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Silences: My Mother's Will to Survive by Alice Tashjian Table of Contents Acknowledgments Foreword Preface Introduction Appendix Frances' Story-Ch. 1 Four Sons-Ch. 2 ThreeDaughters-Ch. 3 Missionaries-Ch. 4 Deportation-Ch. 5 To America-Ch. 6 Leon's Story-Ch. 7 
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Chapter 4 Christian Missionaries In 1860 a missionary physician, a Dr. Henry West, organized a clinic and a small medical school in Sivas. Before, the few Armenian physicians who had studied abroad, had been unable to care for the large population of Sivas. Many women, steeped in superstition and tradition, practiced folk medicine. My mother always felt we should study our ailments and become our own physicians. I remember that when I was ten years old, I had an infection near my thumbnail. My mother roasted a large onion, hollowed out enough from the center that I might insert my thumb and told me to keep it on until the onion became cold. The infection ripened and later drained into the onion. The pain subsided. Mother always managed to heal us. Christian missionaries, who had originally come to Turkey to convert the Moslems, introduced new methods of western education. Some students attended only missionary schools. More attended Armenian schools where the study of both the Armenian and Turkish languages was usually compulsory. Many of us took advantage of both. With the missionaries' perseverance and encouragement, we read their Bibles, books and magazines. The Armenian students learned much about western culture, and became aware of a free nation, called the United States of America. The missionaries purchased the carefully wrought laces I made and resold them to the American and European fashion markets. Many young women in my school earned money this way. Keeping a share of the income for themselves, these kind missionary ladies were able to continue their work with the local orphans. We all profited. We girls tried to be very skillful in our needlework to earn as much as we could. Initially, we did traditional patterns. We studied the Gody Pattern books the missionaries gave us. The peacock was a favorite of many, but I found it more interesting, and often earned more, when I designed my own patterns. I earned many, many gold pieces. I saved my money very carefully because I hoped to attend Robert College, where I would prepare for the teaching of arithmetic. I sewed these coins in the sleeve of a suit my mother had just finished for me. The suit was left in the house as we hurried away. In American money, I am certain the coins were worth one hundred dollars. Those Turks had no conscience. They even took the laces I prepared for the collars I had finished for the latest shipment they would send to the United States. I have often wondered what happened to the gold coins I had sewn in the sleeve. According to Moslem law, if a Moslem turned Christian, he was immediately put to death. Converting them became impossible. With their puritanical, evangelical zeal, these same missionaries set out to enlighten the Armenians, who had already practiced Christianity in their Armenian Orthodox churches. Throughout twenty centuries of religious wars and persecution, the Armenians had held fast to their Christian beliefs. This division caused by these missionaries created a separation in the church, a division the Armenian people did not need at such a time. Miss Mary Graffam, a missionary from the United States, was director of the American Girls School of Sivas. Soon, she became the favorite teacher of many of us girls in Sivas. She left her home in Andover, Massachusetts, and came to Turkey at the age of thirty. In June 1891, she had graduated from Oberlin College where she majored in mathematics. Her decision to go to Turkey as a missionary found her in Sepastia in the autumn of 1901. For twenty years, she taught stories from the Bible that made the characters come alive. She was the principal who counseled and encouraged me in my studies. From her, I learned the Old and New Testaments. The missionaries, who wrote about us Armenians in their letters to America, watched, to their horror, our starvation, disease and death by torture. They tried to help as best they could . . . to no avail. We heard that from 1915 to 1921 Miss Graffam joined the Armenian women on the march to Malatia, enduring the same hardships. Her already declining health suffered.
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