Türkçe

Who am I?

My name is probably Mehmet Raşit Ahmet, everybody around me called me Mohammed Rasheed Ahmed. I am going to tell you my story, the details are a bit sketchy because I never documented these events and now that I am no longer alive I am telling it through one of my grand sons. So what you are about to read is what he & my son remember from what I told them.

I was born around 1903 in the town of Diyarbakir in south east Turkey. My dad was Raşit Ahmet Abdulkadir, my mother Mawi Juma’a died when I was about 5 years old, those days we did not use surnames in Turkey. I lived with my father and my sister(s), at least one of them was married, may be I had a brother, my children can’t remember the exact details anymore.

I remember when the First World War started in 1914, and shortly after that Turkey declared general mobilisation. My father joined the army and took me with him, I must have been 11 or 12 years old at the time. In either 1915 or 1916, somewhere in eastern Turkey or possibly northern Persia my father was killed while fighting the Russian army & I was captured as a prisoner of war. Being a young boy I was adopted by the local Russian commander & his wife, they could not have children of their own. I became a member of their family and I stayed with them until 1917. After the Bolshevik revolution, Russia pulled out of the war and the Russia army was ordered back to Russia, I heard them talking about taking me back with them. I did not want to go to Russia and I wanted to go home, so in the chaos I hid from them and ran away. By then I think I probably was somewhere in Persia. As I was walking back with a number of other released Turkish soldiers (about 200) we encountered a Turkish army retreating from Persia on its way back to Baghdad to reinforce the Turkish army defending the city against the British. On our way to Baghdad we were engaged by the British army several times until I was captured somewhere in northern Iraq.

I was brought by the British army as a prisoner of war and held at Al-Rasheed army base in Baghdad (known at the time as Al-Hinaidi). When the war finally ended I was set free. I could not remember my address in Turkey and which part of Diyarbakir I came from, I had no where to go, no body to help me or support me so I started to work in Baghdad, eventually I got married and settled there.

All my life I worked hard and very long hours to bring up my children & I think I did well by anybody’s standard, so I never had the chance or time to go back to Turkey to find my family, and the years just passed by.

Finally, in 1991 and during the first gulf war I fell ill due to kidney failure, it was difficult to reach me and by the time my family got to me there was no more hope left and I could not be transported to hospital due to the continuous bombardment of Baghdad, so I passed away in my house near Al-Rasheed army base, the same place where many decades ago I was held prisoner (Al-Hinaidi).

Due to circumstances many members of my family including this grand son grew up far away from me and could not accurately document my story, they no longer remember some of the critical information that could help them locate my family, like the year my father was killed, which battle and where exactly. As time pass by, more and more details are being lost and forgotten.

So if you have heard through a father, a mother, a grand father, a grand mother, a far relative, a friend or a neighbour about a family that lost a son or a brother with similar details to mine then please email my grand son. Remember that my family might think that I was killed, or captured and taken to Russia or Persia, not realising where I actually ended up, Iraq.

I do not need anything, but I want my children and grand children to find their roots, know their family history, nothing more, I just want them to know who I am.

Mehmet Rasheed Ahmet (I do not know what surname my family in Turkey eventually adopted)