The
author spent the early spring of 1914 at the hospital in Konia, when
all the people named above were at work there.
The tinkle of camel-bells as a caravan of laden beasts swung by, the
quick pad-pad of donkeys' hoofs, the howl of a Turkish dog, the cry
of a child--these and other sounds of the city came through the open
window of the ward.
On a bed in the corner of the ward lay a bearded man--a Turk--who
lived in this ancient city of Konia (the Iconium of St. Paul's day).
His brown face and grizzled beard were oddly framed in the white of
the spotless pillow and sheets.
His face turned to the door as it opened and the matron entered. The
eyes of the Turk as he lay there followed her as she walked toward
one of her deft, gentle-handed assistant nurses who, in their neat
uniforms with their olive-brown faces framed in dark hair, went
from bed to bed tending the patients; giving medicine to a boy
here, shaking up a pillow for a sick man there, taking a patient's
temperature yonder. Those skilled nurses were Armenian girls. The
Armenians are a Christian nation, who have been ruled by the Turks for
centuries and often have been massacred by them; yet these Armenian
girls were nursing the Turks in the hospital. But the matron of the
hospital was not a Turk, nor an Armenian.
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