The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Englishwoman in a Turkish harem
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: An Englishwoman in a Turkish harem
Author: Grace Ellison
Author of introduction, etc.: Edward Granville Browne
Release date: April 27, 2026 [eBook #78562]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Metheun & Co, 1915
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78562
Credits: Craig Kirkwood and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM ***
Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_) and ^{} encloses
superscripted material.
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
(_In collaboration with_ MELEK HANOUM)
“ABDUL HAMID’S DAUGHTER”
(_In collaboration with_ ZEYNEB HANOUM)
“A TURKISH WOMAN’S EUROPEAN IMPRESSIONS”
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN TURKISH COSTUME]
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
BY
GRACE ELLISON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
EDWARD G. BROWNE, M.A., F.B.A., F.R.C.P.
WITH THIRTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
* * * * *
_First Published in 1915_
* * * * *
I DEDICATE
THESE LETTERS TO ALL THOSE
WHO MADE MY VISIT
SO INTERESTING AND HAPPY,
BUT PARTICULARLY TO MY FRIEND
AND HOSTESS.
PREFACE
These letters do not claim to be a psychological study of Turkish
character, nor are they a political or historical treatise. They are
only an Englishwoman’s impressions of Turkish harem life, written
during a very happy and interesting visit amongst Turkish friends.
Should I not have said in these letters what my Turkish sisters
expected me to say; should I not have understood their civilization as
they hoped I would understand it; I feel sure they will forgive one who
they know has always been, and will always be their sincere friend.
To correct the errors, prejudice, and hatred which have become almost
part of the British national “attitude” towards Turkey is not an easy
task. If these letters have been able in ever so small a way to spread
some of the enthusiasm and love I feel for a nation which Europe has
so severely censured, they will at least have justified the reason of
their existence.
My thanks are due to the editor of the _Daily Telegraph_ for allowing
me to reproduce those letters which have appeared in the columns of
that paper.
GRACE ELLISON
ROUEN, 1915
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER
I. BACK TO THE HAREM 1
II. “TIME’S FOLDED WINGS” 9
III. BACKGROUND AND ATMOSPHERE 19
IV. THE IMPERIAL HAREM--A RECEPTION BY THE SULTAN 33
V. THE ANGEL OF DEATH 50
VI. CHAMPIONS OF WOMEN--THE MEN WHO LEAD 64
VII. PASSIONATE WOMEN PATRIOTS--A MASS MEETING 79
VIII. A TURKISH MOTHER 91
IX. WOMEN WRITERS OF TURKEY 104
X. THE PROPHET AND POLYGAMY 119
XI. THE MAN WITH TWO WIVES 128
XII. FARTHER AFIELD--THE PRIMITIVE PEOPLE 137
XIII. THE PULSE OF THE NATION 151
XIV. FORBIDDEN GROUND--THE HOLY TOMB 162
XV. ON THE SHORES OF THE UPPER BOSPHORUS 170
XVI. MORE ABOUT HAREM LIFE ON THE BOSPHORUS 180
XVII. INCONSISTENCIES ON THE SHORES OF THE BOSPHORUS 187
XVIII. ONLOOKERS ONLY 195
AFTER-WORDS 202
INDEX 213
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE AUTHOR IN TURKISH COSTUME _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
HALIDÉ HANOUM, THE BEST KNOWN OF TURKISH WOMEN
WRITERS AND A LEADER OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT 18
MISS “CHOCOLATE” 24
AN ENGLISHWOMAN WEARING A YASHMAK 34
H. E. GENERAL DJÉMAL PASHA, MARINE MINISTER,
THE FEMINIST MINISTER 82
H. E. TALAAT BEY, MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR,
A SUPPORTER OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT 82
A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE NEW TURKISH WOMAN’S PAPER,
_KADINLAR DUNYASSI_ (“THE WOMEN’S WORLD”) 114
DANCING CLASS AT THE GIRLS’ SCHOOL, BROUSSA 120
THE GREEN MOSQUE AT BROUSSA 124
BROUSSA 140
THE FOOTBALL TEAM OF THE BROUSSA LYCÉE 142
OPENING OF THE BELGIAN SCHOOL OF ARTS AND
CRAFTS, STAMBOUL 160
TURKISH LADIES IN THE COUNTRY WITH THEIR
EUROPEAN GOVERNESSES 166
INTRODUCTION
As one who for nearly forty years has been a friend and admirer of
the Turks and a student of their language and literature, it is a
satisfaction to me, especially in the dark days through which Turkey
has passed and is passing, to find a fresh opportunity of testifying
to my belief in the virtues of that much-maligned and ill-used race.
I have, therefore, willingly acceded to the request of the authoress
of this work that I should add to it, now that it is finished, a few
words of introduction, though such introduction, as it seems to me, is
hardly needed. Miss Ellison enjoyed an opportunity of seeing an aspect
of Turkish life which few English women and no English men have been
privileged to study at first hand, and, as her book abundantly shows,
she has made good use of her opportunity. It will not be her fault
if she fails to “correct the errors, prejudice and hatred which have
become almost part of the British national attitude towards Turkey,”
and “to spread some of the enthusiasm and love” she feels “for a nation
which Europe has so severely censured.”
Before the Revolution of 1908 Turkish family life and the qualities of
the Turkish woman were, in all save the rarest cases, sealed books even
to those Europeans who mixed freely with Turks and spoke Turkish with
fluency; and though since that period a few Turkish ladies, notably
the talented authoress, Hálida Hanoum (to whom Miss Ellison repeatedly
refers in the course of these pages),[1] have visited England, and
even pursued their studies with remarkable success in English women’s
colleges, they are still sufficiently unknown and surrounded with
mystery to give to this present book a real interest and value. On one
occasion, some four years ago, when I was at Constantinople, I was
invited to meet a group of Turkish ladies who were anxious to make
the acquaintance of an Englishman who had studied their language and
literature, edited the most comprehensive and sympathetic history of
their poetry,[2] and was known to them as a sincere friend of their
country and their religion. I was much struck by their eagerness
and intelligence, as well as by the distinction of their manners,
and I am glad to find the impression left on my mind by this single
occasion entirely confirmed by Miss Ellison’s much more extended
experience. Knowing how absurd and baseless are many of the opinions
about the Turks and Islam entertained in Europe (so that, to take one
instance only, people who ought to know better constantly re-assert
the oft-repeated calumny that in the Mohammedan faith the existence
of a soul is denied to women), I was prepared to find Turkish ladies
much more intelligent and better educated than is generally supposed;
but the reality greatly exceeded my expectations. Of their profound
patriotism Miss Ellison gives (on pp. 85-87) a moving example, and Mr.
Morgan Shuster, at pp. 188-9 of his great book, _The Strangling of
Persia_, has shown that in this quality the Persian women do not fall
short of their Turkish sisters.
Nothing has so greatly retarded the evolution of the Muslim nations
as the backwardness of their women, seeing that in the formation of
the children’s characters it is nearly always the mother who plays the
chief part. Polygamy, as Miss Ellison points out, is so much rarer than
is generally supposed in Europe, save in the wealthiest classes and
especially in the royal household, that its evils have probably been
exaggerated; but, for the reasons set forth on p. 96 of this book,
happy and suitable marriages are rarer in the East than in Europe. The
changes in this respect which are now taking place, and with which
this book largely deals, are not the least of the blessings conferred
by the Revolution of 1908, and though it is at present the fashion in
the English press to disparage that revolution, which was at first
hailed with so much apparent enthusiasm, I cannot understand how any
one who knew Turkey both before and after it can deny or ignore the
vast improvement which it has effected not only in the happiness but
in the moral and intellectual condition of the people. In our own
country the contemplation of a Liberalism which takes Tsardom as its
ideal, a Conservatism which coquets with lawlessness and makes two
such reactionary measures as Conscription and Protection, the chief
“constructive features” of its programme, a Cabinet which pays less and
less heed to Parliament, a Parliament which grows ever less and less
in touch with public opinion, and a Press which tends increasingly to
make the selection rather than the collection of news its main object,
has produced a political pessimism, the like of which few living men
can remember, which makes it difficult for us to believe in the reality
of any political enthusiasm, or to understand what emancipation means
to a people who have just emerged from centuries of despotism. The
bright hopes born in Turkey in 1908 and in Persia two years earlier
have, indeed, been sorely dimmed, when not entirely extinguished, less
through the faults or shortcomings of the patriotic elements in these
countries than through the Machiavellian cynicism and materialistic
greed of the Great Powers of Europe, who least of all desired any
real reform in the lands which they had already marked down for their
spoliation. Yet even should Turkey and Persia unhappily perish and
cease to be counted amongst the free and independent nations of the
world, the historians of the future will pay the tribute of admiration
withheld by the politicians and journalists of to-day to their last
splendid struggles for freedom, independence, and reform. For truly
says one of the Arabian poets:
_Kam máta qawm^{un} wa má mátai makárimu-hum,_
_Wa ’asha qawm^{un} wa hum fi’n-nási amwátu!_
“Many a people’s virtues survive when themselves are sped,
And many a people linger who are counted by men as dead!”
It cannot, of course, be denied that the Turkish reformers (much
more, in my opinion, than the Persians) made several frightful
mistakes, the worst of which was the vain and disastrous attempt to
Turkify or Ottomanize the various non-Turkish elements of the Ottoman
Empire, a matter in which their policy contrasted very unfavourably
with that pursued by the late Sultan ‘Abd-ul-Hamíd. This grievous
error, like many lesser ones, was largely due, in my opinion, to the
French influences which played so large a part, both in the political
and the literary field, in the evolution of the “New Turks” (_Yeñi
Turkler_), or, as they are commonly though absurdly styled (now even by
themselves) “Young Turks.” The French are, indeed, more chauvinistic,
more intolerant of languages, customs and ideas other than their own,
in a word more “insular,” than the English; and from the time of Kemál
and Shinásí, the founders of the “Young Turkish” school, until that of
Ahmed Rizá Bey, Dr. Názim, ‘Ali Kemál, and others who took a prominent
part in recent events, French ideas have dominated the Turkish
reformers. So, just as the French discourage the use of the Breton
language in Brittany, and endeavour to impose their own tongue on the
inhabitants of that Celtic province, the “Young Turks” endeavoured to
impose their language on the Arabs and Armenians, and their alphabet on
the Albanians, while at the same time, with a strange inconsistency,
they were ruining the Turkish language by hasty and ill-considered
attempts to “reform” its spelling and to modify or even entirely change
the Arabic characters in which, like all other Muhammadan languages, it
is written.
I agree so entirely with nearly everything that Miss Ellison says
as to the true democracy[3] and hospitality[4] of the Turks, their
kindness to the poor,[5] their sincerity and unceremoniousness, the
humane character of the “slavery,” with the toleration of which they
have been reproached, and the like, that it seems ungracious to dissent
from a statement which she makes on pp. 104-5 as to the New School of
Turkish poetry. She quotes an opinion as to the value of this modern
poetry expressed by my late friend, Mr. E. J. W. Gibb (than whom in all
that concerns Turkish literature no greater authority can be adduced),
for which I also appear to be made responsible, as also, perhaps, for
the preceding implication that the Turks often excelled their earlier
Persian exemplars. This, I feel bound to state, is not my view.
Whatever comparisons may be instituted between the Turks and Persians,
and in whatever points the former may be deemed superior to the latter,
in literary skill and poetic talent there can, in my opinion, be no
comparison whatever. Turkish poetry, whether old or new, is at best
seldom more than pretty and graceful, while often the verses of even
comparatively unknown Persian poets (let alone such masters of the art
as Jalálu’d Dín Rúmí, Sa’dí, Háfiz and Jámí) touch the sublime. The
production of fine poetry may not be the highest aim of man, or the
object for which he was created, but, whatever this distinction may be
worth, some of the finest poetry in the world has been produced by the
Persians, and no one, I think, however great an admirer of the Turks he
may be, could make this assertion about them.
In what concerns the languages and literatures of Western and Central
Asia, I must, I fear, admit that I am what my learned and versatile
Turkish friend, Dr. Rizá Tevfiq, sometime Deputy of Adrianople in the
Ottoman Parliament, and commonly known in Turkey as “_Feylesúf Rizá_”
(“Rizá the Philosopher”), calls Mu’allim Nájí, the last great champion
of the old or classical style in Turkey, “_un réactionnaire décidé_,”
and it is with certain tendencies of the “Young Turks” in this domain
of philology and letters that I find myself least in sympathy. I have
already alluded to certain innovations in spelling which appear to me
deplorable, and to several still more deplorable attempts to modify or
abolish that beautiful Arabian character which is one of the strongest
bonds uniting all Muhammadan nations; and I must add a few words of
disapproval of that fantastic movement, briefly referred to on pp.
67-8 of this book, known as “The New Turanian” (_Yeñi Túrán_). Against
the attempts of this school to revive the use of obsolescent Turkish
words and to displace in their favour the equivalent, and at present
much more familiar, Persian and Arabic vocables, I have nothing
to say; there is no more reason why a Turk should not endeavour to
persuade his countrymen to call God “_Tañri_” instead of “_Alláh_,”
or fire “_üd_” instead of “_átesh_,” than there is why an Englishman
should not strive to oust from his language the words “Preface” and
“Introduction” in favour of “Foreword,” or even “photograph” in favour
of “light-bild” (as some few have done), provided always that he is
not so archaic and Anglo-Saxon as to be totally unintelligible. My
objection to the “Young Turanian” School is their hatred of Arabic
and Persian culture and desire to cut themselves altogether adrift
from them, and their grotesque ideal not merely of a Pan-Turkish but
of a Turanian world-empire, which should exclude Arabs, Persians,
and other non-Turanian Muhammadan elements, but should on the other
hand include not only Tartars and Mongols, but even Bulgarians. To
such strange lengths does the distorted Nationalism of these “New
Turanians” extend that they blame their own great Sultan Báyezíd, “the
Thunder-bolt,” because, not recognizing his “Turanian overlord,” he
strove to arrest the devastating advance of Tamerlane the Tartar, and
perished in the attempt. To me the aims of this school, so far as I
understand them, appear little less insane than those of Marinetti and
the Italian Futurists. Far truer, saner and more reasonable is the
Pan-Islamic ideal of Sayyid Jamálu’d-Dín al-Afghání, whose body rests,
after the storm and stress through which it passed, in the cemetery of
Nishán-Tásh in Constantinople.
These, however, are comparatively small matters, the inevitable
exuberances of a great National Awakening. However we may appraise
the “Committee of Union and Progress” or the “Liberals,” Enver Pasha,
Tal’at, Jávíd and Ahmed Rizá on the one hand, or Kyámil Pasha, Dámád
Feríd Pasha and Isma’íl Kemál on the other, let us render all honour to
the noble and often nameless and fameless Turkish patriots, both men
and women, who by their lives and deaths have during the last eight
years striven so gallantly to save and free their country; and, when we
think of their mistakes, let us remember what the Turkish poet says:--
“_Yár-siz qálir kimesné ‘ayb-siz yár isteyan!_”
“Friendless surely he remaineth who demands a faultless friend!”
EDWARD G. BROWNE
CAMBRIDGE, _May 5, 1914_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Pp. 17, 66, 69, 77, 107.
[2] The late Mr. E. J. W. Gibb’s _History of Ottoman Poetry_. Mr.
Gibb died on December 5, 1901, little more than a year after the
publication of the first volume of this great work. The remaining five
volumes, of which the last (vol. vi) contained the Turkish originals
of the poems translated in vols. i-v, were edited by myself, at the
request of his widow and parents, from the carefully written and
well-arranged manuscript materials which were found amongst his papers.
A seventh volume, dealing with the most modern period, is in course of
preparation.
[3] Pp. 21, 45, 54.
[4] P. 22.
[5] P. 52.
* * * * *
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
* * * * *
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM
CHAPTER I BACK TO THE HAREM
It is a landscape of unending and beautiful sadness which surrounds the
Konak where I am now living. In my home away yonder I had imagined that
where the sun shines there must be laughter and merriment, yet here,
face to face with reality, the sun, the bright blue sky, and clear
atmosphere have steeped everything around--the mosques, the minarets,
and mournful cypress trees, which stretch towards heaven like a prayer,
with that inexplicable sadness which is the basis of Oriental life.
How could I have expected to find laughter and merriment in a landscape
like this? Here happiness even is expressed in some form of sadness;
the people’s songs of rejoicing are like funeral hymns; the sweetest
poetry is sad beyond our Western comprehension; the tales the old slave
tells us as we sit cross-legged round the big mangol are of sadness
so great that I often wonder whence they come, and yet, paradox of
paradoxes, I have come back to Stamboul to laugh, for I have never
laughed anywhere as I have in this land of extremes and contradictions
and surprises.
* * * * *
And now, after five years, here I am back again enjoying once more
the calm and peace of an Eastern home, and the interesting society of
my dear friend Fâtima (I change the name). To the Western ear, to be
staying in a Turkish harem sounds alarming, and not a little--yes, let
us confess it--improper. When, before I left my own country, I had the
imprudence to tell a newspaper correspondent that I was longing to
get back to the quiet harem existence, I was accused of “advocating
polygamy,” for to the uninitiated the word “harem” means a collection
of wives, legitimate or otherwise, and even the initiated prefers to
pretend he knows no other meaning.
Worn out with what we in the West call pleasures of society, the
fatigue of writing against time, the rush and bustle of our big Western
capitals, the hideous and continual noise of the traffic, which, like a
great roaring wave, seems gradually to deaden one’s understanding; how
good it is to be here!
The wonderful silence! Sometimes it is almost terrifying! And at nights
when I rise and peep through the lattice windows and see the beautiful
moon bathing with its silver magnificence the silent, sleeping city and
the calm, quiet Marmora beyond, it is difficult to believe that there
are living souls in these dimly lighted streets, and the Bekjih’s tap,
tap, tapping on the cobbled stones sounds, in the stillness, like some
spirit rapping from another world.
Yet much as I am drinking in the beauty of my new surroundings, they
do not in the least force me to write. In this wonderful garden of
God, for here one feels so keenly a divine presence in every living
thing, ideas surge through the brain; every nerve, every sense tingles
with the beauty around; one becomes part and parcel of its grandeur,
but alas! the thoughts vanish before they even come to any precision.
Encircled by such Nature, how can one write? “You in your Western
cities,” once said to me a Dervishe of the contemplative order, “have
you time or place or opportunity for contemplation?” No doubt he was
right, yet, like all those Turks who are privileged to make their
choice, we are dwelling on a height, and, like the Dervishe, we have
time, place, and opportunity for contemplation. But do we ever get
beyond contemplation?
The diary of my existence as a Turkish woman, which in England I
imagined could be written in a very short while, lies day after day
in the form of a pencil and exercise book, untouched, on the little
mother-of-pearl table in the most comfortable corner of my large
bedroom. “To-morrow,” I say, like a true Turkish woman, and alas! in
Turkey it takes a few to-morrows to beget “some day”; “some day” is
soon changed into “never,” and who knows whether the best of my Turkish
impressions will not be given “their local habitation and name” in a
room of some Continental hotel?
Now I understand how weeks and months, years even, may pass without
receiving news from Turkish friends; now I understand that lack of what
we English call “common courtesy.” We have misjudged the Turks. A pen
in the harem! The unnecessary intrusion! The reforming fever which has
swept over the land of Islam ever since the Constitution has not yet
taught the Turkish women the use of a pen as we understand it. When I
reproached my friend and hostess with not having written one letter,
“Why should I write,” she asked; “what have I to say? You know exactly
how every moment of my life is being spent. You know my affection for
you, and when two friends are really sure of one another’s sympathy,
each can feel the thoughts the other is thinking....” And so we took up
the threads of the conversation where we had left them five years ago.
Fâtima did not know I was coming to Constantinople. She was not dead,
of that I was sure, so I should find her, no matter into what part
of Turkey she might have wandered. But the news of my arrival reached
my friend almost as soon as I had found her address. She came at once
to see me at the hotel. A Turkish woman visiting me at an hotel! Was
it possible? Five years ago what would not have been her punishment
for such reckless _licence_? The customs of the country do not yet,
however, allow Turkish women to visit hotels, and in taking every step
forward she has to run the risk of offending the ignorant and fanatical
mob.
Fâtima did not come in by the front entrance. Quite recently a
restaurant for “ladies only” has been opened by the same management
as the hotel where I stayed and is, to some extent, a rendezvous for
Turkish women. It is their first step towards a “fashionable” club,
and to me, the newcomer, another big step towards freedom. Let those
Western critics, who have taken such a deliberate stand against the
present government and declared “the new order of things worse than
the old,” take into consideration such details as the opening of a
restaurant for Turkish women. It is part of a great scheme of reform,
and everything is going on in proportion. In 1908 more than two men
sitting at a café together were “suspect” and reported at headquarters;
in 1913 Turkish _women_ meet in a restaurant and discuss political
subjects--certainly this is not the Turkey I expected to see....
Having some work to finish that day, I had given orders that I would
see no one, and consequently when Fâtima asked for me in the restaurant
she was told that I was ill. I was in my room writing, and at first
hardly heeded a gentle knock at my door. Then came a faint repetition
of the first knock, and a few minutes after followed yet another and
another tap. At last I rose and opened the door to see who was there. A
moment’s pause, then a little black-robed, thickly veiled figure threw
herself in my arms and without saying a word, without even raising
her veil, just clung and clung to me. It was Fâtima, and this was our
meeting after five years without having seen or even heard of one
another.
“Little Fâtima,” I asked, when at last our long embrace had finished,
“how did you get here?”
“I slipped through the side door and came up in the lift,” she
answered, and she nearly laughed her hair down at the thought of her
own daring. Five years ago the zenith of Fâtima’s longing was to be
taken up in a hotel lift. I had begged her father to let her satisfy
her curiosity--he was powerful enough to do so--but he did not say “No”
and he did not say “Yes” either, and she went on wondering and longing
and wondering, and now, when she least expected it, her ambition had
been gratified.
It was arranged that I should go to Fâtima that very afternoon, the
carriage would be sent to fetch me, and the same old coachman would
drive me from the noise, vulgarity, and “patchwork” morality of that
Pera which to me was as obnoxious as Stamboul was delightful.
“I shall be counting the minutes till your arrival,” said Fâtima, as
she rose to go, and all of a sudden for the first time she realized
that she had not only to go back the way she came, but face the crowd.
How delightfully Turkish! Counting the cost of the wares when the bill
is in your hand--such a contrast to our British prudence!
“But tell me, Fâtima,” I said, as together we boldly walked down the
staircase and out at the front door, “how did you like your first
journey in a lift?”
“That you were alone and ill in an hotel,” she answered, “was of more
importance than anything else. I never even thought about it.”
* * * * *
The sun was shining brightly that afternoon--shining as it only shines
in the East. All the long way from Pera to my new home it had darted
its way through the carriage windows, showing so distinctly the thick
coating of dust which had spread itself so comfortably on my black
serge gown, and transfiguring the large white buttons of the carriage
seat into sparkling diamond stars. At every corner I recognized old
nooks--old wisteria-covered houses, my favourite mosques and fountains,
the same slowly moving crowd, the same beggars almost, and I was going
back to the Fâtima who had grown from a girl to a woman--Fâtima
who had so persistently resisted the European civilization at her
very door, if it in any way prevented her remaining faithful to the
traditions of her own civilization and religion.
* * * * *
But at last we are there. Fâtima has come to the door to meet me and
hugs me into the big salon. There are the same tiny cigarettes, the
same coffee cups, the same endless rows of bon-bon boxes filled with
the delicious candies of the East, the same liqueurs, the same array
of cakes, and we walk and talk as though miles and years had never
separated us.
But the sun is now sinking to rest. It is our dinner-hour, the candles
are being lighted, the darlingest little baby girl toddles in to bid
her mother good-night and make the acquaintance of her new “aunt.”
Kissing my hand, she raises it to her forehead with the grace of a
little Empress. Dear little Perihan with the beautiful, wide-awake,
brown eyes! Will your destiny be like that of the great Eastern
Princess whose name you bear?
CHAPTER II “TIME’S FOLDED WINGS”
But to return to the burden of letter-writing. Another Turkish
friend, a lady who has stayed in England, considers one of the most
disagreeable features of our civilization is our continual answering
of letters. “Unnecessary letters,” she called them, “and I pitied my
poor hostess,” she explained, “wasting the greater part of her morning
choosing where she would or would not eat and asking friends to eat
with her.” Here our friends come uninvited, they take what we at home
call “pot luck” with delightful and refreshing unceremoniousness.
But the greatest obstacle to one’s writing, setting aside the
atmosphere, is the lack of solitude. Here there is, except for the
honoured guest, the solitude of the multitude and the silence of
familiarity, but solitude, as we understand it in the West, _i.e._
one’s own self within one’s own room, and the door locked, never. And
I doubt very much as I write these lines whether solitude and its near
relative, celibacy, will ever be admitted or even understood in these
Eastern homes.
Several times, however, when the thought of dear friends in my home
away yonder has pricked my conscience I have escaped to my room to
write. But my maid for the moment, Cadhem Haïr Calfat (Calfat means
slave), an elegant negress, follows me to see what she can do for me. I
am seated on the sofa--she uses the word “esbab,” and I understand the
word “esbab” means “dress”--I shake my head. No, I will not change my
dress. I hear “sou” (water). I shake my head again. I washed a short
while ago. “Satch” (hair). No, my hair is quite in order. I pass my
hand over my forehead, and move my fingers, to make her understand I
want to write. She thinks I am ill, and runs to fetch my hostess, who
hastens to find out what is wrong. She, too, fails to understand why I
go to my bedroom to write in solitude when I could write at a big desk
in the salon with the other ladies to keep me company.
But what a devoted creature is my chocolate-coloured attendant! With
what patience she tries to make me understand! Not a stitch of clothing
will she allow me to put on by myself, and only when I am safely tucked
up under my mosquito net does she leave me alone. And what would she
say now if by any chance the idea should enter her faithful woolly head
to come and see whether I am all right? Here I am, outside my mosquito
net, writing by the candle light till the scratch, scratching of my pen
sounds almost terrifying in this still household and the silence of the
night.
The other afternoon, on returning from our afternoon drive, lady
visitors arrived. Here was my opportunity to write. So, after we
had drunk our coffee and smoked a cigarette, I excused myself, went
upstairs, and Miss Chocolate (as my negress is now called by all my
friends) removed my tcharchaff (veil and cape). By the time, however,
that I could make her understand her service was finished for the
moment, the sun began to set, with a magnificence only to be seen
in the East. I stepped on to the balcony. From the minaret of the
neighbouring mosque a clear, wonderful voice rings through the air,
calling the faithful to prayer. I hear also the muezzins, in the
distance, singing the Moslem credo; it is like an echo, for every note
in the scale is a faint repetition of the beautiful voice which wakes
me at the break of dawn with a reminder of the greatness of God--and
all the while the sky is increasing in warmth, now it has formed itself
into a wonderful vermilion carpet, and wrapped the mournful cypress
trees and mosques and minarets which rest upon it, with a wealth of the
finest azure blue, and even the wooden houses on the neighbouring hills
have changed into little ochre palaces, so distinct that they seem to
have been put there as an afterthought. Then there is the beautiful
Sea of Marmora, cloaked in a mass of purple and red and blue and gold.
Could any spectacle be more gorgeous? How well now I understand those
beings who worship the sun!
The visitors have taken their departure--they must be home before the
sun has set completely. My friend has now joined me. On the balcony we
stand and watch in silence. We, too, have become part of the glorious
landscape; we, too, are bathed in the wonderful roseate tints of the
setting sun.... The sun has set. Miss Chocolate is there, to dress me
for our evening meal ... and my letters are still unwritten. And so the
time flies on, and we, unaware of its flight, are happy enough. Letters
belong to the West--energy belongs to the West--but the sunset and
the dreams and the beautiful, calm felicity which I now enjoy is the
inheritance of the Woman of the East.
But, supposing my letters are written, how am I to post them? English
letters have to be sent from Galata. It means that a domestic must
drive to Galata and post them. That, too, is not so easy as it sounds.
I have been trying to work out for myself this problem; if it is the
custom of this country to grant two holidays a week to the donkey,
how many are necessary for the coachman and gardener? I look into the
garden; perhaps I see my answer in the person of the mountainous-bodied
gardener, who stands, spade in hand, watching the flowers grow and
the fruit falling from the trees. How can the inhabitants of a country
of tubes and motor-’buses and telephones understand what life is like
here? A distance requiring ten minutes with us would take here quite
three hours, at least with Réchad, our coachman, on the box. Of him,
certainly, it may be said he is merciful unto his beasts. They need not
hurry unless they like; he never whips them; and although my friend and
I together weigh less than 18 stone, the horses are allowed “a pause”
at the top of each fairly steep hill.
My short stay here shows me more and more clearly how impossible it is
to keep up with Western customs with all these Oriental disadvantages.
For the first two or three days it may be exasperating, but the
philosopher soon becomes resigned. I cannot get about if there are no
means of communication, he argues, and his Western friends leave him
severely alone.
The night before the Messageries Maritimes steamer arrived at
Constantinople we anchored near Haidar Pasha. It was nine o’clock, but
too late for the fulfilment of certain Turkish red-tapisms which make
commercial life unnecessarily complicated. “See,” said a diplomatist on
board to me, pointing to the two shores of the Bosphorus--“Europe and
Asia--action and dreams--energy and fatalism--liberty and bondage.” And
the lights from the European shore were shedding their brilliance on
to the cool, calm Bosphorus, and Stamboul, my present home, showed in
the distance only a few flickering sparks to remind us that these good,
honest Turks were yet alive, and that even in this twentieth century
they had ignored the civilization which had taken possession of the
greater part of their capital.
To be cut off from the society of Pera, however, with few exceptions,
is no deprivation for the Turkish woman. She dislikes the women,
perhaps, even more than the men, because she knows them better, but
she lumps them all, both sexes and all nations, into the somewhat
contemptuous term _Perote_. She dislikes the loud voices of the
women--she, who is taught as the most elementary form of good
breeding to speak in a soft, low voice (the domestics here literally
whisper)--she dislikes the Perote’s abominable habit of asking
questions (for the Turkish woman will not be questioned); she dislikes
the inquisitive, staring men, who look as if they would “gimlet” their
way through the black face-veil the Turkish women wear....
“But why do you Turkish women dislike the Perotes?” I asked one day.
“They have the blood of six nations in their veins and the soul of
none,” replied my friend; “and the vices of the six and the virtues of
none,” and I have found out recently that it is these Levantines who
have told the world the little that is known of Turkish women.
The veiled Turkish woman is always a source of unending interest. A
chapter, at least, on harem life will always add to the value of the
book; for the word “harem” stirs the imagination, conjures up for
the reader visions of houris veiled in the mystery of ages, of Grand
Viziers clad in many-coloured robes and wearing turbans the size
and shape of pumpkins, and last, but not least, is supplied for the
reader’s imagination a polygamous master of the harem, and they have
made him the subject of their coarsest smoking-room jokes. Poor Turks!
