - But I escaped at ii^ght and ran to Be < j* rout » to the Russian Consul there, and hC> deeming me crazy, put me on a Greek boat and sent me to the Consul's at Sy/nrna. And that oflScer telegrnphed about me to Constantinople, some Eussian surgeons came down in a dispatch boat, claimed me as a Eussian subject announced me mad and sent me in charge of safo-keepern to Marseille, and thence to this place. But I am not mad. I am only that Yorwki, the Bulgarian, who in pursuit of his revenge, became Haji Oglou, the prophet, and preached the plague in Bagdad. And, heaven bo praised, that plague has me now in its direful clutch"*, and presently will make an end of all in., we.— [lie Petit Journal Medico Psychologique.