Ishmael

When Ishmael, son of Hagar, ancestor of all Mohammedans, was born (Genesis 16:11-16), a pessimistic angel acidly remarked that he would be a wild man, his hand would be against every man, and every man's hand would be against him. For two weeks his descendant Ismael* Husseyin wandered like a wild man over the bleak mountains of Anatolia. Every man's hand was against him. Last week they tracked him down.

Unlucky Ismael was one of a group of 28 dervishes, sheiks and others arrested some weeks ago for fomenting insurrection against the Turkish government and later sentenced to death. Leader of the dervishes was 94-year-old Sheik Abdul Hassan, who sat cross-legged on the floor of his prison cell, dressed in an expensive fur-lined overcoat, taking snuff and murmuring "Bismillah!" ("In the name of God!") The night before he was to mount the scaffold at Menemen he quietly died.

Ismael Husseyin stood on that scaffold with the rest of the condemned. While hangmen twisted ropes round his colleagues' necks he suddenly leaped away, fled through the streets followed by whizzing bullets, a dozen yapping curs, and most of Menemen's many men.

A price of $500 was put on his head. Fourteen days and nights Ismael Husseyin wandered in the mountains, his bare feet torn on the rocks. Starving, last week he entered a village to search for food. Five hundred dollars is a lot of money to a Turkish village. Townsmen turned him over to the authorities. Next day Ismael Husseyin swung from the gallows he had once cheated, his blackened tongue impudently thrust at his captors. On his breast swung a placard: THUS ARE PUNISHED TRAITORS TO THE RE PUBLICAN REGIME OF KEMAL PASHA.

In an effort to explain the Menemen executions last week, Turkish officials an nounced that the Republic was "completely neutral" in the matter of religion, made no attempt to interfere with mosque services or missionary schools. It was, on the other hand, determined to suppress the dervishes because they were secret societies determined to bring Turkey back to the social forms of six or seven centuries ago.

*Variation of Ishmael.

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