How we have humiliated them! The Turk loves his home and he loves his
wife. He is an indulgent husband and a kind father. And yet we judge
him from the books which are written, not to extend the truth about a
people, but only to sell; the West expects to hear unwholesome stories
when it reads of the Eastern homes, and all these falsehoods are put
into circulation by expelled governesses and Perote ladies, who have
given an ugly form and soul to all that passes behind the door through
which they are rarely privileged to enter.
Indirectly the proclamation of the Constitution has meant much to the
Turkish woman. After that date she was allowed to travel and see for
herself the lands about which she had read so much. Then it was with
her observant eyes and receptive mind she understood our lives as no
Western woman has been able to understand the East, and the result
is that to-day, although to the tourist she appears as veiled and
secluded as ever, yet she has advanced so rapidly that I, after an
absence of five years, scarcely know her.
“It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,” says our proverb, and poor
consolation though it seems, it is heavy misfortune which has been the
lot of poor Turkey, which has banded the women together, brought out
all their best qualities and determined them, with Western militancy,
to save their Fatherland at all costs.
It is time Europe saw the Turkish woman as she really is; saw her
splendidly organized Red Crescent Society, her woman’s paper edited by
a woman, her programme for the national health, for the training of
nurses and doctors, and even telephone clerks, for the near future.
Surely, honour should be given where honour is due, and although, for
reasons I will explain later, it will be some time before the Turkish
woman can or before it would be wise for her to cast aside the veil,
she is not what Europe generally imagines she is. She has awakened
from the darkness and horror of the Hamidian régime with a courage and
determination to show the world that one sex cannot govern a country,
that the woman’s voice must be heard in every matter of importance--not
in the anonymous manner of yore, but openly and honestly and
above-board, as is her right--and that if one sex is to be kept in
ignorance it shall not be the women.
I have faith in the women of Turkey. With education--for these
women, though of great culture, are not educated--they will acquire
the necessary perseverance and exactitude, the lack of which keeps
the Turkish woman behind the rest of Europe. With improved means of
communication and organized work, too, her character will develop. She
can take her place splendidly in a big cause. Whence she acquires her
extraordinary courage, sangfroid, and savoir faire I do not know, but
it is the details that worry her; she loses patience, and that terrible
“To-morrow I will do it,” which is partly due to the climate and
partly the inheritance of ages, has been till now the Turkish woman’s
stumbling-block in all she undertakes.
I asked Halidé-Hanoum, perhaps the most active and best known of modern
Turkish women, in the name of one of our prominent suffrage societies,
how we English women could help the Turkish women in their advancement.
“Ask them,” she said, “to delete for ever that misunderstood word
‘harem,’ and speak of us in our Turkish ‘homes.’ Ask them to try and
dispel the nasty atmosphere which a wrong meaning of that word has cast
over our lives. Tell them what our existence really is.”
And so here I am in the heart of Stamboul, a Turkish woman for the time
being. Only by living the life of another people can we have any idea
of the real value of that people. By sinking for a while one’s own
personality one obtains the recompense of superior knowledge, and I
have been received in a Turkish home and offered hospitality it would
be difficult to equal in any other land.
Halidé-Hanoum paid a very pretty compliment to the energy, indomitable
courage, and self-sacrifice of so many of the women of my country.
If, then, the Eastern women can understand the tactics of a section
of women workers which so many men and women of my own country have
covered with ridicule and injustice, surely we in England should try to
understand better the Turkish women, for it is to us they still turn
for guidance, example, and, above all, sympathy.
[Illustration: HALIDÉ HANOUM, THE BEST KNOWN OF TURKISH WOMEN WRITERS
AND A LEADER OF THE WOMAN’S MOVEMENT]
CHAPTER III BACKGROUND AND ATMOSPHERE
The Turkish home in which I am staying at present has little in common
with the harem described by most Western writers, and no doubt those
readers accustomed to the _usual_ notions of harem life will consider
my surroundings disappointingly Western.
Had I been able, as I hoped, to send some photographs of the interior
of my friend’s house, those photographs would probably be considered
“fakes,” or perhaps even they might be returned (as they were returned
to me when I last stayed in Turkey five years ago) with the comment,
“This is not a Turkish harem.”
For a long time now, European furniture has been the fashion in Turkish
homes. At first this craze for everything Western began in the homes
of the Government officials, but it has been gradually spreading ever
since, so that to-day, in the smaller homes, cheap, gaudy furniture
of the worst kind has replaced the beautiful embroideries and
accoutrements of the East. And now the pendulum will swing the other
way. With this new movement of “Turkey for the Turks,” thinking women
like my hostess, who look round their houses to-day, must necessarily
ask themselves the question, “Is this really a Turkish home?” With as
much zeal, then, as she showed in filling her house with the ornaments
of the lands she longs to visit, my friend Fâtima has now begun to
collect the furniture, ornaments, and embroideries for the real Turkish
room which is to be mine when next I visit this country. Day after day
we have sauntered through the old bazaar, which is always an attraction
for a woman of the West, buying those quaint and delightful souvenirs
of the Turkey of the past, in much the same way as we English who
can afford it indulge our tastes for the furniture and porcelain of
a century that is gone. And when we visit the mosques, too, and the
sacred tombs, we generally come away with ideas for “my Turkish room,”
so that next time I come to Turkey I shall not have the disappointment
of travelling all these miles to sleep in a room furnished with an
Empire suite (however beautiful it may be), a Western sofa, armchairs,
and tables.
Sometimes in the morning when I wake I still wonder where I really
am. Am I in Europe, or am I in Asia? My room is as large as any of
the largest rooms in our country houses at home, and its ceiling and
high walls are painted with the primitive gaudy colouring seen in the
mosques. Fortunately there are seven windows, for there is no open
fireplace, and the room is carpeted from end to end. A solid silver
basin and jug of the real Eastern shape are on my washstand, the rest
of the toilet service is French, and there is a Venetian glass bon-bon
service, with sweets, liqueurs, and other drinks, beside my bed, and
tables--tables of all nations. One table put there specially for my
use was a gift from the late Pope Leo XIII. to my friend’s father, and
on it stands a Bible which my friend, though a Moslem, often reads.
On another table stands a signed portrait of Great Britain’s King
and Queen, removed for a short while from its place of honour in the
big salon as a sign of my friend’s great affection for one of their
Majesties’ humble subjects. It was a most delightful and delicately
turned compliment. But there are pictures in my room, too, pictures in
a Moslem house! A print water-colour of Windsor Castle and copies of
two of Reynolds’s pictures in the National Gallery, and many English
books. Is it surprising that when I look round this curious room I
wonder whether I really am in Turkey?
The more I stay in Turkey the more I admire the inborn aristocracy of
the Turk, and yet “aristocracy” as we understand it does not exist.
Turkey is the country where brotherhood and equality have been best
understood. The Turkish woman does not often open the doors of her home
to the foreigner, not for lack of any friendly feeling towards her,
but because the foreigner has lost her confidence, the foreigner has
made fun of her, and, above all, the foreigner “pities” her. But when
the Turkish woman opens her door to the foreigner, she opens her big,
generous heart. Always, however intimate may be their conversations,
the honoured guest stands on a pedestal, and the hostess is at her
feet longing only for an opportunity of showing courtesy and kindness.
In no other land have I met with such lavish hospitality--hospitality
even that makes one feel a little uncomfortable, especially when
one realizes how little one has done to deserve it. The courtesy,
also, is almost overwhelming. Every time I go in and out of the room
the assembled company, men and women, stand, and every time coffee,
cigarettes, and sweets are brought by the slaves for the guests, my
hostess rises to serve me herself. Always, too, I sit in the place of
honour, as far away from the door as possible, and sometimes right in
the draught of the window!
It is the custom, too, for the master of the house to pay all the
visitor’s bills. That I should have proposed to stamp my own letters
hurt my friend. The result is that, nowadays, I write no letters and
buy practically nothing. I feel almost guilty when I accept what I do
and give nothing in return, and always I have before me the haunting
fear of the terrible disappointment my friend will have when she visits
my country, for our hospitality cannot be compared to this.
When I asked my friend how long she expected me to stay, she was
surprised at my question. “As long as ever you like; you need never go
away; how I wish you would stay always.” And so it is in most Turkish
houses. There are guests here who came, as I did, for a few days, but
they have never gone away at all; some even came to visit Fâtima’s
grandfather, and still they remain; they have become part of the house
itself.
Fâtima has put her entire trousseau at my disposal. Many of the stuffs
and embroideries were brought to her when she was a child by her
father’s friends. They made a special pilgrimage from the depths of
Asia Minor to bring their offerings to the daughter of the “father of
the people,” as the ex-Pasha was known for many years. I take out these
precious gifts sometimes and examine them at leisure, trying to imagine
the arrival of the “wise men” of the East to pay honour to the father
of the little baby girl lying in the cradle. For these pilgrims were,
many of them, real “wise men” of the East, and they brought, amongst
other garments, a coat I am to wear when I dine with European friends,
but I am sure to tremble all the evening for its safety. The tissue
itself is pale blue silk, the yoke, collar, and cuffs all studded with
precious stones. It is a present from Mecca, and it lies with the other
priceless possessions in my room--jewels, linen, embroideries, money,
and letters too, in drawers that have no locks, and in a house where
all day long the doors are left open for any to enter who will. Truly,
this is a restful civilization!
It was nine o’clock this morning before I tinkled the little silver
bell beside my bedstead to summon my “chocolate” attendant. This is
a very old Turkish house, and in spite of its Western furniture it
rejoices in neither electric bells nor electric light. As a rule,
however, my negress is in my room, patiently waiting till I wake, not
daring, although she has been asked to do so, to disturb my sleep. Miss
Chocolate, clad in a scarlet-coloured dress, her woolly head tied up
with a scarlet scarf, brings in two silver trays, on which my breakfast
is served. Her skin is like brown velvet. Round her neck she wears a
gold necklace, and on her arms she has clanging bangles, which announce
her arrival. On one tray Miss Chocolate has collected all kinds of
jams, varying from quince to strawberry and violet, and many kinds
of biscuits; on the other there are Turkish coffee, milk, powdered
chocolate, and tea. Fâtima is generally present to see that I do honour
to this curious repast.
[Illustration: MISS “CHOCOLATE”]
My breakfast finished, I follow Miss Chocolate into the marble
bath-room attached to my bedroom. But it is not a bath-room which
is in the least designed to accompany the Empire suite in my room.
A real Eastern bath-room it is, _i.e._ it has a marble floor with
a gutter, so that all the water thrown over me runs away, and it
contains also the marble basin like a fountain in which the Turks
wash, always in running water. The morning after my arrival here I
took advantage of Miss Chocolate’s leaving me alone for a few minutes
to plug up the marble basin, and began to wash as we wash in Europe.
But Miss Chocolate returned sooner than I expected, and with much the
same expression as the mother who scolds a child who has been playing
in the mud, she extracted the handkerchief which served as my plug.
“Ach, mattemoiselle,” she exclaimed, in Turkish. “What a horrid way to
wash!” And she is astonished to see my skin so white--now she knows I
have washed all my life in dirtied water. Also when, after meal-time,
she pours the water over my hands, she carries away first the basin of
dirty water, and then comes back to fetch the jug, thinking it wiser no
doubt to keep temptation out of my way.
But not only Miss Chocolate, most of the Turkish women I have met
dislike our manner of washing. Indeed, they consider it dangerous to
sit in a bath which is not exclusively reserved for their own use.
Were they only in other ways to show this fear of spreading disease!
But cleanliness, as every one knows, is godliness itself in the Moslem
religion, and no doubt the Eastern bath-room will exist even after the
veil has disappeared.
Miss Chocolate interests me. She certainly is an excellent maid. She
sews well, keeps my clothes well brushed and tidy, washes me well, and
has an unending capacity for taking pains. By degrees I shall find out
her life history, as I shall find out, perhaps, before I go, the names
and social status of all these women here, but I have to work slowly
and carefully, lest my sympathetic interest should be mistaken for
idle curiosity, and so far I have found out little about my faithful
negress. Bought at the age of four by the Pasha, Fâtima’s father, for
the sum of forty Turkish pounds, she has a record of twenty-five years’
faithful servitude. But that is all I know. Since the Constitution, the
sale of slaves and eunuchs has been forbidden, and all those at present
employed in the house have been offered their liberty. Every slave in
this household has, however, refused her liberty, preferring to keep to
the original terms of her contract--her freedom only on marriage, with
a dowry from the Pasha. Slavery, then, can be considered as no longer
existing, and only a few eunuchs remain in the palaces to remind us of
an ugly chapter of history that is closed.
Miss Chocolate’s features show that she must first have seen the
daylight somewhere in the neighbourhood of Lake Tchad. Many lies have
been told about the treatment of these slaves, but Miss Chocolate has
never been beaten, she receives only kindness; she is invited, with all
the other members of the “domestic sisterhood,” to see us dance and
hear the Western music when we dance and sing in the evenings, but
generally we read and sew. And yet never does she nor any other slave
take advantage of her mistress’s familiarity, standing always at the
door, although bidden to come in. And she has a heart of gold. When
she saw my face so covered with mosquito bites that I was unfit almost
to look upon, the tears ran down her brown cheeks. “And to think,” she
said, as she rubbed in the ointment, “they might have eaten the whole
of my face and it would not have mattered”--the mosquitoes evidently
preferred mine.
Before I leave this house I hope to get some photos of the interesting
persons it contains, but in undertaking to photograph a Turkish
household, I had forgotten first that the windows are dimmed by the
inevitable lattice-work, which prevents my having a full view of the
wonderful landscape which stretches from the foot of our garden to the
rising and setting sun, and when the sun shines it shines through the
lattices, throwing on to the furniture all around large lozenge-shaped
reflections. But there is another and a greater difficulty, and that
is, photography is forbidden by the Moslem religion. My friend would
certainly let me photograph the house if I asked her. The sacred law
of hospitality is part of her religion. She urged me even to eat bacon
in the morning, although pork is forbidden in an Eastern house, and
no doubt she would have insisted on buying it had I not declared that
even in my own country I never eat pork. But Fâtima has to deal with a
most fanatical entourage, the women much more than the men, women who
for centuries have been taught to interpret the Koran as Mahomet never
intended it should be interpreted, women who are purblind to any form
of progress, women who still consider that to reproduce the human form
created by God involves disobedience to the laws of the Prophet, though
the Koran distinctly orders the faithful to march on with the centuries.
It is extraordinary and interesting to watch the working of this
household. My host, an exceedingly well-read, intelligent officer,
speaking two European languages, and having served three years in the
German army, is a man with ideas of feminism and government and social
questions quite half a century before his time, and he is surrounded
by a household of ignorant fanatics who can neither read nor write. He
would give his wife complete liberty this very day if it were possible,
and, although she has more liberty than any woman I know, for her sake
he cannot too openly defy Islam. The other day one of his brother
officers lunched with us in the harem, but we were served by the male
servants, as every woman slave refused to appear with bare face before
a man who was not a “blood relation” of the lady of the house.
There are some ladies here who blame the Turkish women for not taking
their freedom as other women have done; there are times, too, when I
feel inclined to sigh for the militant spirit of the Englishwoman, but
until one has really been behind the veil one can have no idea of what
“fanaticism” really means. Isolated rebellion is of no use--a protest
here and there may, or may not, help, but a movement only really counts
when women march out in an army, and nothing will ever make them turn
back, and there is no fear of death.
The day I first visited my friend Zeyneb in the Turkish home which she
left six years ago, and to which she has now returned, the sight of me
in a hat made her forget her surroundings, and, as she always did in
Paris, she eagerly seized my new hat and tried it on. But she had not
counted with the picturesque old lady seated cross-legged in the corner
of the room alternately smoking and embroidering. The old lady wore a
red tunic and green pantaloons; her tobacco and matches she kept under
the arm-chair near which she worked. She, too, had come on a visit to
Zeyneb’s grandmother, and never gone away again. Perfectly contented
with her lot, as are the women of the last generation, she saw no
reason why the children of this generation should sigh for a horizon
that goes beyond embroidery, cigarettes, and sweetmeats, especially
when it brings them to forget the sacred commands of the Prophet. The
old lady, at the sight of my heathenish hat on Zeyneb’s head, muttered
something about the giaour I could not understand, ground her teeth
(she is eighty, and still has her teeth), and cast at both of us a look
of the most profound contempt. Then it was I first understood what the
women of this country must put up with whenever they try to take a step
forward.
“And supposing you were to go into the street with that hat, what would
happen?” I asked Zeyneb.
“The old lady would rouse the neighbourhood, we should be seized by an
angry mob, and trampled to death....” I made no comment. It is not for
me to criticize the methods of the women who are working for liberty.
“These old women are not immortal,” I am assured; “we are concentrating
all our efforts on the future generation and educating the people. The
rest will come by itself.”
The women are fortunate, however, in having the Government on their
side, and without exaggeration I may say they have with them most of
the men who count at all, for what thinking man could see any chance of
progress while this absurd separation of the sexes continues? I don’t
say the Turk wants for his womenkind the liberty of the English or
American women. He does not even want them to work, but he does want
them, for his sake, to take part in the social life going on around
them. The Turk likes society, and he likes theatres, but to-day, unless
he has married a Christian woman, he must go there by himself, borrow
some one else’s wife, or stay at home.
“Why should I go out and amuse other people’s wives and leave my own
wife at home?” said my host one day; and very rarely does he go out
in the evening; but all Turks are not like my host. The Minister of
the Interior, Talaat Bey, a man of surprising energy, with a clear
understanding of men and things, a real God-send to this country in
its present state, encourages any work for the advancement of women,
and he is paying particular attention to their education. The military
governor of Constantinople, Djémal Bey, too, has given instructions
that the liberty of the women is not to be interfered with, and no
doubt in time his word will become law.
The women, however, as I said before, have made enormous progress in
five years. What would have happened five years ago if Fâtima and I
had driven home from a family party with her husband at the “indecent”
hour of 9.30? Five years ago we never walked a step; now we not only
saunter through the bazaar, but go to a big dressmaker’s in Pera,
whilst formerly all our goods had to be purchased from Greek merchants
and Paris dressmakers who came with their goods to the harem. But not
only in the bazaar do we walk; we have walked in the magnificent newly
laid-out park, where women are allowed for the first time to walk, in
a park where there are men. The men, I must say, have not yet grown
accustomed to this new and extraordinary state of things, and vie with
the Levantine “mashers” in their desire to see the features under the
veil. It is not a very comfortable experience for the Turkish women,
but it is the darkness before the dawn. The dawn is coming slowly; but
it will come if the Turkish woman really wishes it, and works always
with that aim before her--the uplifting of her sex.
CHAPTER IV THE IMPERIAL HAREM--A RECEPTION BY THE SULTAN
It has been the privilege of many foreigners visiting Constantinople
to witness the ceremony of _baise-main_, which takes place at the
Dolma Bagtché Palace, but it does not fall to the lot of every woman
to see that imposing ceremony from the Imperial harem. This unique and
interesting experience I owe to my hostess, Fâtima.
The ceremony of baise-main is too well known for me to describe it
here, and those persons who were seated in the gallery reserved for the
Corps Diplomatique would no doubt see to better advantage than I the
throne-room, the Sultan, and the curious and many-coloured uniforms and
costumes of the Ottoman subjects who paid their homage to the Kaliph
of Islam. Through the lattice-work windows of the Imperial harem it
was difficult to form more than a vague idea of the ceremony, for we
were so many women huddled together on the cushions, so many who were
trying to see, that after a few moments I gave my seat to another lady
in order to wander at leisure through the Imperial harem, where Fâtima
tells me I am the first Englishwoman to be admitted as a visitor.
It was the first day of Baïram. We were awakened at dawn by the
plaintive cries of the sacrificed sheep. Réchad, the coachman, was
chosen as vékil (sacrificer), because he is recognized by the whole
household as the most pious of us all, and his forty-five years of
service also demand that this privilege should be his. His, too, was
the privilege of distributing the meat, the skin, and the horns of the
four sheep which this Moslem household offered to the poor, who came in
through the open gates like a pack of hungry wolves, and looked, with
their poor ravenous eyes, as if they could tear the meat from the hands
of the coachman. To me, standing on the balcony, it was like watching
a scene from the Old Testament--a scene all out of focus with so many
of the attempts at progress which I see around this beautiful and
interesting capital.
How strange it seemed also to be dressing for Court at 6.30 in the
morning! To be putting on thin silk evening dresses and slippers at
that early hour, and driving away in the chilly morning to pay our
homage to an Eastern monarch.
[Illustration: AN ENGLISHWOMAN WEARING A YASHMAK]
Fâtima’s dress was of pink crêpe-de-chine embroidered in dull silver--a
Paris creation--the last, however, she will ever have embroidered
outside Turkey, for, like so many other ladies here, she has now
awakened to the fact that the most costly embroideries of Europe are
but poor imitations of the work of her own land. Round her hair she
wore a pink and silver scarf, attached to the side by a silver rose,
a charming variation of the curious turbans of flowers, feathers, and
jewels which are worn by so many of the ladies attending the Ottoman
Court. I asked Fâtima if the Court officials gave instructions to
the ladies regarding their dress. “Provided their hair be decently
covered,” she replied, “etiquette is satisfied,” and the Caliph has the
“supreme” privilege of seeing all his subjects unveiled.
Like most of the ladies of the Court, we were attended by a slave,
my negress, Miss Chocolate, an interesting personage in her Court
attire. For this occasion she was dressed in pale blue satin, with a
pale blue turban trimmed with pink roses, her fingers, arms, and neck
being covered not only with all the jewellery she possessed, but the
jewellery of the other slaves. It was her duty to follow us all the
while, and during luncheon she stood inside the door with folded arms,
in case her services should be required. It was she who took charge
of our little bags, and in one of the “grandmother” pockets of her
wide satin skirt were hair pins, safety pins, and handkerchiefs, in
case of emergency. To drive to the Court, Miss Chocolate wore a white
tulle veil which entirely covered her face, and a vivid blue satin
feridji, covered with sequins and big white velvet pansies. How I wish
I could have photographed her! Fâtima wore a yashmak, now, alas! only
worn by Princesses and ladies attending the Court, for to me it is one
of the most becoming of head-dresses, showing the eyes to very great
advantage. She wore, also, a peacock-blue satin feridji, a hideous
contrast to Miss Chocolate’s electric blue.
The Imperial harem, in spite of certain changes and certain privileges
accorded to the Imperial Ottoman Princes and Princesses, still remains
the harem in the real sense of the word, the harem about which Western
readers expect to hear, the part of the Oriental house exclusively
reserved for the use of the women. Across its threshold no man may
enter, and even as we drove into the big door, which is inside another
wooden door, and which is opened to admit each carriage and shut again
immediately, our footman had to descend and wait for us outside the
door. The whole Imperial harem is surrounded by a wall so high that no
passer-by can possibly see within. The coachman, too, having left us at
the entrance door, had to drive out and wait outside the first door.
This is the first time since I have been back again in Turkey that
I have felt myself really within a harem. Even when I wear a veil,
even when I forget I am not in England and try to push back the fixed
lattice windows, even when I take part in these Baïram dinners, where
not even the master of the house may be present, I do not realize the
atmosphere of the harem. But within the palace, amidst its curious
assembly of slaves and eunuchs, and in spite of its wide corridors
and immense salons, there is a most uncomfortable feeling of bondage
which would turn me into a raving lunatic at the end of a week. It is
true, Fâtima explains to me, that all these women are solemnly asked
four times at the end of each year whether they would like to marry
and leave the harem. I say to myself, then, if they stay it is because
they wish to stay, and are therefore happy. Their existence, however,
seems a most heartrending waste of human life, and as I sat watching
them loitering along the exquisitely carpeted corridors, gossiping,
smoking, carrying alternately coffee and water to the guests, I longed
to break down for them the lattice-work which always is there between
them and the sun, to fling the windows wide open, so that they could
breathe in the fresh air, and open the doors so that they, too, might
go out. And yet not one of these women seemed in the least to feel her
slavery, and, no doubt, they would turn their backs in horror on the
ugly, unprotected existence of some of the women of my country.
“But these slaves are perfectly happy,” again and again Fâtima
assured me, and, to judge from their smiling faces, I suppose they
are. But waste is always sad--waste of youth, waste of beauty, waste
of womanhood, especially when women are so sorely needed for the
regeneration of this country.
Arrived at the central entrance door of the harem, Fâtima and I were
helped out of our carriage by the attendant eunuchs. I was told that
eunuchs were now a thing of the past, but certainly that remark
could not have been made with reference to the Imperial harem. It
is difficult for me, however, to remember that these poor mutilated
anachronisms are great personages at the Ottoman Court, who, although
they perform the menial service of opening the carriage doors and
helping us up the stairs (one on either side and one behind, as though
we were old ladies), are yet the masters of the establishment. Fâtima
explained to me that they spoke to her with the exaggerated politeness
of the Eastern courtier, because of their affection for her father, and
all of them came to ask for news of him.
At the first turning of the central staircase we walked into the
yashmak room, where a host of female slaves came forward to help us. I
felt for a moment as though I had strayed behind the scenes at Drury
Lane, so curious they looked, in their brightly coloured figured silks
and clashing coloured turbans, but their dyed hair and blackened eyes
should be my excuse for the poor compliment I am paying them. Some
of the costumes, it is true, were made of those priceless Persian
embroideries for which Fâtima and I have searched the market-place,
but always the _tout ensemble_ was spoilt by some vividly coloured and
clashing turban, a vivid yellow dress with a bright pink head-dress,
an electric-blue dress and an exaggeratedly blue turban, which made
one’s eyes ache. Behind the footlights, perhaps, such combinations
could pass muster, but in the daylight, even in the dim daylight which
comes through the latticed windows, they were a motley, uncomfortable
spectacle. These dresses, however, defied both time and fashion, and
were all cut on the same model; a long dress, with the train caught up
to the waist, and a sack jacket.
Once the yashmak and our cloaks were removed the slaves took away the
veils to iron them, and other slaves arrived to conduct us upstairs and
announce our arrival to the lady Court officials, who wore costumes of
different colours according to their rank. There was, first of all,
the Hasnadar Ousta, or High Controller of the establishment, in white
satin, trimmed with real gold embroidery at the foot of her dress and
at the bottom of her coat. Her little white and gold turban suited her
perfectly, and her jewels, if not beautiful, at least were original.
On her breast was a bouquet of diamond flowers, which stretched almost
from shoulder to shoulder. Another diamond ornament stretched across
the front of her turban, and in her ears she wore birds the size of
butterflies, each holding in its mouth a pearl the size of a cherry.
She was an old lady, judging by her wrinkled face and bent back,
rather than her golden hair, and after she had walked once or twice
round the assembled ladies, kissing some and saluting others, leaning
on her stick of office, she hobbled into the presence of one of the
Princesses, leaving the real duties of the day to the younger officials.
I would have liked to ask one of the Court officials, had I dared,
how our dresses appeared to them. The wife of the War Minister was
wearing a dress of cerise _crêpe-de-chine_, so tight that she had to
sit down carefully. All the ladies wore silk stockings and high-heeled
shoes--most of them might have come straight out of the paper
_Chiffons_ which is carefully studied in up-to-date harems to-day. How
strange we all must have looked to these uncorseted women, who made
no attempt at a fashionable coiffure, who still remained faithful to
the “babouches” (heelless slippers) and coloured stockings worked with
gold, and whose dresses could have been made into three or four of our
present-day creations.
Most of the Court officials wore the Grand Cordon of the Order of
the Chefakat, the Order of Mercy given to ladies of high rank and
distinguished lady visitors. Fâtima alone amongst the lady visitors
wore that order. Every time the Court officials passed, the guests
stood, as the Eastern etiquette demands they should in the presence
of superiors and aged ladies. This, however, was rather uncomfortable
for us, for the Assistant Treasurer had known Fâtima’s family all her
life, and frequently came and spoke to us. Seeing us about to rise,
with Eastern politeness she ordered us to remain seated, but Eastern
politeness also demanded that we should disregard her request and rise
to speak to her.
The Assistant Hasnadar was particularly interested in me when, after
much beating about the bush, Fâtima at last owned that I had never had
a husband. “We are companions in distress,” said the Hasnadar, which in
her case was not true, as I have already explained. A husband would be
found for her to-morrow if she wished. But the wherefore of my celibacy
puzzled her. “It is nothing of which to be ashamed,” I protested. “It
is nothing of which to be proud,” she answered, and, like an Eastern
woman when unable to reply, I shrugged my shoulders and laughed. The
joys of “single blessedness” are not understood in this country, and
personally, outside these high Court officials, I have never met an old
Turkish spinster.
But supposing any of these women should take advantage of the solemn
asking once a year, whether or no they will marry, what becomes of
them? We have at present living in our harem a slave who has just left
one of the Princess’s palaces. Fâtima has undertaken to keep her here
until she and her friends can find a suitable husband for her. She is
a contented, beautiful, useless creature, who eats with us when the
young Bey is not here, and sings Oriental songs of exquisite pathos,
accompanying herself on the oude.[6] And sometimes, when she sings, I
ask Fâtima to interpret the words of them. “It is an old, old Turkish
love-song,” she said, “a beautiful old song, and I love to hear her
sing it.” “And what kind of love-song does a Turkish man sing to his
unknown bride?” I asked. “That all the sorrows in the world may be
his lot, if only all the joys may be hers.” “And what is the most
awful of all the sorrows?” I asked. “Solitude,” answers Fâtima without
hesitation.
We were a curious luncheon party that day--the wife of the Sultan’s
Master of Ceremonies, several of Fâtima’s friends, and an Egyptian
Princess, whose arrival at the Palace in a magnificent steam launch I
had seen through the harem lattices. Most of these ladies, who spoke
quite fluent French, were too timid to speak to me, a most distressing
modesty, especially when it necessitates the constant employment
of Fâtima as interpreter. If only they could hear how unmercifully
most of us Englishwomen handle foreign languages, whilst they are
really excellent linguists (the best in Europe, except, perhaps, the
Russians), they surely would take courage.
The meal the Sultan offered us could scarcely be called a luncheon.
There were cold meats of various kinds, sweetmeats, creams, and other
delicacies, served in Sèvres dishes, but water was the only beverage.
And after the meal was over, the slaves came round offering us glasses
of water in beautifully cut crystal goblets, with gold lids, and served
on little golden dishes. It was extraordinary to me to be bidden to
an Emperor’s feast and given only water to drink, and yet here water
is so limpid and cold that it is often more acceptable than the best
champagne, and often on the steamboat, when we travel, I call the
water-seller, who frequently passes in and out of the harem part of the
boat in which we travel, and purchase a penny glass of water.
The ceremony of baise-main in the Selamlik was finished about eleven.
To the cry of “Oh, Sultan, be humble, and remember God is greater than
you,” from the assembled Court, the Sultan retired for a short rest
before coming to the harem to receive the ladies of the Court. And,
perhaps, he slept longer that day than he intended, for it seemed to
us an eternity to wait. Eight hours at a Court, however, would be
considered tiring in most countries, but most particularly in a harem
where male conversation cannot be procured for untold gold. I begin
to miss the society of the opposite sex: it is true we have men, far
more men, in our Turkish home than in any other Turkish home I know,
but I miss the men at the parties and picnics and meetings. And it
does seem rather a waste of time to put on my prettiest gowns and
make a particularly handsome coiffure to eat only with women. Zeyneb
used to say that “men spoiled the look of our Western functions;
that they crawled about our drawing-rooms and ball-rooms like great
black-beetles.” Surely she had forgotten the appearance of an Ottoman
Court and the awful black-beetles that crawl about there, when she
spoke so disparagingly of our Western assemblies.
Fâtima explained to me that the Court of the present Sultan in no way
equals the Court of the ex-Sultan in magnificence. The embroidery
which the slaves hold in front of the coffee tray whilst coffee is
being served was only a plain gold embroidery, whilst in Abdul Hamid’s
time the cloth was studded with real stones. The coffee cups, too, and
the jam service were only solid gold, whilst in Abdul Hamid’s time
jewelled coffee cups were always used. The Court, however, has become
more democratic. Princesses walk about amongst the people as they were
not allowed to do during the reign of Abdul Hamid, and but for their
red enamel necklaces and large diamond orders, exclusively worn by
members of the Imperial family, we should have scarcely known we were
amongst the members of the Imperial family. The Sultan’s grand-daughter
interested me particularly--not so much because of her rank, but
because of her appearance. She is a short girl for her age, which, I
believe, is about twelve, but her dress was long and wide, her hair
dressed in a knot on the top of her head inside a diamond crown, and
the front of her small body was covered with diamond orders and a
diamond dog-collar encircled her little throat. But most curious of all
was the long, thin hand, quite out of proportion to the size of her
body, with which she acknowledged our _temenahs_ (Eastern salutations),
and on those curious hands she wore gold mittens studded with rubies
and diamonds. It looked as though she had utilized a gold purse for
that purpose. She had a charming and interesting face, this little
Princess, though one of unending sadness. She looked to me not unlike a
schoolgirl acting the part of Queen Elizabeth, and a striking contrast
to the merry little Princesses of her age in our Western countries.
But what is most delightful to me in Turkish life, in the Court and
out of the Court, in fact in every station of life, is the beautiful
feeling of democracy. A Princess, while talking to you, will suddenly
excuse herself, rise and throw her arms round the neck of her old
_nourrice_, who walks about amongst the highest of the Court ladies.
The accident of high birth demands specially cultured conversation,
kindness, and fine manners towards persons of humbler birth, argues the
Turkish woman, and the _snobbery_ which is so frequent in our Western
countries has never existed here.
But suddenly one becomes conscious of a certain movement amongst the
ladies, who, in spite of the music of the Imperial orchestra playing
in the garden of the palace, in spite of the Hasnadar’s merry laugh
and her encouraging request to be “patient,” have been growing weary
of waiting. The Sultan has arrived! He has taken a particularly long
rest this day, changed the uniform in which he received the Ottoman
officials for a simple morning coat, and is seated in an armchair in
the big salon waiting the arrival of the ladies in the order which the
Hasnadar should see fit to introduce them. A procession of four ladies
at a time, headed by the Hasnadar, we enter the room where Mehmeth V.
is seated. But it is a ceremony so intimate, so unlike the ceremony we
had dimly seen a few hours before through the latticed windows, that
I cannot bring myself to think this good-natured, unceremonious old
gentleman is the Sultan of a great Empire.
To me, we had the appearance of four students going to an examination,
and I felt this more when, after kneeling before the Caliph, as
etiquette demands, and kissing his hand, we were requested to rise and
be introduced. “Your Majesty, our Sultan, Commander of the Faithful,”
began the Hasnadar, with bent head, and leaning on her stick of office,
“this is the daughter of ---- and the wife of ----” Then the Sovereign
Caliph congratulated her on being the daughter of ---- and the wife of
----, said he was delighted to make her acquaintance, and passed on to
the next lady, who was introduced in the same manner. When Fâtima’s
name was made known to his Majesty, he asked her to be seated, and,
again kneeling before the Sultan, she gave him news of her father, and
answered the many questions he asked.
This was the first time Fâtima had made the acquaintance of the Sultan.
“He was delighted,” he said with Eastern courtesy, and Fâtima rose
and asked permission to introduce me herself. I was not introduced as
the daughter or wife of a well-known Pasha, but as Fâtima’s “English
sister,” who had come to share her existence for a while, and who had
now come with her to pay homage to the Sovereign of the country. Many
questions the Sultan asked about me, about my country, and all the
while he talked I was thinking of the poor captive, Prince Réchad, who
for thirty-three years had been imprisoned within those walls, and
who now was the Sultan seated before me. He was weary. Early rising,
perhaps, suited him as little as it suited me. He frequently pulled
himself up, forced his eyes open, said he was delighted to make our
acquaintance. Then we rose, and the Hasnadar escorted us from the room,
and on the same occasion four more Court ladies were led into the
Imperial presence.
It is interesting naturally to meet the ruler of a country, of an
empire of such tradition, of a land which will be for so many years
to come the subject of the greatest interest, but the meeting of the
present Sultan did not stir me as did the meeting of the ex-Sultan
Abdul Hamid--Abdul Hamid, who pretended not to know one word of
the French language, which he speaks fluently, who always played
his part, and took particular care that part should be well played
before foreigners. All the nicest-sounding words were chosen from the
Turkish language to delight their ears. He humbly requested that the
distinguished foreigner for a short while staying within the capital
of his “dear” land would make known to him the manner in which the
Government could be of service in helping the foreigner on his or
her journey. His great, big, brown eagle eyes were wide awake, he
_unpacked_ the distinguished visitor, whilst the interpreter translated
into the language he knows so well, and this hideous tyrant became a
being of fascination. The present Sultan is a “fatalist.” Could he
be otherwise with such an agonizing past? He who was obedient to his
brother is now obedient to the Constitution; perhaps for Turkey it is
better he should be so.
* * * * *
We drove home in silence, Fâtima and I. She had explained so many
things to me that day; now she was tired. A long, tiring, but
interesting day it was. I was almost sorry it had to end. Miss
Chocolate, in her gaudy attire, is sitting in front of us in the
carriage, weeping at the honour conferred on her, for she, with all the
other slaves, has kissed the ground on which the master’s feet were
resting.... Cannon are firing to announce that the time for evening
prayer has come; the fat, unexercised horses are ploughing their way up
the hill; the shops, which at 4.30 are pulling down their shutters for
the night as we drive by, have had a day of rest.... What a wonderful
change it is to be a Turkish woman for a while.... Surely Fate was kind
to me when she crossed my destiny with that of little Fâtima.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] Oude: Turkish guitar played with a feather.
CHAPTER V THE ANGEL OF DEATH
The Baïram festivities have ended sorrowfully for us. This house, which
a few days ago echoed with mirth and laughter, is now silent--as silent
as a grave. The whole Konak is as if it were covered with a pall of
ice; the happy faces of the slaves have now an expression of woe; the
long stream of ladies who came to visit us at Baïram have returned to
mingle their sorrows with ours--the beloved master of this house is
dead. He was spending the winter in Cyprus; his Baïram telegram said
he was in perfect health: but even before the news reached us he was
sleeping beside his father in the little cemetery by the sea, buried
within twenty-four hours of his death, as is the custom here; and the
grand old man of Turkey was laid to rest like the most humble of the
Sultan’s subjects.
We Westerners, with our curious ideas of Eastern life, cannot imagine
the picturesque, simple, and natural attitude the Turks have towards
death. None of the hideous wailing, the rending of garments, sackcloth
and ashes (supposed to be part of the Eastern mourning); none of our
Western terrifying preparation for the long last journey; no mourning,
no flowers, no funeral cards; it is as if the dear one had gone on a
journey to a foreign land, and his family and friends pray for him as
if he were still alive. A Turkish burial, however, is impressive in its
simplicity. A plain wooden coffin, covered with a Persian shawl, and
a fez at its head, is carried on the shoulders of the relatives and
friends.
When the dead man’s eyes are closed the Hodja is called, and he reads
for the comfort of the bereaved ones some verses of the Koran. Then he
pauses, and solemnly asks those persons present whether they consider
their relative an upright, honourable man--a curious custom, this seems
to me; it is almost as if the Hodja were preparing for the dead man a
passport for the next world. (I write these words with all reverence.)
It is not always, however, that the assembled mourners answer the
Hodja’s question in the affirmative. If their conscience tells them to
speak the truth they do so, and the Hodja answers simply, “Then forgive
your brother his sins, as Allah will forgive you,” and the assembled
mourners pass on to the grave.
To me it has seemed a little strange to see the sons of wealthy
Pashas buried as only the poor in our country would be buried. When I
questioned a friend about this she answered, “The money you people in
the West spend on funeral pomp we give to the poor assembled round the
grave, and according to the deceased’s years and fortune. Supposing a
rich man of 83 is buried, eighty-three sovereigns would be distributed
amongst the poor; when a man of 83 and of moderate means, eighty-three
francs, or even eighty-three pence, as the case may be. The poor are
never forgotten in this country; they come to the marriage feast, they
come to the Baïram festivities, every day they come to this house and
are fed, and even during death they are not neglected.”
We, the women of the house, do not follow the coffin to the grave.
Twice since my short stay here the Angel of Death has visited this
house. The Pasha’s grandson left us first of all, and now the Pasha
himself is “not here,” which is my Turkish friend’s expression to avoid
pronouncing the word “death.”
For days now, streams of visitors have come to show their sympathy.
The door leading to the _selamlik_ has been left open for all the men
friends who will to enter, and the door leading to the _haremlik_ has
been left open for any women who care to enter. But what a curious
assembly of visitors! What a lesson in “equality”! Some of the callers
were the wives of Ministers of State, some were the wives and daughters
of generals, admirals, and the most honoured of Turkey’s great men,
some were almost beggars, but they were all together in the same room.
Death, the great leveller, had brought them together to mourn the loss
of a personal friend, and we of the household were grateful for the
sympathy of them all.
According to their custom, the ladies made their _temenahs_ (Eastern
salutations) to the hostess, which she acknowledged, rising, however,
to kiss the hand of the old ladies, some of whom came from long
distances to take part in the mourning. They came in bright colours
many of these callers, which seemed strange to me, accustomed from my
birth to the habit of outward mourning.
When the visitors have taken their seats, they make their _temenahs_ to
all the assembled guests, and the guests acknowledge their salutations;
it is a picturesque manner of saying “How do you do?” When first I
arrived here I frequently forgot to acknowledge the _temenahs_ of the
guests. A veil, after all, does not make a Turkish woman. My thoughts
at the time were far away, but the look of surprise at my lack of
breeding called me to order, and I pay particular attention now to what
are elementary points in good education.
Whilst sipping my coffee, as very few of the ladies speak, or, if
they speak, they do so in a whisper, I carefully study the assembled
guests. The wife of ---- Pasha is wearing a bright blue satin dress
and _tcharchaff_ (Turkish cape and veil), high-heeled shoes, and
open-worked silk stockings; a scarf of ermine is round her neck. At her
feet, sitting cross-legged on the floor, is an ex-slave dealer, a woman
in a tattered red _tcharchaff_. She has left her shoes outside. Near
her are a bath attendant and a poor woman, who usually sits nursing her
miserable offspring not far from our gate; they sit silently weeping,
these women, for the benefactor who is no more, and without uttering
one word they rise, politely bow to the assembled guests, put on their
shoes, and disappear through the open door of the harem.
Every time coffee is served--and coffee is offered to every visitor--I
take a cup; it gives me a better chance of studying the curious scene
in which I am playing a part, and the more I look, the more beautiful
it seems to me, and it makes me almost sad to think I cannot meet this
spirit of democracy in any other land. But the most beautiful part
of it all is the absolute “naturalness” of the situation. The rich
woman has not the patronizing attitude of the Western woman towards
her humbler sisters, the poor woman has not the cringing gratitude
of the West for favours received; each knows her part--the woman
whose birth and education entitle her to a chair and the woman whose
education teaches her, her place is on the floor, and who, even though
the high-born woman invites her to sit on a chair, refuses. Each is
fulfilling her destiny--each is content with her lot.
I do not swear by everything Turkish, much as I love the Turks. They
have their faults; which nation has not its faults? but, as a woman
who has led the life of a Turkish woman, surely I am privileged to
point out to the reader the most beautiful features of this life as I
see them. We have been unjust to Turkey; we have for so long confounded
the Turkish subjects with the cruel despots of the Hamidian régime; we
have for so long now condemned wholesale everything Turkish, and the
novel-writers of the day describe a Turkey which certainly does not
exist to-day.
I have so often explained the meaning of the word harem; the papers
have repeated my explanation; but I still receive letters asking the
most primitive questions I would be ashamed to repeat to my friends.
They who know our history and literature as few in England know it, how
would they feel were they to have an idea of what Europe thought of
them? How is it possible for a British official, after long residence
here, to ask whether we eat with our fingers? How could a man of any
intelligence suppose that my host, who has eaten at the Kaiser’s table,
could come back to his own country and eat with his fingers? One feels
inclined to treat the question with the contempt one feels for the
questioner, but silence is consent, and one of the reasons why the
modern Turk is so misjudged to-day is because he has treated these
calumnies with silent contempt.
To the British official I answer, then, we eat with Sheffield knives
and forks, we eat off British plates, we sit on British chairs, we have
a British table, British linen, and a British sideboard, and in every
corner of this house is some token of the very great love the late
Pasha had for my country.
And the word harem! When will Europe understand the meaning of that
unfortunate word? An Arabic word, meaning “sacred” or “forbidden,” it
is used to describe those rooms in a Turkish house exclusively reserved
for the women. Imagine for a moment a konak (Turkish palace, a large
Turkish country house), situated on a hill, and with a magnificent
view over the Sea of Marmora and its picturesque islands. The wooden
gates are always open, the beggars enter at leisure and loiter in the
carriage-drive, and walk along the garden paths, and sit under the
trees and eat the fruit, so that unless you notice you have entered
a gate you would imagine yourself still on the road. To the ordinary
tourist this garden would seem a mass of ruins, a waste heap, a place
most shamefully neglected. But the connoisseur knows at once the
priceless treasures it contains, relics of Byzantine fountains, crypts,
cornerstones, for which Western museums would give a fortune.
There are two entrances to this Turkish house. One leads into the
selamlik, and the door leading into the harem is at the side. In the
selamlik, or men’s quarters, there are reception-rooms, a dining-room,
and bed-rooms for the unmarried male relations living here. A door in
the selamlik leads into a big salon, and a door also from the harem
leads into this same big salon. It is here that European guests are
received, having entered by the door of the selamlik, and this is all
they see of a Turkish house; it is here they must find all the material
for their romances of Turkish life. Occasionally through the open door
they catch a glimpse of some of the ladies of the house who pass by the
door, and who strictly keep their hair veiled. They see, perhaps, the
slaves in their picturesque costumes, and immediately the thought of
“polygamy” enters their mind; all these ladies must be the wives of the
Pasha.
Polygamy does not exist, nowadays, in Turkey, or at least it is
very exceptional. Even many members of the Imperial family content
themselves with one wife. The reason for this is only too obvious.
“When four wives meant to their possessor four tillers of the land,”
said a witty Pasha, the other day, “there was some sense in polygamy,
but not when they buy their dresses at Paquin’s.” Setting aside,
however, the economic question, where is the woman to be found who
would tolerate a rival in her own home, and supposing she did, what
kind of a life would the poor master lead?
A story is told of a pious Moslem who was always the first in the
mosque. “How is it you are so early?” one day his friend asked him;
“however early I come, you are always here.” “I have two wives,”
answered the pious man; “I get away as soon as I possibly can.”
The Turkish woman is proud, and insists that her dignity be respected,
and, personally, I know few who would put up with the “polygamy”
which women of the Latin races are obliged to accept. When a Turkish
woman marries, her husband is obliged according to his means to make
a settlement; this sum becomes hers should she find it necessary to
divorce him. So when a wife has cause for complaint she claims her
dowry and personal effects, and returns to her family or nearest
relative, and both husband and wife are free to marry again.
Marriages can be made and unmade here with a rapidity that would
astonish even our Transatlantic cousins. Reform of the marriage and
divorce laws is urgently needed, and yet when you come to look at
the question carefully, regrettable as this easy divorce is, it is
astonishing how few men take advantage of their privilege. In a country
where public opinion considers a man’s private life belongs exclusively
to him, where men and women take their pleasures apart, where men
are so frequently obliged to seek the society of European women, and
divorce is as easy as saying “Good morning,” it seems incredible to
me that the Turkish households run along so smoothly. Perhaps it is
that the Turkish wife, feeling her insecure position, takes particular
care to please her lord and master; perhaps it is that the Turk is, as
a rule, a good husband and father; perhaps it is that he sees in his
wife a charm the European does not possess. At any rate, to a foreigner
these laws appear as though they were made to lead men into temptation.
Many people have stayed to lunch this week, none of them, of course,
invited. Always our table is laid for twelve persons, although
sometimes we are only three to lunch. Those who call in the morning
stay to lunch as a matter of course; the hostess would feel herself
slighted were they to go away without sharing her meal. She it is
who is under obligations to her guests for honouring her with their
presence.
The two principal meals here, lunch and dinner, are unending, and
generally extend to twelve or fifteen courses, quite ten of those
courses being vegetables cooked in oil or cooked with the meat, and,
the goodness of the meat having given itself to the vegetables, it is
not served at table, but is given to the beggars or the endless army
of cats which inhabits the basement of a Turkish house. These cats,
fortunately, understand their place is downstairs unless they are
invited upstairs. Stamboul will soon be as overcrowded with cats, as
Pera was with dogs. “Why do you not drown some of them?” I asked a
member of this household. “It would be a sin according to the Koran,”
said he; “we only kill animals to eat them.”
Turkish cooking, delicious though it be, is not the diet for most of
the ladies here, and certainly not for me. Cheese _bereks_, of pastry,
so thin that they fall in bits before you can get them into your mouth.
_Kadaïf_, biscuits soaked in treacle and covered with sugared cream,
the breast of chicken ground into a powder and served with cream and
chocolate--I feel I need four hours’ hard riding to digest properly the
dishes the hospitable Turks set before us, and I have scarcely walked
five hundred yards in six weeks.
This lack of physical exercise and air is to me one of the most
unfortunate features of Turkish life. It is true the windows are open,
but the sun shining through the lattice windows does not have a chance
of playing its proper part; it can neither warm the house nor kill
the microbes. This would not matter so much if the ladies spent more
time out of doors, or if, when they are out of doors, they kept their
veils up. There is absolutely no reason now why they should not; the
police have strict orders from the “feminist” Military Governor of
Constantinople to interfere in no way with the ladies, and any man
daring to insult a woman is punished with exile.
But the slavery of ages cannot be cast aside in a few months, and the
ladies continue to wear their thick black canvas veils over their
faces. Through this veil the beautiful coloured landscape becomes
a black-and-white sketch. On hot days it is unbearable; one has a
tendency to squint because of looking through the holes in order to
see, and it makes one’s eyes ache if one suddenly throws it back and
comes into the full glare of the sunshine. And yet the Turkish woman
still wears her veil down. “You see,” said Djémal Bey (the Military
Governor of Constantinople), “they will not take advantage of the
liberty I try to give them.”
And now the men, not the women, curious as it may seem to Western
minds, have awakened to the fact that this lack of physical exercise is
beginning to show most distressing results in the poor anæmic children
born of these mothers who take no exercise. Nowadays, when thinking men
no longer accept the decrees of the Church as the supreme verdict, but
begin to judge for themselves, progress is possible.
Formerly, when the weaklings died off, the faithful bowed their
heads in resignation: Kismet, “it is written,” said they. Now the
indefatigable Minister of the Interior, Talaat Bey, who has ordered
fifty schools to be opened during the next year, is importing into the
country teachers of Swedish drill. I took part the other day in the
first lesson given to the girls. How interesting it was to see their
wide-awake, wondering eyes, their look of disgust when the teacher
appeared in knickerbockers and unveiled in the presence of the male
inspector--they who, though only ten to twelve, had their hair closely
veiled. And the mothers who came upon the scene, and with tears in
their eyes begged that they might have their children back, for they
could not understand what these Western women were doing with them.
How strange and curious it all is, this awakening of a people after
centuries of sleep!
In this work of regeneration, again, we have not given the Turks either
the praise or justice they deserve. It is when one is behind the
scenes, and sees the difficulties the Turks have to contend with that
one can appreciate their efforts. It is true they have made mistakes;
youth and inexperience always make mistakes--that is the natural order
of things. It would certainly have been better for Turkey to have made
more mistakes and had the advantage of the lesson those mistakes bring
than to have relied on Europe for assistance. The duty of Europe should
have been to help the Turks to help themselves, instead of which all
along the line they have stepped in and taken the bread from their
mouths.
Here are these Turks struggling against the tyranny of a religion
which is not the religion of Mahomet; they are striving for a more
intelligent interpretation of the Koran, especially on the subject of
women and the veil. The all-powerful Sheik-ul-Islam, whose followers
are principally amongst the turban-headed men in Asia Minor interferes
with progress, as the Church always does when Church and State are
combined. When Djemil Pasha, the Prefect of Constantinople, opened a
beautiful park in Stamboul, and gave men and women permission to walk
in that park at the same time, the Sheik-ul-Islam issued a decree
forbidding the women to walk in this park the same day as the men.
Then Talaat Bey, with a boldness yet unknown in Islam, issued a decree
ignoring the Sheik-ul-Islam, and gave women and men permission to walk
in the park on the same days.
All these reforms are going on in what Europe considers an
almost bankrupt State. Education, new roads, industries, a new
navy--everything is needed; but Turkey will pull herself together if
only she has confidence in herself.
CHAPTER VI CHAMPIONS OF WOMEN--THE MEN WHO LEAD
I have been to one of the Turkish feminist meetings, which take place
every Friday afternoon upon which it is possible to find speakers.
This society is not organized according to our Western methods, there
being no responsible head and no list of members. It has not even a
battle-cry, as, for example, “the vote,” nor an official name; it is
the society where the different interests of women are discussed, and
its best appellation, perhaps, would be “the society for the elevation
of womanhood.” From articles which have from time to time appeared in
our papers I imagined there was in Turkey an organized society for the
abolition of the veil, and that “man,” the arch-enemy of woman, was the
chief obstacle to woman’s progress. I believe, however, this idea is
prevalent in our Western countries.
Signed always with the name of a Turkish woman, these articles are
written by persons who are catering for readers of sensation. The names
of the writers are unknown here amongst the feminists, the statements
most emphatically denied; it is not to the women’s advantage to be
described as these articles describe them--beautiful, idle creatures
airing their grievances to the women of the West. A Turkish woman
never airs her grievances, most certainly not to foreigners, and those
who come into intimate contact with her know she resents being asked
questions, and she does not ask to be pitied.
I have pointed out in previous chapters that for the present the
Turkish woman’s aim is not to cast aside the veil, and also the fact
which is still almost incomprehensible to me, viz. the encouragement
the men are giving to the women in their work. It is they who are
trying to give the women courage; they who are urging the women to
be a little bolder in their tactics, and who, in their writings and
speeches, are imploring them to leave no stone unturned to hasten their
enfranchisement. I am told that the men have even written articles
for the newly founded woman’s paper, and signed them with feminine
names, for the number of women writers here is still very limited.
The cultured women, it is true, speak Turkish, but as their education
has been given by French or English governesses, the study of their
own language has been neglected, and at present they can best express
themselves in a language not their own.
My friends speak and write to one another in French; hence, when
Fâtima and I walk, which is very rarely, and speak to one another
in French, no one supposes that one of these veiled figures is an
Englishwoman. It seems almost to a stranger that French is the language
of the country, and Turkish is for the poor and uneducated, although
the members of the new Nationalist movement would not be happy to hear
this. They are, however, setting themselves to the task of learning
their own language, which they have neglected, and many are doing so
with a view to writing. Halidé-Hanoum, the most talented of Turkish
writers, began the study of her own language after she was twenty, and
another Turkish lady, who spent a year in London when her husband was
attached to the Ottoman Embassy, is working day and night at Turkish in
order to write.
The hall in which the feminist meeting was held was the large lecture
hall of the university, lent by the men. Men were the stewards, and
all four speakers were men. Strange and chivalrous as it seemed to
me to see the men conducting the women’s meeting, I was, however,
disappointed not to hear a woman speak. I had so often heard of
Halidé-Hanoum’s talent as a speaker, and I particularly wanted to
compare her gestures, her delivery, and her subject-matter with the
women speakers of my own country. Halidé-Hanoum is the mother of
two children. Up till a month ago she taught history, pedagogy, and
literature at the Normal School for Girls. She has written five or six
volumes of importance, as well as articles on special subjects, and
frequently she addresses the Friday afternoon meetings. But in all her
work, she tells me, she has been encouraged by the opposite sex, and
no one ever questions whether, since she gives so much time to public
work, her children and home are neglected, as is generally the case
with us.
Long before the meeting began the big hall was crowded with veiled
women, a few of whom never raised their face veils during the whole
three hours’ meeting. The hall, from the entrance, appeared as if it
were filled with nuns, for even those who had their veils thrown back
carefully covered their hair. I was seated in the middle of the hall,
with the Turkish woman who recently studied at Bedford College on my
left, to translate for me, and my friend on my right, also to translate
if she felt inclined.
The first person whom the chairman called upon to address us was a
poet. Being unable to understand more than the titles and the ideas
of the poems, I listened to the rhythmic language and watched the
interested faces of the listeners. This poet, my friend explained to
me, was a prominent member of the society, or rather, shall we call
it the movement of “Turkey for the Turks”? One of the objects of this
movement is to purify the language, to use exclusively Turkish words
instead of a mixture of Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, which takes away
from the strength of the language and makes the study of Turkish
so difficult even for the Turks. We Westerners forget that, besides
French and English, and perhaps German, cultured Turks must learn three
Oriental languages.
Another object of this Nationalist movement is to encourage the
translation of the Koran into Turkish. The Koran has never been
completely translated into Turkish; commentaries only have been made,
many of which have lost the spirit of the Prophet’s meaning. When once
the Koran is translated, when once the people can read, think, and
interpret for themselves the meaning of the Prophet, then really will
serious progress begin.
I have been studying with a friend the verses in the Koran concerning
women. “Women must have similar rights to men,” says the Koran. “Women
are the twin halves of men--the rights of women are sacred. The best of
men are those who are best to their wives. To acquire knowledge is an
equal duty of man and woman. Woman is the sovereign in the house of her
husband.” “Whosoever doeth the things that are right, whether male or
female, they shall enter Paradise.” This is all so strange to me, I who
have heard, ever since I can remember, that Mahomet denied woman even a
soul, and she could not go to Heaven unless her husband cared to take
her there.
We read, too, the verses on veiling. “Mahomet,” my friend explained to
me, “knowing the jealous temperament of the Arab, considered it wiser
for _married_ women to veil their hair, but he did not say all women
were to be veiled, that is an amendment tacked on by his followers, and
it is they, and not the Prophet, who are responsible for this useless
bondage.”
I have discussed with many enlightened Turkish women this question of
the veil. Is it a protection or is it not? Halidé-Hanoum considers it
creates between the sexes a barrier which is impossible when both sexes
should be working for the common cause of humanity. It makes the woman
at once “the forbidden fruit,” and surrounds her with an atmosphere of
mystery which, although fascinating, is neither desirable nor healthy.
The thicker the veil the harder the male stares. The more the woman
covers her face the more he longs to see the features which, were he to
see but once, would interest him no more.
Personally I find the veil no protection. In my hat I thread my way in
and out of the cosmopolitan throng at Pera. No one speaks to me, no one
notices me, and yet my mirror shows I am no more ugly than the majority
of my sex. But when I have walked in the park, a veiled woman, what a
different experience. Even the cold Englishman has summed up courage
and enough Turkish to pay compliments to our “silhouettes.” We have not
heeded them, walking as real Turkish women, with stooped backs and
bent heads and a rather swinging gait, but these two silent figures
only served to excite their curiosity, and no doubt they wondered at my
thick veil....
Another reason for condemning the veil is that it dispenses women from
taking the responsibility of their actions. Should they desire to stray
away from the path of virtue, who can control the actions of these
black-robed, veiled women? During the reign of Abdul Hamid they helped
most considerably in bringing about the Revolution, for it was they who
went from house to house carrying the letters, as the men never could
have dared to do. It was the women who were responsible for nominations
being cancelled and for many important appointments, and even I have
seen before now veiled women pleading the cause of their mankind at the
feet of a Grand Vizier’s daughter. Turkish men and women now, however,
have both declared that an anonymous power is a danger to the State,
and yet who is to be the first woman to leave off her veil?
But to return to the speakers at the meeting. The poems, in beautiful
sounding language, were an appeal to the women to save the Fatherland,
and again and again I recognized that sacred word. The poet, with a
woeful face, outstretched arms, and tearful voice, pleaded till most of
us had melted into tears. This recent war had touched all those women
so closely, most of them had lost some loved ones during the war,
many of them had nursed those who were wounded and had fallen victims
to cholera, but always the word Fatherland brought home to them the
terrible fact that half the Fatherland was no longer theirs.
The next speaker was more philosophical and scientific. We dried our
eyes and listened. He was explaining to us the value of our sex from a
scientific point of view, and he tried to show the impossibility of one
sex raising itself without the assistance of the other. “Am I really
in Turkey?” I frequently asked myself, as the principal points of the
speaker’s utterances were translated to me. It is as if sometimes when
I think of my home away yonder and my fellow-women workers that I am
standing on my head. “We are at the Antipodes, we English and Turks,” a
Pasha once said to me. Indeed, he was right. Was there ever, I wonder,
in my country a feminist meeting conducted only by men and where the
men urged the women to rebel and strike for freedom?...
The third speaker had been in England, and prefaced his plea of
“Turkey for the Turks” by relating some of his experiences in our
capital. “On one occasion,” said he, “I had been invited to listen
to music performed by petticoated soldiers. But it was more horrible
than anything I ever heard. Our Kurds would have been ashamed of such
a performance!” On another occasion he visited a school; the teacher
asked the assembled boys to guess the speaker’s nationality. Unable to
guess, they had to be told he was a Turk. “And then,” said the speaker,
“the little boys uttered a cry of alarm.” “Why are you frightened?”
asked the teacher. “Turks eat little boys,” was their reply. The
speaker was not at all enthusiastic about my country; he felt so hurt
at being asked the usual questions about the harem life, and how many
wives he had, that he finally refused, he said, to converse with such
ignorant people. He spoke, too, of the grinding poverty of the East
End of our capital. “How dare that nation criticize us,” he added,
“when within the gates of their own city people are living in a manner
unworthy of a civilized nation.” He was right, this speaker, much as I
wish he could have left unsaid what he had, alas! seen.
From afar we appear to the foreigner so great and magnificent, but
when once they have stayed in our capital, and seen for themselves the
degradation of our people, there is always a blot on the picture, and
England is never for them the England they had dreamt of and wished to
see. The object of this speech was naturally to prove the futility of
any longer admiring a people who took no pains to hide how little they
respected the Turks. “We must learn to help ourselves. God helps those
who help themselves,” was his concluding remark. These Young Turks have
certainly begun to learn the wisdom of action.
The last speech, however, was the speech which stirred the women most.
How I wish it had been possible to read it afterwards in French, for
my neighbours, after two and a half hours’ constant translating for
me, began to grow just a little weary, and I could see they wished
to listen to every word. The speaker had no notes, but he spoke with
eloquence and a passion I have never yet seen in a man pleading a cause
not his own. His subject was “The veil and the subjection of women.”
He condemned it from a moral point of view, and he condemned it from a
physical point of view, and showed how, in spite of the custom which
has been accepted now for centuries, veiling is against the teaching of
the Koran. “Our Prophet,” said he, “considered ignorance a sin. What
has been done to help you out of ignorance?”
A woman, according to the Koran, may preach in a mosque, and may
exercise any profession she chooses. How have you taken advantage of
these privileges? Then he blamed the woman. “Can you not feel your
bondage?” he asked. “Who can give you freedom unless you yourselves
ask for freedom? What right have the interpreters to bind and fetter
and degrade women? I am not against religion; it would be disastrous
for Turkey to-day if there were no religion; but what I demand,
and what every thinking man and woman should demand to-day, is a
reformed religion, a seeking after the truth, the real meaning of the
Prophet’s teaching.” A storm of applause greeted these words. My friend
translated. I watched the women with their veils down over their face.
Surely, after such a speech they would throw them back.
I, the foreigner, was stirred; it seemed to me that after such a speech
I would be capable of any action to be free ... there sat the women,
a handkerchief occasionally poked behind the thick veil, to wipe
away their tears, but never once were their veils lifted. How well
he had spoken! How necessary, indeed, in this country is a reformed
religion! How extraordinary it is that everywhere the Church is the
chief opponent to most reforms! Has the Christian Church given to woman
the place that Christ intended her to have? How has the Church helped
the women of my country in their fight for freedom? A little mild
assistance when the heavy spade work is done, perhaps, is better than
no assistance at all....
Unfortunately for the women here, the theatre at present is too
primitive to be of any practical assistance. I do not mean, of course,
the poor French companies which visit Pera almost weekly, but the
little native theatres to be found right in the heart of Stamboul, and
which my friends have visited since I have been staying with them.
Whatever piece is played at these little theatres becomes ridiculous by
the mere fact that when an Armenian cannot be found to play the part
of a Turkish woman, a man has to supply that need, and that in itself
turns any play into a farce. It is not easy either to find an Armenian
to play the part of a young Turkish girl. Her accent is not pleasant,
so I am told; her voice exceedingly disagreeable; and I personally saw
a woman whom no theatrical manager would have accepted in my country,
except for the rôle of a stout, elderly matron, playing the part of a
coy maiden of fifteen.
This, of course, made the piece worthless except as an amusement, and
a form of amusement a trifle too primitive for thinking women to-day.
“How can I convince these people?” one day a Turk asked me. “Have you
ever tried the theatre?” I asked in reply. “In our Western countries it
is from the stage that most of our important messages are given to the
world--the stage has been magnificent in the cause of women.”
But to return once more to the meeting. “Can you not see for
yourselves,” went on the speaker, “that although it is our duty to
protect our women, it is detrimental to their very best interests
to keep them shielded from every gust of wind? What use are these
hot-house flowers in the garden of life? Virtue cannot be purchased
by slavery. Are you going to cut out your children’s tongues to
prevent their telling lies?” Again a storm of applause gave my
neighbour a chance of translating for me. Then the meeting ended.
How magnificently he had spoken! After such a speech one would have
expected these women to have walked out without their veils ... but
they are still afraid.
To ask a Turkish woman to go out without her veil is almost like
asking an Englishwoman to go out without a blouse. Living in a Turkish
household one sees this slavery has become almost part of a woman’s
existence. I have heard of women face to face with death, women saved
from a burning house, covering their hair with a veil--the height of
imprudence. The other day at luncheon a poetess of about fifty was at
the table. In the midst of a most interesting discussion on modern
Turkish literature, she screamed, and holding her serviette between
her face and the open door, called for a veil. She had heard the young
Bey’s spurs coming towards the open door of the dining-room. “Don’t
come in!” called my hostess to her husband, and at last I understood
what was happening.
I was wearing a Broussa silk scarf round my shoulders; I lent it to
her; she covered up all her hair and tied it round her neck; then the
young Bey came in to lunch. And yet this was not an ignorant woman! On
the contrary, she was a woman of great intelligence, but she, like so
many others, will not countenance any attempt to modify the veil.
And what about the other women? Halidé-Hanoum, who tells me “the
veil surrounds the woman with an unhealthy air of mystery”--how does
she appear in the street? A thick veil over her face, which she never
throws back. I asked her one day the reason why she kept herself so
closely veiled. “It is a habit,” she answered. Another feminist told
me of her great admiration for the British militant Suffragettes. “If
only we Turkish women could get some of that fine spirit,” she said;
and a little while later she told me of an adventure she had had a
few days before. It was towards five o’clock, an insolent Turk had
pulled her sleeve and pinched her arm. She was defending herself with
her umbrella, when the policeman came to her assistance. “And what
happened?” I asked, for she stopped short in her narrative. “I am
ashamed to say,” she answered, “I ran away. If I had stopped to give
evidence the man would have been exiled.” “And what an advertisement
for your cause,” I added. “Yes,” said she, “but I had not the courage
to face the scandal!”
As I have said before, it is not for me to criticize the methods of the
women of a civilization so totally different from our own. The men are
urging them to take their freedom, and helping them all they can, but
if they will be free they themselves must strike the blow. The women of
another civilization cannot help them except by giving them the benefit
of education whenever they ask for it. An enterprising Turkish woman
came a year ago to Bedford College to study. Her year in England will
mean more to her than anything that could have been offered to her. She
may not have learnt from us as much book knowledge as the French could
have taught her, but she took away with her a moral background which is
of more value than mere knowledge. I have seen this woman giving her
lessons. I have seen her when her weekday lessons are ended spending
her Friday (the Turkish day of rest) giving lessons to the women of the
poor classes. Some of these women are between fifty and sixty, some are
younger, but it is one of the most pathetic sights I have yet seen here
to see these old ladies spelling out their words like little children,
and with bent backs applying themselves to the task of learning to
write as if their very existence depended on it.
When once women can be seriously interested in a cause they are
splendid. In Turkey, in spite of their veil, in spite of their apparent
desire not to take advantage of the privileges offered them, they have
shown themselves magnificent in two most important branches--nursing
and teaching. In both these branches the Turkish woman has shown
qualities Europe never supposed she possessed--she is a true patriot.
CHAPTER VII PASSIONATE WOMEN PATRIOTS--A MASS MEETING
This is the anniversary of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire--a
red-letter day for Turkish feminists. To-day for the first time the
various women’s societies have held a mass meeting, and a member from
each society has given an account of the year’s work. This meeting,
then, marks the end of the old régime for the Turkish woman. She has
now given us, as it were, chapter and verse as to the rôle she intends
to play in the future. She has cast aside the dangerous rôle she played
until quite recently--a powerful part, and all the more powerful since
it was anonymous. When anything went wrong with the political pie
into which so many of them had put their fingers--it was not a case
of “cherchez la femme,” for she disappeared behind the veil, and the
men least of all suspected how well these women could ruin a cause
if only they chose. Turkish women, then, are sacrificing a powerful
anonymous rôle for an honest responsible part in the work of the world,
and recognizing that only by straightforward, honest methods can they
advance the welfare of humanity. And so the Turkish women who declared
themselves perfectly satisfied with their bondage, and yet at the same
time worked in secret to break those chains, have now come out in the
manner of the Western women, openly to demand their rights.
But it is unjust to give all the credit of this meeting to the women.
How different would have been their position now had they had a
Government against them! I am not going to put halos round the heads
of the Young Turks, nor am I going to present them with a pair of
angel’s wings; such vain flattery would be as useless as it is bad
form. The Young Turk, however, has not yet had his opportunity. Youth
and inexperience are responsible for many strange blunders--effort
is so new a chapter in the life-story of Turkey; effort and blunders
beget experience, and experience he must have at all costs. In his
political methods he has not been impeccable. I do not defend him. What
I do protest against, however, is that an action committed by a Turk
should be called “a crime,” and yet committed by a Christian neighbour
“a diplomatic error.” And so in this question of women. “See,” says
Europe, “how the Turk treats his women.” “See,” I might answer, “how
the British Government treats its women.”
There are so many questions which should be entirely settled by women
and never taken to the Imperial Parliament at all. The Turkish
Government has been wiser than we in this matter, for it recognizes
that education and the housing of the poor are questions which should
be left as much as possible in the women’s hands.
A Turkish Feminist Government! To Western Europe this sounds strange.
We have heard for so long of the Paradise of Mahomet, where women have
no place, and of a religion which does not credit them even with the
possession of a soul. Exactly how these ideas originated no one has
been able to tell me--perhaps in the imagination of Hood, for the Koran
distinctly states that “Paradise is at the mother’s feet.” A Turkish
Feminist Government! Have the women quite become accustomed to the
idea? It is true they never before possessed such privileges. One of
the first triumphs of the counter-revolution of April 13 was the total
destruction of the woman’s club founded by Selma Hanoum, sister of
Ahmed Riza Bey, and that lady nearly lost her life as her reward for
having espoused the cause of the liberty of her Turkish sisters.
This meeting, which celebrated the foundation of the Ottoman Empire,
was under the patronage of Djémal Pasha, now General Pasha and Minister
of Public Works, to whom I have so often referred as the Military
Governor of Constantinople. When congratulating him on his new
appointment, I asked him if, in his new capacity, he would still be the
“feminist” Minister. “Most certainly,” said he; “this whole Eastern
question, is it not a woman’s question?”
He it was who gave women the opportunity of visiting the warship
_Hamidieh_; he who allowed a Turkish woman, Belkis Chefket Hanoum,
to go up in an aeroplane, and then had her portrait placed in the
Military Museum beside the heroes of Turkey; he it was who had the
State Treasury and old Serail opened for the first time for Turkish
women. They have now sold at a charity bazaar; they are organizing a
concert, at which they will be allowed to perform. It seems hardly
comprehensible to Western readers that these favours should be a
question to be decided by a Government, or that such elementary
every-day occurrences should be counted as steps towards freedom; they
should have been in Constantinople under the régime of Hamid, then they
could take these “reforms” at their proper value.
Every place in the theatre where the meeting was held was crowded
long before the time announced for its starting. There were no men in
the audience, but men took part in the proceedings and made brilliant
feminist speeches. The whole aspect of the audience was so different
from anything I had seen in the West--the black-robed and veiled women,
some puffing away contentedly at their cigarettes, others walking up
and down to soothe their restless babies. Babies at a meeting such as
this astonished me. I made the remark to my friend. They were not the
women of the “mothers’ meeting” class, as many would have supposed
judging according to our Western habits, but simply mothers who were
interested in the welfare of the country, and curious to hear what was
being done for the uplifting of their sex, but who at the same time
could not make up their minds to leave “the baby at home.” It was a
curious conflict between the woman of the old and new civilizations,
which, although so natural to my Turkish colleagues, interested me more
even than the accounts given by the various societies of the work done.
It is unfortunate not to be able to understand the language of the
country one is visiting--this was the first time I had ever heard
Turkish women speak in public, and I had to rely on the assistance of
an interpreter. They all seemed to speak, however, without difficulty,
quite simply, with few gestures, no notes, and perfect calmness until
they came to the sacred word, “fatherland”--then there were tears in
their voice as well as in their eyes.
How magnificent is this patriotism of the women! There is a strong
movement of patriotism amongst the men, but nothing to be compared with
that wonderful “Joan of Arc”-ism which is going on amongst the women.
With the men it is a mourning for their lost honour, a desire for
revenge. On coming out of the military college at Broussa I saw each
boy pause before an image, which I from the distance mistook for the
“Sacred Heart.” How had this “Sacred Heart” come into a Moslem college,
I wondered; but on closer inspection I found it to be the heart of the
fatherland, pierced and bleeding, and above it the map of the Ottoman
Empire, with its lost provinces covered in black crêpe. Each boy, I
repeat, paused, his brow clouded, his chin was set firm, and then he
placed in the collecting-box his “mite” for the national defence.
With the women the patriotism has the same foundation of giving to a
cause (far, far more than they can afford they have given to the fund),
but a woman’s patriotism is more complete than that of a man--there is
in it a mixture of fine religious feeling, a pious cult for traditions
and responsibility as mothers of the race. Woman is the destiny of
man, and the Turkish woman, because of her lack of education and her
cloistered condition, has been unable to give to the country the men it
needed. All this was explained in the speeches. All her shortcomings
the Turkish woman recognizes--this is the beginning of her salvation.
Another feature of this meeting which interested and surprised me was
to see how cleverly the Turkish woman is able to raise money and how
willingly her sisters respond to her appeal.
The seats for the meeting were from five francs downwards, the entrance
money being devoted to the upkeep of a school for girls that women have
recently opened. They are responsible for the expenses of the school.
During the afternoon “Alexandra roses” were sold in the same manner in
which they are sold in my country for the benefit of the poor refugees,
by whom they are made, and finally, after the principal speeches, a
collection was taken in the real “Pankhurst” style for the national
defence. I might almost have been back in London hearing the “militant”
speakers pleading for funds for the “war chest.”
“The nation must have a fleet, its very existence depends on its fleet,
and the women must help,” began the speaker. “I trust the women to
give whatever they can.” There was a moment’s silence, a thrill went
through the audience. What was coming? One of the charms of Turkish
life is that you never know what will happen. Anything may happen, and
generally that which is least expected. There was another pause. All
eyes were fixed on the stage, for coming through the wings appeared a
Turkish woman, wearing the white sash of the Navy League, and carrying
in her arms what I supposed to be a baby in long clothes. Slowly and
reverently she began to take off its silk wrappers, reverently she
handed it to the chairman--it was not a baby at all, but a magnificent
head of woman’s hair sent with these words, “This is all I can give
towards the Turkish fleet.”
As a rule Turkish women have very beautiful hair. Mahomet regarded a
woman’s hair as her “crowning glory,” and it was for this reason he
considered it wiser for married women’s hair to be veiled; it is not a
woman’s face, but her hair the fanatics insist on having covered, and,
as I have already explained, it is almost indecent to appear before
a man with one’s hair unveiled. One day I had strayed through the
selamlik, and had gone bareheaded to the door. An employee had arrived
at the door at the same time, and seeing me turned his head discreetly
away until I had time to pull my _écharpe_ over my hair. Hair, then,
having this value attached to it, this extraordinary contribution
towards the Turkish navy had a special meaning for the Turkish women.
And the giver? Was she married? If so, her gift was of even greater
value, since physical charm is the Turkish woman’s dowry. Was she the
wife, sister, or daughter of a Turkish officer? She preferred to remain
anonymous with true Turkish modesty, and £80 was raised for the fund
from the sale of her hair.
Dear little patriot! Every time I see in the papers the Turks have
bought a new ship I shall think of her. Those ships to me have now
taken a form different from mere ships, for have I not seen them
purchased with the price of a woman’s hair, the widow’s mite, and the
orphan’s halfpence? But not only a woman’s hair--jewels, embroideries,
stuffs were sold for the ships that were to “guarantee the very
existence of the fatherland.” Most women were weeping. Who could help
it when mothers with bowed heads and broken hearts came forward with
offerings such as this: “£5 I give to the National Defence in memory of
my five sons fallen for the fatherland”?
And so the moments I am spending in Turkey in the charming intimacy of
my Turkish sisters are at bottom moments of sadness. Only five years
ago I saw this people strike for freedom and shout with joy at the
proclamation of the Constitution; now after only five years they are in
the deepest mourning. It is not in a fashionable hotel at Pera that one
can understand the real meaning of the war. Never shall I forget the
spectacle of a long procession of soldiers crossing the Galata Bridge.
Medical science had done its best for these men, snatched almost, as
it were, from the jaws of death. Of what use were they in life? One
person more to feed, and an eyesore to their nearest and dearest, one
really begins to wonder if the old Chinese method of hacking the enemy
to pieces is not, after all, the most merciful. There were men without
legs; some without hands and arms; some blind; but these were nothing
compared to the hideously disfigured faces of many, and some of those
earless or eyeless victims of the “Christian” Bulgars. No words can
describe their pitiful condition--these men had been mutilated for
their fatherland, a glorious destiny indeed. Should we not rejoice? At
the sight of them I was physically ill.
But there is another side to the question. These men, many of them,
were the breadwinners. Who is going to feed the women now? Now is the
time to blame the harem system. The idle, protected women, what are
they going to do now? In other countries women of this class could
cook or sew or clean. I would have been glad of some one to sew for me
besides Miss Chocolate, but in all Stamboul, amongst all these starving
women, I can find no woman to do plain sewing. It is not when women
are actually starving that one can teach them a trade; they must work
at once. They can embroider; they can produce embroidery that is worth
leaving to one’s grandchildren, and yet a European child of ten would
be ashamed to make buttonholes as they do.
And this priceless embroidery is less well paid than plain needlework
in my country. The Red Crescent Society undertakes to pay one franc a
day to these poor women who embroider and weave, and also to find work
for the poor refugees who have come back penniless to their native
land rather than lose their nationality. It is sad to see these poor
creatures arriving. I have been with the women of the Red Crescent
Society to meet them at the boats or outside the mosques, where they
sit and wait, whilst their husbands try to get work. They look
perfectly resigned, these poor women, as they sit huddled up beside
the carpets and the cats, kept in bird-cages. Those who have no baby
to nurse sit with their elbows on their knees and their heads on their
hands. They can only wait their fate. But the Red Crescent ladies are
there; they will not starve.
I had no idea before coming here of the splendid self-sacrifice these
women are making for these starving souls. They have formed a league
and have undertaken to buy only the stuffs of their own country, and
have opened a shop in Stamboul where only Turkish goods are sold. No
more Paris dresses, no more jewels; not one luxury till these poor,
starving women are fed, and if you ask a Turkish woman to-day what is
her greatest ambition, she will answer without hesitation, “To save my
poor country.”
I have no space in this book to write of the other works started by
women, but the Red Crescent, which is organized on the lines of the
Red Cross Society (and has the embroidery and weaving establishment
in addition), and the movement for the education of the women are, to
my mind, the most important of all. It is when one sees these women
themselves fettered by atavism, crippled for want of education and a
misunderstood teaching of the Koran, fighting against the terrible odds
of having to find work for women who cannot work, and food for hungry
mouths in a country where there is no money, that one understands how
bitterly these women resent the manner in which they are introduced by
the writer’s imagination to the Western world.
I very much doubt whether, in the West, we could have fought this
terrible fight against poverty as the Turkish women have done. It is
infinitely comforting, however, to think, as I sink at nights into my
comfortable cushions, that although the wind is howling and the rain
is beating against the windows of this konak, any beggar may come in
and find food and shelter in the basement. “Find me one of your Western
countries,” said one day to me Zeyneb (Pierre Loti’s disenchanted
heroine, to whom everything Western now is tarnished by a lack of
Christian charity), “where the poor are accommodated in the houses of
the rich; and if they were,” she added, “you would have to employ a
detective to watch them.”
CHAPTER VIII A TURKISH MOTHER
I have been this afternoon with Fâtima buying “birth” presents. In
a Moslem house it is difficult to find a more appropriate name for
these presents, which correspond to our christening presents. These
“birth” presents, however, were not only for a little new arrival in
this world, but for the dear friend to whom this little life was to be
entrusted.
This custom of honouring the mother as well as the child, insignificant
though it may seem, is only one of the few ways in which homage is paid
to the mother in the East. Here all maternity is respected. Not only
the married mother, but the unmarried mother, is respected, so that
the woman who is left with the “child of her shame” to do the best
she can for it and herself does not exist yet in Turkey. It is true
the Turks do not consider their women “responsible” for either their
good or bad conduct, however much freedom Islam gives them. In this,
as in most things, we and the Turks are at the Antipodes. According
to the Moslem law, a woman has absolute control of her own fortune;
she can exercise any profession she likes; but when it is a question
of a misdeed--theft, for example--the husband is responsible. I do not
defend the Turkish system--nor do I defend ours, and the Turkish women
themselves now recognize they must be accounted responsible for their
good and their bad deeds.
To understand the importance given to maternity, one must have lived
for a while in the East. Mahomet placed maternity above everything
else when he said “Paradise was at the mother’s feet.” In the highest
circles and in the poor man’s house the mother rules. As cadines
(wives) the Sultan’s legitimate wives do not count socially, yet if
the son of one of them becomes Sultan, she then is the highest lady in
the land--the Validé-Sultana, to whom all petitions from the women to
the Imperial Master must be addressed. She is the head of the Ottoman
Court, the only woman before whom the Sultan kneels.
And so in private life, the relations between mother and son are not
the same as with us. There are always reverence and respect for her as
well as love. She is not the “old mater,” nor would he allow her to
wait on him. However great a scoundrel a man may be, however deep his
hands may be steeped in blood, he will rise when his mother comes into
the room, kiss her hand, then raise it to his forehead as a sign of
great respect, and inquire for the health of Annajim (my dear mother),
and give her the seat of honour.
In the homes of the people, in the two-roomed cabins in Asia Minor, and
where they still eat out of one dish, helping themselves with their
fingers, the son will only take his share when he is sure his mother
has taken a substantial helping. The law of Islam obliges a man to keep
his mother, and his wife accepts this as a matter of course.
A young Turkish woman who marries and has her own establishment, as
with us, is the exception rather than the rule, and, personally,
amongst all the women with whom I am acquainted, I know no one who does
not live either with her husband’s or her own parents. Some parents
make the stipulation before consenting to their daughter’s marriage
that she shall still live with them, and I have met some parents who
have refused good marriages for their daughters simply because they
could not allow them to leave their home. The Turkish mother urges her
son to marry as soon as possible. He marries before he can even keep
himself. His family sees nothing extraordinary in the fact that they
have not only to keep him, but his wife and family.
“And the mother-in-law?” one naturally asks. The relationship between a
Turkish mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law is quite different from
the relationship existing in the West. My hostess and her mother-in-law
remind me not a little of Ruth and Naomi. The daughter-in-law treats
her husband’s mother just as she would treat her own mother, _i.e._
she has the same position towards her mother-in-law that she had
towards her own mother before marriage. It is the mother-in-law who
is the head of the house, the mother-in-law who sits in the place of
honour, the mother-in-law who is first greeted, the mother-in-law who
gives permission to do such and such a thing, and who is called by her
daughter-in-law Hanoum Effendi (honoured lady).
My friend cannot understand how difficult it would be for a
daughter-in-law in England to live with her husband’s mother, nor can
she understand the tactless Western woman who expects a mother-in-law,
her superior in age and experience, to give over the household to her
son’s wife. “My turn will come, alas! only too soon,” one lady said,
“when I become a mother-in-law, then I expect my daughter-in-law to
treat me as I have treated my husband’s mother--to love and respect
me, and not to make of me a subject of ridicule.” I must say it is
difficult to think of the sweet-faced woman who sits at the head of
our table as a mother-in-law in the Western sense of the word. She
effaces herself with exquisite tact; absents herself when she thinks
her presence unnecessary--for example, at our harem tea parties; gives
advice only when it is asked; and is always ready to show how grateful
she is to have gained a daughter and not lost her son.
It is curious and astonishing to see this woman of another generation
not understanding in the least her daughter-in-law’s civilization and
culture and yet accepting it as perfectly all right. After the midday
meal her prayer carpet is taken out of the cupboard and laid for her
on the floor of her room, her shoes are removed, she performs her
ablutions, veils her hair, and prays in the picturesque manner of the
East. She obeys the teaching of Mahomet in the letter and not in the
spirit, yet if it enters her head to wonder why her daughter-in-law
performs none of the prescribed religious duties she never makes a
remark.
When the young Bey’s brother officers dine with us she absents herself
from the table, for although nothing would induce her to be present,
she sees no reason for her daughter-in-law not presiding at the table.
Is it, I wonder, a broad mind which understands without understanding,
or is it a supreme trust in her son, that he will only allow his wife
to do those things which are right, or is it fatalism, a resignation to
put up with what you cannot change? At any rate, the smooth working of
a ménage of women of totally different centuries, the possibility of
their living together in perfect peace and affection, shows there must
be sacrifice on both sides, and a tact and diplomacy, which we do not
possess.
It might be argued, the Turkish bride is of the mother-in-law’s
choosing. Generally yes, but not always. In a marriage _à la Turque_
the bridegroom takes on trust her whom his mother chooses for him. He
is usually content with the choice, or, if he is not, he accepts her
as his written fate and makes the best of the situation. But since the
Turkish man has become accustomed to Western civilization he no longer
will marry _à la Turque_, and since the customs of the country do not
allow a man to see and speak with the woman he is to marry, many of
them prefer to marry a European.
A Turk recently told me you could not expect thinking Turkish men to
make a real Turkish marriage. He does not want a plaything--he wants a
companion, and Europe affords him the possibility of at least knowing
the woman he is to marry. To me it seems a dangerous and unsatisfactory
way of solving the woman question. Turks who have acted otherwise have
in general linked their existences with that of not the best class of
European society, to put it rather mildly. In fact, so serious did it
become that a short while ago the then Turkish Minister of Foreign
Affairs issued an order forbidding Turkish diplomatists to marry
without the consent of their Government. Truly a wise measure. All
details are required by the Turkish Government of the young lady’s
Embassy, and marriage without the Government’s consent means dismissal
from the service.
When the Turkish woman has a foreign daughter-in-law, the ménage does
not always run on smooth lines. The European is unable to adapt
herself to her new surroundings, she does not take the trouble to
understand the working of an entirely new civilization.... I have in
these cases, however, always admired the forbearance and tact of the
Turkish woman.
The modern Turkish woman demands the privilege of talking with her
future husband before her fate is signed and sealed. She does not have
the opportunity of knowing him as we Englishwomen know our future
husbands, but she can at least know whether he will “get on her
nerves,” in which case she refuses to marry him. Judging, however, as
she still does, by instinct, she generally chooses at least a man whom
she can respect and a man whose physical appearance pleases her. Many
women, however, have owned to me that they accepted their husbands
not with any feeling of gratitude or delight, but rather with one of
profound thankfulness they were no worse.
Most emphatically I disapprove of marriages between men of the East and
women of the West, not because I do not think Turkish men good husbands
and fathers, not because I do not consider them honest, upright men,
but because I always see in one of these unions, if not disaster for
the young couple themselves, at least disenchantment for the children
of these unions.
When discussing this subject seriously with a Turkish man who honoured
me by asking my advice about his proposed marriage with a foreign lady,
he confessed he preferred to marry a Mohammedan lady, but the “veil”
placed too many obstacles in the way of his enjoying her companionship.
“Why not marry a Turkish woman and give her her freedom?” “No,” he
answered, “the women must go slowly; I shall be in my grave before they
are free.”
If ever Turkish women wanted an argument in favour of a strong militant
movement, they have it in the colossal egoism of men like these. Had
she the courage to break her fetters, then he would honour her with his
protection, but since she has not, the foreigner, often the Turkish
woman’s social inferior, becomes his life companion. The law of Islam,
at least a bad interpretation of the law of Islam, refuses to allow a
Turkish woman to marry any but a Mohammedan, whereas a Moslem man may
marry a Christian woman; the woman now understands the slight this is
to her sex and intelligence.
Since Turkish women cannot retaliate, then, by marrying a man of the
West, how are they to accept the challenge other than by fighting for
freedom?
I have so often sighed here for the daring of some of my countrywomen,
inconsistent as it may seem. What these women need is a strong woman
at their head--a strong, responsible woman, with a definite programme,
and able to gain the confidence of her sex. It is the circumstances
which make the hero or heroine. “I am such an one as my age requireth,”
says the Book of Judith. It was the Hamidian régime which made Enver
Pasha--there will come, most surely, a woman leader, and that moment
may not be far off.
With a feeling of thankfulness that her husband is no worse, the
Turkish woman (there are exceptions, of course) naturally stakes
everything on maternity. That there should be women in the West who
actually refuse to have children is incomprehensible to my friends,
and that there are women who for the sake of their figures give their
children to strangers to nurse is almost as incomprehensible.
“What have we Eastern women in common with you women of the West--not
even the heart,” said one day a Turkish woman to me as she caressed the
little curly-headed girl who played at her knees. She added, “All my
life’s happiness is in that little form; my greatest sorrow was when
I found it was physically impossible to nurse her, and every time I
hear her call her foster-mother ‘Anna’ (mother), a name no doubt she
deserves, I have just a tiny pain at my heart.” And yet how good she is
to this poor peasant woman. She had been deserted by her husband, her
own child died a few days after its birth. “You understand,” she went
on, “she will stay with me as long as ever she likes. She has been too
good to my child for me ever to leave her without a home.”
Aïche-Hanoum, the mother-to-be, for whom we bought presents, has
been the subject of conversation for weeks past. To her all kinds of
delicacies are sent, the most comfortable place is reserved for her
in the harem, there is always some one to tuck her up amongst the
cushions. How tenderly she is spoken of, how tenderly she is spoken to
... in a short while Aïche will be called to fulfil the divine mission
(according to the East) for which every woman was sent into the world.
Then her outlook on life will be different. She will have a different
position towards her friends; it is almost as if she had, as it were,
risen in the social scale.
* * * * *
We went to visit Aïche, the very day the little new arrival was
expected. “In all probability we shall stay all night,” said my friend
before we started. “But shall we not be in the way?” I asked. “Of
course not,” she replied. “How happy Aïche will be to feel we are
there; we Turkish women always take part in one another’s joys and
sorrows.”
With my British fear of being in the way where I was certainly of no
use, I took my place with the other six friends of Aïche who had come
to be present at this very important moment in her life’s history.
We were seated round the big mangol alternately drinking coffee (which
we ourselves made on the red-hot charcoal), smoking and eating sweets.
Two of the ladies had bound their heads up with handkerchiefs to
prevent their having headaches, a precaution I did not imitate however
much my friends advised me to do so. We did not speak. We just sat
round the mangol waiting, waiting....
I occupied the most comfortable of the _mussaffir’s_ rooms (guests’
rooms) that night, for the other guests’ beds were made on mattresses
on the floor, in the Eastern unceremonious fashion. I should have
preferred to occupy one of these “emergency” beds--they are perfectly
comfortable--for in the guests’ room when I finally sank to rest after
the safe arrival of the little girl, I had the same uncomfortable
feeling of the unnecessary trouble I was giving.
But the Eastern woman has not yet begun what we in the West know as
“the servant trouble.” With the abolition of slavery, however, this
is on its way. When all the slaves in Fâtima’s family are married,
she must necessarily employ hired domestics; with education “hired
domestics” become _exigeants_. They will object to making coffee and
emergency beds at all times and at all hours, then “good-bye” to the
charming unceremonious hospitality of the East.... I asked a Turkish
lady who had lived for some months in London what she most appreciated
in our capital. “What I know best,” she answered, “is Mrs. ----’s
registry office for servants.”
The next afternoon a host of friends and acquaintances arrived to pay
a visit to the mother and the little girl. In my country the doctor
and the nurse would have forbidden these visits as the height of
imprudence; here “it is a matter of habit.” It is true the visitors, in
most cases, only passed in a procession before the mother and child,
but even that seemed unnecessary fatigue for the mother, much as I was
assured to the contrary.
The mother and daughter were picturesquely arranged. The mother, in
her big bed, covered with a priceless embroidery, and the child, in
a smaller bed, covered with a smaller quilt of the same priceless
embroidery, peacefully sleeping, and a French Sister of Mercy, with
her big white _cornet_, playing the part of nurse. It was a pretty
picture--a picture which brought tears of emotion to the eyes of the
visitors. It is an old and beautiful masterpiece--the mother and her
child--all the world over, and a masterpiece at which every true woman
looks again and again, and always with delight.
All the guests brought presents for the mother and child, according to
their means. Some were of the greatest value--jewels, embroideries,
stuffs--and Fâtima tells me her “birth” presents formed a very
important part of her trousseau. But why, at a Turkish birth ceremony,
is cinnamon syrup given to the guests? No one can tell me. To me this
beverage is the only unpleasant feature of a most charming ceremony.
They called her “Melek” (Angel), the little girl. I made a sign of the
Cross on her little forehead. Her mother was pleased. And as I made
that sign I wondered why our Western mothers are not honoured as they
are in the East. Christ paid as high a tribute to maternity as Mahomet.
Who is responsible for the misinterpretation of His words? Is it
civilization, or is it the Church?
CHAPTER IX WOMEN WRITERS OF TURKEY
There are not many, it is true, but there are Turkish writers and
Turkish women writers. For so long, however, it has been the habit to
condemn wholesale everything Turkish that most European nations have
come to the inconsequent conclusion that there is no Turkish literature.
Say to the average European that you have started to study the Turkish
language, and he will ask, “Unless you are to live in the country of
what use is it? They have no literature.” How many times has that
remark not been made to me! Yet there are some very fine masterpieces,
and it is to an English Professor, Professor Browne, of Cambridge,
that we owe a five-volume study of the history of Ottoman poetry, an
intensely interesting and fascinating book, which has followed me into
the houses of my Turkish friends.
It seems extraordinary to make such sweeping assertions without giving
chapter and verse. “Had the Turks had an Omar Khayyam, long ago Europe
would have known it,” says the Western critic; “Most certainly, had the
Turk had the supreme good fortune to be translated by a Fitzgerald,”
one might reply.
But it is not for one without an accurate knowledge of Turkish to
compare the relative values of the Turkish and Persian poets. The Turks
for a long period of their literary history bowed before the Persian
culture, and once having accepted their methods, without, perhaps, any
really particular reason for doing so, they remained loyal and faithful
to the Persian culture, as they remained loyal and faithful to Islam.
I wonder, however, since I have been studying some of the masterpieces
of this language with my Turkish friend, whether often the disciple
did not become greater than the master--great enough, at least, to
require no longer the master’s example. And then, as Browne and Gibbs
have written, “it was when the Ottoman Muse had flung off her golden
apparel, which for centuries the Persians had embroidered with gold and
precious stones, as a present for her, and put on the Turkish chalvar
(pantaloons) and enturi (tunic), that she assumed an air of youth,
which suited her perfectly, and all the poets of the time admired her.”
When last I visited Turkey five years ago I felt the time was very
near when the Turkish woman of culture would have to find some art by
which to express herself. Beauty’s characteristic is a desire for
self-manifestation. The eternal blue of the sky and sea, the glorious
sunsets, the silence, the solitude of an existence lived amongst people
of another century; the strong draught of idealistic pantheism there is
in the religion of Mahomet--all give birth to beautiful thoughts; the
difficulty is to find a form of expression.
The Turkish woman is modest, as I have said in other chapters, and
her modesty leads her into a lack of self-confidence which has been
detrimental to her cause. Unlike the women of Western Europe, she has
not inherited the tired brain of tired ancestors; she has now awakened
after centuries of rest, with a brain fresh and ready for work, and it
is astonishing to see the ease with which she can learn.
And so it is in literature. Many of my friends can write verse, but
they have not yet written prose, and the five Turkish women who can now
lay claim to a place in the world of letters all began by writing verse.
Of the work of these five writers it is really unfair of me to speak,
seeing I can judge their work only by translation, and that not at
all well done. My object rather is to draw attention to the fact
that they exist, and to induce those Turkish women, as, for example,
Zeyneb Hanoum, who have a thorough knowledge of French, to save their
compatriots’ literary honour in the eyes of Europe by giving us good
translations of their work.
Halidé-Hanoum’s “Handan,” which has been so widely circulated in her
own land, is an interesting study of the Turkish woman’s mind and
life told in a series of letters. But how could this writer let her
work make its bow to the Western world in its inaccurate, and often
indelicate French translation? I have read no other work of this
writer, and I believe “Handan” is not Halidé-Hanoum’s best work. But
the writer herself! what an interesting person! A slight, tiny little
person, with masses of auburn hair and large, expressive Oriental eyes,
she has opinions on most subjects, and discusses the problems of the
day in a manner which charms one not so much on account of what she
says, but because it is so different from what one expected. Strange
it does seem that these women who have been bound and fettered for
centuries, when once they begin to think, acknowledge in the world of
thought no boundaries and restrictions. Again we and they are at the
antipodes. We Englishwomen, who have a liberty of action the world
envies, think, as a rule, in conventional grooves. With how many of
my feminist countrywomen could I have discussed the subjects I have
discussed with my Turkish friends?
It would not be without interest, perhaps, to notice how many Turkish
women are to-day reading Ellen Key. Ellen Key in a Turkish harem
naturally sounds a little alarming! But this herald of feminism
to come cannot do as much harm as she might in an English home,
for I very much doubt whether they--except, of course, women like
Halidé-Hanoum--understand what she means. It is true the titles “Love
and Marriage,” “The Century of a Child,” are especially attractive to
those women to whom the sentimental side of Western life appeals as
being an unexplored territory, and I feel sure many have ordered the
works of Ellen Key on the strength of their titles, and then cast them
aside, to be read some other time.
“To the pure, all is pure,” we say. The Turkish women generally, to
my mind, are more pure-minded, perhaps, than the women of any other
nation. This will certainly come as a surprise to many, who, with their
erroneous ideas as to what a harem really is, still consider the women
as beautiful, idle, intriguing creatures, and “passion” as the only
drama that is played within its mysterious walls. How is it, then,
that Turkish women have acquired this purity? I am not speaking of the
ignorant women, who are innocent rather than pure, but the women who
read and think. The explanation, I believe, is to be found in the fact
that from the age when they begin to think the Turks are taught that
nature must be respected.
As soon as children begin to ask what we call “embarrassing questions,”
they are told the truth. Mothers do not speak in whispers about
subjects which are “perfectly natural”; from a very early age children
know exactly what “maternity” means. All nature, then, being taken
as a matter of course, the _arrière-pensée_ does not even come into
existence; hence purity. When first I arrived in Turkey, however, I
must confess I was surprised to hear the conversations which took place
before the children. Now I see its advantages. Natural curiosity,
unsatisfied, becomes morbid curiosity; morbid curiosity becomes
degeneracy.
I heard the following conversation between a mother and her
six-year-old son: “Mother,” asked the little boy, “would it be very
wicked of me if I didn’t want to marry?” “Yes,” replied the mother, “it
is the duty of all men to marry.” “Why is it the duty of all men to
marry?” next he asked. “So that mothers may have dear little boys like
you,” she replied.
Of the work of Fâtima Alié Hanoum I have read only one book, “Oudi”
(The Lute Player), in a French translation, which has kept none of the
Eastern grace and charm of this writer’s work, for her compatriots,
men and women, universally pay homage to her fine talent, her subtle
perception, her clear and poetical style, and her endless historical
knowledge. Fâtima Alié Hanoum is no longer a young woman. She has a
kind face, which shows at once her good heart; she is small, pale,
thin, and exceedingly active, and her eyes sparkle with enthusiasm as
she discusses with you the subjects which interest her most. Fâtima
Alié is a feminist. She is strongly in favour of women leading an
active, useful life, and working at a profession if necessary, but she
is decidedly opposed to the adoption of European fashions in literary
style, as well as in clothing and furniture.
To her the picturesque stuffs of Broussa are worth more than all the
wares in shops of Paris put together, and to her neat compromise
between a dressing-gown and a dress which covers her uncorseted form
and to her easy, if not elegant, slippers, she will remain faithful
to the end of her days. But feminist though she is, she strongly
opposes any attempt to modify the veil, not because the veil has to
her a religious meaning, but to her it is one of the traditions of
her race, and therefore sacred. No woman in Turkey has made a more
thorough study of the Koran than she, and I am grateful to her for
the pleasant moments spent in her “real Turkish” house whilst she has
explained to me the position of women in Islam. The daughter of Djevdat
Pasha, the celebrated Turkish Patriot, Fâtima Alié Hanoum has inherited
documents which will make her work particularly valuable to those who
are interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire. She is shortly
to publish a history of the last four reigns, and she is particularly
qualified to do this, since she worked for so many years as her late
father’s secretary.
It is interesting, but nevertheless sad, to find in studying the
history of the women of Islam that they, as we of the West, have lost
so much of the power they once possessed. Let us imagine for an instant
those olive-skinned, perfumed women of Arabia in their gaudy raiment
(much in the fashion we are wearing to-day), half-gipsy, half-empress,
even though they were in rags, listening to the preaching of Mahomet in
the desert. Was it not to them particularly that he was preaching?
During the war they took their place beside their husbands, to whom
they were faithful and devoted, and their deeds of daring would make
our hair stand on end, we, the super-sensitive creatures of this
century of half-tones and half-emotions! In time of peace these women
were faithful and sweet creatures, kind to the stranger who sought the
hospitality of their tent, the stranger who, unknown the night before,
received from them enough to satisfy his hunger and to continue his
journey. And the fact that they were women did not prevent their taking
part in the great outer life around them. Mahomet’s own daughter, known
as the “Lady of Paradise,” was one of the finest orators of the East.
During Charlemagne’s reign, too, when Haroun-al-Rachid was Khalif of
Baghdad, a woman, Zeyneb, was appointed professor of the University of
Baghdad, and five hundred young men daily listened to her lectures on
philosophy. Her reputation was so great that she was known throughout
the East. Then there was Leyla, the famous poetess, and Hind, the
famous wit, who was asked to define the worst of women (her answer has
stood the test of time and become proverbial). “The worst of women is
she,” she said, “who when begged to speak holds her tongue, and when
begged to hold her tongue speaks.”
There was about the fifteenth century, too, a poetess, Mihri, to whom
we owe the following lines: “One day the loved one who was near me
questioned me about my love. I gave him my soul, and he never spoke of
it again.” There was the poetess Fituat, also, whose work is full of
sorrow and feeling, and who made for herself so great a reputation as
a woman of letters. To understand her work, I am told, is like “taking
part in the death of the whole world and the awakening of another.”
What an original criticism! And if you question the people of Asia
Minor even to-day they will tell you history cannot find a greater
attachment given to a woman of letters.
And so on through the ages. I could quote names of women who have
done great work, women who have taken their place beside men. How is
it they lost their power, and gradually sank down to the state of
the poor nonentities whom Lady Mary Montagu visited? “Islam alone is
responsible,” says the Western critic. But this is false. Mahomet’s
mistake, perhaps, as a legislator, was that he gave too many rights to
the mothers, and not enough to women who were not mothers. Perhaps,
I repeat. At any rate, all that has most oppressed and crushed the
Turkish woman comes, not from Islam, but from, I was going to say,
Christianity; I prefer the word Byzantium. The latticed windows, the
wrong meaning of the veil, the harem, the eunuchs, the fez, the very
Crescent itself, are all survivals of that Byzantium which has stifled,
for a while, the life and soul of this people of the desert.
There are three more women of whom I must speak as modern Turkish women
writers: Leyla Hanoum, an old lady now, whose verses were several times
recited to me. I cannot judge her as a writer, except to repeat that
the Turks themselves admire her work, and that when told they have no
literature they indignantly ask, “And Leyla Hanoum?”
There is also the poetess Niguar Hanoum, Niguar, whose acquaintance I
made at Monte Carlo after the proclamation of the Constitution. A woman
of great charm and intelligence and an exceedingly hard worker, it is
she herself who will translate her own beautiful lyrics into French and
German.
Another woman whose talent has been very much appreciated in her own
land is Eminé Semié, a sister of Fâtima Alié Hanoum. Her novels have
not been translated. Her political articles have been of no little
assistance to Young Turkey. I met this famous authoress first in
Paris; it was during the recent war. Not one luxury would she allow
herself, not even a cab in the pouring rain, and all her beautiful
jewels she sold in order to send the money to the Red Crescent Society.
She had worn herself almost to skin and bone as a Red Crescent nurse,
and had been sent to Paris to recuperate. Her impressions of the gay
capital were all so charming and original.
But I cannot close this chapter on the women writers of Turkey without
speaking of “Kadinlar-Dunyassi” (“The Feminine World”), a weekly
illustrated paper devoted to women’s interests, whose pages are open to
any woman writer who cares to contribute. It was started, first of all,
as a daily illustrated paper--rather an ambitious idea, but as such it
was a failure, and was therefore quickly converted into an illustrated
weekly.
[Illustration: A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE NEW TURKISH WOMAN’S PAPER
“KADINLAR-DUNYASSI” (“THE FEMININE WORLD”)]
The proprietor and editress of the paper, Oulvyé Mevlane Hanoum, had
had no experience whatsoever either of editing or of the business
side of running a paper; therefore, the result of her effort is
doubly interesting. She understood that if a serious society for the
advancement of women was to be founded they must have an organ in which
to explain their views. She saw the need, and she supplied it.
The publication of this paper is a very happy omen for all those who
take an interest in the woman question. It shows what Turkish women
can do when they have confidence in themselves and a determination
to succeed--unfortunately two qualities they rarely possess. I do not
mean to say they are lazy, but they lack concentration certainly, and
are too proud to risk a failure. But all this will change. Only by
measuring ourselves against the great can we understand how they, too,
have tried and failed over and over again, then we take courage.
What matters it whether the articles of “Kadinlar-Dunyassi” are not
equal to those published in the daily papers! If every Turkish word
were badly spelt and every phrase badly constructed, and every article
poor, I should still rejoice at the publication of “Kadinlar-Dunyassi,”
because it is a co-operative effort--co-operative effort alone can save
Turkey.
And now where are those women who are seeking to express themselves
to turn for assistance? To the West naturally, and to France. It was
Shinasi Effendi who ended the Persian allegiance--Shinasi Effendi
who took his countrymen to the West, and is rightly considered the
founder of the modern school of Ottoman literature. The hazard which
turned him towards the West is interesting, as showing on how slender
a thread a great change may depend. Shinasi was born about 1826, in
the Top-Hané division of Constantinople. After attending the parish
school he entered the Imperial Arsenal, and when there made the
acquaintance of the Comte de Châteauneuf, who afterwards became a Turk,
embraced Islam, and became known as Rechid Bey. This Frenchman was the
grandfather of my friends Zeyneb[7] and Melek[8] Hanoums, the heroines
of Pierre Loti’s “Désenchantées.”
From Châteauneuf, who admired the intelligence of the youth, Shinasi
received the French lessons which created in him the strong desire to
become more and more intimately acquainted with the culture of the
West, and he never rested till his great desire was accomplished and
he finally went to Paris. An interesting study might be written of
the career of this extraordinary man, whose translation of the French
classics, especially of Voltaire and Rousseau, changed the whole
destiny of his country’s literature and history. Just as the French
expressed themselves in French, so the Turks, after Shinasi, learnt not
to express themselves in Persian construction, but to say what they
wanted to say in a Turkish construction.
After Shinasi came Ziva Pasha, the great Kemal, who was exiled after
the publication of “Vatran” (“The Fatherland”), and who in his writings
paid so high a tribute to England: and finally, the greatest of modern
Turkish poets and writers--Abdul-Hak-Hamid, for some time at the
Turkish Embassy in London. The publication of his “Makber” (“Tomb”)
completely revolutionized Turkish literature. Shinasi had shown the
way: Abdul-Hak-Hamid took it, and his verses are already Turkish
classics, recited in all the schools.
And now for the political side of Shinasi’s work. It is necessary for
me to point out that a careful study of Rousseau gave birth to the
Young Turk party, which overthrew the most terrible absolutism the
world has known, to my mind more terrible even than the absolutism of
Nero.
The absence of what we in the West call “social life” naturally makes
the Turks great readers, and the sale of French books in Turkey is
enormous. Books, good, bad, and indifferent, are read, and there are
some who blame the “French novel” for all the shortcomings of the
Turkish youth of to-day.
Unfortunately, the number of persons who read English is limited. I
say unfortunately, because the spirit of our literature is much better
suited to the Turkish character. It is astonishing to notice how many
qualities of the Englishman the “real” Turk possesses, and particularly
his _sangfroid_ in moments of difficulty and danger. In appearance,
too, many of them are so like my own countrymen (and particularly a
naval officer whom I met the other day), that one wonders often whether
they are not Englishmen in the Turkish service.
Although a translation is, after all, only the wrong side of an
embroidery, I have, wherever I can, urged my friends, since they
cannot read our masterpieces in English, to read them in the French
translation.
The Turks may not quite agree with me, but it has seemed to me
everywhere I went that our literature comes as a surprise to them.
We have the reputation of being a solid, matter-of-fact, honest
nation, with a mighty fleet. England still puts her hall-mark of
“all-rightness” on everything she touches, but somehow literature and
art are not expected of us. The Turks will tell you they have read our
masterpieces, they know our literature ... but I saw none in any of
the libraries of the colleges I visited. Voltaire, Rousseau, V. Hugo,
Vigny, Anatole France, Pierre Loti, and now a “promise” of Wells and
Kipling.
I must add, however, in defence of the Turks, that this neglect of our
literature is very largely our own fault. What have we done to spread
the knowledge of our language in the near East? And what has France
done? Les Dames de Sion, the Lazarists, and the innumerable other
orders who, when driven from France, sought the hospitality of the
kindly Turk, what have they not done to further the knowledge of their
language, not only in Constantinople, but throughout the East? And we?
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Zeyneb.--Co-authoress of “The Turkish Woman’s European Impressions.”
[8] Melek.--Co-authoress of “Adbul Hamid’s Daughter.”
CHAPTER X THE PROPHET AND POLYGAMY
No book on Turkey would be complete without a chapter on polygamy--in
justice to the Turk such a chapter is necessary. It is the chapter to
which every reader will turn first of all, and not _one_ critic will
allude to it. How well I know my countrymen!
Let me at once confess, however, to the morbid curiosity of actually
trying to find a “harem” where there was more than one wife. Fâtima
wished to satisfy that curiosity if it were possible. “You must see us
as we really are,” said she and her husband, “and if this unfortunate
blot on our civilization is still to be seen, you shall see it.” And he
really went out of his way, this kind, courteous host of mine, Fâtima’s
husband, to ask all and sundry where, in Constantinople, could be found
two women sharing the protection of one lord and master, and for a long
time not one was to be found.
I have met, however, men and women who are the children of fathers who
had more than one wife. They are too proud to speak of their unhappy
youth, but since we find them in the front ranks of those who are
standing for the elevation of womanhood, we must necessarily draw our
own conclusions. One of the most beautiful of modern Turkish poems is
written by a feminist orator, describing in touching, eloquent notes
the tragedy of being a child in a polygamous household.
To me, the lover of the East and the admirer of Islam, this
“permission” to have four wives is regrettably unfortunate. From that
“permission” we have totally misinterpreted the words of the Great
Prophet of the Desert; we have classed Islam as a religion destined to
encourage sensuality, a religion devoid of spirituality, a religion
which has degraded womanhood, whereas those who take the trouble to
study particularly that part of the Koran relating to women must pay
homage to the wonderful foresight of this great reformer.
When Mahomet limited the number of wives to four, he was legislating
for a people which polygamy had reduced to the depths of degradation,
and those who will compare the history of the period when Mahomet began
his ministry and the period afterwards, must surely admit the high
place given to women in his teachings and the excellent laws made for
their protection.
The poor down-trodden woman of the East is one of the fallacies
which has descended through the ages, and nothing has done more
to increase the misunderstanding between East and West than the
Western disdain for what, to the Oriental, is all that he counts most
sacred--his women and his religion.
When Mahomet limited the number of wives to four, he was legislating
for a people who could not be brought too suddenly from the outer
darkness to the great blazing light of civilization, but he put what
appear almost like codicils to annul the statement about polygamy when
he ordained that each wife must be treated with an equal amount of
tenderness, that man _and woman_ must seek knowledge “from the cradle
to the grave,” and “that they must keep travelling about, for there
were many beautiful things to be seen on God’s earth.” There is also
that splendid verse which I hope my feminist friends will stretch to
its utmost capacity: “You must march on with the centuries.” Time and
knowledge will put everything right, argued the Prophet. Alas! is it
not the tragedy which accompanies the life-work of every great reformer
for the meaning of his words to be misinterpreted?
Mahomet in his time was confronted with a woman’s problem as entangled
as the woman’s problem of to-day. Although he considered maternity the
destiny of woman, he did not prevent her entering the professions.
Few women, however, could work, and since she could not work she had
to be provided for. Was it not better for four women to be housed and
cared for than for one to live in luxury and three to starve? No man
was obliged to take advantage of the Prophet’s permission to have four
wives, but the Prophet, with his keen knowledge of humanity, foresaw
the danger to which the woman might be exposed, and polygamy was the
loophole through which her honour could be saved.
But now all this is changing. For some time now polygamy has been
very _mal vu_, and nothing hurts a Turk more than the eternal Western
question: “How many wives have you?” An officer on board the man-o’-war
which brought the Turkish Crown Prince to our Coronation tells me that
every Englishwoman with whom he danced at the Naval Ball asked him that
same question, “How many wives have you?” And to every one he replied:
“Just one dozen, and I hope to have one dozen more before I die.” He
was a bachelor.
Polygamy is not amongst the Turks the same smart smoking-room joke
that it is in the West, and I have heard these Turks who are working
day and night to save their country protesting with energy against the
“princely privilege” of having more than one wife. “The whole system
will have to be changed, and the sooner the better,” a Young Turk said,
and, even as I write, the news comes to me that the Turkish Government
has passed a decree forbidding polygamy in the Imperial household and
refusing to recognize as legitimate any but the children of the first
living _wife_.
This is, perhaps, the most important reform that Young Turkey has
so far brought about, a change which will do more than anything to
heighten her prestige in Europe, and it is the first step towards the
formation of a “court” as we in the West understand that word.
It was during the reign of Abdul Hamid that the absurd rule which
allowed Royal princes only to marry slaves was so strictly observed.
So terrified was the ex-Sultan, in particular, of giving power to a
subject, through the alliance of his family with the daughters of
Pashas or Imperial Princes, that the wives of the Emperors had to be
chosen from amongst the slaves of the Imperial harem--from amongst
those girls who had been bought at an early age on account of their
physical qualifications _only_, and their Circassian parents being paid
a sum down renounced any claim to these children. These girls were
prepared for the rôle of Empress which they might one day be called
upon to play, dancing and music being very important items in their
education. Then they had to await such time as they might find favour
in the “Master’s” sight and become his favourites.
An ugly, unhealthy atmosphere surrounds this buying and selling of human
beings after careful examination of their teeth, hair, and skin, and
the Royal purchasers themselves are the first to complain about it. How
can an intelligent man be expected to comply with such unnecessarily
barbarous customs? If it is imprudent to marry the daughters of Pashas,
have not Egypt and India enough and to spare of Moslem Princesses to
grace the Ottoman throne? So probably the Imperial family has argued,
for now for the first time two Princes of the Imperial Ottoman family
are to marry the two daughters of the Governor of Broussa, the nieces
of the Grand Vizier, Prince Said Halim, and nieces of the Khedive.
These two Princesses, although, like their mother, “more Turkish even
than the Turks,” have travelled extensively, and are well read and
cultured women. They have been brought up by an English governess.
The Princess, their mother, an artist to her finger-tips, refuses to
modify in any manner the sacred laws prescribed by the Prophet, yet she
accompanies her husband on his official excursions into the interior of
Asia Minor, and takes a particular delight in the study of the lives
of those primitive peoples of Turkey whose hospitality she accepts.
The Princess pays visits to the mosques and tombs, and what lover of
art would not take the opportunity of studying in detail the most
exquisite colouring and designs of the porcelains of those mosques,
the Green Mosque in particular, which Pierre Loti has immortalized?
Pierre Loti used, the guardian of the mosque told me, to write his
books in the Green Mosque, sunk in the magnificent carpets, the quality
and beauty of which have defied time, with on one side of him the door
(which replaces our altar) of exquisitely blended green porcelain and
beautifully worked golden lettering, and on the other side the central
fountain, which, from its multitude of invisible mouths, sends out a
gorgeous mass of exquisitely coloured rainbows between you and the sun.
[Illustration: THE GREEN MOSQUE AT BROUSSA]
Before dawn Loti was in the mosque, working all day in the hallowed
atmosphere of God’s house, the kindly guardian bringing him coffee and
his _narghili_ when he required them, and arranging the cushions when
he wished to sleep. Loti’s best work was done in the Green Mosque at
Broussa. No wonder!
* * * * *
No one could dread more the advent of electric cars and light than the
Princess. “It will not be Broussa any more,” she says, and rightly so,
and yet the Princess herself is helping on progress--she has started
schools in the town itself and in the neighbouring villages, she
herself bearing the entire expense. And the little girls are taught
Western dancing, they sing Western songs, and recite Western poetry.
How is one to make a compromise between the two civilizations? I
sympathize, however, with the Princess in her reluctance to welcome
such intruders as cars and electric light. When once this tide of
progress comes in it will sweep all before it. Historical associations
will have to give place to hideous Western factories; smoking chimneys
will obscure the sight of the minarets; but no longer shall we see the
cabman tying up his back wheel with a cord to replace the brake. The
students in the “Medressa” (college of Theology), the future Hodjas
whom I saw busy washing their linen in the fountain, where will they be
in the days of Western steam laundries?
[Illustration: DANCING CLASS AT THE GIRLS’ SCHOOL, BROUSSA]
* * * * *
It is very difficult to give accurate knowledge about members of the
Imperial family, unless brought into intimate contact with them. Their
subjects do not know them, and they multiply so quickly that it is
easy for a stranger to credit princes with accomplishments they do not
possess and overlook the qualities of those princes who deserve praise.
Of some of the princes it would be charitable to guard a discreet
silence, and, after all, so little is required of them: they cannot
even play a “spectacular” part, as our Western royalties do. Therefore,
says Young Turkey, and wisely so, the State can no longer afford to
keep these ever-recurring princes: one family is quite sufficient for
each member of the Imperial house, we will recognize no more.
To all those who stake any importance whatsoever on soul heredity,
this Eugenic manner of arranging Imperial marriages is a dangerous
experiment. Fortunately they were given Circassian wives, otherwise
whence would so many Imperials have acquired their talents, charm,
and moral qualities. And Abdul Hamid, the criminal genius and madman,
the monster tyrant--how far was he responsible for his actions? Who
can tell us the truth about his birth? Some say he was born of an
Armenian dancer, others credit him with French blood, brought into the
Imperial harem by a lady of that race, captured by brigands and sold
into slavery. All kinds of suppositions are advanced to explain the
curious mentality of this man, who still puzzles criminologists of the
twentieth century.
Most sincerely is Young Turkey to be congratulated on this new and
enormous step towards progress. It is a bold step. Any blow levelled
against the dynasty, any modification of the “divine” rights of the
Kalife, is liable to rouse ignorant fanaticism of those turban-headed
masses in Asia Minor who still know neither the meaning of Kalife nor
that of the Constitution, but would willingly die for both.
CHAPTER XI THE MAN WITH TWO WIVES
I had given up hope of seeing a Turkish house where there was more
than one wife. I was sorry, and Fâtima was sorry that she was unable
to satisfy my curiosity. The opportunity came, however, when we least
expected it.
We were sipping our coffee one day in the big salon. _Guzel Sutanna_
(the beautiful nourrice), as I called Fâtima’s nourrice to distinguish
her from her little daughter’s nourrice, had tucked us up comfortably
amongst the cushions, and whilst distributing to us lumps of pumpkin
preserve which she had made for our special benefit, she was recalling
certain chapters of her own strange life-story which Fâtima translated
for me.
I loved _Guzel Sutanna_. She was so superbly human. Sorrow had
sweetened what was still a beautiful face, beautiful enough to allow
one to guess what her beauty and charm had been. She had had six
successive husbands. Her lords and masters, she confessed quite as a
matter of course, had never been more to her than a means towards an
end. Maternity was her rôle, not wifehood; then God gave to her for a
little while what the old nourrice called “the most precious of His
angels,” but death and the Imperial Harem took them all away from her,
and in her old age she became what she had firmly made up her mind from
girlhood she never would be--childless. Such is the irony of life!
And so Fâtima became the whole world to the old nourrice. She could
have lived with us altogether, but her young master (for this old lady
had married a man many years her junior), claimed a certain amount of
her attention, yet she generally managed to come and see Fâtima every
day, and always bringing with her some of her delicious violet and rose
jams.
We had made up our minds that Fâtima’s husband must try to obtain a
diplomatic post and live for a while in England. I was teasing _Guzel
Sutanna_, telling her in England her services would no longer be
required, that I should look after Fâtima. But the old nourrice was
not to be worsted. “Tell me,” she said to Fâtima, “as soon as the
appointment becomes official, then I will marry my husband to some one
else and come with you.”
The old nourrice had the form of a young woman. A green plaid dress
covered her uncorseted body, around her waist she wore a gold belt and
round her neck a thick gold chain which Fâtima had given her, and
which she wore day and night. Her skin was not too wrinkled for her
age, her eyes magnificent, and sometimes her rebellious little _hennéd_
curls would come peeping out from under her pink silk turban. In the
streets she wore a black satin tcharchaff and was also well shod; her
manners were aristocratic, and as she was generally somewhere within
calling distance of Fâtima, I supposed at first she must be a relation.
One of my greatest difficulties in Turkey is to be sure of the social
standing of the men and women. The man you might easily in my country
take for a groom is perhaps the Pasha’s son; the man you might take
for the Pasha’s son is perhaps a domestic. The woman seated in the
place of honour, dressed like a charwoman, may be the mother of a great
statesman or a minister’s wife, and amongst them all sits the old
nourrice, one of the family.
The nourrice’s answer to my teasing was so different from what I had
expected that I did not take her seriously till she began asking
questions about my country. “What did it matter after all,” she
concluded, “if the sun never shone?” She would be there to make the
clove wine if Fâtima coughed, and the coffee and the pilaff, too; she
would be there to speak to Fâtima in the language of their own native
land, and above all to teach the little girl to say her prayers. The
one thing which was worrying her, however, was her veil. What would
she do if the police tried to make her wear a hat? She never had worn
one and she never would.
“But your husband,” I ventured to suggest.
“Fâtima is my child,” she answered, “I will choose him a suitable
wife,” and she seemed astonished that I should see anything
extraordinary in the fact that a foster mother should follow her child
even to the other end of the earth, if necessary, and relieve her
conscience by seeing that her husband was properly cared for during her
absence.
I asked Fâtima whether this situation was frequent in Turkey. “It does
happen,” she answered. Then she told me the curious life story of the
golden-haired erstwhile beauty, who in the evening of her existence
was allowed to occupy a modest place in the basement of our Konak in
exchange for her occasional service as dish-washer. She had started her
career as an oar maiden on the caique in which the Sultan Abdul-Aziz
rowed about on the lake in his park when he was weary. But she grew
tired of celibacy, asked to be allowed to marry, and finally was
presented to an old Pasha as a reward for his distinguished services to
the State.
When the Pasha died, she married a man years her junior, whom she loved
with all her heart and soul, and who in his turn loved her. Knowing how
bitterly disappointed he was not to have children, she herself found
another wife for him, left for her successor everything she possessed,
and came penniless to Fâtima. And her husband? When not washing dishes,
she dreams of him as she wanders amongst the garden trees, she writes
long letters to him which she never posts, and he, probably, has
forgotten her very existence.
All these curious stories brought us back to the subject of polygamy,
and the harem with two wives I wanted to visit.
“Do you know of a harem where there is more than one wife?” asked
Fâtima.
“Yes!” answered the nourrice, “my two friends, the wives of the
Dervishe ‘R.’”
The words “My two friends” surprised me just a little, but I made no
comment. It was arranged, however, that I should go the next day to the
dervishe service and _Sutanna_ should take me afterwards to call on
the two wives. _Sutanna_ knew all the dervishes in the out-of-the-way
districts of old Stamboul. These performances, I may at once explain,
have little in common with the paid exhibitions arranged for tourists
in Pera and Scutari. The Faithful howled and danced not for the curious
spectators, for none were admitted, but to praise the Lord, the whole
of their creed being based on the words of the Psalmist David: “Make a
joyful noise unto the Lord, make a loud noise and sing praise.”
On these occasions I accompanied _Sutanna_ to the woman’s gallery,
always wearing a veil. Seated on a cushion I watched the worshippers
below through the lattice work of the gallery. The atmosphere was
never very invigorating, the lack of fresh air being supplied by
an unpleasant mixture of incense, sandal wood, and tobacco, and a
stuffiness which almost choked me. We were so many women huddled
together in this kind of magnified dog-kennel, and the worshippers,
too, needed some space to do the same movements as the male howlers in
the body of the mosque below. The dancing dervishes were charming. I
enjoyed the weird piping of what sounded like a shepherd’s flute, the
curious beating of the drum, the graceful movements of the men as they
“waltzed” bare-foot on the polished boards, their wide skirts expanding
and contracting like a well-chosen crescendo. Curiously enough the
women did not attend or follow the “dancers” with the same delight
as the “howlers”; they preferred the noise. What an extraordinary
conception must they not have had of the Deity, these poor primitive
souls, that they should suppose He would find delight in the medley of
grunt and bark which accompanied their curious contortions and drowned
in its hideousness the wonderful words “Allah al Ecbar.” (God is Great.)
I was studying the profile of the polygamous dervishe who sat on his
legs amongst the Faithful, his arms crossed on his chest and his head
reverently bowed. He had a turned-up nose, on the top of which rested a
growth. He certainly was a hideous specimen of humanity, and yet two
women loved him!
Yes, after all, is not humanity the same all the world over, Mahomet
saw the danger of a priesthood, he did not wish the holy men to
have more power than, let us say, the recorder of the Quakers. The
Sheik-ul-Islam himself impressed upon me that there were no priests in
Islam, and yet here, face to face with the truth, are dervishes who
have grafted on to the bare spirituality of the religion of Mahomet
_credenda_, fanaticism and external manifestations, just as the
priesthood of the West has done in a different manner from the religion
of Christ.
Every one of the dangers which Mahomet tried to guard against in
denying a priesthood to Islam are in existence to-day. The words of
the Prophet are interpreted in such a manner as to keep the people in
ignorance, and in spite of the large sums of money left by the Faithful
to pious foundations for their enlightenment. Do not the dervishes in
the Tekhi live on the fat of the land and enjoy all the privileges of
the “cloth”? It makes one sore to think when money for the regeneration
of the country is so urgently needed that a poor woman whose six sons
fell in the war gives her bed-cover to the National Defence, all this
money is lying there in so unproductive a form. It surprised me rather
that, when the shoe pinched so hard, the Turkish Government did not
take a leaf out of France’s book, and help itself to some of these
funds. After all, however, they have acted wisely, for the money can
now be used for National Education.
The dervishe’s two wives came in towards the end of the ceremony.
Sutanna, after kissing them both, introduced me, and we were invited
to coffee in the harem. The first wife was a sickly looking, resigned
creature, not very much older than her colleague, to whom she seemed
quite attached; indeed, her attitude towards her rival was rather that
of a mother. She was quite content to wear the old clothes, to do the
work to be done, to wait on us, to give way in everything to the second
wife, a well-built, healthy woman not without charm, and whom Allah had
blessed, for she was to be a mother.
The first wife talked to Sutanna with delight about the expected
new-comer, and alluded to it as “our child.”
She worked at its layette, she spared its mother every fatigue, she
seemed as enthusiastic as a mother whose daughter is expecting a child;
and yet, who knows the sorrow which may have been gnawing at her
heart-strings?
For she loved her Master; she was proud of him. Sutanna had her
confidence and told me so, and it was she and Sutanna together who
chose as her successor, a friend of their own.
Strange and inexplicable it all seemed, and not altogether pleasant.
“Our grandmothers,” one woman explained to me, “submitted to this as
their written fate; they could not understand why pride should not
allow us to accept such a degrading position.”
The pride of the Turkish woman takes her through an ocean of suffering.
Just as the woman of the last generation accepted to remain with a
rival for the sake of her children, now the woman of this generation
is too proud to take advantage of the protection the law gives her
in monetary assistance for the upbringing of her children when she
leaves her husband. Personally, I know more than two women working
against terrible odds to pay for the children’s education. When I have
suggested alimony, “Never!” they answer.
They, however, like other women of Turkey, will learn as the women of
the West are learning, that they must, as individuals, insist on their
rights for the benefit of the community, and reserve their pride for
something else.
CHAPTER XII FARTHER AFIELD--THE PRIMITIVE PEOPLE
Alas! I have stayed too long in the charming society of Fâtima. In
my quiet Eastern existence I have not noticed the flight of time. I
came for a week, and I have stayed over twelve. Soon, I believe, I
should have taken Fâtima’s advice to send for my mother and stay here
altogether.
And now winter has come. In my own country I had mapped out quite a
different programme for myself. Constantinople, after all, is not
Turkey. To know Turkey I must go right into the homes of the people
of Anatolia, and the thought of spending my days on horseback and my
nights sometimes in the homes of the primitive Turks, sometimes under
the starlit sky, with the glorious Eastern moon to kiss me to sleep,
gave me courage to break away for a while from my matter-of-fact
grinding existence of the West. But I have been so completely under the
spell of my new life that I have not even known the day of the month.
When writing one of my letters I remember I questioned a friend as
to the date. “Must you really put the date?” she asked. “It isn’t a
matter of life and death,” I answered, “but one generally does so in my
country.” “Well, my dear,” she went on, “you must wait till my husband
returns, he, perhaps, will know; I haven’t the least idea.”
Ah, happy country, where one can forget even the date! Alas!--yes,
I say alas!--its hour has come. It, too, will have to take on the
uncomfortable yoke of civilization, and be a plain, matter-of-fact
people, like the rest of Europe. I have felt all the while I stayed
with Fâtima as if I were present at a beautiful sunset, and I must not
lose the joy of drinking in every ray of light, for in a few moments
night would be there. “How you notice every detail,” Fâtima said to me
one day. “It is all so beautiful,” I replied, as I felt this was the
end of the true “East” in the old sense of the word--the cook, who goes
to sleep over his work, and serves the meals according to the sun, or a
still more accurate timepiece--his own healthy appetite; the coachman,
whose two great passions are his horses and the history of Turkey,
which he has acquired from conversation only, since he can neither read
nor write; Miss Chocolate, who in a month’s time will take her place
as the wife of a coffee-skinned railway official. I had the feeling
when I left my dear Fâtima this morning that when next I return to this
country this charming picture will have passed into eternity.
And Fâtima herself! A true daughter of the East, and proud to be so.
Dear little friend, with the blue-black hair, olive skin, and dark
eyes!--such a striking contrast to myself. How, in the hurry and bustle
of our life, I shall miss her soft, low voice, and the gentle touch of
her hand, and the “Let us sit down quietly and rest, and I will explain
our Eastern customs to you.” I have been with Fâtima in the hardest
moments of her life. Where has that tiny little creature found in these
moments of anguish--which would have crushed us Western women used to
the tumble and rough of life--a strength of will to carry her dry-eyed
through an ocean of suffering? These Turks have the pride of Emperors.
How we have misjudged them! When the enemy was at their very door, when
half their Fatherland was gone, Europe noticed how they listened to
all the news with dry eyes and apparently resigned indifference. But
this is not indifference--it is pride. When Fâtima was mourning the
loss of her little baby girl she told me calmly her heart was broken,
but never would she let me see the tears which soaked her pillow at
night. Indifference, indeed! I never met any one who cared less for
her own woes and more for the woes of others. Lady Mary Montagu was
right when she said, “There is as much sense in asking the refugees of
Greek-street to write about the Court of St. James’s as in asking the
average woman to write about the women of Turkey.”
And now, although winter is here, I have come as far as Broussa and the
neighbouring villages to take a peep into the lives of these primitive
people of Asia Minor. The sea has been rough for days; so rough that
the cautious captain has preferred to remain quietly in the sheltered
harbour. But to-day, one might almost imagine the hospitable Turks had
ordered the Bosphorus to spread itself out into a blue satin carpet all
along the way, and the sun to give a special performance in my honour.
A comfortable cabin is reserved for me. I am accompanied by one of the
most eloquent orators of the Young Turk party, N---- Bey, who in his
turn is accompanied by a secretary. This man is a patriot to the core;
nothing counts with him but his Fatherland. He would be a gentleman
even were he in rags, and if he had to assassinate an enemy of his
beloved Fatherland, at least he would set about it like a gentleman.
The boat we travelled on was named after a favourite Sultana. The
first thing that greeted my eye was the notice, “Private cabin.” Was
everything on board, then, to be translated into English? My heart
thumped with delight. Alas! things do not always go as quickly as
one could wish, and the explanation of the English was nothing more
poetical than the fact that the steamboat which now bears the name
of a much-loved Sultana was a cast-off boat belonging to the Brighton
and South Coast Railway Company.
On the little stretch of railway which extends from Modana to Broussa
no one hurries. One station is called “The Persians,” and the next “The
Jews,” and each time the train stops the kindly guard gives the _souje_
(water merchant) a chance of doing some business before the train moves
on again. “If only you had come in the spring,” my companion tells
me, as I give way to the enthusiasm I feel for all I see around me,
“you, who love the flowers, what pleasure they would give you!” But I
am content with small mercies. Everything, after all, is relative in
this world. And when I think of London at this moment, shrouded in fog,
whilst we are surrounded by a blue sky, a blue sea, trees in all their
autumn glory, and the air which caresses my face like _iced velvet_, I
am thankful for what Broussa can give me at present.
[Illustration: BROUSSA]
We had a long, cold drive from the station, but I do not mind this in
the least, for the long way takes me by the tomb of Kara Kheuz and his
partner, Hadgi Vadt. Two insignificant turban-topped stones, which
time has almost laid horizontal, spring out of the bank on the side
of the road. One gets so used in Turkey to seeing tombs springing out
of places where they are least expected that unless one’s attention
were particularly drawn to it one would never have noticed this
insignificant, neglected burial-place of a great man. I say great man,
because I am told that it is from Kara Kheuz that the great Molière
took so much of his inspiration, and his well-known _que fait-il dans
cette galère?_ comes straight from this source.
In the inn where we are staying there is no woman to attend to me.
This does not trouble me in the very least, and men, after all, make
excellent housemaids. They give me cheese for breakfast, rustic bread,
and coffee _à la turque_, after which I rise early and dress, in order
to see all there is to be seen whilst the daylight lasts. The inn is
situated on a hill; there are sulphur and Turkish baths attached to
it. Broussa is the happy possessor of springs, which for a European
_Kurort_ would be a fortune; but where is the European who would come
to a _kurort_ without a casino? Our inn is not in Broussa itself, but
in the neighbouring village. Broussa lies at the foot of the hill,
bathed in a pale blue mist, which looks from the distance like the sea,
and there are lines of naked poplar trees jutting out of the wide blue
expanse, and an horizon such as I love, for it never seems to end.
S---- Bey, the sympathetic principal of the Broussa Lycée for boys,
is to be my guide whilst I am here. My guide from Constantinople is
visiting his old friends, who are arranging a meeting-lecture at the
town hall, for never is this charming politician allowed to leave
a town without first speaking to the people. A lecture from N----
Bey! It is the event of the year! There is nothing whatsoever going
on here after sunset. A handful of dimly lighted cafés, where a few
resigned-looking Turks sit sipping a halfpenny cup of coffee, talking
rarely, smoking generally, and occasionally humming a favourite
ghazelle (a popular song which sounds to my Western ear like a dirge).
But when N---- Bey speaks the cafés are deserted, and the proprietors
themselves are amongst the audience.
[Illustration: THE FOOTBALL TEAM OF THE BROUSSA LYCÉE]
It was a splendid meeting. A seething mass of 2,000 odd fezzes and
turbans; old and young, rich--or rather, shall we say, the better
class--and poor, workmen, hamals, and the Grand Vizier’s brother. The
present Governor of Broussa, who was himself absent, was represented.
The prefect and his officials came to the big entrance door to fetch
me, and after a little speech of welcome conducted me into the
_mayoral_ parlour, where I drank coffee and syrup before the meeting
began. The prefect is one of those kind-faced Orientals who belong
to the Turkey which is passing away. He has a little, withered-up,
dark-skinned face, and big, brown, wondering eyes; he wears a long coat
made of Persian embroidery, and lined with fur, and a big turban, which
looks too heavy for his small head, and although he is the municipal
head of the ancient capital of the Turks, he can neither read nor write.
And here, again, the inborn good manners of the Turks struck me. They
had never before seen a woman at one of their meetings; they did not
stare at me during the speech, they did not hang about the door to see
the “curious monster” arrive and depart. When I took my seat beside the
Prefect and his officials they rose respectfully; then I became one of
themselves, and they paid no further attention to me.
I asked N---- Bey, when we travelled to Broussa, whether he prepared
his speeches. “No,” said he, “I speak from my heart.” Although
during the speech I understood no more than that his subject was
the Fatherland, the sight of this man, who was ready to lay down
his life for the Fatherland in danger, giving out the fire of his
eloquence to stir the people to be ready, and this whole mass of people
sobbing, moved me also to tears. That I should have wept without
understanding a word sounds incomprehensible. I understood the sacred
word “Fatherland.” That was enough. Now should all Western critics who
spoke of the Turkish “indifference” come and see these tears--tears of
old men and boys. Where were the fathers of these youths and the sons
of the old men? I asked. The answer I knew--they had fallen for the
Fatherland.
N---- Bey, explaining the reasons for the Turkish losses, found three
principal causes: First, the absence of the clergy, if the Moslem holy
men can be called by that name. “Ever since the beginning of Islam,”
said he, “the clergy have been at the wars encouraging the soldiers
when they grew faint-hearted, and helping to care for the sick. In this
last war not one Hodja took part.” Secondly, he blamed the dynasty for
not sending one of its members to lead the troops. Before the reign of
Abdul-Hamid the Kalife of Islam always led the troops; the dynasty,
like the clergy, had forgotten its duty. The third cause found was that
the people had not obeyed the dictates of civilization. That is true.
But on whom can the blame be laid? On the shoulders of that fallen
tyrant who is eking out his days in a prison-palace on the shores of
the Bosphorus. It is when one goes about this country and sees the
extraordinary ignorance of this people that one realizes something
of the hideous crime of the Sovereign, who for thirty-three years
terrorized his people, and the extraordinary courage of the Young Turks
who deposed him.
Civilization the Turks must have. Much as I have loved the reposeful
nature of the quiet cities of Islam, much as I feel the sight of
electric light and gas and electric trams offends my artistic soul,
I know only too well that Turkey must “move on with the centuries.”
And here again one recognizes the gigantic task the Young Turks have
before them. Hamid is no longer on the throne, but Hamid’s work lives
on. You cannot repair in five years the damage of thirty-three. You
cannot in five years change the character of a people used to a régime
of terror. I see in the faces of these poor old men a resignation
which is the result of a crushing and brutalizing tyranny; they are
like horses which have taken fright. What can Young Turkey do with
them? “You cannot put new wine into old bottles,” says the Prophet of
Nazareth. Young Turkey is wise in staking all its efforts on the coming
generation, and giving power to a Minister not yet thirty years of age.
S---- Bey is determined I shall not leave Broussa till I have visited
every stone it contains. It was the “woman’s day” at the Turkish baths
this morning, and I went into all the steaming heat to see the women of
the people spending, as it were, a holiday. They can stay there all day
for 2_d._ if they like; so they take their food, and their children,
and their children’s children, and make a day of it. Fat old ladies in
gaudy-coloured tunics sit huddled up in corners singing contentedly,
others walk about, dragging their clogs over the baking marble floors,
whilst little girls and boys, with wine flasks tied round their waists
in the place of lifebelts, swim about the fountains like little brown
fishes.
We have been to the market-place and the old bazaar, which very much
resembles the bazaar of Stamboul, except that one has Moslem merchants
to deal with instead of Levantine Christians. What a charming
difference! Yes, but these good-mannered men will never make successful
merchants. I buy a piece of embroidery. “The price,” says the merchant,
“is 12 francs.--2_d._ profit for me,” he adds. I offer 10_s._ for a
blue stone. “I could not take more than 6_d._,” says the merchant; “it
is only glass.”
I want to buy a couple of the charming blue bead necklaces which every
quadruped here wears round his neck. It does not matter really whether
his harness is worn almost to a thread, no harm can come to him if he
has the bead necklaces round his neck. “This lady loves your country,”
S---- Bey tells the merchant, and the merchant will not take a penny
for his wares. I go to see the Broussa silks. “Is this the lady who
loves my country?” asks the merchant. A pink silk dress is mine, but
all attempts to get the bill have been in vain.
And, at the bazaar at Stamboul, who has not experienced the
disagreeable bartering which takes place between the merchant and
the customer? I went one day with Fâtima. The man tried to sell
us imitation antique embroideries for the price of real antiques.
Fortunately, Fâtima knew the difference, for I did not. Then the
merchant showed us the real article. “Very beautiful,” commented he; “a
beautiful price!” replied Fâtima. “But I never cheat Turks,” although
he had tried, he assured us, “only English people,” for, naturally, he
did not recognise through the thick veil I was wearing the features of
a woman of that race “he always cheated when he could.”
The women in the villages here are not veiled, as are the women of
Constantinople. Their hair and shoulders are covered with yellow
embroideries, of which I was given a sample, and they sit astride their
ponies, mules, or donkeys, as the case may be, often without saddles,
and a well-worn cord only as bridle and reins. They carry a rather
substantial twig of a tree for a whip, which they hold threateningly
before the donkey’s eyes whilst mounting, but I never saw them use it.
Horseback, of course, is the only way of getting about this country.
The horses are sure-footed, if not very active, and at each village
travellers find a fairly steady pole, to which a horse is tied up
and left. The kindly villagers feed him and water the horse, and the
little, pantalooned children play with his tail and stroke his body--he
is quite resigned. We rode over to Hamidlair, a village about two and
a half hours away. On the verandah of the schoolhouse was placed a
chair for me, which had been procured with very great difficulty. The
schoolhouse itself could accommodate twenty children, ten little boys
on one side, and ten little girls on the other, and the schoolmaster
stands between the children and addresses first one sex and then the
other. He, too, is a picturesque person, with the honest Eastern face
and big, brown eyes. He wears a turban and long, brown coat. The
schoolmaster’s salary is paid in corn, which means, of course, when the
harvest is good, salary is high, and vice versa. It seems extraordinary
to think that in this enlightened twentieth century wages can still be
paid in corn.
I went to visit the wife of the schoolmaster. She lived in a
two-storeyed house of four rooms, with a tiny garden, where a cow, a
goat, and a lamb had space to walk about and remain great friends.
The young wife was about seventeen, and lived with her mother and
grandmother and little baby. They all came to the door to meet me,
and, kissing the hem of my dress, they led me by the hand up a wooden
staircase ladder to a room which was furnished with cushions all
round--their chairs by day and their beds by night. The bare boards
were scrupulously clean, and the cushions a welcome resting-place for
my tired limbs. I wanted to take off my boots, like the other women,
but my hostess refused to allow me. After having tucked me up amongst
the cushions, with a queenly gesture she took off her ear-rings,
her ring, and a jade bracelet, and gave them to me, but I naturally
declined to accept them. This jewellery, together with a new pair of
clove-ball silk pantaloons, were all the worldly goods this woman
possessed, and she was ready to give them all to me, a stranger. Then
the grandmother came, bringing for me a cup of milk warm from the
goat, and the great-grandmother put in as a token of respect for the
honoured guest seven lumps of sugar. And I had to drink it!
I loved being among that primitive household. They had bread to eat and
milk to drink; their own vegetables they grew in the little patch of
garden, where the animals walked about at leisure, but they never ate
meat, nor did they feel the want of it--to have told them they were
poor would have surprised them.
CHAPTER XIII THE PULSE OF THE NATION
A European official, who has lived here all his life (and he is an
old man now), is astonished at my recklessness in trusting myself as
I have done to the protection of the “unspeakable” Turks. He was born
and bred with the idea that Turks were “unspeakable,” and consequently
has nothing to do with them, unless he can possibly help it, and when
he does he lets them see he dislikes them. Extraordinary it is, that
there should be Europeans in this country who, after living almost a
lifetime amongst a people, have not got to know them one little bit
better! They make their whole existence, as it were, an island--their
thoughts, their actions, their words, even their friends--and fondly
imagine themselves to be patriots. “How uncomfortable! How nasty! Oh!
I wouldn’t like that!” they exclaim, as I describe to them some of
the customs of this people amongst whom they have lived over fifty
years. “Whatever did you do in a household where there were no forks
and knives?” The answer is not very difficult to guess; but they seem
incapable of understanding my delight at eating with my fingers, like
the primitive people who entertained me.
And yet, after only a short time, how different is my experience of
these same “unspeakable” Turks! Every day since I have been here some
woman comes with a present for me! I have received a wooden spoon,
stuffs, embroideries, Brussels sprouts, melons, sweetmeats, yourout
(curdled milk), and one poor woman has walked from a neighbouring
village, bringing me a little lamb; I have explained to her, however,
that although I much appreciate her gift, the fog of London would kill
the little thing, and he had better, therefore, remain where he is in
the sun. And why have all these women come bringing me presents? Simply
out of gratitude (and gratitude is one of their chief characteristics)
to a woman who loves their country, and because that woman is English.
Right into the very heart of Asia the word “England” stands for
something almost superhuman. “We can never, never forget that England
has shed her blood for us,” said one day the Turkish Heir to the
throne. England stands for all that is good and honest and just.
England is the fairy godmother, who, with a touch of her magic wand,
could put everything straight for them. In the families where there
are two governesses, an Englishwoman and a Frenchwoman, it is the
Englishwoman who is given the position of trust, the Englishwoman
who sleeps in the children’s room, the Englishwoman who buys their
clothes; in short, whatever the mother cannot do herself she prefers
the Englishwoman to do for her. “The Englishwoman told me so, therefore
I believe her,” is a phrase which I myself have heard; and one mother,
quite recently, who was, in spite of my presence, weeping bitterly
because her son had gone to Paris to study, added, “It would have all
been so different had he gone to England.” My host tells me, too, that
when he was a little boy, and the Circassians were groaning under the
Russian yoke, his mother and her friends used to comfort each other
with the hope that the English most surely would come to deliver them.
They did not think of the Turks, who were their natural deliverers, and
who at that time were quite strong enough to come to their assistance;
but their thoughts always turned to the great faraway England, who
always came to help States in bondage, or States struggling for
regeneration.
And so, when I think of this great prestige of my country, it seems a
thousand pities that there are persons doing their best to destroy that
prestige.
I hear the Turks called suspicious--during the reign of Abdul Hamid,
perhaps, yes--they had every reason for being so. I have trusted them,
and they of all the nations of Europe have never given me the wrong
change.
I have trusted them, and they have not deceived me. One day, I
remember, I had to cross the bridge without Fâtima, and pay my own
toll. Not knowing the Turkish for what I wanted to say, I opened my
purse, and the man took out what he wanted and put back the change. My
boxes have never been locked since I left the boat. When I return from
my afternoon drive Miss Chocolate takes off my “tcharchaff” and puts
away my purse. My books, my papers, my letters are all open; the few
jewels I possess are on my table. I close my eyes in the homes of these
humble villagers confident that no harm will come to me; that they will
not unfasten my pearls whilst I sleep. In our Western countries should
I not be scolded for putting temptation in their way? And I, in my
turn, feel sure they trust me.
My friend Zeyneb lives at No. 43. It is a luxury to have a number.
Addresses are generally given in this manner: the district first,
let us say “Kiz Tach,” for example; then, as further direction, “the
house at the corner, near the fountain, near the convent, near the
mosque.” One generally trusts to Providence, in the form of a kindly
stranger, to find the way, and I must say they take unending pains to
help one. With a number, then, I say to myself, it will be easy to
find Zeyneb. But alas, there are other No. 43’s in the district, these
numbers, for the most part, having been purchased at the bazaar and
put on the door without rhyme or reason, and as a sort of decoration.
To find my friend’s house, which is ten minutes’ walk from Pera, it
took my coachman two and a half hours and cost me 20f., and “the way
is so easy,” explained Zeyneb. After that I walked, following these
instructions: “Always keep on the cobbles which lie on the earth
from north to south. Although the road may turn and twist, mount and
descend, as long as you keep on the north to south lying cobbles you
will be all right.” And after dark, when I have taken that way, had the
Turks been suspicious, what would they not have imagined I was doing
when suddenly, from my little bag, I extracted a box of matches and
examined the cobbles to be sure I had not strayed on to those lying
from east to west. Once or twice a kindly old man brought his lantern,
and came with me as far as the hillock, at the side of which Zeyneb’s
No. 43 is situated.
When I remarked on the number of maps and the prominence given to
drawing of maps in the Turkish schools, my guide answered, “You English
on your comfortable island do not require to know the map of Europe.”
Yes, a thousand pities it is that we all of us, from the highest of the
land to the schoolboy, should not have a more accurate knowledge of the
map of Europe and a more accurate knowledge of the peoples on that map.
If all those who are now working in the cause of peace turned their
efforts towards making the nations of a country understand one another
better war would be much less possible. If only we had more knowledge
of the people of other lands, many diplomatic errors could be avoided.
Over and over again we have slighted the Moslems of our Empire. How
many of us even realize that King George rules over more Moslems than
any other sovereign. Hear the asinine remarks of our young subalterns
about the uncivilized Indian _niggers_ who must be kept in their
place!! How dare they thus humiliate persons of a civilization older
and greater than our own.
There is a wonderful brotherhood amongst the Moslems. Any injustice
to their Moslem brothers of Turkey is counted as an insult to Moslem
Indians; they have written so to me. Unfortunately we have not this
same brotherhood amongst us Christians. I have in my possession a
letter written by a Lazarist Father, deploring the possibility that
Constantinople might fall into the hands of the Greeks. “They are
waging war,” he says, “in the name of the Cross, but does Europe not
know that that Cross is _tout ce qu’il a de plus Grecque_” (sic). What
a splendid example of Christian brotherhood to show to the Moslems
of the world! He prefers the _infidel_ Turk to another member of the
Christian Church because the Turk has offered him hospitality and
allowed him to have his churches and his missions, and has in no way
interfered with his religious liberties, whereas from his brother
Christian he could not expect such broad-mindedness. And what horrors
would not have been committed at the Holy Sepulchre had not the Turks
been there to guard it against the Christians. Sad, indeed, it is that
this wonderful Christian religion of ours should be divided against
itself to the detriment of its best interests.
Had the Bulgarians and the Christian natives of the Balkans gone out
to wage war like Hottentots, or any of the other nations they have
the impertinence to regard as savages, we might have pitied them;
but that they should carry the Cross, and wage war in the name of
the Cross, what Christian can ever forgive them? “We used to respect
your Christian Cross,” one day a Turk said to me; “we used to bow
respectfully when the Cross passed in the streets, but the Bulgarians
have dragged that Cross in the mire.” I was one day reading with a
friend the beautiful, wonderful story of Jesus of Nazareth.
“This is not the Christ of the Bulgarians,” she said. “No, indeed,” I
replied.
* * * * *
And Young Turkey--has she yet had a chance? We cannot pass judgment
on them till they have had ten years’ fair trial. Unfortunately for
them, their revolution was a little too idealistic. Theirs was to be a
bloodless revolution! Bloodless revolution it was, and it astonished
the whole civilized world. Alas! they have now to learn you cannot
make a revolution without shedding blood, any more than a doctor can
amputate a limb without shedding blood. The poison they should have
cleared away at the time of their revolution they have to clear away
now; the minions of Hamid, who earned a substantial living as spies,
are still there to plot and plan for the return of the tyrant.
The Young Turks have had to pay a heavy price for their experience!
Counter-revolutions and insurrections to the number of seven, and three
European wars, and the last two against five nations! Add to this also,
the humiliating interference of Europe. I have seen here households
with a Greek cook, an Armenian _bonne à tout faire_, an Albanian
cavass, and a Turkish gardener. It is no easy matter to rule such a
household. See what tact and patience it requires. The Armenian, for
some reason, insults the cook, who replies by throwing the chicken at
her head; then the Albanian and the Turk are dragged into the quarrel,
and you hear them cursing one another in their different languages.
Who does not pity the mistress of a house like this? Who is the person
so tactless as to interfere? And is it not the same with the Turkish
Government, except that they have the Syrians and Arabs as well? When
things seem to be going on fairly smoothly, the Powers, with bungling,
interfering hands, come along and “demand reforms.” “We cannot make
headway with our reforms,” writes my compatriot from Trebizonde; “some
Power always objects to something.” And what will the Power say now,
when I tell them that here in the schools of Asia Minor the walls are
covered with German maps, the apparatus in the agricultural college is
German, and most of the scientific instruments are German? Poor Turkey,
will she ever have a soul to call her own?
* * * * *
Unfortunately, the world always seems to forget that the key to the
understanding of a nation is in the hands of the women. One sex cannot
achieve true greatness without the assistance of the other. “If I only
had a woman who could tell me what to do and say just at the right
moment,” a Turk said to me one day. How well I understand what he felt.
Where would our political men be without their womenkind, not only to
tell them what to do and say, but often to do and say it for them? This
Turk in question had made a social mistake; he told me all about it. In
my country a charming wife’s smile can atone for multitudes of social
sins much more serious; but here----. Political men cannot be expected
to bear on their shoulders both burdens political and burdens social.
I have been, whilst here, to see the Governor’s wife. She is a sister
of the Khedive, and her husband a brother of the Grand Vizier, and,
like his brother, he receives no salary for his services. This
beautiful and accomplished lady, who dresses only in Turkish dresses,
made of Turkish stuffs, whose very jewels are all set, not in Paris,
but in the old Arabian Fâtima style--see of what assistance she could
be to her husband if she took her place at the head of his table,
as our Western women do! The Princess, who speaks five Western and
three Oriental languages, has read, perhaps, more than most of her
countrywomen (she is Egyptian), and she has supplemented her knowledge
by travelling, not only in every European country with the exception
of Russia, but right across to San Francisco and back through Canada,
“and you see,” she added, charmingly, “I can give all my attention to
travelling because I have no dressmaker worries.”
The man who has not beside him some woman who can judge instinctively
for him, and whisper “Beware!” from the bottom of my heart I pity him.
How many men can tell at a glance whether another is a gentleman or
not? A woman generally can, a man sometimes. I have seen most charming
Turks with friends unworthy of them. “Surely,” I have said to myself,
“you would not have made a friend of such a man had your wife been
there to guide you!” And so, in trying to solve the riddle of the Turk
the answer is to be found behind that harem door. Both men and women
blame the harem, and rightly so, for most of their disasters; the
remedy they see in the education of the women.
I have come to Turkey at indeed an interesting time. Here in Broussa
I have not marvelled, as did the Oxford professor of Arabic, in the
visitors’ book, about the boys’ knowledge of that language. I have
congratulated them on their first football match. I have admired the
children’s first attempts at plain needlework (not embroidery, that is
born in them), dancing, singing, and drawing. In all these arts they
have made progress, and although the art students’ trees are a little
bald and a little too green, and their cows’ eyes a little too near
their tails, there is in that work a great promise of better.
The Belgian head-mistress of the School of Arts and Crafts, at the
opening of which I was present, and who has allowed me to go so often
to see the working of a school which, naturally, interests me, tells
me, “double the number of children have arrived over the number for
whom the Government provided accommodation,” and she added, “We must
just put up with the discomfort. They are like hungry children asking
for bread, and I dare not turn them away.”
[Illustration: OPENING OF THE BELGIAN SCHOOL OF ARTS AND CRAFTS,
STAMBOUL]
And now Turkey is to find teachers of her own to instruct all these
children. She cannot always be asking the assistance of the foreigner.
She knows to her cost now what that means, and we who wish her
well will leave no stone unturned to help her to help herself--to
improve the teachers’ training college, and assist some of the most
brilliant pupils to have the benefit of English and French methods of
organisation.
CHAPTER XIV FORBIDDEN GROUND--THE HOLY TOMB
I have been with Fâtima to the Holy Tomb of Eyoub. Ever since I came
here I have looked forward to this experience; not so much, let me
confess at once, to see the beautiful porcelains which cover its sacred
and historic walls as to contradict the regulation which reserves
entrance to the Holy Tomb exclusively for “believers.”
This was not my first visit to Eyoub. Five years ago I had the
humiliating experience of being refused admission to the tomb because
I was wearing a hat; now I am wearing a veil who can tell whether I am
Moslem or Christian? Last time I came to Eyoub in a friend’s launch.
It had been freshly painted, and was out that day as it were for its
maiden trip. We had chosen an afternoon when the sea was calm and the
atmosphere clear enough to enjoy the magnificent view one has of the
opposite shore, and all the hieroglyphics and brass-work on the launch
were dancing in the sunshine like little golden butterflies.
Although we could not visit the mosque that afternoon five years ago,
we did not give to the tombs and the curious cemetery the time they
deserved. We climbed up the steep and stony path which leads to a “Well
of Souls,” where a witch with wonderful powers of divination can not
only predict what will happen in the future, but will tell you the
valuables stolen during the year and in the water of the well the faces
of the thieves can be distinctly seen. But we never found the witch.
And now, since my last visit, Eyoub does not seem in the least bit
changed. There is the same merchant who sells you corn with which to
feed the pigeons, there are the same devout-looking turban-headed
inhabitants, the same thickly veiled women, the same unending streams
of beggar children, and I even think I can recognise our boatman of
five years ago. He is still a little on my conscience. The launch, I
remember, was too big to land at Eyoub, so a caïque was called and we
were rowed up to the little landing-place; and I remember so distinctly
the boatman was not paid. When we returned, however, he was either
praying or had gone home to rest. Calling another man, we engaged
him to row us to the launch; he was paid and given the money for his
colleague. With Western _naïveté_, I asked whether the first boatman
would ever receive his money. “Why, of course,” answered my friend, not
in the least understanding my question.
We drove to Eyoub this time. A long, delightful drive it was through
the picturesque quarters of Stamboul, which are now becoming so
familiar to me and to which I have become so attached. The market-place
with its richly coloured fruits; the well-balanced shops of meat,
bread, and other wares so charmingly arranged on the mule’s back--I
watch them almost as one watches by the death-bed of a loved one.
Like death, the passing of the primitive Turk is inevitable; but that
does not make his going any the less sad, nor does it prevent one’s
mourning....
It was Friday afternoon. The Faithful were at prayer when we arrived. I
wanted to see the mosque; but how could I, even as a veiled woman, take
my place amongst the women? Much as I admire the wonderful solemnity
of the Eastern prayers--much as I, a Christian, would have loved to
worship Allah with my Moslem sisters--I was just a little frightened;
my action might be mistaken for irreverence.
We went, however, into the gallery reserved for the Sultan, and through
the lattice-work windows we had a good view of the mosque below. But
the mosque and its historic contents--for it is in this mosque that
the Sultan is girt with the sword of Islam--were dwarfed to me in the
magnificence of seeing men and women in one mass bending in rhythmic
supplication to the God of us all. The women were screened off from the
men, but they were “believers,” every one of them, and they worshipped
with a reverence I had never yet seen elsewhere.
Of its charity, one branch of our Christian Church prays every Sabbath
for Turks and heretics. There are some heretics I know who resent being
classed with the Turks. I am proud to be classed with the Turks; but
then, I am a heretic who has seen them at prayer....
* * * * *
Eyoub-Ansari-Khalid-ben-Said, to give him his full title, was a
favourite standard-bearer of the Prophet, and during the siege of
Constantinople he fell. About eight centuries after his death a body
was exhumed which was supposed to be his, and was buried by Mahomet the
conqueror, who placed it with pomp and ceremony beside the sword of
the Prophet. To his tomb come pilgrims who have special favours to ask
the saint, and he has accomplished, I am told, some marvellous cures.
It was not a little surprising to me that these superstitions had also
crept into Islam--yet who would grudge the ignorant the comfort of
their beliefs?
* * * * *
Slowly and reverently I followed Fâtima and her friend across the wide
courtyard, whose plantain tree stretched like a magnificent green
canopy between us and the sky; a flight of white pigeons flew out to
greet us. “Only do not speak!” warned Fâtima once again as we crossed
another courtyard to the entrance of the Holy Tomb. On arriving at
the mausoleum, we took off our shoes and left them on the doorstep.
The thought did just flash through my mind that it would be rather
uncomfortable should a passer-by take a fancy to my new shoes; but I
soon felt ashamed of my Western suspicions--and, after all, I have left
my shoes so often outside mosques and never have they been taken....
[Illustration: TURKISH LADIES IN THE COUNTRY WITH THEIR EUROPEAN
GOVERNESSES]
Fâtima and I have visited many tombs now. They seem, these _turbés_,
to reconcile one with the idea of death, although it is only the
great of the land whose mortal remains are kept in a mausoleum. In a
coffin covered by a shawl and surrounded by candles, with his Koran
and other precious souvenirs kept by his side ready for use, the dead
man rests--it is as if he were asleep, and the guardian, who with his
little _ménage_ of beads and cushions and a Koran, watches and tends
and shields him from all harm. These _turbés_ are not altogether what
one would expect, however, in democratic Turkey. I should have fancied
that the equality preached in life would have been enforced after
death, and that the Turks would have buried their dead in much the
same way as the Moravians, whose cemetery is the picturesque lesson
in Socialism which greets me every morning from my study window in
Chelsea. Flat stone slabs level with the earth--hidden at certain
seasons of the year by long grass, poppies, and cornflowers--whatever
they have been in life, on their long last journey they start in the
same vehicle.
The guardians of the tombs were generally men of learning--Hodjas, or
at least students, who in the evening of their existence were content
to guard the mortal remains of some great man.
There is a sympathetic and interesting old Hodja who guards the tomb
of the Sultan Fathij, the Conqueror. His age in Biblical parlance
is five score and ten, I am told, but I cannot vouch for the truth
of this statement, since I have not seen his birth certificate. He
is in perfect possession of all his faculties, walks, however, with
difficulty, and he remains all day seated cross-legged on his cushions
with his chaplet of amber beads and open Koran before him.
When we had removed our shoes, we sat down beside the old Hodja, and
kissing his bony old hand as a sign of respect for his age and his
office, Fâtima spoke to him of many things. “Tell him,” I said, “that I
am a Giaour.” Fâtima did as I requested. “There are no Giaours in our
religion,” replied this kindly old man; “every creature whom God has
created is dear to Him and dear to us all.”
“There are no Giaours in our religion.” The answer was so unexpected
and so splendid that I have repeated it to many who have attacked in my
presence the fanaticism of Islam. Yet, was the old Hodja right after
all? Should he not rather have said, “There ought to be no Giaours in
our religion”? The Koran says in this respect, “We believe in God and
what has been sent down to us through the Holy Prophets--we make no
difference between them, and to Him are we resigned.” This being the
case, why then must I, a Christian, go to the Holy Tomb disguised as a
Mahometan?
The tomb of Eyoub was by no means the most beautiful that I have seen
in Turkey, nor the most interesting. One had not time during one’s
short stay to examine at leisure the porcelains. But can they be
compared in any way, I ask myself, with the exquisite porcelains of
the Rustem Pasha mosque, that tiny, almost unknown mosque to which
one drives through the most unappetising of the Stamboul streets,
and whose beauty so many tourists take for granted, since the mosque
is so difficult to find? Two or three walks round the tomb, two or
three peeps at the silverwork, two or three glances at the purple silk
curtains, and we are out and have put on our shoes again. Yes, indeed,
one could see many things more beautiful, but this tomb is beautiful
because of the difficulty in seeing it. To run the risk once more of
being torn to pieces by an angry mob, as I did in Bosnia! Truly the
forbidden fruit is sweet indeed!
We walked slowly up the hills, threading our way amongst the tombs; the
wistaria was shrivelling in the brownness of death, but there was a
wealth of those bright pink roses which I had searched for in Zeyneb’s
garden in order to make the rose jam. The ragged beggar children
follow us asking for alms. We pause and look towards the Golden Horn.
How magnificent it all looks from here. There the five hills, each
crowned by a mosque--Sudludgi, Piri Pasha, Hass-Kerin, Kassim Pasha,
and Galata--can be seen as distinct as the five fingers of your hand,
and all bathed in those wonderful uncertain and poetical tints which do
not belong to our Western world.
One wanders on for a while, and then pauses to drink in just a little
more of the beautiful landscape. Neither of us care to speak. We
understand each other. A melancholy happiness, a calm, quiet feeling of
resignation has taken possession of us, and in this resignation lies
the whole enchantment of the East.
* * * * *
Just before we reached our carriage I saw a dear friend with her
accustomed unselfishness escorting some English visitors round as
much as they, Christians, could see of the holy city of Eyoub. She
recognised my voice, and I was introduced as a Turkish lady to my
compatriots.
I felt just a little guilty at their delight in meeting a real Turkish
woman, but it was too dangerous to undeceive them in those fanatical
surroundings. “And how well you speak English, too!” they said.
“English was the first language I spoke,” I answered truthfully. I
wonder whether Miss A. ever told them who I really was.
CHAPTER XV ON THE SHORES OF THE UPPER BOSPHORUS
To-day the sun peeping through the latticed windows of the harem has
found me sleeping soundly on a comfortable mattress in the corner of my
hostess’s bedroom.
This is my first experience of Turkish country-house life, and it is so
different to anything I have lived before--quaint, strange, charming,
and at times confusing.
The house is immense--in most countries it would have been classed
amongst the palaces--and it looks much larger than it really is, so
scantily is it furnished.
But what a curious feeling of loneliness and desolation one has on
first entering this house. What has happened to the poor place? Has
it been successfully burgled? Have its inhabitants deserted it, or
have they simply sent the best of the furniture to the emporium and
the “household gods” to the bank? No pictures on the walls, no cosy
corners, not even the elements of comfort. Then all of a sudden one
discovers a table, almost hidden from view, covered with a host of
tiny little articles, some of gold studded with precious stones, and
the tinier they are the more they are cherished, and not one Turkish
woman would change her table of useless nothings for a whole room full
of Western comforts.
A large retinue of slaves and servants, many born on the premises, are
supposed to keep the house in order, yet if every one of them looked
“work” seriously in the face, three times their number would not
suffice to do the work as we in the West would have it done.
But then, after all, we are not dealing with the West. The Turkish
point of view is this: What a lot of fine tears and good worry are
wasted in the West. Why should these Europeans criticise us? Our
beds do get rolled up and put away before it is time to take them
out again. If there is a slight error of an hour on the wrong side
of our mealtimes, we do get them. Should our rooms not be dusted
daily, a friendly wind from the Bosphorus blows through and shifts the
accumulation from place to place. And, says the Turkish woman, “I came
to the country to rest. It may seem like running away from rest in
order to rest, but that’s my business. My household runs on the basis
of good, delicious, creamy Turkish coffee at all hours of the day;
everything else is in proportion.”
The lord and master of the establishment is away. I do not know whether
I am sorry. I find Turkish men so much less interesting than the
women. He, the master, will be back some time within the _radius_ of
a month, and no one ever supposes that my “week-end” will not have
extended long past that date. For an unattached woman to suggest that
she deliberately wishes to leave a friend’s house without a serious
reason for doing so is an insult to a dear friend, and it cannot be
done.
* * * * *
Here in the country we are wearing Turkish dresses--nice, comfortable
dressing-gown arrangements of Broussa silk, with wide sashes which
begin under our arms. Mine has round the neck and sleeves a fine,
magnificent embroidery quite out of proportion in value to the stuff
to which it is attached, that being the case with so many Turkish
embroideries. I’m not sure that my gown suits me, but that is a detail;
it was built to accommodate a person twice my width and half my height.
Only the master’s slippers will fit me, and the noise I make as I
slither along the wide hall in my silk gown is like that of a sail in
the river breeze.
We have done away, also, with our Western _coiffures_, and it’s a
delightful change to be wearing “flapper” plaits again, and so good for
the hair. And then, since the master is away, provided I do not again
commit the indecency of letting the gardener see my hair and the sun
kiss my unveiled head, it matters little whether my hair is up or down.
The old _nourrice_ having fallen out with both her shoes and stockings,
has discarded them for the time being. Fortunately for her the rooms
are carpeted. Taqui, the Armenian servant, who waits at table and is
chief of the bed-distributing servants, has done away with her shoes;
to her heelless and toeless stockings, however, she has become so
attached that no promise of better seems to tempt her away from the
affection she feels for her old friends.
Amongst the staff there are two grooms and a coachman, relics of the
“fat” years that are no more; and although there are no horses in the
stables, they still remain in the family, performing odd jobs like
opening and shutting the huge windows at the back of the house.
In honour of my arrival, a tiny slave, perched like a fly on the top
of a garden ladder, is busy cleaning the big window with a dainty silk
handkerchief. She has been working for an hour, and although during
that time she has toiled and accomplished little, and finally given up
in despair, a small bright and shining place, sparkling in the sun, is
there as proof of her charming compliment to the housekeeping qualities
of my nation.
At the same time, one of my hostesses, seized with a fit of Western
energy, is, with the assistance of a small camel’s-hair brush and a
box of water colours, busy supplying vivid red and green parrots with
those beaks and feathers which a recent rainstorm has swept into air.
I suggest that if a brush can be found for me--or a blunt knife--I
would like to help in re-beaking the parrots, or if anything from a
pocket handkerchief to a towel can be found, I too might make a shining
place on the window-pane (how delightfully Turkish). But no--I am the
honoured guest--cigarettes, coffee, and sweets are provided for me. I
must remain in the seat of honour, as far from the door as possible and
right in the draught of the gilded windows.
What a curious household we are! I have obeyed my hostess’s orders and
brought no luggage except a tooth brush. With everything I have been
provided, including my dresses, and a _sachet_ of linen is placed every
night at the foot of my mattress.
There is in my room a little _coiffeuse_ which looks like a doll’s
table in the emptiness of the room; a big armchair and a carpet
complete the furniture. We wash all together at a marble fountain, and
when the weather is dry it takes an eternity to wash, for the drainage
is primitive and you can only coax the drops of water out of the tap at
the rate of two a minute.
But oh! the silence and loneliness of my bedroom. It frightens me.
I wish one of my friends had offered to share it with me. I wonder
how long the sturdy candle will last! What a distressing shadow the
_coiffeuse_ makes on the wall! There are little draughts coming from
everywhere. The door, bereft of its handle, is attached by a string to
a substantial nail and the window will neither open nor will it quite
shut.
I sink down on to my mattress and fall asleep, but only to wake with
a start a few moments later. Having reassured myself that the door is
securely hooked on to the nail, I go back to my mattress again, but not
for long: the moonbeams forcing their way through the latticed windows
have given birth to all kinds of curious shadows, the _coiffeuse_
is dancing in the candle light, and the deadly solemn silence is
unearthly. If only the trees would shiver as I am shivering! If only a
dog would bark! If only I could sleep! but paradox of paradoxes, it is
the silence that is keeping me awake. “Yet I am not afraid,” I say to
myself. “I will sing to contradict this awful silence.” I try, but not
one note will come, for terror has frozen my voice to my throat.
Summoning up the little will-power that the soul-crushing harem life
has left me, I stagger to the mirror to see how I look--but the horror
of it! Can that hideous, unearthly face be mine? Where am I? and where
am I going? My whole being is numbed, my ears are singing--I can
remember no more....
Exactly how I and my bed were transplanted to my friend’s room I cannot
tell. Did I faint? It is not a pleasant memory, nor one on which I care
to dwell; let me turn my thoughts rather from my lonely bedroom to my
curious bed--my beautiful, comfortable, unpractical bed.
The costliest of linen, the finest embroidery, a satin bolster allowed
to show itself at both ends through the embroidery, satin cushions
heavily embroidered with gold--the sheets sewn to the quilt--the
gold itself worth a nice little sum--this is my bed, and all this
magnificence cast down in the corner of an almost unfurnished room!
* * * * *
The day is breaking; the Bosphorus, so near to our window, is licking
the steps of the rickety landing stage. In a short while the little
white boat will come paddling along, if it has pleased the captain to
start at all, for unless the Bosphorus is calm he prefers not to run
the risk of attaching his little boat to the landing stages which dance
on the waves with more zest than his boat.
To-day the Bosphorus is calm. The rising sun has thrown himself on
its bosom, and their joyful union sheds around an indescribable
happiness. Who could imagine that only a week before, this peaceful
resigned-looking river had raged and stormed and invaded the peaceful
resigned souls who dwell so confidently near its banks? But nothing
will cure these unprepared Turks! Over and over again the Bosphorus
has overstepped its boundaries, swept away landing stages, entered the
houses and caused damage irreparable--it is not natural for a river
which looks so fine when it is sparkling in the sunshine to scowl and
frown and storm, and no doubt each time it misbehaves they hope it will
be the last. It is the character of the Turk, and so it will be always.
Armenians--Greeks--Bulgarians--Germans will overstep his boundaries
until they have swept him out of his harem and out of his land.
* * * * *
My hostess is stirring. How peacefully she sleeps, and how well her
dark skin looks beside her scarlet cushions. She rushes to the window.
She, too, will admire the Bosphorus.
“Beautiful, beautiful river,” she says, half musing. “What would lonely
Turkish women do without you to love!”
“Do you never tire of the Bosphorus?” I asked.
“Never,” she answered; “everywhere I go I see it; it is my fixed
standard for all comparisons of beauty in nature. When we are unhappy,
or think we are unhappy, we throw our woes on to the Bosphorus and
dream them away ... what a consolation to follow even in imagination a
barque that is slowly sailing away somewhere ... perhaps to eternity.”
But I am ravenous. My long, curious, eventful night has begotten for
me the appetite of a wolf. I hope something will be given me to eat
and drink without unnecessary delay. “Taqui,” I call, for just as I
was about to ask for something to eat she pops her head inside the
door without knocking, as is the custom. She kisses and hugs us both.
Her hair, like ours, is done up into a hundred little plaitlets, and
covered with a handkerchief--this method of wearing one’s hair during
the night has been advised by all the potentates of the witchcraft
sisterhood. Turkish women have thick glossy hair--it is the result that
counts.
Taqui has made the tea and is pouring it into a thin egg-shell
porcelain cup. But it is not the same as when the _Hanoum_ herself
makes it. What can have happened? Nothing very serious, dear Taqui,
except that you have forgotten to put in the tea. So tiny an error can
easily be remedied and the water is quite respectably hot.
In the meanwhile there is enough food for me to go on with. A massive
silver tray resting on an unsteady table is covered with all kinds of
good things, but what shall I choose?
Fig compôte bathed and saturated in sugary juice. I cannot swallow it.
Marrow jam equally saturated in sugar, sweet almond biscuits, brown
sausages--(are they shrivelled up from age or is that their natural
condition?)--there is also cheese with an equal proportion of sugar and
more biscuits that probably have seen better days.... I have postponed
my hunger.
Taqui has found the tea--a quarter-pound packet which, like the
biscuits, looks as though it had seen better days. She is to make the
tea; I, as the honoured guest, cannot offer to help. Pausing only to
kiss the back of my neck, which she does whenever an occasion presents
itself (and particularly at table when she is serving a dish floating
in oil), Taqui shoots half the remaining tea out of the packet on to
the lukewarm water ... and waits to see me drink the unhappy result--it
has not even been stirred.... Blessed is she who expecteth less than a
good cup of tea on the shores of the Bosphorus!
CHAPTER XVI MORE ABOUT HAREM LIFE ON THE BOSPHORUS
The house itself is built as most Turkish houses are built, with two
separate entrances--the Haremlik and the Selamlik--and a central
entrance hall, arranged as a lounge, from which all the other rooms can
be entered. The lounge on the ground floor is marble tiled and in the
centre is a fountain which has long ceased to play. There are chairs
uncomfortably near the ground and unsteady-looking coffee tables, and
the whole place has not yet recovered from the recent overflowing of
the Bosphorus, a substantial piece of the front door being amongst
other things missing.
The front door possesses neither knocker nor bell. To obtain admission
one kicks or bangs, but not too violently, for the whole thing would
yield before very little pressure.
And the arrival at the house itself! How strange! The springless
old wagon which comes to the boat to meet one, and the faded green
curtains which are discreetly pulled along a rusty rod to hide us
from the glances of the passers-by! The weary old horse, not too
securely roped to the springless wagon, which rumbles and jaunts over
the “self-made” paths! The inhabitants peeping through the latticed
windows as we rumble by! How and where we were going to I just began
to wonder, when the turban-headed coachman drew up at the dilapidated,
God-forsaken-looking dwelling where I now am staying. But, really is
“God-forsaken” the word to use? “God-forsaken,” when the Turks have a
comfortable habit of leaving all the hard housework to God Himself! He
sends His rain to wash the steps and clean the windows. His wind blows
away the dust. His sun kills the microbes and dries the dampness. He
makes the fruit and flowers to come in their right season, and the Turk
looks on....
Three or four kicks and several sharp umbrella-taps at the door, and we
obtain admission. The male who opens for us first looks at me curiously
and then smiles, whilst Taqui, emerging from behind a palm as big as
a small tree, takes us all in her arms, and welcomes me with such
vehemence that my hair comes tumbling down. That means good luck, says
she. That is compensation!
A good, kind, sympathetic soul is Taqui. She was given as wife to the
gardener as a reward for his years of faithful service, and had borne
him a substantial family, all of whom live on the premises and walk in
and out of the salons as they please, except when there are _visites de
cérémonie_. I feel honoured to be classed as a member of the family;
and also _visites de cérémonie_, which are rare in Turkey, come quickly
and leave quickly, whilst I have come to take up my residence for as
long as it pleases me to stay. Taqui must have been born somewhere
within the influence of the “Joconde,” for she had the face and the
wicked smile of the much-discussed Italian, or perhaps had the real
“Joconde” Armenian ancestors?
She is a hard worker, judging from Oriental standards, and used to
complain bitterly about the lazy Turks, and as she takes her place
at the head of the procession of slaves carrying beds she urges her
companions to hurry, or the beds will never be made. Sometimes,
however, even she forgets herself and pauses as she carries the
mattresses to listen to some favourite song. At the end of the first
verse she drops her mattress, sits on it during the second, and then,
having given way so far, she waits until the singing is over. But it is
not often that Taqui goes astray, and considering how many times she
kept the others from committing this Turkish failing--killing time--a
little margin should be allowed her from time to time.
There is a beautiful old woman in the household whom I long to “Kodak.”
Once I thought I “had” her as she sat cross-legged on the carpet
rolling her quarter-hourly cigarette, but she noticed me, alas! then
cursed, screamed, and buried her head in her roomy pantaloons. I shall
not repeat the experiment.
This old lady is a personage in her way. Years before, she attempted
to visit the Holy Tomb at Mecca, and although she never really got
there, having lost all her worldly possessions in consequence, those
kind friends who gave her shelter when she returned penniless always
addressed her by the title “Hadgi,” a title given to those pilgrims who
go for their salvation to the Holy Tomb.
Hadgi loved the young master of the house more than the whole world.
She was at his birth and at his mother’s birth. Her great wish was to
see the master’s own little son make his appearance on life’s scene.
But the young master had acquired Western tastes, and in spite of
the teachings of the Koran, in spite of all the privileges the Koran
offers to those who enter into “holy matrimony,” the young master was
twenty-five, and had not yet taken unto himself a wife, nor was he
thinking of doing so.
It was this question of the master’s future that was tormenting poor
old Hadgi when my visit began. She did not care for my appearance in
a hat, but when I sat beside her on the floor and threaded her needle
and tucked away inside my veil all my hair, the old woman’s heart
melted, and she promptly offered me not only the master of the house
but all her worldly goods--four hand-woven coarse chemises, exquisitely
embroidered, which, tied up in a handkerchief, remained beside her on
the floor all day; at night, still tied up in a handkerchief, an honour
paid by women to the Koran, beside her bed. To me, these chemises were
more like armour than _lingerie_ and of not the slightest use; they
were, however, placed beside my bed for two nights, then given back to
their owner, and she rejoiced more over the return of her lost chemises
than over any present I could have made her. Dear old Hadgi, she could
be such a sweet angel. She tied me up with charms to protect me from
the evil eye, she sang to me and admired me and loved me, but only as
long as I was veiled. When I wore a hat I was a stranger to her--not
one of the “faithful”; and when I went to sit beside her, her usually
benevolent face clouded, her eyes flamed, and she rose from the floor
and hobbled away, casting at me a look which being interpreted might
have been, “What are you doing beside me, Giaour? Whose religion is the
better--yours or mine? I shall see you do no mischief here....”
* * * * *
The kitchen is a hundred yards from the house and the same distance
from the dining-room. It is quite an independent building and a really
excellent idea for those who object to kitchen “odours.” There is to
balance this convenience, however, the fact that should it rain or
snow the soup increases in quantity and the vegetables have water added
to the oil, and oil and water do not mix, also Taqui is tempted on the
way to question one of her children as to where he is going and what he
is doing or likely to be doing; but still, to those who really do not
know what is supposed to be hot and what cold, it does not matter.
The kitchen building is thick with ivy and creepers; even its unpoetic
chimney is encircled with a wealth of roses which spread all around a
welcome and delightful perfume. Above all, however, I love the garden.
In the days that had been, it was planted and cared for and attached
in terraces, as it were, to the side of a hill. Now it is left to the
freedom of its own sweet will, and the roses, jasmin, carnations,
lilies, and violets which grow all the year round are vying with one
another for supremacy. Everywhere the roses have an easy victory,
for it is they who can climb best, and they have climbed over every
convenient inch of territory they can find. Exquisite, glorious roses
they are! It seems a sin to pluck them in order to make jam, especially
in a land where the women have a pathetic tenderness for flowers.
“You mustn’t pluck a flower when the sun has gone to rest,” they tell
one, “for then the souls are coming into the flowers and you would
kill a little soul about to be born.” So I respect the little souls
that are being born, and wander along the weed-grown paths, roses
tearing my silk dress, roses tearing my veil. Who could be unhappy in
a garden when the sun has drawn out all around a most perfect concert
in perfumery--roses, lilies, jasmin, carnations, and violets? When I
am back in my country I will see what the distiller can make of this
concert; it will be to me a souvenir of this beautiful garden of the
East where I have dreamt and where I was glad, and at the same time
sad; where I have longed and hoped and am resigned. How far are the
perfumes of “Araby” responsible for the destinies of its curious people?
“In my country,” said I to my friends, “the book of ‘saws’ has it that
those who love flowers are born to sorrow.” “No doubt, no doubt,” they
answer, “but we will bear with the sorrow, for no Oriental can do
without the flowers.”
CHAPTER XVII INCONSISTENCIES ON THE SHORES OF THE BOSPHORUS
I have been to stay with Zeyneb at her little Yali on the shores of
the Bosphorus. I had not seen her since she so resolutely and for ever
closed the book of her European experiences, and our first meeting was
just a little painful. Zeyneb is a dear friend--a curious, interesting
study--a woman who had gone forth with a flourish of trumpets to try
the great, wonderful liberty of the West,--a woman who cast aside her
own civilization to throw herself before the altar of ours. She was
not prepared for our civilization, she was not armed for the fray, the
hurricane of progress took her off her feet, and now ... she is back in
the little Yali again.
This time I came in a caïque, for the house is right on the water’s
edge. It looked from the river like a tiny house--almost a Henley
villa--yet once inside, it grew and grew, and every room seemed to give
birth to a new one. I felt as though I were visiting a genealogical
tree....
I cannot master Turkish architecture--at least, this funny place has
entirely upset my calculations. Perhaps in the days when polygamy was
practised the master of the house, beginning with one wife, built the
façade, then extended his premises as he extended his family; the fact
that his eighth wife is still living permits me to make this bold
supposition. A hateful idea it is, to have rooms with more than one
door; it’s like having people with eyes in the back of their heads, and
I wonder whether there is not also a door under my bed and one in the
ceiling. It’s rather uncanny too, for in a country where doors have no
locks and would not lock if they had, every one flits unheard into one
another’s room....
Fortunately there is some one in all the three rooms leading out of
mine. I have a big brass bed with mother-of-pearl decorations, the
mattress is comfortable, so surely, being very tired, I will sleep.
I close my eyes, and shortly afterwards wake with a start. In the
semi-darkness I see a figure in my room; I call out in some language.
“Don’t be afraid,” replies the figure, “it is Zeyneb.” She has been
to fetch a fire lest I should be cold. In her one hand is the brass
_mongal_, about the size of a pail, which throws out a welcome heat,
and in the other a big silver teapot to warm the water for my bottle
after I am sound asleep. “Don’t be afraid,” again says my hostess,
but it is just a little strange to see in the dim moonlight a long,
sweeping dressing-gown, a turban-headed figure armed with a _mongal_
and a teapot.
As time goes on, however, I grow accustomed to these nocturnal
invasions and too lazy even to acknowledge them. Sometimes it is my
left neighbour who comes in to help herself to my candies or my syrup,
sometimes my back neighbour wonders, since she cannot sleep, whether
I am also awake, and if so perhaps a story ..., and sometimes Zeyneb
wakes me to see whether I am dead, so peacefully do I sleep.
I am invited to coffee in the Selamlik. Zeyneb must not accompany me,
she who was a Western club woman--she who ate _décolletée_ in the
presence of men....
A charming diplomatist who is there--he is a Turk of the old
school--rises politely when I enter and asks permission to talk for a
few moments to his brother diplomatist, a European, in French. Their
conversation is charming and interesting--both speak French with a
curious, original construction. What kind of French construction shall
I have acquired, I wonder, by the time I return to Paris?
But the Turk has me on his conscience--he cuts his conversation down
to the lowest possible brevity, and then _en galant homme_ comes right
down to my level!
I asked him for political news. “Mademoiselle is very polite,” said
he; but he would not allow me to sacrifice myself in that manner. I
remained firm, so did he. “Poetry for women,” said he, “politics for
men.” “In my country women like politics better than poetry,” said
I. “Yes,” he answered, “but not you. I have seen pictures of your
political women!”
We were to go for a picnic--a mysterious little semi-Western
performance, and no one was to know about it. Our plan of action was
soon determined.
It is noon and we have already lunched. A springless wagon is before
the door. Thickly veiled, we get in and the curtains are drawn. A short
while after another wagon starts. This wagon will follow us, but it
does not convey veiled women. Let me at once confess, it contains as
many men as we are women. What a bold adventure!
The men are Turkish gentlemen, and will keep within the confidence of
our little circle what we are rash enough to do. There is amongst our
party _une jeune fille à marier_, and we would not care to wreck her
matrimonial prospects for any pleasure, great or small, that might be
ours....
A charming drive it is--a little long perhaps, but the jolting of the
carriage is exercise in Turkey. One has every horseback sensation from
walking to jibbing, except a good canter.
Along the zig-zag path we plunge. We catch hold of one another as we
dive into the holes; we crawl up the hills and crawl down, and finally
arrive at the forest and at the lake where we are to meet.
It is a sleepy, beautiful lake covered with pink and white
water-lilies, and a little old boat has been taken prisoner amongst
them.
Not long after our arrival we are joined by the Selamlik. I don’t
know any of the men, and we are introduced and bow in the picturesque
fashion, carefully keeping our hair covered, and we speak to them as
naturally as though we were in the West.
Together we admire the beautiful nature around. We speak of the war--we
speak of the future--we make plans for Turkey, and the men present us
each with boxes of cigarettes and chocolates, and eat them with us
until the sinking sun reminds us that it is time for us to be returning
the way we came. Then the two sexes--the Harem and the Selamlik--are
separated again, but both feel better for the little interlude.
We have done no harm, nor is our adventure particularly thrilling,
though charming all the same. Perhaps after all the Turks are
right--they can give to innocence, as we cannot, a lovely dash of
wickedness.
* * * * *
One more household to stay with and my visits on the shores of the
Bosphorus must be ended. Fâtima wants me back, and that is sufficient
excuse for my leaving my friends without offending them. Also, it is
getting very chilly near the Bosphorus, and already the general exodus
back to Constantinople has begun.
I watch the removal carts packed with luggage passing before the
windows. Sometimes it is a donkey or a series of donkeys who remove the
goods on their backs, but whether it be cart or donkey the things have
a peculiar habit of falling off or out, and but for an honest passer-by
who draws the driver’s attention to the fallen articles, they would be
lost. And all this takes time, and yet the Turk says, “Why hurry? One’s
destination will not walk away.”...
I am now to stay with the family of a Cherif--a high dignitary of the
Moslem church. In this family the division between Harem and Selamlik
is strictly kept--and such a family will be the last to cast aside any
of the traditions or superstitions that have crept in like a weed to
spoil and strangle Islam.
* * * * *
My visit is over. It has been interesting as an experience, but not
one man have we seen for one week, for as the Cherif may see no woman
farther removed in blood than a sister--and there are generally other
women visitors there--he cannot come to the harem.
In this household, only one lady spoke French, and that not at all
well; added to this, she is timid and prefers rather not to speak
than to give me an opportunity of criticising her. Our conversation
therefore is reduced to signs, and our pleasures to eating and
drinking. We have the east side of the house, the men the west; and we
each have a separate garden, and a wall that no one would dare to climb
separates us.
Our long unending meals are still longer since I require both my hands
to talk with. An old negress insists on filling up my plate with good
things. “I simply can’t,” I say to her in English; she laughs the
bereks off the dish. Then she explains to me with signs which the
French speaker finally puts into French: “_Beaucoup corps, beaucoup
manger._”
In the afternoons, since we cannot speak, we try on all kinds of
costumes and drink coffee, the ladies always taking possession of my
grounds to see whether something good is not in store for me. A sign of
“abundance” is always there, but since the interpreter has never been
able to define the kind of abundance to which I am limited, let us hope
an abundance of all kinds of good things is coming.
It is a curious household and quite without interest to me after one
day. A weary round of days exactly the same--women who know little of
their own land and nothing of any other. I begin to feel myself a “sin”
in such surroundings. Perhaps after my visit these women will begin to
think. They were perfectly happy before I came; will they still be
happy after I have left? Yes, I believe so. Some power has arranged
their life as it is. Were that power to wish it otherwise, that power
would change it. Every nation must have doormats at its threshold.
CHAPTER XVIII ONLOOKERS ONLY
And now the time has come for me to return to my native land, I ask
myself what have been my final impressions of my life as a Turkish
woman. All these weeks, which have slipped by without my noticing their
going, I have felt like an actress seated in the theatre, watching
another play my part--indeed a restful sensation.
I came here with perhaps just a little of the “downtrodden woman of
the East” fallacy left, but that has now completely vanished. To me,
an Englishwoman, there are sides of this life which would irritate me
into open rebellion. That the customs of the country should have power
to make me wear a veil, whether I wished it or not, that I should be
forced to travel in a compartment reserved exclusively for women, that
I must always have the hood up when I drive in a carriage, that if I
chance to stray into a café of the people, I am served in a superior
kind of rabbit-hutch, separated by a grating from the opposite sex,
that if I go into a tea-shop where there are men, I will be requested
to leave, and last, but not least, that I should have to depend for
male society exclusively on my blood relations--Heaven indeed forbid!
A Turkish woman asked me once what it felt like to be able to mix
freely with men who are not blood relations. “I cannot _tell_,” I
answered; “it dates right back to the time when my big brother teased
me to tears, and his friend wiped them away. To ask me what it means to
mix freely with men is almost like asking what it means to have lungs.
I never stopped to think, but I know I should die without them.”
But then, after all, is not everything relative? Had I never known the
pleasures of male society, had not circumstances forced me to take my
life in my own hands and work out my own destiny, I should not perhaps
quarrel with what is part of a Turkish woman’s existence. If we in the
West possess what is known as the “joy of liberty,” have not so many
of us been denied the blessing of protection? The veiled Turkish woman
asks, Can you imagine how distressing it is to be willing to work and
for the conventions of the country not to allow it? Many of the poor
tired workers of my country might ask, Can you imagine what it is to
have to work and not to be able to find work?
All these weeks I have been leading a Turkish existence. I have really
tried to put myself in a Turkish woman’s place, but I cannot somehow
pity her. Is it that I have been too near the suffering heart of my
own countrywomen? “Our lives are so empty,” pointed out one woman.
“Really we do not have enough social distractions.” I close my eyes and
think of the women of my own country, worn out with a London season and
its festivities. In their moments of sincerity they would not tell you
they had expended their time and energy only to be bored; but social
obligations cannot be taken in moderate doses, you must swallow the
whole draught.
“Can you imagine what it is to have longed all your life to hear Wagner
and a full orchestra and not to be able?” said one woman; and another,
who is an exceedingly good musician, tells me she has no idea of her
own value as a pianist, seeing she never had an opportunity of hearing
professionals.
But all this is changing, and it is a passionately interesting study to
see them taking off the customs of ages to put on something different.
How will they appear when next I visit them?
I have called the Turkish woman an “onlooker.” She is at present, as it
were, only on the margin of the great life; she understands enough of
the game, however, to long to take a part. How will she play that part?
Is it absolutely necessary for her to come to us for assistance?
This is the question I have asked so many Turkish women. They must
think I argue almost like a reactionary. Yet I have not defended the
harem system. There is, however, so much in the Turkish home life which
is beautiful that I would prefer to see them progressing on the lines
of their own civilization, rather than becoming a poor imitation of us.
Let them come to us and learn to organize their studies; the rest they
can, if they will, manage for themselves.
But I have a feeling that, except for a very few, Turkish women will
not take too kindly to our civilization. When my charming English
friends, who reconcile me just a little to Pera, took me to the Dorcas
Ball I felt uncomfortable prickings of conscience, going to enjoy
myself and leaving my friends at home. I might have saved my regrets,
however, for it was they who were sorry for me, having to waste my time
dancing till the small hours of the morning with mere acquaintances.
And those Turkish women who have come to Europe? How well they have
adapted themselves to our civilization. When they were with us who
could have supposed they were wearing hats for the first time? Who
could suppose, to hear them speaking our language, to see them
threading their way in and out of the traffic of our big capitals, that
they had not lived with us all their lives? And yet how glad they were
to return to their own home life!
The Turk has always been most severely attacked in Europe on the manner
in which he treats his womenkind. He considers them, it is said, “mere
possessions.” But surely this is the case with the men of most nations.
On what but this is the woman’s rebellion based?
That the Moslem woman has no status, I most emphatically deny. If the
Moslem women are “possessions,” they are “cherished possessions” and
treated as such. Are Moslem women obliged to exercise the most hideous
of professions as are their Christian neighbours? Is there anywhere in
the East the terrible degradation of our poor Whitechapel women? It
is not because he despises her that the Turk has kept his womankind
screened from the world. Her rôle is maternity, therefore the cares and
temptations of the world must not be known to her, and nothing ought to
interfere with this supreme reason of her existence.
Quite recently a decision of the greatest importance and daring was
taken by the Ottoman Government. Without their having to ask, the
University was thrown open to women, and they are now attending
lectures on gynæcology, hygiene, woman’s rights, etc.
When I heard the news, much as I rejoiced, I could not help making a
comparison between the methods of the East and those of the West. Here
are these “unspeakable” Turks giving to women privileges for which they
have not asked, simply because they are theirs by right, and since
they are to take their place as workers in the world, they must be
educated. And yet, here in England, much as women have tried to work
along the lines of evolution they have been driven to revolution. Is
this sex antagonism of their asking? From the beginning of the woman’s
movement, every privilege has had to be bought with rebellion.
* * * * *
And now, with reluctance, I close the diary of my existence as a
Turkish woman. I have not attempted to give a careful and finished
picture of my life here; this is the age of impressions, and the
beautiful Eastern colouring would lose much of its warmth, were it
not put on fresh from the brush. My boxes are corded and ready, the
Messageries Maritimes steamer which brought me here will take me
back through the beautiful Sea of Marmora, where the setting sun
casts itself in such magnificence on to the water beneath it, and the
dolphins bathed in sunlight pop up to greet us as we pass along.
A little Turkish friend is going to Europe with me. Her first hat is in
readiness, and when the steamer has gone through the “Dardanelles” she
will put it on.
If only I could order the same calm sea which brought me here to take
me back again; but I must trust to Providence. All through my visit the
glorious sun of Eastern hospitality has been darting its beams upon
me--it has been a wonderful experience.
Ah! the beautiful unceremoniousness of the East, the absolute
sincerity, the liking of one’s friends for friendship’s sake
irrespective of position, and the true brotherhood and democracy of the
kindly Turk ... if these qualities must vanish in the inevitable march
of progress, then may I never see Turkey again; for, without these
qualities, it would no longer be the Turkey I have admired and loved.
AFTER-WORDS
It was Christmas 1913. The Balkan War was over, and Young Turkey had
begun with a patriotism born of humiliation to save what remained of
the poor mutilated Fatherland. (I have described my impressions of
Turkish life during this period.)
At the head of affairs were men who could accept responsibility. Seeds
of progress were being sown amongst the ruins. The leaders, who had
learnt their lesson from bitter experience and had accomplished so much
against terrible odds, could they not now steer the ship of State into
the calm waters of prosperity?
Talaat-Djavid and Djémal knew what they wanted. Though confronted with
international and internal problems, difficulties of race and religion
and financial chaos, yet they kept their heads, and then they made one
fatal mistake--that mistake was ENVER PASHA.
Only a year ago Enver was neither Pasha nor the Sultan’s son-in-law nor
Minister of War. He was lying seriously ill at the German hospital at
Constantinople, and only his great determination to serve his country
pulled him successfully through three terrible operations. He had
been fighting in spite of appendicitis, and in spite of all kinds of
internal complications and bullet wounds. He was brought almost dead
from the battlefield--even German surgery had given him up--and yet he
would not die. Enver struck one as a picturesque personage. His energy
and determination were such new features in Turkish civilization. A
fearless and reckless soldier, tall, handsome, a patriot certainly,
unintelligent but sincere, hated and loved in so many harems, his
picture was to be found draped in the Turkish flag: he was the best
selling of picture postcards.
Accompanied by Enver’s great friend and master, Djémal Pasha, I went to
visit the Turkish hero in the German hospital. It was then I discovered
what Djémal afterwards owned was true, that Enver was totally lacking
in initiative and imagination, and that he could only command when
he himself was commanded, but no one better than he could obey. “And
the revolution of 1908?” I asked. “How splendidly he carried out his
orders!” I was told. “He’s a magnificent fellow, and such a man is
_indispensable_ to our cause.”
Although weak, Enver discussed many political questions with us, but
in everything he agreed with his friend Djémal Pasha, whose sympathies
were entirely Franco-British, because, as he explained, and rightly
so, Britain and France were the two countries who had no interest to
work for Turkey’s destruction. Djémal detested Germany even more than
he detested Russia. He loved England, but more than England he loved
France and everything French, and French culture and thought, and he
once added, “_French money_.” Djémal’s policy was to allow Turkey
to be under the greatest obligations to England and France. If only
England and France would come forward and do this and that for us,
if France would offer us education, if England, as the ruler of our
co-religionists, would come nearer to us, where then would be German
influence?
The German Mission had just then arrived in Constantinople. My Turkish
women friends were much distressed, considering it a humiliation to
see their capital thus invaded by Teutons. Indeed, they requested me,
in their name, to ask the Government whether the Mission could not be
removed to Adrianople. Djémal could not understand the women’s anxiety
about Germany. “We have begun with German methods and we must go on,”
said he; “but the German mission has no political meaning....” Djémal
was always sincere. His god was power. He wanted power above everything.
And so Enver, as a useful _instrument_ of his colleagues, and
particularly Djémal, was appointed Minister of War. As their obedient
servant in his own reckless manner, he was to obey their orders; he
was to sweep out from the War Office old worn-out servants; to make
other drastic changes his friends found indispensable; but his rôle was
distinctly to obey, not to command. He fulfilled his mission; he _did_
obey, but he changed masters--he gave himself up body and soul, not to
his colleagues, but to the German Kaiser.
When Enver so emphatically denied to me the Germanophilism of which he
was accused, no doubt he was sincere. He was like a man in love. He,
as a soldier of an army suffering from lack of discipline, could not
help admiring the German organisation. Their arrogance also appealed
to him, and although, as a democrat and a man of the people, he tried
to persuade himself to the contrary, he was flattered by the Emperor
William’s attention. In Berlin, when military attaché, they, the
Germans, made a god of Enver; he left his heart in Germany, too, it is
said. He may have tried to escape from this German influence; he simply
could not: it was his destiny. He who loved to obey found his master
at Potsdam and his master’s representatives at Constantinople--the
Ambassador, Baron von Wangenheim, and General Liman von Sanders, head
of the German Mission. They took possession of him; he was powerless;
as powerless as his ex-master, Djémal, to take a firm stand once more
for Franco-British influence.
It was Christmas Eve a year ago. The Turkish heir to the throne
invited me _tout à fait sans cérémonie_ to his palace to coffee and to
talk to him about my country. Although he could perfectly understand
French, he could not speak it; consequently Djémal Pasha was good
enough to act as interpreter.
The Prince’s knowledge of everything connected with my country was a
pleasant surprise. He admired and loved England. “Whatever political
mistakes we may say England has made, however unjustly we may think she
has treated us,” said the Prince, “England is still our model. She’s a
clean, honour-loving nation, a nation of gentlemen.” These sentiments
were shared by the Grand Vizier.
The Prince was not as enthusiastic about France as Djémal Pasha. France
to him meant Paris, and Paris was a danger to Young Turkey. “Let our
men go to France afterwards, but let them first be sobered down in
England,” said he. “French learning may be fine, but England gives a
young man character.... English women make their sons men. We want
Turks to be men.” To our statesmen the Prince paid tribute; also to our
Court, our literature, and our architecture. “It is all aristocratic
and solid,” were his words....
The Turkish heir to the throne considered German influence something
that did not even come within the range of discussion. “Germany,” said
he, “is forty years old; she has yet to be tried.” Then he added,
“Britain has shed her blood for us--that we can never forget.”
Such is the opinion of the future Sultan of Turkey about Britain--now
Turkey’s enemy--and indeed, he meant every word he said.
And in the harems--does Germany even count? Right in the heart of Asia
Minor, they have heard of British honour, but who has heard of Germany?
and the name of Britain rests on a prestige which has stood the test
of time. That “_all right_” verdict which was given to the English
governess--that acceptance of the British word without contract--are
facts which count.
An ill-advised Government can lead its country to destruction, but the
mighty Kaiser himself cannot crush out this admiration born in the
Turks for England.
It is true England and France have never considered Turkey worth while,
as Germany has done. I said so to a British official. “We cannot send
out retrievers, as Baron Marschall does,” he answered. “We can only
offer a straightforward friendship. If the Turks cannot accept that....”
Yet Germany did send her finest diplomatists to Constantinople, and
also her picked officers; the Kaiser himself paid court to the Sultan,
and on his Eastern tour saw that Moslem feelings and customs were in
every way considered. He gave presents of great value to both the
Sultan and his Grand Vizier. Kiamil Pasha in his Konak has books of
priceless value given to him by the Kaiser, and yet evidently it was
of little value, for the veteran statesman of Turkey turned always to
England for sympathy. England was the country who could put everything
right, and one of his greatest sorrows was that England had not come to
Turkey’s assistance in her hour of need.
And Turkey’s quarrel in this case was certainly not with Britain. She
was still smarting under what she felt the injustice of giving Mitylene
and Chios to Greece. Day and night she was waiting for an opportunity
to get back her islands, and day and night she was in terror lest
Greece should strike before her Dreadnoughts--ordered in England--were
ready. Hakky Pasha, the ex-Grand Vizier of Turkey in London,
telegraphed and advised that in spite of Germany’s offer of assistance
against Greece, Turkey must remain neutral, and to attack Greece even
during the present war classed her at once as anti-British. But it was
not what any reasonable statesman wanted, it was what Germany wanted.
Turkey was clamouring for war with Greece; instead of this she found
that Germany in her name had bombarded an open Russian port! Germany
promised her Mitylene and Chios and even Cyprus. She staked her whole
fortune on German victory and German honour--and Germany promised
to free her from European interference. Now, it is not difficult to
calculate what Turkey has gained from the speculation.
It is hard to make out a good case for Turkey, but however bitter one
may feel against the foolish Enver and the Young Turkish Government,
the Turkish people are not to blame. A friend writing from Turkey
tells me Germany left no stone unturned to lead the Government into
difficulties. In Anatolia, she spread the false report that the Moslems
in the Caucasus were being ill treated by the Russians! Baron von
Wangenheim took possession of the press. Enver Pasha, led by Baron von
Wangenheim, made short work of those who under the eyes of their new
masters declared they had put up too long with this “mad Government.”
Djémal Pasha’s orders that the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ should be
disarmed were totally disregarded; the German Admiral Suchon was master
of the situation, and refused to take on board the Turkish sailors sent
by Djémal. Turkey ceased to exist.
The rest of the story is known: the touching “Good-bye” which passed
between the British and French Ambassadors and the Grand Vizier, the
arrival of three million marks which was Germany’s first instalment of
a river of gold she had promised to her faithful Enver. Then a time of
waiting and the second instalment of gold--German paper!!! Turkey is
now quite aware of the treachery of Germany. But it is too late.
“There is no happiness and no salvation for the Turk,” a dear friend
writes me. “However much we try, whatever sacrifices we make, our lot
has always been, and always will be, to be sacrificed to the ambitions
of the European Powers. Once more Turkey has fulfilled her destiny....”
* * * * *
It was Christmas only a year ago. The land of Islam was wrapped in a
mantle of snow. To the quiet harem came Turkish friends from far and
near, and together we celebrated the birth of the Saviour of the World.
It was a beautifully pathetic Christmas, one of the most interesting
and wonderful I ever spent.
The celebration of Christmas in a Moslem home! As a little girl, I
longed and dreamed of the day when I should be privileged to tell the
Moslems the great and real meaning of Christmas.... And that day had
come.
We had a Christmas tree, we played at snapdragon and hunt the slipper
and musical chairs. We sang “Auld lang syne,” and to me it was the
beginning of a great understanding--a great wide brotherhood--and we
promised to spend this Christmas together in the same real Christmas
manner....
And that was Christmas a year ago. Could I ever have dreamed where I
would be this year? I, who had a year ago explained the beautiful real
meaning of Christmas, am here in a French hospital with English nurses
helping to repair the ills that Christian nations have done to one
another!
What a glorious example for the Moslem peoples! The hideousness of the
Christian’s warfare! Is there anything the East can now learn from the
West?
There are Christmas trees in all the hospital wards. The English nurses
have dressed them ... the bare walls are transformed into a fairyland
of ivy and candles and real good Christmas decorations. There are cakes
and sweets and fruits and British plum pudding....
Luncheon has ended. These splendid English nurses, who have responded
to the French appeal to come and help, ask me for a toast.
“There is only one toast for all thinking humanity,” I reply, and the
nurses understand.
The German prisoners are washing up the dishes on which we have eaten
our British plum pudding. Poor pathetic souls! Let us distinguish
between the criminal and his crime....
And this is the Christmas I promised to spend in Turkey--the land where
I have spent so many happy days of my life. And this is the result of
the world-famed Teuton _Kultur_.
Beside the crimes of Louvain and Rheims and the poor shivering and
hungry refugees who were first wrecked at Havre and then brought on
penniless and homeless here to Bordeaux, and all the other crimes
for which Germany must answer, I place the betrayal of Turkey. To
deliberately lead to destruction a people who made so brave a stand for
regeneration, whose patriotism I have so inadequately described, if
this is all that civilization can produce--if this is how we illustrate
the lessons we have learnt from Bethlehem to Gethsemane--how can we any
longer preach that wonderful gospel of peace and goodwill amongst men?
My companions urge this is the darkness before dawn. Behind the clouds
and battle smoke the sun is shining. Cruel platitudes in a hospital of
eleven hundred wounded soldiers. And when the war is over? Alas, the
unending sadness of my surroundings has killed for a while any hope of
happiness.
HOSPITAL MILITAIRE DE TALENCE,
BORDEAUX, _Christmas_ 1914.
INDEX
Abdul-Hak-Hamid (Turkish writer), 116
Abdul-Hamid (ex-Sultan of Turkey), 44, 48, 127, 145, 153
Ahmed Riza Bey, 81
Architecture, 188
Aristocracy of the Turks, 21
Baïram, 34
Baise-main ceremony, 33
Balkan War, 202
Bedford College, 67
Beds, 176, 182, 188
Belkis Chefket Hanoum, 82
Birth presents, 91
Bosphorus, 171, 176, 177, 187
Breakfast, 177, 178
British King and Queen, 21
British prejudice, 55, 152
Broussa Lycée, 142
Broussa Village, 148
Browne, Professor E. G., of Cambridge, 104-105
Cadines (Sultan’s wives), 92
Calfat, or slave, 10
Charms, 184
_Cherchez la femme_, 79
Cherif, Stay in the house of a, 192
Chocolate, Description of Miss, 24-25
Christian Church, Attitude of, towards women, 74
Christian Cross, the, 157
Christmas in a Moslem home, 210
Civilizations, Collision between old and young, 83
Classes for women, 78
Coffee, 171
Court ladies, 35
Court officials, 39
Dames de Sion, 118
Death, Natural attitude towards, 50
Divorce easy in Turkey, 85
Djémal Pasha, 31, 60, 61, 81, 202 _et seq._
Djemil Pasha, Prefect of Constantinople, 63
Djevdat Pasha, 110
Dresses, 172
East End of London, 72
Eminé Semié Hanoum, 113
Enver Pasha, 202 _et seq._
Eunuchs, Sale of, 26
Europe, Duty of, towards Turkey, 62
European furniture, 19
Eyoub, 162 _et seq._, 169
Fanaticism, 29, 30
Father of the people, 23
Fâtima Alié Hanoum, 109, 110, 191
Feminist meeting, 64
Feminist Turkish Government, 81
Fitzgerald, translator of Omar Khayyam, 105
Flowers, 185, 186
Football in Turkey, 161
Foreign languages, Knowledge of, 42
France, Anatole, 118
German influence, 204 _et seq._
German Mission, 204
_Goeben_ and _Breslau_, 209
Governments, Comparison between Turkish and British, 80
Grand Vizier, Prince Said Halim, 124
Green Mosque at Broussa, 124
“Hadgi,” 183, 184
Hadgi Vadt, 141
Hair (crowning glory of Turkish women), 86, 172
Hakky Pasha, 208
Halidé-Hanoum, 17, 18, 66, 69, 76, 107, 108
_Hamidieh_ (Warship), 82
Harem, Imperial, 43
Harem shopping, 31
Harem tea-parties, 94
Haremlik, 180, 191
Hasnadar Ousta, 39, 41, 46
Hind (writer), 112
Hospitality of Turks, 23, 173, 174
House, Turkish, 56, 57, 170, 180
Hugo, Victor, 118
Kadinlar-Dunyassi, 65, 114, 115
Kara Kheuz, 141
Kemal, 116
Key, Ellen, 107
Kipling, 118
Lady of Paradise, 111
Lazarists, 118
Leyla (poetess), 111
Leyla Hanoum (modern Turkish writer), 113
Liman von Sanders, General, 205
Loti, Pierre, 90, 118, 124, 125
Marriage, Turkish, 93, 95-8
Married Women’s Property Act in Turkey, 91
Marschall von Bieberstein, the late Baron, 207
Medressa, 126
Mehmeth V., 46
Melek, 116
Menus, Turkish, 59, 60
Messageries Maritimes, 13
Mihri (famous poetess), 112
Military College at Broussa, 83
_Mongal_, 188
Montagu, Lady Mary, 112
Mosque, Sultan Fathij, 167
Mothers-in-law, Turkish, 93, 95
Movement, “Turkey for the Turks,” 20, 68, 71
Navy League, Turkish, 85
Niguar Hanoum, 113
Order of Chefakat, 40
Patriotism, 84
Perote, 14
Photography and Moslem religion, 27
Picnic, A Turkish, 190 _et seq._
Place of honour, 22
Polygamy and Paquin, 57
Pope Leo XIII., 21
Proclamation of Constitution, its effect on
condition of Turkish women, 15
Purity of Turkish women, 109
Quakers, 134
Red Crescent Society, 16, 88, 89
Red Cross Society, 89, 114
Restaurant, Turkish woman’s first, 5
Roses, 185
Roses, Alexandra, 85
Rousseau, J. J., 117, 118
School of Arts and Crafts (Belgian), 161
Selamlik, 180, 189, 191
Selma Hanoum, 81
Servants in Turkish House, 158
Serving coffee, 54
Sèvres china in Imperial Harem, 43
Sheik-ul-Islam, 63
Shinasi Effendi, 115
Slaves, Sale of, 26
Soldiers, Wounded, 87
Suchon, Admiral, 209
Suffragette, Admiration for militant, 77
Sutanna, 128, 129, 132
Swedish drill, 61
Talaat Bey, 31, 61, 63
Talaat-Djavid, 202
Taqui, 173, 177, 178, 181, 185
Theatre, Turkish, 75
Tolerance towards all religions, 156
Turkish baths, 146
Turkish defeat, Reasons for, 144
Turkish language, Ignorance of, 66
Validé-Sultana, 92
Vatran, 116
Veil, Tyranny of the, 76
Veils no protection, 69, 70
Vigny, 118
_Visites de cérémonie_, 182
Voltaire, 118
Wangenheim, Baron von, 205, 209
Wells, H. G., 118
Wilhelm II. of Germany, 205
Womanhood, Society for elevation of, 64
Woman’s rôle according to the Koran, 68
Yali, on the shores of the Bosphorus, 187
Young Turkey, Unfair criticism of, 157
Zeyneb, 29, 90, 106, 116, 154, 155, 187, 188, 189
Zeyneb (professor at the University of Baghdad), 111
* * * * *
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.
Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned, except for the frontispiece.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
The source scans for this ebook do not include the two illustrations
shown in the List of Illustrations as facing page 82, and other
available online scans of the original hard copy of the book also do
not include these illustrations.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN A TURKISH HAREM ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
